soreff (12/02/82)
A comment on Ed Pawlak's comment that progressive income taxes make sheltering income worthwhile: Certainly a progressive tax will direct investments into areas where there is a tax advantage (presumably with some loss of economic efficiency as a result). This is, however, also true of any income tax, though the effect should be less for a tax with a lower marginal rate at the income level where most investment occurs. Even with a flat tax, some income sheltering would still make sense. -Jeffrey Soreff
soreff (12/03/82)
From the tone of the last two articles on this subject, Bruce Parker's and Rabbit!Morley's, it would seem to be time to start net.politics.flame. Does this seem appropriate to other subscribers? Might it make sense to have explicit voting on how much redistribution takes place via the tax system? If one had a parameterized tax law, with the parameter(s) set by referendum, then one would have direct, popular control of how progressive the tax law is. Certainly the functions in the tax law would have to be reasonably simple for this to work. Perhaps incremental tax rate cold be a piecewise linear function of income with a flat minimum and maximum and linear interpolation in between. Does anyone have any comments on this? It seems to me that there are approximately three economic things that are intrinsically political issues even in a perfectly tuned economy without unemployment or inflation: 1) the amount of redistribution of income 2) the fraction of production going into public goods 3) the balance between long term and short term activities in the economy (admittedly this one is pretty hazy, but there must be some decent measure for the time frame of "the average economic decision") Does this seem like a reasonable set of things to be handled politically? Can anyone out there think of some mechanisms for getting public involvement in setting these parameters? -Jeffrey Soreff
ark (12/05/82)
The single most important question about any tax system is this: Does my life belong to me, or not?.
soreff (12/06/82)
A message from rabbit!ark asks: "The single most important question about any tax system is this: Does my life belong to me, or not?." I think the author is either confusing the tax system with the draft system, or confusing earning and breathing. -Jeffrey Soreff
jfw (12/14/82)
A message from hplabsb!soreff says: "A message from rabbit!ark asks: ``The single most important question about any tax system is this: Does my life belong to me, or not?'' I think the author is confusing the tax system with the draft system, or confusing earning and breathing. -- Jeffrey Soreff" If I am a slave, then my life does not belong to me. If I am a slave for 11 months of the year, but am permitted freedom for the 12th month, is this truly being free? At what point does a tax system cease to be slavery? Does it ever (were *YOU* *asked* to give up your earnings, or do you merely agree with it happening)? Before you laugh off these questions, answer them: what percentage of time must I give you freedom before you will not feel that you are my slave? Even if you agree with tax systems (and some libertarians acknowledge their partial necessity), these questions do NOT go away -- they merely go unanswered by those who benefit. Note: working for Big Multinational Incorporated for money is NOT slavery -- you always have the option of telling them what you think of them and going to live off the land in the Alaskan North Woods. *They* won't have you imprisoned. Fighting for the recognition and acknowledgement of tradeoffs, -John Woods
soreff (12/15/82)
In response to John Woods' article: I would not define the boundary between slavery and freedom in terms of the fraction of my earnings which are seized, but rather in terms of whether anyone is in the position to force me to follow arbitrary orders. This is a strictly personal view. I think of taxation as being rather like a form of consistent computer theft by the government from the point of view of personal impact. It means I can save and buy less than I would without the taxes, but it is predictable (so I can budget for it) and doesn't involve the collateral damage that a burglary would. To contrast it with the draft: the IRS can't risk my life, if the department of war had me in its clutches it could. The IRS forces me to take a single action each year, no such limit exists on a slave holder. In fact, the IRS has a lot less control over my life than the company I work for does. Certainly I could switch companies if I found one I strongly preferred, and which accepted me, but the same thing applies to countries. -Jeffrey Soreff (hplabs!soreff)
courtney (12/21/82)
#R:hplabsb:-117400:hp-pcd:17400004:000:1675 hp-pcd!courtney Dec 20 13:22:00 1982 In reading John Woods response and quest for recognition of trade-offs, I get the feeling that John himself is missing the scope of trade-offs that will always exist in a society of more than one living being. Certainly we all recognize that there is some limit to individual freedom. Many people will agree that an appropriate place to draw the line is at the point where one person's freedom infringes on another person's. What happens when we consider peoples freedom measured over time? Suppose we could each choose how much tax we wanted to pay this year. We probably would not see anything change for the first couple days of having this freedom (if given the choice, most of us would choose to pay little or no taxes). But in a week, a month, ... our lives would be radically affected and few of us would be happy with the result! So how much tax should we pay and how far into the future should we care? That question is the "crux of the biscuit" as far as I can tell. Much of our tax burden provides payoffs in a somewhat distant future, such as military budget, social security, education, environment, ... How far into the future can the public see and how many of them will forego consumption today for some abstact improvement of the future? The wise of today's society and of past societies seem to agree that we need a guiding collective body to help insure that we don't discount the future too greatly ... we call this collective body "government" and we bestow upon it the power to serve us with the more abstract needs of our society as a whole AND as a group of individuals. Courtney Loomis