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On January 26 2018 18:00 Pr0wler wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2018 16:58 Big J wrote:On January 26 2018 08:19 kollin wrote:On January 26 2018 08:05 Big J wrote:On January 26 2018 07:03 Nyxisto wrote:
I'm very much in favour of egalitarian liberalism, but I don't know where you're getting the idea from that the United States or Western Europe grew without property rights. Strong property rights are the foundation of any functional economy. Property rights are always there, since a state is a construct of people, rights and land. The moment your society claims land, it has a property system. The owners are those who actually rule parts of the land, regardless of what the propaganda says who holds the land. (E.g. in the case of state socialism you have an elite party that gives the orders and no access from anyone else. it is the most anti-liberal, anti-egalitarian form of property. But those people would claim it is "the people" who rule) So the core question is always by which mechanisms are those rights distributed. In early America these were claimed and distributed between equally poor people. Which means the capital prices were low, everyone needed each other for trade and lots of innovation and growth happened. In feudal europe this wasnt the case, the land was in the hand of very few people and the capital prices were high and access to being economically active was limited, because those who controlled the wealth didn't need the others but prevented them from becoming active. An example of what changed this for some time: the French Revolution redistributed the property rights between many people, growth and innovation happened and subsequently Napoleon could conquer europe based on a rather free and therefore strong society. The question is whether you want to go on forever waiting for war, crisis or revolution to open a small window of violent redistribution or whether you want a system in which property gets thrown back on the market under certain circumstances (like death) and we actively recognize bad distributions as part of an illiberal system. Is there any precedent for the second system? "New Deal" politics by FDR. High taxation on super high incomes (up to 90%) but low taxation for middle/low incomes which catches the "property based" part of income, but keeps the workbased parts undertaxed (obviously it does catch a lot of high earners without property too which is why I prefer a direct high wealth taxation and no/less wage taxation, but since there is no market for things not traded you need a central planner that gets the tax rates right, which might be worse than fucking over a few high earners that do so by work) and 77% inheritance taxes. The only peaceful redistribution program that ever happened without destroying the economy first and one of the biggest economic wealth programs ever. Sadly its image has been distorted from the left (positively seen) and from the right (negatively seen) for its big state economy, when the actual achievment was liberal redistribution, not state economy. Try to tax someone with 90% now, and he is gone from your country the next day. People are no longer bound to one location. Taxes are just numbers and are not that important. The most important thing is how you spend the money from them. From what I've seen usually these money go for ineffective policies and for the circle of companies that supports the ruling party. So it's not a surprise that so many people are not willing to pay taxes.
True. Which is why you need economic areas to work together, because then people can't leave the tax system. Which is what people like Macron or German soc-dems are focusing on. Which is what nationalist-neoliberals and conservatives try to prevent by keeping the systems split and local, so that there is always a tax haven you can flee to, so you can never change the system without sabotaging yourself. Which these people then see as proof of the Lafer assumption, that high taxes slow growth in general.
Which is another reason why I believe taxation on physical wealth instead of wage taxation can go a long way. If your property is in Poland you can leave Poland, but your property cannot. If it leads to buying physical property being less attractive as a choice of securing your money, then it deflates the prices and it makes it cheaper for those who actually want to work with and live in it.
The alternative we do nowadays did not reduce overall taxes, they just shifted them to the middle and lower classes. The question is not just a percentage number, it is who pays the high percentages and the limits for that have been shifted dramatically to the bottom. In Austria if I have a 1.5 median income I am in the highest taxation class of 50%. People used to need like 10-15 times the median income to fall into the highest taxation classes, when those taxes were higher and bottom taxation lower.
Of course the state driven economy isn't very efficient when it tries to compete on the market based on political beliefes. In my view such an inheritance tax + Show Spoiler +(or rather turning the concept upside down, you are allowed to inherit an amount proportional to the median income, everything else is auctioned; like, let heirs compete in such an auction with an account of 1 million euro. If they can outbid everyone with that sum for (parts) of thr heritage they get that. If they can't they get a million from the bidders and everything else goes to the central bank)
By the way, this is not some leftist fantasy. Such ideas were popularized by Republicans like Theodore Roosevelt, the German FDP used to be for high inheritance taxes in the 60s and 70s etc. Not even Hayek and the Austrian economists believed in the neutrality of money, which is a necessary condition to justify the ongoing monetarism.
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This is seriously some nice presentation here Big J. Good job.
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On January 26 2018 04:03 Nyxisto wrote:
Probably just recognition of the fact that both globalisation and fairness at home are issues that somehow need to be dealt with, because equality is no good if you don't have an economy and any jobs, and a booming economy is no good if you have a too high degree of inequality.
no such thing as a system free of contradictions
Macron literally praised and denounced his own policy in the same speech. But after all, perhaps that is just an example of the "flexibility" he advocates for workers...
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On January 26 2018 16:58 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2018 08:19 kollin wrote:On January 26 2018 08:05 Big J wrote:On January 26 2018 07:03 Nyxisto wrote:
I'm very much in favour of egalitarian liberalism, but I don't know where you're getting the idea from that the United States or Western Europe grew without property rights. Strong property rights are the foundation of any functional economy. Property rights are always there, since a state is a construct of people, rights and land. The moment your society claims land, it has a property system. The owners are those who actually rule parts of the land, regardless of what the propaganda says who holds the land. (E.g. in the case of state socialism you have an elite party that gives the orders and no access from anyone else. it is the most anti-liberal, anti-egalitarian form of property. But those people would claim it is "the people" who rule) So the core question is always by which mechanisms are those rights distributed. In early America these were claimed and distributed between equally poor people. Which means the capital prices were low, everyone needed each other for trade and lots of innovation and growth happened. In feudal europe this wasnt the case, the land was in the hand of very few people and the capital prices were high and access to being economically active was limited, because those who controlled the wealth didn't need the others but prevented them from becoming active. An example of what changed this for some time: the French Revolution redistributed the property rights between many people, growth and innovation happened and subsequently Napoleon could conquer europe based on a rather free and therefore strong society. The question is whether you want to go on forever waiting for war, crisis or revolution to open a small window of violent redistribution or whether you want a system in which property gets thrown back on the market under certain circumstances (like death) and we actively recognize bad distributions as part of an illiberal system. Is there any precedent for the second system? "New Deal" politics by FDR. High taxation on super high incomes (up to 90%) but low taxation for middle/low incomes which catches the "property based" part of income, but keeps the workbased parts undertaxed (obviously it does catch a lot of high earners without property too which is why I prefer a direct high wealth taxation and no/less wage taxation, but since there is no market for things not traded you need a central planner that gets the tax rates right, which might be worse than fucking over a few high earners that do so by work) and 77% inheritance taxes. The only peaceful redistribution program that ever happened without destroying the economy first and one of the biggest economic wealth programs ever. Sadly its image has been distorted from the left (positively seen) and from the right (negatively seen) for its big state economy, when the actual achievment was liberal redistribution, not state economy.
But the New Deal was the result of a crisis. Same with the post-war left wing consensus.
Edit: I'm not new to the concept or history of state intervention in social or economic issues, I just think that the mass reductions in inequality throughout history have always been brought about by disaster rather than policy. I'm unsure whether that trend can be bucked, though I'd love it to.
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On January 26 2018 18:00 Pr0wler wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2018 16:58 Big J wrote:On January 26 2018 08:19 kollin wrote:On January 26 2018 08:05 Big J wrote:On January 26 2018 07:03 Nyxisto wrote:
I'm very much in favour of egalitarian liberalism, but I don't know where you're getting the idea from that the United States or Western Europe grew without property rights. Strong property rights are the foundation of any functional economy. Property rights are always there, since a state is a construct of people, rights and land. The moment your society claims land, it has a property system. The owners are those who actually rule parts of the land, regardless of what the propaganda says who holds the land. (E.g. in the case of state socialism you have an elite party that gives the orders and no access from anyone else. it is the most anti-liberal, anti-egalitarian form of property. But those people would claim it is "the people" who rule) So the core question is always by which mechanisms are those rights distributed. In early America these were claimed and distributed between equally poor people. Which means the capital prices were low, everyone needed each other for trade and lots of innovation and growth happened. In feudal europe this wasnt the case, the land was in the hand of very few people and the capital prices were high and access to being economically active was limited, because those who controlled the wealth didn't need the others but prevented them from becoming active. An example of what changed this for some time: the French Revolution redistributed the property rights between many people, growth and innovation happened and subsequently Napoleon could conquer europe based on a rather free and therefore strong society. The question is whether you want to go on forever waiting for war, crisis or revolution to open a small window of violent redistribution or whether you want a system in which property gets thrown back on the market under certain circumstances (like death) and we actively recognize bad distributions as part of an illiberal system. Is there any precedent for the second system? "New Deal" politics by FDR. High taxation on super high incomes (up to 90%) but low taxation for middle/low incomes which catches the "property based" part of income, but keeps the workbased parts undertaxed (obviously it does catch a lot of high earners without property too which is why I prefer a direct high wealth taxation and no/less wage taxation, but since there is no market for things not traded you need a central planner that gets the tax rates right, which might be worse than fucking over a few high earners that do so by work) and 77% inheritance taxes. The only peaceful redistribution program that ever happened without destroying the economy first and one of the biggest economic wealth programs ever. Sadly its image has been distorted from the left (positively seen) and from the right (negatively seen) for its big state economy, when the actual achievment was liberal redistribution, not state economy. Try to tax someone with 90% now, and he is gone from your country the next day. People are no longer bound to one location.
You can still tax him if he leaves your country. If he goes from A to B to pay less taxes, you can still make him pay the [A minus B] difference even if he's overseas. You won't get 100% back but it will diminish the incentive to leave.
Taxes are just numbers and are not that important. The most important thing is how you spend the money from them. From what I've seen usually these money go for ineffective policies and for the circle of companies that supports the ruling party. So it's not a surprise that so many people are not willing to pay taxes.
Above all, some people are less/not willing to pay because they have to compensate what big companies or super-riches do not pay...
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Above all, some people are unwilling because of what the money is wasted on.
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Yes but "waste" isn't a very explanatory term because it oftentimes serves as a placeholder for a policy judgment instead of an efficiency argument.
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On January 26 2018 20:59 kollin wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2018 16:58 Big J wrote:On January 26 2018 08:19 kollin wrote:On January 26 2018 08:05 Big J wrote:On January 26 2018 07:03 Nyxisto wrote:
I'm very much in favour of egalitarian liberalism, but I don't know where you're getting the idea from that the United States or Western Europe grew without property rights. Strong property rights are the foundation of any functional economy. Property rights are always there, since a state is a construct of people, rights and land. The moment your society claims land, it has a property system. The owners are those who actually rule parts of the land, regardless of what the propaganda says who holds the land. (E.g. in the case of state socialism you have an elite party that gives the orders and no access from anyone else. it is the most anti-liberal, anti-egalitarian form of property. But those people would claim it is "the people" who rule) So the core question is always by which mechanisms are those rights distributed. In early America these were claimed and distributed between equally poor people. Which means the capital prices were low, everyone needed each other for trade and lots of innovation and growth happened. In feudal europe this wasnt the case, the land was in the hand of very few people and the capital prices were high and access to being economically active was limited, because those who controlled the wealth didn't need the others but prevented them from becoming active. An example of what changed this for some time: the French Revolution redistributed the property rights between many people, growth and innovation happened and subsequently Napoleon could conquer europe based on a rather free and therefore strong society. The question is whether you want to go on forever waiting for war, crisis or revolution to open a small window of violent redistribution or whether you want a system in which property gets thrown back on the market under certain circumstances (like death) and we actively recognize bad distributions as part of an illiberal system. Is there any precedent for the second system? "New Deal" politics by FDR. High taxation on super high incomes (up to 90%) but low taxation for middle/low incomes which catches the "property based" part of income, but keeps the workbased parts undertaxed (obviously it does catch a lot of high earners without property too which is why I prefer a direct high wealth taxation and no/less wage taxation, but since there is no market for things not traded you need a central planner that gets the tax rates right, which might be worse than fucking over a few high earners that do so by work) and 77% inheritance taxes. The only peaceful redistribution program that ever happened without destroying the economy first and one of the biggest economic wealth programs ever. Sadly its image has been distorted from the left (positively seen) and from the right (negatively seen) for its big state economy, when the actual achievment was liberal redistribution, not state economy. But the New Deal was the result of a crisis. Same with the post-war left wing consensus. Edit: I'm not new to the concept or history of state intervention in social or economic issues, I just think that the mass reductions in inequality throughout history have always been brought about by disaster rather than policy. I'm unsure whether that trend can be bucked, though I'd love it to.
And it is difficult to say whether the people with the money had accepted New Deal policies without the crisis and without the war effort giving the taxation a state purpose that the taxed "rich" could stand behind, that wasn't just there to prevent rich kids from using their parents money to control the land in times of peace as I suggest it.
But all in all the actual process of closing the gap between the poor and the rich happened in a peaceful manner and was overall a period of extensive growth and freedom.
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Europe prepares the future for its youth...
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On January 26 2018 22:33 farvacola wrote:
Yes but "waste" isn't a very explanatory term because it oftentimes serves as a placeholder for a policy judgment instead of an efficiency argument.
Policy judgement is an efficient argument in this case. Don't be daft.
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On January 26 2018 22:46 Ghostcom wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2018 22:33 farvacola wrote:
Yes but "waste" isn't a very explanatory term because it oftentimes serves as a placeholder for a policy judgment instead of an efficiency argument. Policy judgement is an efficient argument in this case. Don't be daft.
Yeah and many times, "waste" means something other than efficiency, don't be daft.
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On January 26 2018 22:48 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2018 22:46 Ghostcom wrote:On January 26 2018 22:33 farvacola wrote:
Yes but "waste" isn't a very explanatory term because it oftentimes serves as a placeholder for a policy judgment instead of an efficiency argument. Policy judgement is an efficient argument in this case. Don't be daft. Yeah and many times, "waste" means something other than efficiency, don't be daft.
If you have a point, please clearly state it instead of making half an argument.
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The point is that arguments of government "waste" that don't engage with specific circumstances or alternatives are themselves half-arguments. It's like when people claim that they are "fiscally conservative" on the basis that they oppose "waste"; well no kidding lol
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Yes? And how does that point relate to the argument presented by TheDwf to which I replied? It seems like you think I'm actually arguing that governments are wasting money.
EDIT: I can add a qualifier to the original statement if that is what throws you so much off:
On January 26 2018 22:21 Ghostcom wrote:
Above all, some people are unwilling because of how they perceived the money is wastefully spent.
Although it should be rather self-evident that we are talking about perceptions from the context.
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Nah, I understand what you're saying, I'm just being obtuse with regards to a term that causes a lot of political problems here in the States 
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Thanks for wasting my time I guess. I would be more interested in your thoughts on the matter.
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I think it's a mix of what both of you describe; there are a lot of reasons why folks don't like paying taxes, and the notions that tax dollars won't be well spent and that the rich are avoiding their fair share of the tax burden are likely the two biggest. How to ameliorate those concerns is one of the big questions facing anyone pro-"big government."
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More like "The European youth prepares the future for itself". Sure, the state should do more to encourage them to vote, but even when it doesn't they have no right to blame the government for prioritizing the needs of those who do vote.
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This article https://www.ft.com/content/48adaca2-0292-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5 in the FT as well as TheDwf’s post above reminded me of the discussion people had in this thread some weeks ago about what language to speak in a potentially more integrated EU.
Personally, and I realize this is kind of weird coming from a Scandinavian who is fluent in English, I actually kinda agree with the French in that the dominance of English is somewhat of a problem. I also think people do the French a serious disservice when they dismiss the issue as one of vanity or pride. Language is how we think, it’s how we understand the world, and giving the Americans and the British a monopoly on defining our collective history cannot, in my view, be a positive thing.
For example, I would expect pretty much anyone here to have heard of JFK or Nixon, but how many have heard of say Jean Monnet? Sure the Vietnam war was a big deal (certainly if you lived in Vietnam) but it can’t be very controversial to say that the existence of the European union (and free movement in particular) is much much more important to the day to day lives of most people in Europe today. Yet Monnet was French, and so does not exist in a popular history primarily written in English. (I hadn’t heard of him either until someone gave me this biography https://www.amazon.com/Jean-Monnet-First-Statesman-Interdependence/dp/0393314901 lol, it’s actually really cool)
Ask any politically interested individual in Europe today which politicians from 70 and 80s are most responsible for shaping todays political climate and the majority will without hesitation respond Reagan and Thatcher. Yet while the privatization and liberalization regime of Thatcher certainly effected continental and northern Europe, it never took root in nearly the same way as in England. It seems to me like the conception of the Euro, the reunification of Germany, and the Maastricht treaty, powered by the Mitterand/Kohl friendship was more consequential.
This shows up in this thread a lot, when people look for historical figures whom to compare Macron too, Thatcher comes up a lot. Yet neither in his speeches nor policies at least I haven’t seen anything to indicate that his brand of capitalistic liberalism is Thatcher inspired. It reminds me more of the “socially responsible” capitalism traditionally associated with the Rhineland or Scandinavia. Yet the comparison to Schröder is seldom made.
Practically I think encouraging the use of French, German, and Polish (Spanish and Italian may have more speakers, but there is a very good argument to be made to include a Slavic language) within European contexts in an attempt to at least challenge the role of English in collective history telling would have benefits.
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It's not like we're being mind-controlled by English just because it's a common language. That's putting the cart in front of the horse. We all speak English and know a lot of English and American politicians because the US is the single biggest global power (and especially was in the post-war years up to the 90s).
I also really haven't heard a lot of Macron Thatcher comparisons, that was what people were saying about Filllon, and surely most kids who have a class about European history know who Monnet and the other founding fathers of the EU are.
As a lingua franca English is fine. It's easy to learn, it's the de facto language in many scientific fields and so on.
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EPT
