ya bro, you forgot your link

Someone has said, somewhere:

The tax should be envy-based, since the role of government in redistributing income is formalization of envy. Since the target of envy is consumption, the base of the tax is consumption.

Also, gratification of envy is a public good. If I am gratified that somebody better than me has had his consumption curtailed, everybody worse off than me is similarly gratified. Same thing when my turn comes to be taxed. Suppose that the average level of consumption goes as the square of the household income percentile, the total envy that could be gratified would go as the integral of the square?the cube?of the household income percentile. So the average envy tax should go as the cube of the percentile, or the percentile-marginal envy tax should go as the square of the percentile of consumption.

skum, I will assume it was directed at me.

I concider myself liberetarian/liberetarian left

I think deficit spending (over a certain 2-3% of GDP limit (this is ofcourse from inflation)) is a bad thing, and it is one of the worst things the government can do. I say that if we want a wellfare system, we have to pay for it. the only way to pay for it is through taxes.

I like how we pay for it in norway, we got a 35% flat tax on most income, and a 50% top tax

but our coorperate tax is low, our minimum wage is high and our tax on goods is high.

the idea is that we mainly tax the income and the spending, and then keep coorperate taxes low, so that they an afford to pay the wages, and make it profitable to have a cooperation here.

on the side, there is a myriad of tax loopholes to keep the really rich in the country. there is a loophole that makes the owner of shipping only pay a few percentages tax, to keep the from shipping out.


but main point, I am crystal clear, don't spend money you don't have.

Skrum you really have nothing to say about the points I raised? There is a reason money is considered capital and not the other way around. Capital is a means of production and profit. When you have lots of capital it's easier to increase your purchasing power. Money is purchasing power. Does that make sense?


Furthermore I feel there is somewhat of a grave disparity between the richest 1% of Americans owning 35% of the nation's capital and the bottom 99% owning 65% of the nation's capital.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

The next 19% own 50% of the nation's wealth and the bottom 80% own 15% despite being the labor and work force for the rest of the country. Is it me or does that seem grossly disproportionate?

GB that's an eloquent post you made about sound finance. Let me direct you or anyone else that thinks that makes sense to the section directly below it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit_spending#Post-Keynesian_economics

Summary: We operate under a fiat money system (our money is worthless but we ascribe value you to it). Historically our money was based on gold reserves, that is to say the government had an equal amount of gold to the money it printed. Nixon (fiscal conservative) ended this so that our money was completely fiat. Since fiat isn't real wealth can only be increased through deficit spending or borrowing money. If you've taken a basic high school economics course you should understand this. Basically without deficit spending we would be living under a mercantilist economy where it is impossible to grow wealth. There's a reason every single corporation has debt. As K8 put it, there is "good debt". And it is a necessity to our government and economy.

Not saying this is a good system, I think capitalist principles like this are bullshit, I'm just telling you how it is.

I try to help Boner out on his talking points and see what I get?

We differed on the role of government skrum. I don't think the government's job is to be some sort of asshole robin hood. I think the government should protect people from the inherent failures of capitalism. Namely and more specifically the ability for those who have capital to accrue capital at an exponential rate.

The inherent flaw of unregulated capitalism is that those that control the capital (money) control the means of production and ultimately they control the growth of capital. Populist regulations like minimum wage, child labor laws, and the graduated-bracket tax system are in place to curb this inherent flaw of capitalism.

This is another good read if you have the time:
http://www.vargr.com/pages/stories/images/markets.html

"I think the government should protect people from the inherent failures of capitalism."

So bailouts are good?

I think the fact that there is such a thing as "too big to fail" is proof enough that capitalism is a very flawed system