Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Seeing a lot of nitwits out there, as the Bush tax cuts close in on their latest sunset, insisting that we need taxes to go up.
In response to this, wisdom, again, from my Hello Kitty of Blogging account:
An observation about the debate over taxes:
As is the case with some other issues, it is a more complicated matter than it should be to define the “moderate” position. In fact, this passion for higher taxes is not only out of the mainstream and extreme, but weird, strange and surreal. We don’t see it, because by the time you have taxes you have to have a government demanding it, and of course by the time you have a government you have politics muddying everything up.
But “my taxes are too high” is a natural, heartfelt, honest plea (whether something should be done about that, is the question).
“The taxes are not high enough” is not natural, heartfelt, or honest. It is an insincere protest. It is driven by a desire to please others, to pay someone back for favors received, lust for control over the resulting receipts, old-fashioned jealousy, or some combination among those.
Suppose we were to start all over again, and we had to take stock of what was needed. We would identify food, water, shelter, then hygiene, and then somewhere along the line we would say we need a right to property and a system of laws to maintain it…and we need to make sure everyone has enough to live, if they work for it. But we wouldn’t say “We have to make sure everyone is taxed enough.” You have to endure as a civilization long enough to get sloppy, lazy and silly to identify that “need.” You have to use technology’s gifts to drive a wedge between yourself, and reality. That is what is happening here.
I’m wondering if people understand what it says about them, as thinking people, when they insist tax cuts lead to the dissipation of jobs, and tax increases lead to job growth. “Tax” means to “deplete.” The dictionary defines the word as “a burdensome charge, obligation, duty, or demand.” It is something that, by necessity and often by intent, diminishes the thing upon which it is laid; that is what it does, and that is what it is supposed to do.
A nation having a debate about whether they need to go up, is a nation that is having a dishonest and contaminated debate. That’s us.
I’ve written previously about the meaningful differentiation between efforts involved in building and preserving things, versus the efforts involved in destroying things. There can be some difficulty involved in differentiating this, but it is worth the trouble, because it seems to me we as a species make our greatest and gravest mistakes when we bollux it up. It’s often a murky question. A sniper, for example, destroys something so that something else can be preserved. The terrorist he’s sniping, on the other hand, is trying to preserve something so that something else can be destroyed.
There can be no question that a tax raised to a higher level than what is needed, has a destructive effect; and there can be very little question that this initial destructive effect is a net effect, once the loot flows into the government coffers it is unlikely in the extreme that there will be some creative process to offset the destruction. (If there is one, better-than-even odds it will have something to do with hiring more IRS agents or something of the like.)
Once again, I see our national discourse has become, as I said, contaminated; we have permitted something to become a part of it, that should not have been so allowed in. When a wife says to her husband “I have a problem with that new dishwasher, we did not pay enough for it” that is grounds for divorce, is it not? It is, right? No? Well, I guess maybe I’m in the minority on that one…nevertheless, I’m right. A wife who pushes for a household to spend more money on things, is analogous to your stockbroker pushing for your profits to be lower, or for a general doing what he can to make sure more of his troops are killed.
The same is true for pundits and politicians pushing for taxes to be higher. If your agitation is toward more destruction, why are you part of the process? You don’t belong in here. Debates about taxes are debates about more bang for the buck. We don’t need people to be part of the discussion, who are trying to make things cost more. It’s as simple as that.
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To me this is all very simple, and in a sane world, it would be equally simple to everyone else.
What’s the goal when setting tax rates? Let’s pick an obvious contender – to maximize government revenue.
A tax rate of 0% yields zero dollars of government revenue.
A tax rate of 100% likewise yields zero dollars, as no one would bother to earn a living or produce anything if 100% of the salary or profits were immediately confiscated.
There’s some optimal point in between that maximizes revenue. Some people refer to this as the Laffer Curve.
The debate should be about finding that point, then persuading policymakers to set taxes at that level. Period. (And I’d argue that everyone should be paying the same rate.) If someone thought that this rate needed fine-tuning now and then in response to fluctuations in the economy, fine. But I doubt this level would change much – it wouldn’t be 10% one year and 25% the next.
That, in my opinion, is the only discussion worth having. I’m tired of seeing taxes used as a carrot-and-stick to shape economic behavior.
- cylarz | 07/09/2012 @ 18:52