The poor don’t buy very much in the way of taxable consumables and therefore would not pay very much in sales tax. It would be no different than it is now.

“Far be it for me to speak for Kinsella, but I think you misunderstand him. His point is that economics can only tell you “is”, and never “ought”.”

I agree Chris. What I don’t get is that you don’t hold Mike up to that sort of standard when he starts trotting out economic theory. Why the double standard?

Hey! That generation paid for your education, you cheapskate!

Consumption taxes are just another thing that corporations can easily dodge. As an example, rather than buying machinery or computers in the US, they have their offshore subsidiary buy them outside of the US, and then LEASE them to the US company, specifically avoiding a consumption tax on the full value.

It’s so easy to dodge, even a kid can do it!

BTW, if North Dakota could be compared to ANY European country, please use the accurate one…

BTW. it’s NOT Greece…

It would be Iceland.

Two things:

1. Pragmatically social security does not actually work that way. It takes from you and gives to the currently retired. Those statements you get about what you paid in and what you are owed are just smoke and mirrors to cover up the fact that your money is given to someone else.

2. Let’s assume it works the way you’re suggesting. Why is it even necessary at all if that’s how it works? Why can’t individuals keep for themselves what is theirs instead of handing it to the government for decades before getting it back? Why is it unreasonable to expect individuals to save their own money for retirement instead of having the government force them to do it via taxes?

The question you need to be asking is why even the moderately wealthy would go bankrupt paying for their own cancer treatment.

So the US and EU get a free pass to subsidize the shit out of their own farming and screw over the entire third world in the process. Yes that is a totally rational and reasonable explanation for why such things should be allowed to continue.

We pay others to provide things we cannot provide ourselves all the time. There’s no reason to immediately jump past that to ‘paying’ the government to do it.

“Giving seniors a baseline standard of living is a humane thing to do, and all of society benefits from it.”

As far as it being the humane thing to do while that’s true it doesn’t automatically argue for government intervention as much as it argues for humanitarian causes. I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not but non-government entities are perfectly capable of being humanitarian. I’d say the government is actually pretty bad at being humane. As far as everyone benefiting: [Citation Needed].

The problem with state run education is that the state is excessively bad at running education and that fact is very well documented.

Guys, just fyi, SS is, by the law which creates it, “old age insurance”. You can read it in the law. Insurance, by definition, takes from one to give to another as a way of offsetting risk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance

“Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment.”

Except in the case of old age insurance provided by the government the “payment” to the provider, i.e. the government is tiny (something like .01% of money collected goes towards administering the program). However, the transfer of “risk” in this case, risk of being poor because you reached old age and didn’t save enough (for whatever reason), is done by taking money from one and giving it to another.

Stick to the technical analysis of the impact of technology and the Internet to the business practices of modern corporations, and stay the hell out of the neoliberal, Republican, voodoo economics political hackery. Any more posts like this make this blog a useless destination.

And what about people like me who were suddenly disabled and unemployable? Am I to simply roll over and die because I cannot afford health insurance or health care? See, I like ideas like this, but then, you know, you’re telling people to their faces they should just die. Thanks for that.

It isn’t. If you were born in 1960 or later it is now 67, and that will likely get changed in a few more years.

Still see no credible evidence the HFCS is any worse for you than any other type of sugar, here. In the end, that’s a health concern that’s up to debate. Besides, if you’re concerned about sugary drinks, then don’t drink them.

your arguments alternate between arrogant entitlement and disgusting self-pity,

If you are going to make these sorts of accusations, and I might add that the way you delivered it was troll-worthy, than might you be willing to show what you think falls into these categories? I, too, am on permanent disability due to illness when I was in my early 20s.

I see you accuse him of not using his mind when you fail to realize just how debilitating some forms of arthritis are. When you are in pain, you cannot think clearly, which means you cannot work efficiently. What job, then, would you say he is good for? Or myself, for that matter? I’m still looking for ways I can go back to school and work, again, but guess what that requires? Those social systems that you seem to be so against!

Umm… Number 6 is very specifically a ‘spending side’ suggestion…

> And what is your alternate theory for the drop in elder
> poverty?

> While you think of that, here’s the Nation Bureau of
> Economic Research’s paper on the link between the two:
> http://www.nber.org/bah/summer04/w10466.html

Frankly, alternative theories was beside the point. I was shocked that people were accepting “A preceded B, therefore A caused B” at face value, even calling it insightful.

At least the NBER paper is something that can actually be discussed. I can’t drill down into the details of the paper at the moment, but the abstract states the following:

“The authors also find that higher benefits lead some elderly to live independently rather than with family members, and conclude that the effect of Social Security on poverty would have been even more dramatic in the absence of these changes in living arrangements.”

While this is potentially an accurate reading of the data, it implies another detail – Poverty was disproportionately high for elderly households prior to SS. Most elderly individuals did not maintain their own households prior to SS. Therefore, most elderly households prior to SS were likely already in problematic situations.

In other words, for most elderly households prior to SS, living on their own was less of a choice – it was less because they wanted to support themselves, and more because they had no one to support them.

Additionally, the poverty line makes no concession for private charity. It is assumed that low income/resources = poverty and poverty = suffering. If the kindly old lady with no biological family is cared for by her church community, does she NEED a check from the government? Does it really serve that significant a purpose if she does receive that check? Is it the best way to spend taxpayer dollars?

I concede that SS has done some good for some people, and has even been a lifesaver. But you simply can not justify spending the country into crippling debt for the sake of a few human interest stories.

But overall, this claim really doesn’t pass the laugh test. The 20th century has been host to one (or several) of the most dramatic economic and cultural shifts in all of human history, and you expect there to be a 1:1 correlation over 75 years between an economic policy and a particular demographic?

I love that this is even being discussed. It fits well with my general belief that you should “Tax people for things you don’t want them to do, not for the things you do want them to do.”

While I understand and agree with the reasoning behind all 6 points, I differ slightly on how I would implement them.

1. Replace the mortgage tax deduction with a large onetime capped deduction for first time buyers.

2. Instead of taxing the company for health benefits, make them a taxable benefit paid for by the employee. You should never tax a company for hiring more people. However this point and the one above it are mute if you eliminate income tax.

3. I agree completely with eliminating the corporate income tax. You want them to keep their profit in the country, not trying to move the profitable parts of their business offshore.

4. I strongly agree with eliminating all income and payroll taxes. However while a Consumption Tax is the lesser of two evils, I think it would be better to replace the revenue with taxing things you don’t want people to do. Increase the US taxes on gas, cigarettes and alcohol to what Canada charges or slightly above. Enormous fines for corporate fraud. Large fines for bogus DMCA takedown notices. Large fines for frivolous law suits. Etc etc.

5. Yes increase gas taxes some, but don’t stop there on pollution taxes. Tax gas guzzling vehicles to bring the sticker price in line with hybrids. Tax other types of pollution so pollution controls and alternatives become a cost savings.

6. Tax marijuana so heavily that it costs almost as much as it did before legalization.

Ron and Jake:
Salary = $100K
Tax = 30% = $30K

What is a reasonable amount of spending? 60% of your income? So the math is:
Salary * percent spent on consumption * consumption tax =
$100K * 60% * 50% = $30K

Yes, if you spend 100% of your income, then the consumption tax would equal your income tax. But that is usually not the case.

Which is why ‘our generation’ is $150k in debt from school?

Well, virtually every justification for government,right back to Leviathan in the modern era and Republic in the classical) holds that the purpose of government is to serve the needs or desires of its citizens, so from that point of view, it is right and proper that the EU and US governments screw over everyone else if it is in their citizen’s best interests.

The problem lies in reminding politicians that their citizens’ interests are not congruent with their cronies’ and sponsors’ interests.

Voting for the wrong people and ideas is the problem, not the system.