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Robert Frank:
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Re: Robert Frank: the Darwin Economy
Interesting. He recommends abolishing the income tax and replacing it with a consumption tax, after giving a deduction to lower and moderate income earners who naturally have to spend more of what they earn. Income minus savings, with tax on what was spent. Taxing "excessive" consumption seems like a good idea in a world facing Peak Everything. I'd like to see a discussion of what the unintended consequences for such a tax would be.
Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle. -
Re: Robert Frank: the Darwin Economy
Interesting academic construct. With FIRE having captured government decision making in this field, the likely implementation would be a reverse in burden of what Frank outlines. (there is meat here, however, for a sci-fi treatment - the new taxation following a global collapse, not before, reform having proven impossible . . .)Comment
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Re: Robert Frank: the Darwin Economy
Good governments encourage investment, bad, consumption.
By this yardstick most Anglo countries have been a disaster for the last 30 years.Comment
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Re: Robert Frank: the Darwin Economy
I noticed several years ago that politicians in their speeches and sound bites had started to refer to us as "consumers" rather than "citizens". They want us to think of ourselves as "consumers", i.e. pigs at a trough, rather than citizens.Originally posted by oddlots View Post
Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.Comment
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Re: Robert Frank: the Darwin Economy
Ever seen "They Live"?Comment
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Re: Robert Frank: the Darwin Economy
Yes, unfortunately. Twice....obviously with very little better to do. Possibly one of the worst movies of all time.Originally posted by jpatter666 View Post
....which I guess it what makes it hard to turn away from.
When you look at the actions that the gov't takes that can be so illogical, so destructive, it is very difficult not to put on a tin foil hat (or magic eyeglasses that let you see the aliens as they are), and come up with rationale for such actions.
Shiny - your comment about being labeled consumers is right on the money!Comment
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Re: Robert Frank: the Darwin Economy
Only half-way through and I think I like what this guy's saying a lot. And just to show that I thoroughly stuck in saddle of my hobby horse... I think what he's getting at is almost a bit like Isaiah Berlin's notion of positive freedom and negative freedom. If I recall I think Berlin's point was to say that negative freedom - the absence of coercion - is not enough. We need a positive sense of what's required for freedom to have value: think basic lawfulness, basic necessities, human rights, ability to secure an education and employment or some less sloppy version of this.
My point - hobby horse charge! - is that it really seems we're struggling to re-legitimate government. I remember when I first read Thatcher's famous quote that "there is no society, only individuals." I think this attitude has actually held remarkable sway over the public imagination and discourse over the last 30 years and, as I've said before, has I think allowed absurdities to seem plausible, like Greenspan's assumption that market's police themselves. Hell, we even had textbooks by leading academics proclaiming that laws against fraud were unnecessary, even bad because they would distort the natural market functions that would eliminate it anyway. (How on earth could fraud not be an advantage that would distort?) I'm not saying that this trend was caused by a bad mental model - obviously, it paid to think this way - but do think it provided intellectual cover if nothing else.
Conversely, I think what Frank's arguments provide - so far - is a way to see in a simple way that optimum outcomes are sometimes only available if you presuppose an actor that can stand outside and set the rules of the game, in fact set them such that the individual actor has the option to choose the path as an individual that is in his and everyone else's best interest: the optimal outcome. Think of his example of the helmet wearing rule in pro hockey.Comment
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Re: Robert Frank: the Darwin Economy
The only thing that makes sense is a transaction tax on every transaction and at one percentage. Income is a arbitrary concept to more people than it is real and certainly a fantasy for a corporation. Taxes should pay for the enabling of the economy whether through national defense or police or schools ectera.Comment
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Re: Robert Frank: the Darwin Economy
The problem with the 'consumption tax' is that rich people must consume less.
The entire point of taxing income is specifically to redirect some portion of income back towards the society and government which serve as the backdrop for this income.
Every time someone comes up with a new variation of this type of utopian theory, a bankster gets his horns.Comment
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Re: Robert Frank: the Darwin Economy
Wonderful!Every time someone comes up with a new variation of this type of utopian theory, a bankster gets his horns.
Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.Comment
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Re: Robert Frank: the Darwin Economy
as sunskyfan mentions, a TRANSACTION TAX, but on the machinations of the casino (FKA the stock markets) seems like the way to go... take some of the wind out of the sails of the quant's high-freq trading schemes, which is NOT 'investing' a GD dime - they just using supercomputing power to skim millions/billions off the top, while contributing what, precisely, to the world economies?
and then allow the hedgies to claim 'capital gains' rates of taxation on 'carried interest'?
something VERY fishy about all this and methinks there ought to be some throttling of it and a transaction tax should accomplish that quite nicely, eh?Comment
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Re: Robert Frank: the Darwin Economy
Agreed. The most pervasive and lasting leverage of the wealthy is rent, and its inherently not productive. Why have a tax on goods and services at all when a good deal of wealth naturally flows to people who don't produce?Originally posted by c1ue View PostComment
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