Tax the rich, eh?

[TheGer]

Sorry but your theorizations, models,and datasets don't hold much water when taking into account factual information from real events.

"It is certainly not self-evident that decreasing taxation increases economic activity"

That is a silly statement.  That's like saying if I give someone $500 they won't go out and spend some money.  Yes, spending money equates to economic activity.  In case it wasn't self-evident that is...

TheGer: As much as we all appreciate your "common sense" explanation - this very problem has been theorized and modeled many times, in many countries, under many tax conditions, with many datasets. Results tend to be muddied by confounding macro-economic factors, but the overall answer is that "it depends". It is certainly not self-evident that decreasing taxation increases economic activity much less that increasing txes actually decreases total tax receipts (or vice-versa), no matter what the supply-siders say.

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[lemonginger]

Sorry but your theorizations, models,and datasets don't hold much water when taking into account factual information from real events.

ok. you win thread.

[Rassah]

"It is certainly not self-evident that decreasing taxation increases economic activity"

That is a silly statement.  That's like saying if I give someone $500 they won't go out and spend some money.  Yes, spending money equates to economic activity.  In case it wasn't self-evident that is...

Except in the real world, increasing taxation increases corporate borrowing/leverage, since interest paid on debt is tax deductible, and decreasing taxation decreases borrowing but also decreases leverage.
So, if government increases the tax rate, government's tax income is almost unaffected, but companies and corporations become more risky, and banks make higher profits, and if government decreases the tax rate, government's tax income is also almost unaffected, but the companies are less risky, and banks make fewer profits.
There are A LOT of external variables anti-tax people fail to take into account.

As for the "if I had more money, I'd hire more people" argument, that's not quite so clear cut either. Hiring and paying employees is a tax deductible business expense. If I make $1,000 a month in revenues, I can hire an employee for $300 a month, pay myself $400 a month, deduct that amount from $1,000 ($700 left), and then have my business either pay $300*70%=$210 under a high tax rate, or $300*25%= $75 under a low tax rate. That's also assuming the remaining $300 is pure profit, which in a competitive market is rarely the case. So, although high tax rate may affect my business growth (which is easily mitigated by borrowing and then deducting loan interest as described above), there really isn't much of an effect on employment, and a fairly small effect on the actual amount paid overall (relative to the revenue produced). Much larger effect is from the overall business revenue, which if I was a Keynesian, I would say is due to lack of buyers, and thus buyers should have their taxes lowered, not businesses, since buyer money translates into business revenue.
But I'm not one, so I'm not saying that's the case.

[TheGer]

Your paragraphs are quite eloquent, but making statements contrary to common sense fail to convince me.  Your statements might be true, "Except in the real world".

[Rassah]

Your paragraphs are quite eloquent, but making statements contrary to common sense fail to convince me.  Your statements might be true, "Except in the real world".

That's kinda the problem. One of my favorite quotes is "common sense is just common, not necessarily sensible"
Things may look fairly straightforward, but then when you start digging, turns out there's way more underneath that you realized. I mean hell, it's kind of common sense that if a government raises taxes, it'll make more money, isn't it? Of course, you point out that no it isn't as self-evident as that. I just take it a step further.
Common sense is what makes a lot of the arm chair economists on the internets difficult to deal with for those with economic and/or business degrees. As for "the real world," what I'm talking about is how global business managers think. I'm just regurgitating things I learned from my professors, from reading dozens of Harvard Business School cases (def. not a Keynesian place), and from adjunct professors who teach part time but whose real job is actually running businesses. So, feel free to accuse me of not having an original thought and just regurgitating stuff, but don't accuse what I say as not being examples from "the real world."
By the way, please note that I'm not trying to promote raising taxes. I'm just pointing out that lowering them, or raising them, really doesn't have the results people assume it does.

[TheGer]

The problem with economic and/or business degrees is that it amounts to programming you to be part of the system.  A cog in the system, not a Force in the system.  Those who are truely successful break and bend the mold, not conform to dogma and become drones in the business world.

Feel free to ask a successful business owner what he would do with an extra $100,000 he didn't have to pay in taxes?  Wether he invested it back in the business or kept the profits for himself one thing is obvious.  He's spending some of that money, which means economic stimulus. 

I can't make it more obvious than that, but if you want to convolute the issue I've raised then feel free.  Thus far I haven't seen a leg for you to stand on.  Plenty of factors effect plenty of things, but 2+2 still =4.

[Rassah]

The problem with economic and/or business degrees is that it amounts to programming you to be part of the system.  A cog in the system, not a Force in the system.  Those who are truely successful break and bend the mold, not conform to dogma and become drones in the business world.

Do you become a force in the system by sheer spontaneous will power, or by learning about the system you wish to be a part of? Did you learn all the stuff you're posting about economics on here by being programmed by the sources you were reading? That whole "higher education is just indoctrination" is, frankly, bullshit. I'll grant you that some schools just program, and some students are to lazy to think on their own, but in both undergrad and grad schools I've been, you're given materials to learn. That material is usually case studies about real businesses, and their real screwups or strokes of genius, operating in a real business world. None of the material is plain regurgitation of old stuff, and it's up to the person to decide what to do with said material.

Feel free to ask a successful business owner what he would do with an extra $100,000 he didn't have to pay in taxes?  Wether he invested it back in the business or kept the profits for himself one thing is obvious.  He's spending some of that money, which means economic stimulus.  

I'm saying a "successful business owner" wouldn't have to pay taxes. Investing money back in the business makes that money tax deductible. Your premise is that with lower taxes, he would have an extra $100,000, which he can reinvest in his business. My point is that he can reinvest that $100,000 in his business FIRST, and deduct it from his revenues, thus lowering his own tax rate in the process. Done well enough, the tax rate should have little effect on his actual business. Now, sure, the increase in the tax rate will affect the company profits (shareholder wealth, and all employee's, including his own, personal paychecks), and sure, there are some types of taxes that will hurt more than others, but for the most part, business activities, aka costs, are tax deductions, so they could actually be encouraged by higher tax rates. (The higher the tax rate, the more you should spend in your business, or borrow to expand, to reduce your taxable income/profit). I understand that's not an easy concept. Maybe it will help if you build a spreadsheet with first line having revenues, next few lines listing costs, including hiring new employees, and apply the difference in tax rates to the Net Profit (revenues - costs) to see how tax rates affect a hypothetical business. Otherwise, I'm not sure how to better explain this.

Plenty of factors effect plenty of things, but 2+2 still =4.

In this case, it's actually closer to 4-2=2, 2*50%=1, versus 4-3=1, 1*50%=0.5

[Babylon]

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=286217

If congress imposed a 100% tax on everyone making over $250k, confiscated all of last year's profits by the Fortune 500 companies, and took all assets of America's 400 billionaires...we could fund our gov't for 8 months.

WOW...WTF do they use all that cash on?!? Does it go back to helping society? It seems like the only thing they achieve is greater and greater debt.

A good portion of it they gave to those same billionaires and companies (at least the ones in the finance industry)

[onesalt]

Think of it this way, if you drop taxes by half on corporations, you are essentially gambling that the additional 10% of revenue that the corporations get is going to increase their profit (by investments, etc) by 100% in the next fiscal year for it to even break even, something which is horrifically misguided.

[GideonGono]

The whole notion of "Tax the rich" is based on a fallacy. First, one must ask, who are the rich? The rich are the ones who in most all societies hold political power.  Having political power and connections is the easiest way to get and stay rich.

In the USA for example just look at the net worth of senior members of govt who make all the rules:

Barack H. Osama - Net worth $10.5m source

Nancy Pelosi - Net worth $35.2m Source

Harry Reid - Net worth estimated between $3.1 - $6.7 million source

I can go on and on...

After decades of "socially progressive" policies all other the developed world we still see an increasing gap between rich and poor.

I wonder, are people really that stupid to believe this shit? Or is this some kind of sick joke and I'm in the twilight zone?

What will it take for you lefties to realize the plan ain't working?

[JBDive]

The whole notion of "Tax the rich" is based on a fallacy. First, one must ask, who are the rich? The rich are the ones who in most all societies hold political power.  Having political power and connections is the easiest way to get and stay rich.

In the USA for example just look at the net worth of senior members of govt who make all the rules:

Barack H. Osama - Net worth $10.5m source

Nancy Pelosi - Net worth $35.2m Source

Harry Reid - Net worth estimated between $3.1 - $6.7 million source

I can go on and on...

After decades of "socially progressive" policies all other the developed world we still see an increasing gap between rich and poor.

I wonder, are people really that stupid to believe this shit? Or is this some kind of sick joke and I'm in the twilight zone?

What will it take for you lefties to realize the plan ain't working?

First off yes the public is that stupid. Second off the plan is working.

The plan by the Left without a doubt and of late I am leaning to saying all Gov't is to make the public stupid and docile. They are the ones funding and controlling our education system which I think most anyone would agree SUCKS. No matter how good the teacher the administration of the educational system in this country is horrible. Second with a stupid populace you can't employ them as they are to stupid which leads to Gov't programs to "help" them. As more and more of the populace becomes dependent on a Gov't payout for their daily existence you find the general voting public is now to dumb to see the plan and to scared to make changes which would take away from their portion of the Gov't pie.

The ever shrinking middle class is taxed to keep the lower class quiet and subservient. The small percentage of upper class (rich) pretends to care by giving out more Gov't paychecks and the occasional charity donation which is meant only to keep the masses peaceful. Now the only thing the Gov't has to worry about is keeping the middle class quiet which they do by pretending to allow their votes actually matter, an occasional bone (income tax breaks) and if any of those middle class speak out they are immediately determined to be extremist, deviants, or worse by those that run the Gov't and pushed aside either by the controlled media or physically by the Gov't run storm troopers.

[niemivh]

This article should have been titled Moronics 101.  I've wrote much on the same topic to which Henry Hazlitt argues in the same vein of.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=28113.0

[niemivh]

we are discussing spending cuts but that and your article is zero reason to not roll back the tax cuts that have helped explode our deficit as bush's Treasury sect Paul O;Neil warned would happen, right before he was forced out for saying that.

Haha, I like how you say it exploded the deficit like it was somehow the government's money to begin with. You're funny.

*Pulls out a dollar and looks at it*

I dunno.  It has Federal Reserve Bank written on it but doesn't have my name written on it.

[GideonGono]

This article should have been titled Moronics 101.  I've wrote much on the same topic to which Henry Hazlitt argues in the same vein of.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=28113.0

That original post is just drivel. Try again.

[The Script]

we are discussing spending cuts but that and your article is zero reason to not roll back the tax cuts that have helped explode our deficit as bush's Treasury sect Paul O;Neil warned would happen, right before he was forced out for saying that.

Haha, I like how you say it exploded the deficit like it was somehow the government's money to begin with. You're funny.

*Pulls out a dollar and looks at it*

I dunno.  It has Federal Reserve Bank written on it but doesn't have my name written on it.

What are you saying?  That if it has somebody's name on it, it is their possession?  Besides, the Federal Reserve is actually a private organization. Perhaps I am misunderstanding your point.

[ascent]

That is a silly statement.  That's like saying if I give someone $500 they won't go out and spend some money.  Yes, spending money equates to economic activity.  In case it wasn't self-evident that is...

I'm sure you'll be the first to admit that governments have the bad habit of spending more than they earn. So when someone does not have that $500 that they supposedly were going to spend, and instead it's in the government's pocket, guess what? That $500 gets spent. Maybe it just gets spent paying down the national debt, in which case, it goes back into the institutions' pockets that lent it. Now they have money to invest. Or maybe it gets spent wastefully on some contract. In that case, it goes into the pocket of a contractor, and now he has that $500 to spend.

What goes around comes around.

Things that are owned, and money (which is something which is owned) are really components of a digestive process, where the system consumes, digests, and then emits energy and waste. The energy hopefully results in development. The waste is hopefully minimal.

Regarding the digestive metaphor, which is very accurate, it's one of the reasons you should be very careful about what the concept of ownership really means. That breath of air you just took - you've claimed it, and now you own it. But do you keep it in your lungs? No. Same goes for that plot of land you own. Essentially, you're a system which is digesting the land, and then outputting it back into the system at some later date. It should make you think twice about what ownership really means.

These are cyclic processes. Revenue, taxes, ownership...

[d3wo]