Well, if the wild extrapolation of my somewhat mild suggestions is any indication, no. You don’t. If words are to be put in my mouth, I’d rather choose them myself, if its all the same to you. Kinda picky.
So I’ve heard, many many times. You’d almost thing it was the defining dogma of a faith, how often it is repeated as irrefutable truth that is beyond questioning.
But lets do it anyway! What the heck, right?
How do humans live “in the wild”, this “human animal”? Well, he lives mostly in tribes, doesn’t he? Communal enterprises. That recognize private property, but don’t place it as a value above the community. If you need to borrow Running Bear’s horse, you must ask. But if your purpose is to acquire food for the tribe, he had best grant it.
In fact, unless I’m very much mistaken, the most “natural” condition for the human animal is that tribal ethos, no? Communism without intellectual pretensions and arcane vocabulary.
Which leads us to the conclusion that your appeal to “human nature” does not, in fact, support your case. Rather the opposite.
But without taxes Ook and Aak would still be trading rocks for fish. Taxes are a trait of human civilization that have been around since there were civilizations. Without them we wouldn’t HAVE civilizations. The question of how to divide them up is a question of fairness, but it’s also a question of what’s in the interest of the society, what’s pragmatic, and a number of other values.
I don’t think it’s either pragmatic or in the interest of society to have some people or groups accumulating such vast sums of capital that they have extraordinarily disproportionate power in the society and in the economy and can essentially buy and sell the government. Too few people have way way too much power.
That’s called an oligarchy. And it’s not “fair” either. You’ve played Monopoly You know the dynamic. The rules can start out the same for everyone, but once one player starts getting disproportionate wealth, he starts bankrupting everyone else.
There are other people that think that’s perfectly fine, or that it’s “unfair” for anyone else to make that analysis. I can see both sides’ point. But I’m against oligarchies. They’re corrupt, they’re inefficient, they create poverty and human misery, they create banana republics. And if a totally free market and a flat tax create them, then I’m against free markets and flat taxes. If it takes a 90%+ tax on the highest brackets to prevent them, then that’s the trade-off. It’s certainly be done in the past without the collapse of capitalism.
Tax rates in past civilizations, from China to England, were much, much lower, in the single digits, though perhaps enforced a little more arbitrarily.
Seriously, haven’t you ever heard of the “the king’s fifth”? That’s 20 percent. And the church used to demand an actual tithe, that is, 10%. Together that’s a 30% tax, isn’t it? Hardly single digit.
And services and general prosperity were also very low; while wealth inequality was very high. Which is what the libertarian types really want; a return to feudalism. They want to be the lords trampling the serfs. And they are far too arrogant to consider that they might end up being one of the serfs.
From A Farewell to Alms, see page 153. Even including the “tithe”, which in practice amounted to about 4% of output, total taxes in preindustrial England came to about 6%.
Reality is often messier and less efficient than ren faires.
You have it exactly backwards. Your system is really the one that leads to feudalism and a lack of prosperity.
You say that conservatives want feudalism through economic coercion, but you want feudalism through political coercion. You want the government to have its foot on the poor’s neck by making them dependent on government handouts and its foot on the rich’s neck by making them beg and play nice for tax rates under 100 percent.
Your system inevitably leads to economic stagnation because it reduces everyone’s incentive to work and innovate.
You don’t understand what money really means, so you think that rich people grow it on trees and will always have it to fund your social programs so you can keep poor people dependent. A free market system allows people to benefit from their hard work, so they’ll work hard.
Under your system, neither the rich nor the poor benefit. The only people that benefit are those with political power. And you are so arrogant that you think you will be one of those people.
Now now, nobody’s policies are going to make us go back to feudalism, at least not in the sense of “medieval standard of living.” The industrial revolution put that to bed, and unless we lose all that technology that ship has sailed. What is possible, however, is economic and technological stagnation.
Well let’s go back to preindustrial GDP too while we’re at it.
Actually It sort of looks to me to me like increasing taxation coincides with increasing productivity and progress. That’s weird.
You know OOK and AAK had no taxes (but they *were *free.) Preindustrials had like 6% taxes (I take your word for it). And the U.S. has kept a pretty solid 20% of GDP average. Which is so unfair, I know.
And oh when the U.S. had it’s most sustained growth - for most of the 20th century - the highest tax brackets paid over 70% in income tax all the way up to 90%+ during the Eisenhower era. But somehow we did OK. Even the rich did OK. Wow.
So we have two opposing economic systems, under which the poor always lose. Can you understand the anger and frustration that leads to class warfare? Why shouldn’t the poor want to eat the rich?
I’m a Utilitarian, so in my philosophy the primary question is: What course of action maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering? So whatever inflamatory language you might coach it in, does a world with “government handouts” and a higher marginal tax rate (“stepping on the rich’s neck”) result in more, or less, overall suffering?
Money doesn’t seem to buy happiness beyond the amount of money neccesary to lift oneself out of poverty:
So based on that, I doubt that jacking up the marginal tax rates will truly cause the rich to suffer much, if any. But it could reduce vast amounts of suffering amongst the poor. Of course, there are probably more effective ways of using money than just handing it out… job training for instance.
No, I and many of my friends were poor. Many people who are poor do not lose. The first wave of immigrants from Europe and Asia were dirt poor but they found a way up. You cannot use the phrase “always lose” because it is wrong.
No I can’t. I was never taught to envy the rich. It is simply not a productive mode of thought. If you teach your children to “eat the rich”, you are brainwashing them to become life-long victims of their own pointless hatred.
Pretty damn well. Lots of people that are born into poverty end up making something of themselves. The vast majority of millionaires are self-made. But you don’t like stories like that, so you don’t pay any attention to them.
There’s about 30 different points there (granted I skimmed - but on the other hand you were lazy too by linking to yourself in some other thread) so what specifically was I supposed to get from that?