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Whatever nation you live in, let's acknowledge the existence of issues that ultimately affect all of us, and discuss potential solutions to those issues, while assuming that the total tax revenue collected by the nations of the world (yours included) is not radically changed. Feel free to discuss changes in how taxes are spent, but let's not devolve this thread into an argument about the amount of taxes that should be collected, or whether taxes should be collected.

Even better, address issues themselves external to the subject of taxes. Real problems, real solutions, real governments, real people.

Here are my suggestions from most favorite to least favorite:

1. For each dollar you pay in taxes, you get to say what it's spent on.
2. Pay people an hourly wage to learn Austrian economics and read libertarian literature.
3. Build a giant theme park with hookers and black jack, on second thought, forget the park!

>Solutions only through violence.

This can't be compromised with. I won't do it.

Anyways, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3aiKuzNeno

I like the idea that each tax $ gives you a vote on what to spend it on.

The rich will naturally want to reduce their taxes, but then in doing so they will have less influence over government expenditure, so they won't want to reduce it too much.

That's a start. Where would you direct those dollars? Make this thread less tax centric and more issue driven.

Well, personally I would spend more of it on public parks. I'd rather an area was 50% public parkland and 50% apartment-style housing, rather than 99% separate houses all spread out with no where to go except a tiny park bench with 1 duck to feed. The former would be actually less claustrophobic despite the higher density living arrangement.

Not to mention apartments are far more efficient for things like water, sewer, electric, etc.

That's cool. I totally agree with this. What about suburban sprawl at the edge of town? Would you advocate a simple reduction in plot size plus the park, or simply set aside the wilderness that would normally be encroached upon?

I've often envisioned wilderness corridors through a town or city. Imagine developments comprised of sections that look sort of like Mont St Michel (see picture) (http://www.destination360.com/europe/france/paris/mont-st-michel), where each section connects to its neighboring sections via a bridge. Now imagine a whole town like that, and flowing between those sections is wilderness, with hiking trails. The idea is, the natural native wildlife (coyotes, racoons, whatever), are not displaced, and may pass through the town without really being in the town.

It's sort of a miniature version of what is known as wildlife corridors - which are components of a plan to (in the case of North America) to rewild North America (see the book) (http://www.amazon.com/Rewilding-North-America-Conservation-Century/dp/1559630612/). It begins with the premise that connected natural preserves maintain and allow greater biodiversity if they are connected, rather than fragmented. The plan is ambitious.

On the surface this sounds nice, but you're probably not comparing how much you earn to the rich. Unless you're on $1m/pa salary, I don't think you realize just how little you have to vote with.

If you give power to money like this, you're going to fight a losing battle, because you're probably in the bottom 80% of the population sharing 15% of the total wealth. http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

That means that 80% of the population will have 15% of the voting power. Do you believe that the people who manage to amass 85% of the wealth will vote for things that benefit you? or that benefit them?

Sorry if that's off topic...a different, future friendly education system would be nice.

i think that's a false conclusion.

that assumes everyone pays exactly the same total % in tax, however i think the wealthy pay far less in percentage terms because they form companies, get bigger breaks, etc.

That's an excellent point. It would be better if once a year, each voting tax payer designated what portion of 50 percent of all tax revenue collected went to which programs.

I'm of the opinion that high school education should be less topic oriented, and more project oriented. At the beginning of the semester, students choose a project which hits several topics (mathematics, science, language, history, etc.), and then, through meetings with counselors, work through their project, which requires team work and research along the way.

If it is, then I must have misunderstood the original point:

No, I don't think I did. A high income person might pay a 10% tax rate on a $10m salary ($1,000,000 tax), which is still 40-50 times more than if the median wage paid 40% tax. They still pay a lot more in absolute tax, even though it's a far smaller % of their income.


This is a much better solution. It still assumes 1 vote per tax payer, and I would be very interested to see the true power of folk economics at work here :).


Interesting. That would certainly make a lot more sense than the industrial age system we have now. We need a proper modern age update.

Oh it's true it would be bad for me while I'm poor, but I don't plan on staying poor forever, so I still like the idea.

Oddly enough, this showed up on TED today: http://www.ted.com/talks/geoff_mulgan_a_short_intro_to_the_studio_school.html

That's a very bad outlook to have and the downfall of many conservative ideas.  The poor matter very much and ensure that the rich stay rich. You should abuse them or not give them a voice, because it leads to very bad outcomes.

Additionally, upward mobility in this country is dead. If you weren't born rich, you'll never be rich.

My issue of the day is redundancy of labour.

Since containerisation, the cost of importing manufactured goods has fallen from 30% on average to less than 1%.  Its cheaper to get a TV from China to Felixtowe Dock than it is to get it from the dock to a house in Liverpool.  Since about 1970, this had been financed by debt.

The effect of this is that our societies have a permanent rate of unemployment as the unskilled manufacturing jobs are gone forever.

This has follow on effects on income equality, on health policies, on social security pensions.

In essence, we have to find a way to manage 2 things:
1. Our society has a significant percentage of people who will never pay their way.  Too many to imprison but enough that things like universal pensions and healthcare are made unaffordable for the entire society.
2. Our economy is sinking deeper and deeper into debt and all the old remedies will fail.  Stimulus?  It creates demand that gets spend on manufactured goods that are imported.  you borrow to pay for the stimulus so you are worse off.  Tax cuts?  Exact same as the stimulus.

so far, almost all governments in the West are relying on policies to boost the construction industry in order to get out of our economic travails.  My contention is that this simply deepens the hole we are in.  More construction means more people buying manufactured goods and thus more imports financed by debt.

And that's my issue of the day, year, decade.

uh, which one?

the thread starts with:

I meant the US specifically, but it's basically true of any first-world country at this point in time.

anyone poor bugger in any first-world country has enormous opportunity to be rich... you just have to jump on the internet to see the potential anyone with a few hundred dollars startup has these days.

Those are some solid points.

The way you describe them, though, does it seem that all you need are more exports?

From what I understand, all the goods are flowing into the US, Australia, etc (I'm from Aus, same thing here and we're only paying by ore + some farming stuff), but not as much is going back (in goods or services) - a trade imbalance, if you will, so debt in the US/Aus climbs, and the chinese grow their savings (and can build their economy). With the dropping $US, shouldn't the govts be using stimulus action to encourage innovation / exporting to pay for the imbalance? If you don't back goods or services, you'll be sending back your land and companies (China's already made it known they're going to start buying up the Intels and Apples etc), which will put you in an even worse position...almost like people want to be slaves...

Ideally countries not having huge trade deficits should mean better standards of living in both countries that trade, according to production increases in either...if there are no goods/services that the US/Aus can produce that china will spend money importing, then everyone is screwed.

If you're being sarcastic then... ZING!


If you're being serious... then you need help.

I think a big problem is the prevalence of voting systems which are not clone-independent. It's what causes two-party systems (Divurger's law) and keeps the corporations in power. Similarly, in this day and age we don't need to elect representatives any more - everyone has a price. We could reduce corruption with delegated voting and liquid democracy instead.

So what should we spend on? The things we actually want, not the things our elected representatives' owners want. The world is trapped in the grip of plutocracy.

completely serious. anyone that can't see how to make money on the internet 'needs help'.

furthermore, anyone that earns just about any amount of income has the opportunity to become wealthy a la "Richest Man in Babylon" style.

So all I need $1,000 start up cash and an internet connection and I can become a multi-millionaire?  Then why aren't we all multi-millionaires?  Are you a multi-millionaire?

Opportunity != guarantee

with $1000 and an internet connection, anyone would have the same (thousands of) opportunities to become a multi-millionaire.

but most people wouldn't, through lack of dedication, motivation, persistence, discipline, etc, etc.

i'm not a multi-millionaire yet (personally i struggle with procrastination), but that doesn't mean i can't see the myriad opportunities to become one.

bonus edit: thanks explodicle!

That's exactly the problem.  I have an opportunity to win the lottery too, but it doesn't mean it's remotely viable.

You play the lottery?

Not really.  I genuinely think the problem is permanent.

Economic theory says that the labour displaced by competition/innovation will find other uses.  Always.  But I wonder if we have got to the point where we have enough hairdressers, chefs and lawyers and thus there is no place for the unskilled labour to move to.  If that's the case, we have a permanent issue of people who will never be able to pay their way.

The question is what does that do to society?  None of the economic models touted by von Mises, by Krugman or by anyone else I know of makes sense in a world where one in ten people is simply not needed.  And with things like automated cars coming, that percentage will grow as the likes of truckers, delivery guys, even taxi drivers get added to the class of people that no longer have a useful economic role to play.

Ah, yes I'd forgotten about that. In which case, the rising need for welfare and "paying people to dig ditches" appears, just to give people a share of whatever national pie is baked each day, to stop them starving, and being kicked out of their homes (and of course keep demand up on remaining production).

There is still a small window of opportunity in "intellectual value", ie high tech to keep it a little more balanced, but otherwise there is nothing else for it but perhaps a shorter work week across the board. If people need to be seen to be productive by peers (to not hate them for being lazy and getting welfare), and the economy simply has no need for everyone to work 40 hours/week, then I suppose we should all have a 3 day weekend instead, and get those people that can't find other work into that extra day's shortfall. The only adjustment would be in sudden drop in income going 5->4 days employment, but if unemployment drops (and it starts as "optional" 4 days, employee choice to help overburdened responsibilities), it might not be too rough a transition, and demand for consumption should not drop.

Ironically, that's the ultimate goal for all of capitalism in society, imho, but the current work week is so ingrained, I think a lot of people would have great difficulty adjusting (won't stop overtime by a long shot, either, so that opportunity is still there to make up any new shortfall). Is it a viable solution?

If it is...the only question then...is monday or friday? :)

The problem with moving to a 4 day week is that you need a rivet basher whose labour isn't needed to fill in for a dentist whose labour is needed and the dentist gets a 20% salary cut as he works 4 days instead of 5.  He may object and his customers may agree with him after the rivet basher has had a go at their teeth :P

In countries with a shorter work week this doesn't happen frequently. I suspect the dentist would  hire more dental hygienists and assistants to keep up, who would in turn vacate jobs the rivet guy would take. Right now a lot of people are working jobs "below" their training because jobs are so scarce.

It's a big broken window, of course. There are more efficient (if less politically palatable) ways to keep the riveter alive without messing everything ELSE up so much.

I know.  My premise is that there is a surplus of labour because unskilled manufacturing is never going to be done in the US or EU again.  It may be that some new profitable occupation for the people who used do that work can be found but I don't see what it can be since you'd have to have global full employment before the expensive people in the big Western economies can be employed again.

I think you're probably right. I think it's time we reevaluate where public education ends - it used to be a high school degree WAS enough, but that bar has risen and will now continue to rise as even some skilled jobs are being replaced by computers. Also we might want to replace minimum wage and some employee protection laws with [takes cover] guaranteed minimum income, too. I realize this will anger many people here (and it kinda angers me too) but I don't know how the free market could solve it. (Free market people - please give me something better, it would actually cheer me up)

I'm interested in how China will handle this. For them the problem will be much more pronounced, and if handled poorly could cause another revolution.

I just posted on this idea using Bitcoins
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=46130.0

That wouldn't work for the owners of a block of apartments debating the level of management fee.  It's utterly impossible spread over millions of taxpayers.