On January 29 2012 05:53 liberal wrote: The simple fact of the matter is the government isn't able to create jobs, only to transfer jobs, and isn't able to create wealth, only transfer wealth. The jobs that were "created" when they were transferred from somewhere else are always visible, which is why people have the mistaken belief that the government actually is capable of creating jobs. What people don't see are the jobs which have been destroyed to create those new jobs, destroyed in the present through taxation and relative inefficiency, and destroyed in the future through payments on our debt and market corrections of over-investment.
The recession in the US is simply the destruction of jobs which were transferred to the past, but people can't see it in that light. The government's fiscal policies have been designed to foster over-investment in the economy, by setting the interest rates artificially low, by maintaining permanent inflation, by setting the fractional-reserve ratio, by insuring against losses ie. government backed mortgages, by fostering the expansion of credit and increased lending, etc. etc.
The government's policies created the housing bubble in order to escape the recession in 2001. We are simply feeling the effects of those policies today. And no, clearly this artificial boom/bust cycle is NOT healthy for an economy. It continues to consolidate wealth, which is then used as a justification to... get this.... EXPAND the governments control of the economy. All roads lead to Rome.
Well to be fair to the keynesians, I think most of them are aware (or at least i hope so), that the value of the jobs they are creating doesn't have the same value as the jobs created by the market. Their throught proces is most likely that government that governmen through its fiscal policies programs can increase aggregate demand which increases employment. But the main problem with this way of thinking is that it doesn't make sense to have think in terms of aggregate sizes, since some industries need to fire employed and others need to hire, and some even need to die. Fiscal policies only prolonged (while indebting) the crises.
Keynesians also dont think the same way of the boom/bust cycles as the austrians does, as they actually think the boom's are healthy (which it isn't as you point out). But the boom is just a proces of malinvestments (haircut industry), which is due to the mismatch between savings and investments, which again is due to the Fractionel-reserve, interest rate policies as you point out.
Jobs create by stimulus has more value than no jobs at all.
And Keynesians don't view booms as healthy, they view it as one of the two extremes of the business cycle that should be smoothed by monetary policy or fiscal policy.
Most economists believe that monetary policy should be used in the first instance, but monetary policy has hit a snag at the zero lower bound so fiscal policy is needed.
No they don't. In order to create a government job it is necessary to destroy real productive capacity in the economy by stealing money from people who produce things that others are actually buying on the market (and thus want it more than whatever government is going to do with the money because otherwise to market would already have been providing it).
It is a worse state of things by definition to have people producing things by government decree and wealth transfer instead of having them produce things others are voluntarily buying and thus expressing their preferences. If a job doesn't exist on a free market it's because it's marginal product is not higher than the labor cost and it drains resources from the economy instead of adding them. Forcing government jobs is just a resource drain on society as a whole.
Taxes =/= stealing.
The entire point of government is to solve the issue of Tragedy of the Commons.
If you can think of a term more appropriate than "theft" for the forceful coercion of taking an individual's money and time, then be my guest.
If taxation is theft then it is a very weird sort of theft. I’ve been robbed a couple of times, but I’ve never sat down afterwards with my copy of TurboTheft and calculated whether the thief had stolen too much from me and, if so, send off some forms to the thief so he will send me a refund check. The whole process bears a greater resemblance to paying dues for your Homeowners’ Association, or some such thing.
The typical response is that if you accept the libertarian philosophical framework then it turns out taxation really is theft, regardless of how things might look on the surface. But that’s question begging. The whole issue is whether we should accept the libertarian philosophical framework or not. Pointing out that framework has lots of implausible implications is not much of an argument in its favor.
On January 29 2012 05:53 liberal wrote: The simple fact of the matter is the government isn't able to create jobs, only to transfer jobs, and isn't able to create wealth, only transfer wealth. The jobs that were "created" when they were transferred from somewhere else are always visible, which is why people have the mistaken belief that the government actually is capable of creating jobs. What people don't see are the jobs which have been destroyed to create those new jobs, destroyed in the present through taxation and relative inefficiency, and destroyed in the future through payments on our debt and market corrections of over-investment.
The recession in the US is simply the destruction of jobs which were transferred to the past, but people can't see it in that light. The government's fiscal policies have been designed to foster over-investment in the economy, by setting the interest rates artificially low, by maintaining permanent inflation, by setting the fractional-reserve ratio, by insuring against losses ie. government backed mortgages, by fostering the expansion of credit and increased lending, etc. etc.
The government's policies created the housing bubble in order to escape the recession in 2001. We are simply feeling the effects of those policies today. And no, clearly this artificial boom/bust cycle is NOT healthy for an economy. It continues to consolidate wealth, which is then used as a justification to... get this.... EXPAND the governments control of the economy. All roads lead to Rome.
Well to be fair to the keynesians, I think most of them are aware (or at least i hope so), that the value of the jobs they are creating doesn't have the same value as the jobs created by the market. Their throught proces is most likely that government that governmen through its fiscal policies programs can increase aggregate demand which increases employment. But the main problem with this way of thinking is that it doesn't make sense to have think in terms of aggregate sizes, since some industries need to fire employed and others need to hire, and some even need to die. Fiscal policies only prolonged (while indebting) the crises.
Keynesians also dont think the same way of the boom/bust cycles as the austrians does, as they actually think the boom's are healthy (which it isn't as you point out). But the boom is just a proces of malinvestments (haircut industry), which is due to the mismatch between savings and investments, which again is due to the Fractionel-reserve, interest rate policies as you point out.
Jobs create by stimulus has more value than no jobs at all.
And Keynesians don't view booms as healthy, they view it as one of the two extremes of the business cycle that should be smoothed by monetary policy or fiscal policy.
Most economists believe that monetary policy should be used in the first instance, but monetary policy has hit a snag at the zero lower bound so fiscal policy is needed.
No they don't. In order to create a government job it is necessary to destroy real productive capacity in the economy by stealing money from people who produce things that others are actually buying on the market (and thus want it more than whatever government is going to do with the money because otherwise to market would already have been providing it).
It is a worse state of things by definition to have people producing things by government decree and wealth transfer instead of having them produce things others are voluntarily buying and thus expressing their preferences. If a job doesn't exist on a free market it's because it's marginal product is not higher than the labor cost and it drains resources from the economy instead of adding them. Forcing government jobs is just a resource drain on society as a whole.
Taxes =/= stealing.
The entire point of government is to solve the issue of Tragedy of the Commons.
If you can think of a term more appropriate than "theft" for the forceful coercion of taking an individual's money and time, then be my guest.
If taxation is theft then it is a very weird sort of theft. I’ve been robbed a couple of times, but I’ve never sat down afterwards with my copy of TurboTheft and calculated whether the thief had stolen too much from me and, if so, send off some forms to the thief so he will send me a refund check. The whole process bears a greater resemblance to paying dues for your Homeowners’ Association, or some such thing.
The typical response is that if you accept the libertarian philosophical framework then it turns out taxation really is theft, regardless of how things might look on the surface. But that’s question begging. The whole issue is whether we should accept the libertarian philosophical framework or not. Pointing out that framework has lots of implausible implications is not much of an argument in its favor.
Have you tried not paying your taxes? You will get letters at first, but men in uniforms with guns will eventually come and take you to jail. If you resist they'll put bullets in your skull. It's theft at gunpoint, even if you don't see the gun. They have to hide the gun because if people saw what it really was they'd never accept it. Would you let someone steal upwards 50% of your income? Hell no.
The libertarian philosophical framework is the same stuff you learned in elementary school. Don't hit. Don't steal. The initiation of the use of force is wrong. Just because it has drastic implications when you actually adhere to it doesn't mean that they're implausible. In fact, I don't even know what "implausible" implications you're referring to.
It is like referring to self defense as murder or killing during war assassination; they don't carry the same legal weight.
Legality often has no basis in reason or logic. The criminalization of marijuana is just one of hundreds of laws that exist because of past lobbying or a bias towards judeo-christian morals. I thought we were discussing ideals here anyway?
If we're discussing legality than what do you say to a Hobbesian, who would hold that you have no right to withold the amount of property required by the sovereign to maintain social order?
I'm not saying the Hobbesian is right and you are wrong, but I am saying chanting "taxation is theft" doesn't answer that argument effectively (although it may be rhetorically effective).
On January 29 2012 15:37 Myles wrote: Just so I know exactly where you stand; if taxes are forceful coercion from an unwilling individual, does that mean democracies and republics are all tyrannies of the majority? I ask since, theoretically, it's the feeling of the majority of society that taxes are needed and useful since they're enacted through a democratic/republic process.
My view is such that one's interests are best represented as the number of people decreases. If you find yourself amongst 10 people, then surely you are better represented than if you were amongst 100 people. But with man as a social being and typically not possessing a wide enough skill set to be fully self-sustaining in this modern day, he may engage in the mutual trade of goods or services in what I believe to be a non zero-sum game.
Anarcho-capitalism, as described by Rothbard and others, is my ideal. If I am to be practical, then I am a proponent of minarchism as described by Milton Friedman.
Ok, thank you. I will let you continue on as before then since the problems I feel are inherent to complete non-economic intervention by the government have already been brought up and quite common(tragedy of the commons, monopolies, externalities, ect).
On January 29 2012 05:53 liberal wrote: The simple fact of the matter is the government isn't able to create jobs, only to transfer jobs, and isn't able to create wealth, only transfer wealth. The jobs that were "created" when they were transferred from somewhere else are always visible, which is why people have the mistaken belief that the government actually is capable of creating jobs. What people don't see are the jobs which have been destroyed to create those new jobs, destroyed in the present through taxation and relative inefficiency, and destroyed in the future through payments on our debt and market corrections of over-investment.
The recession in the US is simply the destruction of jobs which were transferred to the past, but people can't see it in that light. The government's fiscal policies have been designed to foster over-investment in the economy, by setting the interest rates artificially low, by maintaining permanent inflation, by setting the fractional-reserve ratio, by insuring against losses ie. government backed mortgages, by fostering the expansion of credit and increased lending, etc. etc.
The government's policies created the housing bubble in order to escape the recession in 2001. We are simply feeling the effects of those policies today. And no, clearly this artificial boom/bust cycle is NOT healthy for an economy. It continues to consolidate wealth, which is then used as a justification to... get this.... EXPAND the governments control of the economy. All roads lead to Rome.
Well to be fair to the keynesians, I think most of them are aware (or at least i hope so), that the value of the jobs they are creating doesn't have the same value as the jobs created by the market. Their throught proces is most likely that government that governmen through its fiscal policies programs can increase aggregate demand which increases employment. But the main problem with this way of thinking is that it doesn't make sense to have think in terms of aggregate sizes, since some industries need to fire employed and others need to hire, and some even need to die. Fiscal policies only prolonged (while indebting) the crises.
Keynesians also dont think the same way of the boom/bust cycles as the austrians does, as they actually think the boom's are healthy (which it isn't as you point out). But the boom is just a proces of malinvestments (haircut industry), which is due to the mismatch between savings and investments, which again is due to the Fractionel-reserve, interest rate policies as you point out.
Jobs create by stimulus has more value than no jobs at all.
And Keynesians don't view booms as healthy, they view it as one of the two extremes of the business cycle that should be smoothed by monetary policy or fiscal policy.
Most economists believe that monetary policy should be used in the first instance, but monetary policy has hit a snag at the zero lower bound so fiscal policy is needed.
No they don't. In order to create a government job it is necessary to destroy real productive capacity in the economy by stealing money from people who produce things that others are actually buying on the market (and thus want it more than whatever government is going to do with the money because otherwise to market would already have been providing it).
It is a worse state of things by definition to have people producing things by government decree and wealth transfer instead of having them produce things others are voluntarily buying and thus expressing their preferences. If a job doesn't exist on a free market it's because it's marginal product is not higher than the labor cost and it drains resources from the economy instead of adding them. Forcing government jobs is just a resource drain on society as a whole.
Taxes =/= stealing.
The entire point of government is to solve the issue of Tragedy of the Commons.
If you can think of a term more appropriate than "theft" for the forceful coercion of taking an individual's money and time, then be my guest.
If taxation is theft then it is a very weird sort of theft. I’ve been robbed a couple of times, but I’ve never sat down afterwards with my copy of TurboTheft and calculated whether the thief had stolen too much from me and, if so, send off some forms to the thief so he will send me a refund check. The whole process bears a greater resemblance to paying dues for your Homeowners’ Association, or some such thing.
The typical response is that if you accept the libertarian philosophical framework then it turns out taxation really is theft, regardless of how things might look on the surface. But that’s question begging. The whole issue is whether we should accept the libertarian philosophical framework or not. Pointing out that framework has lots of implausible implications is not much of an argument in its favor.
You don't have to agree that tax is theft to be a libertarian.. a libertarian can support anothers right to tax at local levels..
Regardless, the silly tax is theft debate is distracting from more important issues like our national debt, and our federal reserve actively bailing out Greece via FX swaps.. almost $100 Billion now..
On January 29 2012 05:53 liberal wrote: The simple fact of the matter is the government isn't able to create jobs, only to transfer jobs, and isn't able to create wealth, only transfer wealth. The jobs that were "created" when they were transferred from somewhere else are always visible, which is why people have the mistaken belief that the government actually is capable of creating jobs. What people don't see are the jobs which have been destroyed to create those new jobs, destroyed in the present through taxation and relative inefficiency, and destroyed in the future through payments on our debt and market corrections of over-investment.
The recession in the US is simply the destruction of jobs which were transferred to the past, but people can't see it in that light. The government's fiscal policies have been designed to foster over-investment in the economy, by setting the interest rates artificially low, by maintaining permanent inflation, by setting the fractional-reserve ratio, by insuring against losses ie. government backed mortgages, by fostering the expansion of credit and increased lending, etc. etc.
The government's policies created the housing bubble in order to escape the recession in 2001. We are simply feeling the effects of those policies today. And no, clearly this artificial boom/bust cycle is NOT healthy for an economy. It continues to consolidate wealth, which is then used as a justification to... get this.... EXPAND the governments control of the economy. All roads lead to Rome.
Well to be fair to the keynesians, I think most of them are aware (or at least i hope so), that the value of the jobs they are creating doesn't have the same value as the jobs created by the market. Their throught proces is most likely that government that governmen through its fiscal policies programs can increase aggregate demand which increases employment. But the main problem with this way of thinking is that it doesn't make sense to have think in terms of aggregate sizes, since some industries need to fire employed and others need to hire, and some even need to die. Fiscal policies only prolonged (while indebting) the crises.
Keynesians also dont think the same way of the boom/bust cycles as the austrians does, as they actually think the boom's are healthy (which it isn't as you point out). But the boom is just a proces of malinvestments (haircut industry), which is due to the mismatch between savings and investments, which again is due to the Fractionel-reserve, interest rate policies as you point out.
Jobs create by stimulus has more value than no jobs at all.
And Keynesians don't view booms as healthy, they view it as one of the two extremes of the business cycle that should be smoothed by monetary policy or fiscal policy.
Most economists believe that monetary policy should be used in the first instance, but monetary policy has hit a snag at the zero lower bound so fiscal policy is needed.
No they don't. In order to create a government job it is necessary to destroy real productive capacity in the economy by stealing money from people who produce things that others are actually buying on the market (and thus want it more than whatever government is going to do with the money because otherwise to market would already have been providing it).
It is a worse state of things by definition to have people producing things by government decree and wealth transfer instead of having them produce things others are voluntarily buying and thus expressing their preferences. If a job doesn't exist on a free market it's because it's marginal product is not higher than the labor cost and it drains resources from the economy instead of adding them. Forcing government jobs is just a resource drain on society as a whole.
Taxes =/= stealing.
The entire point of government is to solve the issue of Tragedy of the Commons.
If you can think of a term more appropriate than "theft" for the forceful coercion of taking an individual's money and time, then be my guest.
If taxation is theft then it is a very weird sort of theft. I’ve been robbed a couple of times, but I’ve never sat down afterwards with my copy of TurboTheft and calculated whether the thief had stolen too much from me and, if so, send off some forms to the thief so he will send me a refund check. The whole process bears a greater resemblance to paying dues for your Homeowners’ Association, or some such thing.
The typical response is that if you accept the libertarian philosophical framework then it turns out taxation really is theft, regardless of how things might look on the surface. But that’s question begging. The whole issue is whether we should accept the libertarian philosophical framework or not. Pointing out that framework has lots of implausible implications is not much of an argument in its favor.
Have you tried not paying your taxes? You will get letters at first, but men in uniforms with guns will eventually come and take you to jail. If you resist they'll put bullets in your skull. It's theft at gunpoint, even if you don't see the gun. They have to hide the gun because if people saw what it really was they'd never accept it. Would you let someone steal upwards 50% of your income? Hell no.
The libertarian philosophical framework is the same stuff you learned in elementary school. Don't hit. Don't steal. The initiation of the use of force is wrong. Just because it has drastic implications when you actually adhere to it doesn't mean that they're implausible. In fact, I don't even know what "implausible" implications you're referring to.
I'm always interested in libertarianism. It seems such a good philosophy to live by, but what about when someone steals from you, say a guy comes to your house and has a gun and takes your money. Does he get away scot free in a libertarian society because it's a bad thing to steal his liberty? How would you deal with someone like that? What about if someone does copyright infringement? Could you just never sue the person because taking their money by force is wrong? The list goes on of logical pitfalls.
On January 29 2012 05:53 liberal wrote: The simple fact of the matter is the government isn't able to create jobs, only to transfer jobs, and isn't able to create wealth, only transfer wealth. The jobs that were "created" when they were transferred from somewhere else are always visible, which is why people have the mistaken belief that the government actually is capable of creating jobs. What people don't see are the jobs which have been destroyed to create those new jobs, destroyed in the present through taxation and relative inefficiency, and destroyed in the future through payments on our debt and market corrections of over-investment.
The recession in the US is simply the destruction of jobs which were transferred to the past, but people can't see it in that light. The government's fiscal policies have been designed to foster over-investment in the economy, by setting the interest rates artificially low, by maintaining permanent inflation, by setting the fractional-reserve ratio, by insuring against losses ie. government backed mortgages, by fostering the expansion of credit and increased lending, etc. etc.
The government's policies created the housing bubble in order to escape the recession in 2001. We are simply feeling the effects of those policies today. And no, clearly this artificial boom/bust cycle is NOT healthy for an economy. It continues to consolidate wealth, which is then used as a justification to... get this.... EXPAND the governments control of the economy. All roads lead to Rome.
Well to be fair to the keynesians, I think most of them are aware (or at least i hope so), that the value of the jobs they are creating doesn't have the same value as the jobs created by the market. Their throught proces is most likely that government that governmen through its fiscal policies programs can increase aggregate demand which increases employment. But the main problem with this way of thinking is that it doesn't make sense to have think in terms of aggregate sizes, since some industries need to fire employed and others need to hire, and some even need to die. Fiscal policies only prolonged (while indebting) the crises.
Keynesians also dont think the same way of the boom/bust cycles as the austrians does, as they actually think the boom's are healthy (which it isn't as you point out). But the boom is just a proces of malinvestments (haircut industry), which is due to the mismatch between savings and investments, which again is due to the Fractionel-reserve, interest rate policies as you point out.
Jobs create by stimulus has more value than no jobs at all.
And Keynesians don't view booms as healthy, they view it as one of the two extremes of the business cycle that should be smoothed by monetary policy or fiscal policy.
Most economists believe that monetary policy should be used in the first instance, but monetary policy has hit a snag at the zero lower bound so fiscal policy is needed.
No they don't. In order to create a government job it is necessary to destroy real productive capacity in the economy by stealing money from people who produce things that others are actually buying on the market (and thus want it more than whatever government is going to do with the money because otherwise to market would already have been providing it).
It is a worse state of things by definition to have people producing things by government decree and wealth transfer instead of having them produce things others are voluntarily buying and thus expressing their preferences. If a job doesn't exist on a free market it's because it's marginal product is not higher than the labor cost and it drains resources from the economy instead of adding them. Forcing government jobs is just a resource drain on society as a whole.
Taxes =/= stealing.
The entire point of government is to solve the issue of Tragedy of the Commons.
If you can think of a term more appropriate than "theft" for the forceful coercion of taking an individual's money and time, then be my guest.
If taxation is theft then it is a very weird sort of theft. I’ve been robbed a couple of times, but I’ve never sat down afterwards with my copy of TurboTheft and calculated whether the thief had stolen too much from me and, if so, send off some forms to the thief so he will send me a refund check. The whole process bears a greater resemblance to paying dues for your Homeowners’ Association, or some such thing.
The typical response is that if you accept the libertarian philosophical framework then it turns out taxation really is theft, regardless of how things might look on the surface. But that’s question begging. The whole issue is whether we should accept the libertarian philosophical framework or not. Pointing out that framework has lots of implausible implications is not much of an argument in its favor.
Have you tried not paying your taxes? You will get letters at first, but men in uniforms with guns will eventually come and take you to jail. If you resist they'll put bullets in your skull. It's theft at gunpoint, even if you don't see the gun. They have to hide the gun because if people saw what it really was they'd never accept it. Would you let someone steal upwards 50% of your income? Hell no.
The libertarian philosophical framework is the same stuff you learned in elementary school. Don't hit. Don't steal. The initiation of the use of force is wrong. Just because it has drastic implications when you actually adhere to it doesn't mean that they're implausible. In fact, I don't even know what "implausible" implications you're referring to.
I'm always interested in libertarianism. It seems such a good philosophy to live by, but what about when someone steals from you, say a guy comes to your house and has a gun and takes your money. Does he get away scot free in a libertarian society because it's a bad thing to steal his liberty? How would you deal with someone like that? What about if someone does copyright infringement? Could you just never sue the person because taking their money by force is wrong? The list goes on of logical pitfalls.
Omg dude if that is your view on how a libertarian society would handle those issues than you need to do some more reading..
In a libertarian society you would be able to not only defend yourself and your property by means of lethal force, but you can also pursue legal action which if anything, would be more balanced in a libertarian society b/c lack of corporate agenda / effectiveness.. Above all, justice would be much more abundant in a libertarian society.. Very much unlike what we have now..
On January 29 2012 05:53 liberal wrote: The simple fact of the matter is the government isn't able to create jobs, only to transfer jobs, and isn't able to create wealth, only transfer wealth. The jobs that were "created" when they were transferred from somewhere else are always visible, which is why people have the mistaken belief that the government actually is capable of creating jobs. What people don't see are the jobs which have been destroyed to create those new jobs, destroyed in the present through taxation and relative inefficiency, and destroyed in the future through payments on our debt and market corrections of over-investment.
The recession in the US is simply the destruction of jobs which were transferred to the past, but people can't see it in that light. The government's fiscal policies have been designed to foster over-investment in the economy, by setting the interest rates artificially low, by maintaining permanent inflation, by setting the fractional-reserve ratio, by insuring against losses ie. government backed mortgages, by fostering the expansion of credit and increased lending, etc. etc.
The government's policies created the housing bubble in order to escape the recession in 2001. We are simply feeling the effects of those policies today. And no, clearly this artificial boom/bust cycle is NOT healthy for an economy. It continues to consolidate wealth, which is then used as a justification to... get this.... EXPAND the governments control of the economy. All roads lead to Rome.
Well to be fair to the keynesians, I think most of them are aware (or at least i hope so), that the value of the jobs they are creating doesn't have the same value as the jobs created by the market. Their throught proces is most likely that government that governmen through its fiscal policies programs can increase aggregate demand which increases employment. But the main problem with this way of thinking is that it doesn't make sense to have think in terms of aggregate sizes, since some industries need to fire employed and others need to hire, and some even need to die. Fiscal policies only prolonged (while indebting) the crises.
Keynesians also dont think the same way of the boom/bust cycles as the austrians does, as they actually think the boom's are healthy (which it isn't as you point out). But the boom is just a proces of malinvestments (haircut industry), which is due to the mismatch between savings and investments, which again is due to the Fractionel-reserve, interest rate policies as you point out.
Jobs create by stimulus has more value than no jobs at all.
And Keynesians don't view booms as healthy, they view it as one of the two extremes of the business cycle that should be smoothed by monetary policy or fiscal policy.
Most economists believe that monetary policy should be used in the first instance, but monetary policy has hit a snag at the zero lower bound so fiscal policy is needed.
No they don't. In order to create a government job it is necessary to destroy real productive capacity in the economy by stealing money from people who produce things that others are actually buying on the market (and thus want it more than whatever government is going to do with the money because otherwise to market would already have been providing it).
It is a worse state of things by definition to have people producing things by government decree and wealth transfer instead of having them produce things others are voluntarily buying and thus expressing their preferences. If a job doesn't exist on a free market it's because it's marginal product is not higher than the labor cost and it drains resources from the economy instead of adding them. Forcing government jobs is just a resource drain on society as a whole.
Taxes =/= stealing.
The entire point of government is to solve the issue of Tragedy of the Commons.
If you can think of a term more appropriate than "theft" for the forceful coercion of taking an individual's money and time, then be my guest.
If taxation is theft then it is a very weird sort of theft. I’ve been robbed a couple of times, but I’ve never sat down afterwards with my copy of TurboTheft and calculated whether the thief had stolen too much from me and, if so, send off some forms to the thief so he will send me a refund check. The whole process bears a greater resemblance to paying dues for your Homeowners’ Association, or some such thing.
The typical response is that if you accept the libertarian philosophical framework then it turns out taxation really is theft, regardless of how things might look on the surface. But that’s question begging. The whole issue is whether we should accept the libertarian philosophical framework or not. Pointing out that framework has lots of implausible implications is not much of an argument in its favor.
Have you tried not paying your taxes? You will get letters at first, but men in uniforms with guns will eventually come and take you to jail. If you resist they'll put bullets in your skull. It's theft at gunpoint, even if you don't see the gun. They have to hide the gun because if people saw what it really was they'd never accept it. Would you let someone steal upwards 50% of your income? Hell no.
The libertarian philosophical framework is the same stuff you learned in elementary school. Don't hit. Don't steal. The initiation of the use of force is wrong. Just because it has drastic implications when you actually adhere to it doesn't mean that they're implausible. In fact, I don't even know what "implausible" implications you're referring to.
I'm always interested in libertarianism. It seems such a good philosophy to live by, but what about when someone steals from you, say a guy comes to your house and has a gun and takes your money. Does he get away scot free in a libertarian society because it's a bad thing to steal his liberty? How would you deal with someone like that? What about if someone does copyright infringement? Could you just never sue the person because taking their money by force is wrong? The list goes on of logical pitfalls.
I think you just decribed a society of an anarchistic principles, which, well it shares similarities with libertarianism, it is not the same.
On January 29 2012 05:53 liberal wrote: The simple fact of the matter is the government isn't able to create jobs, only to transfer jobs, and isn't able to create wealth, only transfer wealth. The jobs that were "created" when they were transferred from somewhere else are always visible, which is why people have the mistaken belief that the government actually is capable of creating jobs. What people don't see are the jobs which have been destroyed to create those new jobs, destroyed in the present through taxation and relative inefficiency, and destroyed in the future through payments on our debt and market corrections of over-investment.
When 8.5% of the labor force is unemployed, if the government pays them to build a bridge, then the government has created jobs.
Did you not read any of the posts a few further up?
Try to read liberal's.
Let me start the thought process: From where does the government conjure up the ability to "create" jobs? Ie., where does the money come from?
If you follow that throught process you will see how the government doesn't "create" jobs.
Then you try to read my posts. $1 spent in investment of a investment banker =/= $1 in job creation or confidence in the economy. If the ultimate goal is to create wealth as a whole, then yea, private sector will probably be the best bet. But you're going to get unemployment (or long term malinvestment) problems.
On January 29 2012 05:53 liberal wrote: The simple fact of the matter is the government isn't able to create jobs, only to transfer jobs, and isn't able to create wealth, only transfer wealth. The jobs that were "created" when they were transferred from somewhere else are always visible, which is why people have the mistaken belief that the government actually is capable of creating jobs. What people don't see are the jobs which have been destroyed to create those new jobs, destroyed in the present through taxation and relative inefficiency, and destroyed in the future through payments on our debt and market corrections of over-investment.
The recession in the US is simply the destruction of jobs which were transferred to the past, but people can't see it in that light. The government's fiscal policies have been designed to foster over-investment in the economy, by setting the interest rates artificially low, by maintaining permanent inflation, by setting the fractional-reserve ratio, by insuring against losses ie. government backed mortgages, by fostering the expansion of credit and increased lending, etc. etc.
The government's policies created the housing bubble in order to escape the recession in 2001. We are simply feeling the effects of those policies today. And no, clearly this artificial boom/bust cycle is NOT healthy for an economy. It continues to consolidate wealth, which is then used as a justification to... get this.... EXPAND the governments control of the economy. All roads lead to Rome.
Well to be fair to the keynesians, I think most of them are aware (or at least i hope so), that the value of the jobs they are creating doesn't have the same value as the jobs created by the market. Their throught proces is most likely that government that governmen through its fiscal policies programs can increase aggregate demand which increases employment. But the main problem with this way of thinking is that it doesn't make sense to have think in terms of aggregate sizes, since some industries need to fire employed and others need to hire, and some even need to die. Fiscal policies only prolonged (while indebting) the crises.
Keynesians also dont think the same way of the boom/bust cycles as the austrians does, as they actually think the boom's are healthy (which it isn't as you point out). But the boom is just a proces of malinvestments (haircut industry), which is due to the mismatch between savings and investments, which again is due to the Fractionel-reserve, interest rate policies as you point out.
Jobs create by stimulus has more value than no jobs at all.
And Keynesians don't view booms as healthy, they view it as one of the two extremes of the business cycle that should be smoothed by monetary policy or fiscal policy.
Most economists believe that monetary policy should be used in the first instance, but monetary policy has hit a snag at the zero lower bound so fiscal policy is needed.
No they don't. In order to create a government job it is necessary to destroy real productive capacity in the economy by stealing money from people who produce things that others are actually buying on the market (and thus want it more than whatever government is going to do with the money because otherwise to market would already have been providing it).
It is a worse state of things by definition to have people producing things by government decree and wealth transfer instead of having them produce things others are voluntarily buying and thus expressing their preferences. If a job doesn't exist on a free market it's because it's marginal product is not higher than the labor cost and it drains resources from the economy instead of adding them. Forcing government jobs is just a resource drain on society as a whole.
Taxes =/= stealing.
The entire point of government is to solve the issue of Tragedy of the Commons.
If you can think of a term more appropriate than "theft" for the forceful coercion of taking an individual's money and time, then be my guest.
If taxation is theft then it is a very weird sort of theft. I’ve been robbed a couple of times, but I’ve never sat down afterwards with my copy of TurboTheft and calculated whether the thief had stolen too much from me and, if so, send off some forms to the thief so he will send me a refund check. The whole process bears a greater resemblance to paying dues for your Homeowners’ Association, or some such thing.
The typical response is that if you accept the libertarian philosophical framework then it turns out taxation really is theft, regardless of how things might look on the surface. But that’s question begging. The whole issue is whether we should accept the libertarian philosophical framework or not. Pointing out that framework has lots of implausible implications is not much of an argument in its favor.
Have you tried not paying your taxes? You will get letters at first, but men in uniforms with guns will eventually come and take you to jail. If you resist they'll put bullets in your skull. It's theft at gunpoint, even if you don't see the gun. They have to hide the gun because if people saw what it really was they'd never accept it. Would you let someone steal upwards 50% of your income? Hell no.
The libertarian philosophical framework is the same stuff you learned in elementary school. Don't hit. Don't steal. The initiation of the use of force is wrong. Just because it has drastic implications when you actually adhere to it doesn't mean that they're implausible. In fact, I don't even know what "implausible" implications you're referring to.
On January 29 2012 05:53 liberal wrote: The simple fact of the matter is the government isn't able to create jobs, only to transfer jobs, and isn't able to create wealth, only transfer wealth. The jobs that were "created" when they were transferred from somewhere else are always visible, which is why people have the mistaken belief that the government actually is capable of creating jobs. What people don't see are the jobs which have been destroyed to create those new jobs, destroyed in the present through taxation and relative inefficiency, and destroyed in the future through payments on our debt and market corrections of over-investment.
When 8.5% of the labor force is unemployed, if the government pays them to build a bridge, then the government has created jobs.
Did you not read any of the posts a few further up?
Try to read liberal's.
Let me start the thought process: From where does the government conjure up the ability to "create" jobs? Ie., where does the money come from?
If you follow that throught process you will see how the government doesn't "create" jobs.
Then you try to read my posts. $1 spent in investment of a investment banker =/= $1 in job creation or confidence in the economy. If the ultimate goal is to create wealth as a whole, then yea, private sector will probably be the best bet. But you're going to get unemployment (or long term malinvestment) problems.
Actually, it's just the opposite..
In a free economy companies who invested poorly would rightfully go bankrupt and their assets liquidated, In todays society we bail out the financial institutions and pass their losses to the taxpayers. Not only do we pass the losses to the taxpayer, but we inadvertently exacerbate the problems with our bleeding heart and the policies that result.. Now we have TBTF and a ridiculous debt that will seriously burden generations to come..
On January 29 2012 05:53 liberal wrote: The simple fact of the matter is the government isn't able to create jobs, only to transfer jobs, and isn't able to create wealth, only transfer wealth. The jobs that were "created" when they were transferred from somewhere else are always visible, which is why people have the mistaken belief that the government actually is capable of creating jobs. What people don't see are the jobs which have been destroyed to create those new jobs, destroyed in the present through taxation and relative inefficiency, and destroyed in the future through payments on our debt and market corrections of over-investment.
The recession in the US is simply the destruction of jobs which were transferred to the past, but people can't see it in that light. The government's fiscal policies have been designed to foster over-investment in the economy, by setting the interest rates artificially low, by maintaining permanent inflation, by setting the fractional-reserve ratio, by insuring against losses ie. government backed mortgages, by fostering the expansion of credit and increased lending, etc. etc.
The government's policies created the housing bubble in order to escape the recession in 2001. We are simply feeling the effects of those policies today. And no, clearly this artificial boom/bust cycle is NOT healthy for an economy. It continues to consolidate wealth, which is then used as a justification to... get this.... EXPAND the governments control of the economy. All roads lead to Rome.
Well to be fair to the keynesians, I think most of them are aware (or at least i hope so), that the value of the jobs they are creating doesn't have the same value as the jobs created by the market. Their throught proces is most likely that government that governmen through its fiscal policies programs can increase aggregate demand which increases employment. But the main problem with this way of thinking is that it doesn't make sense to have think in terms of aggregate sizes, since some industries need to fire employed and others need to hire, and some even need to die. Fiscal policies only prolonged (while indebting) the crises.
Keynesians also dont think the same way of the boom/bust cycles as the austrians does, as they actually think the boom's are healthy (which it isn't as you point out). But the boom is just a proces of malinvestments (haircut industry), which is due to the mismatch between savings and investments, which again is due to the Fractionel-reserve, interest rate policies as you point out.
Jobs create by stimulus has more value than no jobs at all.
And Keynesians don't view booms as healthy, they view it as one of the two extremes of the business cycle that should be smoothed by monetary policy or fiscal policy.
Most economists believe that monetary policy should be used in the first instance, but monetary policy has hit a snag at the zero lower bound so fiscal policy is needed.
No they don't. In order to create a government job it is necessary to destroy real productive capacity in the economy by stealing money from people who produce things that others are actually buying on the market (and thus want it more than whatever government is going to do with the money because otherwise to market would already have been providing it).
It is a worse state of things by definition to have people producing things by government decree and wealth transfer instead of having them produce things others are voluntarily buying and thus expressing their preferences. If a job doesn't exist on a free market it's because it's marginal product is not higher than the labor cost and it drains resources from the economy instead of adding them. Forcing government jobs is just a resource drain on society as a whole.
Taxes =/= stealing.
The entire point of government is to solve the issue of Tragedy of the Commons.
If you can think of a term more appropriate than "theft" for the forceful coercion of taking an individual's money and time, then be my guest.
If taxation is theft then it is a very weird sort of theft. I’ve been robbed a couple of times, but I’ve never sat down afterwards with my copy of TurboTheft and calculated whether the thief had stolen too much from me and, if so, send off some forms to the thief so he will send me a refund check. The whole process bears a greater resemblance to paying dues for your Homeowners’ Association, or some such thing.
The typical response is that if you accept the libertarian philosophical framework then it turns out taxation really is theft, regardless of how things might look on the surface. But that’s question begging. The whole issue is whether we should accept the libertarian philosophical framework or not. Pointing out that framework has lots of implausible implications is not much of an argument in its favor.
Have you tried not paying your taxes? You will get letters at first, but men in uniforms with guns will eventually come and take you to jail. If you resist they'll put bullets in your skull. It's theft at gunpoint, even if you don't see the gun. They have to hide the gun because if people saw what it really was they'd never accept it. Would you let someone steal upwards 50% of your income? Hell no.
Sorry, your argument assumes absolute property rights. If, per Hobbes, Aquinas, Plato, or just about every western thinker with the exception of Rothbard or we do have a *positive legal obligation* to pay a certain amount of taxes it certainly is not theft. I'm not saying they are right and you are wrong, but you need to do something besides chant "taxes are theft" to engage them.
The libertarian philosophical framework is the same stuff you learned in elementary school. Don't hit. Don't steal. The initiation of the use of force is wrong.
Anarcho-capitalists, like every other political philosophy, do in fact favor coercion and such in certain situations. Of course to the extent that I voluntarily obey its rules no violence would be necessary, but thats only saying "agreement prevents disagreement." Well, I agree, but I don't think we've gotten some easy answer from that.
For instance if I were to walk over a small strip of some property owners land in an anarcho-capitalist society a protection agency (or the property owner) would have the right to use violence against me (some of the more extreme kind, like Walter Block, argue for the blanket proposition that I could be shot without consequence to the property owner in this situation). In the normal usage "everybody learned in school" it is clear I have not initiated force or violence against you in this hypothetical, but per counter intuitive natural rights libertarian definitions *I* would be "initiating force" against the property owner.
Just because it has drastic implications when you actually adhere to it doesn't mean that they're implausible. In fact, I don't even know what "implausible" implications you're referring to
If you don't get it its your loss, since you'll be talking past the majority of people you argue with, but I'll give a go explaining anyway.
An analogy to your disagreement with a hypothetical statist: A fifteen year old is asked by his parents to take out the trash.
"Oh, so now I'm your slave!" the fifteen year old responds.
Per the normal perspective we learned in school we can both see the fifteen year olds argument has implausible implications, but the fifteen year old really thinks he has a good argument.
On January 29 2012 05:53 liberal wrote: The simple fact of the matter is the government isn't able to create jobs, only to transfer jobs, and isn't able to create wealth, only transfer wealth. The jobs that were "created" when they were transferred from somewhere else are always visible, which is why people have the mistaken belief that the government actually is capable of creating jobs. What people don't see are the jobs which have been destroyed to create those new jobs, destroyed in the present through taxation and relative inefficiency, and destroyed in the future through payments on our debt and market corrections of over-investment.
When 8.5% of the labor force is unemployed, if the government pays them to build a bridge, then the government has created jobs.
Did you not read any of the posts a few further up?
Try to read liberal's.
Let me start the thought process: From where does the government conjure up the ability to "create" jobs? Ie., where does the money come from?
If you follow that throught process you will see how the government doesn't "create" jobs.
Then you try to read my posts. $1 spent in investment of a investment banker =/= $1 in job creation or confidence in the economy. If the ultimate goal is to create wealth as a whole, then yea, private sector will probably be the best bet. But you're going to get unemployment (or long term malinvestment) problems.
Actually, it's just the opposite..
In a free economy companies who invested poorly would rightfully go bankrupt and their assets liquidated, In todays society we bail out the financial institutions and pass their losses to the taxpayers. Not only do we pass the losses to the taxpayer, but we inadvertently exacerbate the problems with our bleeding heart and the policies that result.. Now we have TBTF and a ridiculous debt that will seriously burden generations to come..
If by "generations," you mean a decade of increased taxes by a few percentage points, then yes. It's not like we have to pay off the debt all at once, you know.
Did you know that people often buy houses that are more than their net worth, and then proceed to PAY THEM OFF?! OMG! By your logic, their grandkids will still be left with the bill...
On January 29 2012 05:53 liberal wrote: The simple fact of the matter is the government isn't able to create jobs, only to transfer jobs, and isn't able to create wealth, only transfer wealth. The jobs that were "created" when they were transferred from somewhere else are always visible, which is why people have the mistaken belief that the government actually is capable of creating jobs. What people don't see are the jobs which have been destroyed to create those new jobs, destroyed in the present through taxation and relative inefficiency, and destroyed in the future through payments on our debt and market corrections of over-investment.
When 8.5% of the labor force is unemployed, if the government pays them to build a bridge, then the government has created jobs.
Did you not read any of the posts a few further up?
Try to read liberal's.
Let me start the thought process: From where does the government conjure up the ability to "create" jobs? Ie., where does the money come from?
If you follow that throught process you will see how the government doesn't "create" jobs.
Then you try to read my posts. $1 spent in investment of a investment banker =/= $1 in job creation or confidence in the economy. If the ultimate goal is to create wealth as a whole, then yea, private sector will probably be the best bet. But you're going to get unemployment (or long term malinvestment) problems.
Actually, it's just the opposite..
In a free economy companies who invested poorly would rightfully go bankrupt and their assets liquidated, In todays society we bail out the financial institutions and pass their losses to the taxpayers. Not only do we pass the losses to the taxpayer, but we inadvertently exacerbate the problems with our bleeding heart and the policies that result.. Now we have TBTF and a ridiculous debt that will seriously burden generations to come..
If by "generations," you mean a decade of increased taxes by a few percentage points, then yes. It's not like we have to pay off the debt all at once, you know.
Did you know that people often buy houses that are more than their net worth, and then proceed to PAY THEM OFF?! OMG! By your logic, their grandkids will still be left with the bill...
A "decade of increased taxes by a few percentage points" as you so lightly call it, is a horrible burden that governments are imposing on citizens all over the world. I'm not even 21 and my small business hasn't even made 10k profit and I've already payed 2k in taxes, which has robbed me of the oportunity to further reinvest on other profitable matters because of lack of liquidity.
Morever, my real burden is/was all the paper work, incluying 0.5k to start my small company, having to do all the fucking tax declarations every month, the fact that I cannot hire 1 part time employees without having to hire an accountant, etc.
All of the above is caused because people think they are entitled to others property, or to force others to transfer property under gun point because they seem it fit.
Btw 40% of my government's income comes from mining, so if people where a bit more reasonable we could not pay taxes all together and protect individuals life, property and life very effectively.
At least we do not have government debt though. Instead, we burden the poor with a 45% tax on gas and 19% tax on the purchate of every good.
On January 29 2012 05:53 liberal wrote: The simple fact of the matter is the government isn't able to create jobs, only to transfer jobs, and isn't able to create wealth, only transfer wealth. The jobs that were "created" when they were transferred from somewhere else are always visible, which is why people have the mistaken belief that the government actually is capable of creating jobs. What people don't see are the jobs which have been destroyed to create those new jobs, destroyed in the present through taxation and relative inefficiency, and destroyed in the future through payments on our debt and market corrections of over-investment.
The recession in the US is simply the destruction of jobs which were transferred to the past, but people can't see it in that light. The government's fiscal policies have been designed to foster over-investment in the economy, by setting the interest rates artificially low, by maintaining permanent inflation, by setting the fractional-reserve ratio, by insuring against losses ie. government backed mortgages, by fostering the expansion of credit and increased lending, etc. etc.
The government's policies created the housing bubble in order to escape the recession in 2001. We are simply feeling the effects of those policies today. And no, clearly this artificial boom/bust cycle is NOT healthy for an economy. It continues to consolidate wealth, which is then used as a justification to... get this.... EXPAND the governments control of the economy. All roads lead to Rome.
Well to be fair to the keynesians, I think most of them are aware (or at least i hope so), that the value of the jobs they are creating doesn't have the same value as the jobs created by the market. Their throught proces is most likely that government that governmen through its fiscal policies programs can increase aggregate demand which increases employment. But the main problem with this way of thinking is that it doesn't make sense to have think in terms of aggregate sizes, since some industries need to fire employed and others need to hire, and some even need to die. Fiscal policies only prolonged (while indebting) the crises.
Keynesians also dont think the same way of the boom/bust cycles as the austrians does, as they actually think the boom's are healthy (which it isn't as you point out). But the boom is just a proces of malinvestments (haircut industry), which is due to the mismatch between savings and investments, which again is due to the Fractionel-reserve, interest rate policies as you point out.
Jobs create by stimulus has more value than no jobs at all.
And Keynesians don't view booms as healthy, they view it as one of the two extremes of the business cycle that should be smoothed by monetary policy or fiscal policy.
Most economists believe that monetary policy should be used in the first instance, but monetary policy has hit a snag at the zero lower bound so fiscal policy is needed.
No they don't. In order to create a government job it is necessary to destroy real productive capacity in the economy by stealing money from people who produce things that others are actually buying on the market (and thus want it more than whatever government is going to do with the money because otherwise to market would already have been providing it).
It is a worse state of things by definition to have people producing things by government decree and wealth transfer instead of having them produce things others are voluntarily buying and thus expressing their preferences. If a job doesn't exist on a free market it's because it's marginal product is not higher than the labor cost and it drains resources from the economy instead of adding them. Forcing government jobs is just a resource drain on society as a whole.
Taxes =/= stealing.
The entire point of government is to solve the issue of Tragedy of the Commons.
Government, at least in its current form, does the exact opposite of what you're suggesting. The current socialist, collectivist trends create an entity that is quick to reject the idea of personal property in favor of shared or public property. Thus, to say that a government's role is to prevent over-consumption of a shared resource is not true. It is an enabler of the so called tragedy of commons. Not to metion the possibility of government acting in its own self-interest or through favoritism, which happens to be reality.
But to some extent, I agree with you. If government is to exist, then its role is to prevent the tragedy of commons by acting as the protector of individual liberties and private property. And since I subscribe to the belief that money earned through one's own productive achievement also belongs solely to that individual, then government's role is to protect that man and his money from the coercion of others.
If you can think of a term more appropriate than "theft" for the forceful coercion of taking an individual's money and time, then be my guest.
Taxes are the price people pay to live in a civilised society, though the maintenance of civilisation depends on the wise use of the revenues gained. Sadly, in the western world, we spend that money to enable pathological behaviour and penalise, whether directly or indirectly, behaviours that are beneficial to civil society.
But a government never spends as beneficially as an individual spending on his own behalf. By definition, a centrally planned system functions by drawing averages and making generalizations about what is "best" for vast quantities of people. It would seem that you think this idealistic. Or perhaps you believe others have greater claim to your money and livelihood than your self?
And since we're talking about the tragedy of commons, Mises had a great point about what I mentioned earlier:
"If land is not owned by anybody, although legal formalism may call it public property, it is used without any regard to the disadvantages resulting. Those who are in a position to appropriate to themselves the returns — lumber and game of the forests, fish of the water areas, and mineral deposits of the subsoil — do not bother about the later effects of their mode of exploitation. For them, erosion of the soil, depletion of the exhaustible resources and other impairments of the future utilization are external costs not entering into their calculation of input and output. They cut down trees without any regard for fresh shoots or reforestation. In hunting and fishing, they do not shrink from methods preventing the repopulation of the hunting and fishing grounds"
Your opening sentence shows an ENORMOUS logical fallacy. "a government never spends as beneficially as an individual spending on his own behalf." That's completely wrong. What you could rather say, is "A government never spends in such a way as to benefit me as well as I could do, spending on my own behalf." The net benefit of social programs is hard to quantify but it is non-negligible.
Your conclusion does not follow from your premises. Rather, I feel that there are a large number of beneficial programs that people would not voluntarily spend for, because they'd rather let someone else spend on it, and the only way to make sure that they're supported is to require that everyone spend on it (a-la taxes). One example is a police force, another is a fire department.
On January 29 2012 05:53 liberal wrote: The simple fact of the matter is the government isn't able to create jobs, only to transfer jobs, and isn't able to create wealth, only transfer wealth. The jobs that were "created" when they were transferred from somewhere else are always visible, which is why people have the mistaken belief that the government actually is capable of creating jobs. What people don't see are the jobs which have been destroyed to create those new jobs, destroyed in the present through taxation and relative inefficiency, and destroyed in the future through payments on our debt and market corrections of over-investment.
When 8.5% of the labor force is unemployed, if the government pays them to build a bridge, then the government has created jobs.
Did you not read any of the posts a few further up?
Try to read liberal's.
Let me start the thought process: From where does the government conjure up the ability to "create" jobs? Ie., where does the money come from?
If you follow that throught process you will see how the government doesn't "create" jobs.
Then you try to read my posts. $1 spent in investment of a investment banker =/= $1 in job creation or confidence in the economy. If the ultimate goal is to create wealth as a whole, then yea, private sector will probably be the best bet. But you're going to get unemployment (or long term malinvestment) problems.
Actually, it's just the opposite..
In a free economy companies who invested poorly would rightfully go bankrupt and their assets liquidated, In todays society we bail out the financial institutions and pass their losses to the taxpayers. Not only do we pass the losses to the taxpayer, but we inadvertently exacerbate the problems with our bleeding heart and the policies that result.. Now we have TBTF and a ridiculous debt that will seriously burden generations to come..
If by "generations," you mean a decade of increased taxes by a few percentage points, then yes. It's not like we have to pay off the debt all at once, you know.
Did you know that people often buy houses that are more than their net worth, and then proceed to PAY THEM OFF?! OMG! By your logic, their grandkids will still be left with the bill...
A "decade of increased taxes by a few percentage points" as you so lightly call it, is a horrible burden that governments are imposing on citizens all over the world. I'm not even 21 and my small business hasn't even made 10k profit and I've already payed 2k in taxes, which has robbed me of the oportunity to further reinvest on other profitable matters because of lack of liquidity.
Morever, my real burden is/was all the paper work, incluying 0.5k to start my small company, having to do all the fucking tax declarations every month, the fact that I cannot hire 1 part time employees without having to hire an accountant, etc.
All of the above is caused because people think they are entitled to others property, or to force others to transfer property under gun point because they seem it fit.
Btw 40% of my government's income comes from mining, so if people where a bit more reasonable we could not pay taxes all together and protect individuals life, property and life very effectively.
At least we do not have government debt though. Instead, we burden the poor with a 45% tax on gas and 19% tax on the purchate of every good.
I second this notion.. No matter how high you raise the federal taxes, pretty soon the federal government will piss that money and have its hand out for more..
900 bases, 150+ countries.. financial institution bailouts, failed war on drug policy.. the list goes on.. cut spending, stop crippling this already weak economy..
EPT
