your mustache might be evil

[darkelenchus]

Would you invest in a prostitution ring if it promised a %50 APY return? It could sure speed up your attaining FI, but at what expense to the goal of making the world a better place?

Yes, I would, assuming of course that I was confident that I could evade any legal sanctions.  I mention this because it illustrates the differences in ideas of morality: I don't see anything wrong with prostitution, and think the world would be a better place if it were legal, and more people had more practical opportunity for sex.  If in addition I can earn a spectacular rate of return on my investment, that's just gravy :-)

Let me make the intention behind my remark more explicit: Would you invest in a sex slave prostitution ring if it promised a %50 APY return? The whole "differences in ideas of morality" is a red herring.

[darkelenchus]

Also, sol's injunction, "Just donate" requires that it be agnostic to any value system (hence the manner in which I formulated (1)). If you think, say, donating to the Objectivist foundation will make the world a better place, then by all means do so. This may conflict with his and I.P. Daley's emphasis on selflessness, but if the more fundamental message is "Just donate," this means that the core of this discussion isn't about rival value systems (e.g. altruism vs. egoism) so much as it is about the dilemma of pursuing early retirement potentially at the expense of (or, worse, in contradiction to) your value system.

And by "value system," I don't mean mere private/personal goals and such, but what you will for the world.

[sol]

Is this conversation serving a higher purpose than your enjoyment of the debate itself?

I admit I do love a good argument.  I value the diversity of opinions presented here, even the ones I think are ugly.

My intention in starting this thread was not to amuse myself, but to maybe cause someone a moment of reflection about their own financial decisions and how they relate to their personal values.  I think it's a woefully underappreciated aspect of this whole site.  As others have also pointed out, this site is mostly about the mechanics rather than the motivations of saving money.

Way to take that sentence out of context.

Sorry, that was not my intention.  Thanks for clarifying.

And I kind of like the idea of different people covering different kinds of charity.  It's a very democratic way to enact moral behavior. 

Also, sol's injunction, "Just donate" requires that it be agnostic to any value system... this means that the core of this discussion isn't about rival value systems (e.g. altruism vs. egoism) so much as it is about the dilemma of pursuing early retirement potentially at the expense of (or, worse, in contradiction to) your value system.

This was my intention with the first post, in which I tried to phrase this discussion as balancing your financial plan with your life plan.  We've since diverted a bit into the justifications for charity, which interest me less but I've been playing along anyway. 

I'm sticking with the "just donate" message, for now.  I don't really care about your choice of cause or whether you're at 0.5% or 50% of your income.  I just think everyone benefits by the mere act of consciously deciding to give something back, and I started this thread in part to perpetuate that message. 

There's been a lot of focus on how we can help ourselves by cutting expenses, but very little talk about how we can also help other people.

[sol]

As a temporary aside, I wanted to extend a quick thanks to everyone who has participated thus far.  I don't know of any other threads here that have grown to such length. 

I do appreciate those of you who have expressed gratitude for the chance to talk about these topics, or have found value in the viewpoints expressed here.  I've even had a few PMs on the topic, which is a first for me on the internet.  I'm not accustomed to online communities responding to ideas with more ideas, instead of flames.

[Gerard]

(2) the government is horribly inefficient with its resources

I remember living in Ottawa when people used to make this argument -- "What if the government was efficiently run like a business, like Nortel?" they would say. Oh, how we all laughed later.

and as I said I believe that in my hands the dollars spent would be far more impactful and to more people.

Yes, everybody believes this. So you get people hectoring others for not sharing their values. Which may be part of the reason why people on this site sometimes discuss investing and saving as if they existed in a moral vacuum -- because those are the aspects of a money worldview that we more or less share. The other stuff, maybe not so much.

[Bakari]

It is very progressive - all the way to $300k annual income.
Only problem is, someone at the lowest end of the top bracket has an amount of income closer to a homeless guy than to the truly filthy rich billionaires.   We currently have about the least progressive tax rates (in terms of how high the top bracket is, and what percentage of society pays that top rate) than we have ever had - with the predictable result of increasing inequality.

I am not sure I agree with it being the least progressive especially when other countries have higher individual income taxes many have lower corporate tax. 

I said it was the least we ever had.  I was comparing to the US in the past, not to other countries.

     Income   First          Top Bracket   
Year    Brackets   Bracket   Rate     Adj. Income (2011 dollars)   Comment
1913   7   1%            7%     $11.3M                  First permanent income tax
1917   21   2%            67%        $35M                   World War I financing
1925   23   1.5%   25%    $1.28M                  Post war reductions
1932   55   4%           63%    $16.4M                       Depression era
1936   31   4%           79%    $80.7M   
1941   32   10%           81%    $76.3M                       World War II
1942   24   19%           88%    $2.75M                  Revenue Act of 1942
1944   24   23%           94%      $2.54M     Individual Income Tax Act of 1944
1946   24   20%           91%      $2.30M   
1954   24   20%           91%      $1.67M   
1964   26   16%     77%      $2.85M    Tax reduction during Vietnam war
1965   25   14%    70%      $1.42M   
1981   16   14%    70%      $532k        Reagan era tax cuts
1982   14   12%    50%      $199k                      "
1987   5   11%    38.5%   $178k                      "
1988   2   15%    28%      $56k   "
1991   3   15%    31%      $135k   
1993   5   15%    39.6%   $388k   
2003   6   10%    35%      $380k   Bush era tax cuts
2011   6   10%    35%      $379k   

Its not really a matter of opinion.  We have one of the least progressive income tax schedules we have ever had.
Corporate taxes are irrelevant.  Corporate taxes are on corporations, not individuals.  It just means that the return investors get is lower, that's not the same as actually paying a tax out of one's income.

Setting that aside, the top 1% paid 37% of taxes, top 5% paid 59%,  and top 10% of earners pay 70% of the total tax pie clearly they are paying a lot. 

And those numbers seem pretty dramatic, and like they support your argument, when you take them out of context like that!

The top 1% holds 35% of all wealth.  The top 5% hold 62% of wealth.  The top 10% have 73% of all wealth.  And the roughly 50% who pay no income tax?  They have less than 1% of all wealth, with a net worth of zero or less.
Looking at it that way, our taxes aren't progressive at all, they are basically flat.  So I don't see how our current system is even remotely unfair to the rich.

Mosquito abatement and sewage are more what taxes should be paying for,

wait, so you acknowledge that government has a legitimate role to play in society, and that mandatory taxes are an appropriate way to pay for projects for the common good?  Then what are we even arguing about?

A single individual can't stop the local independent businesses from being displaced by a new WalMart coming to town with their own personal buying choices.  If they used to work in one of those shops that goes out of business, maybe now the only reasonable option left open to them is taking the WalMart job.  Business should not be allowed to just do whatever it wants, anymore than private citizens are able to do whatever they want.  If anything, less so.  We, as a society, get to decide what a business can and can't do.

...communities government representation changes zoning, makes tax accomodations, subsidizes infrastructure to get walmart and other retailers in. Tell your politicians to stop caving.
[/quote]
That's what I meant by "We, as a society, get to decide what a business can and can't do."  Collectively people can (via their elected representatives) decide to prevent Walmart from opening up in their town.  Which means business does not get to do whatever it wants.  That's all I was saying.

[Bakari]

I never said you were necessarily advocating giving to charity for selfish reasons, but you do still defend others willing actions to do so with the expectation that it's better than nothing. I feel the subject is relevant because no matter how much right you may do, if you do it for the wrong reasons, it's still wrong, fixes nothing, and is nothing more than legalism.
... When it becomes hollow and meaningless, the act can become perverted by evil people and you become none the wiser because it still appears to fit the shallow understanding you have of it.

I'll definitely grant that possibility, even that it happens in the real world.  Where we really differ is your assertion that the right thing for the wrong reasons "fixes nothing".  It can have an enormous positive impact on the real world!

It is a luxury to focus purely on the emotional benefit to oneself of giving, because that's being selfish.

I didn't say anything about the emotional benefit of giving.  I was contrasting the emotional aspect of the concept of giving with the practical, utilitarian aspect of the end result.   It seems like the mindset of the giver matters more to you and Sol than does the actual impact it has on the person in need.

You know logically that giving money can, does and will make a difference when done so properly. Before jumping on the FI bandwagon, your moral and ethical framework even had you doing so on top of everything else you did. Your approach to charity appears to be one of selflessness (the right reason), and you get that necessity. However, you've since introduced an "ends justify the means" argument into retreating from practicing that philosophy in all aspects of your life. "If I just stop giving money to others, I can achieve FIRE sooner, and can then be more generous with my money again later." It's a slippery slope.

It can be a slippery slope.  But it goes both ways.  The charity that jumps into community service before doing any fund raising won't be serving the community very long.  The teacher that tries to single-handedly fix the problems of every inner-city student is the one that burns out after 3 years (I know some of them).  As a utilitarian, I really believe it is better for the world if, by delaying donations now, the grand total amount of my contributions at the end of my life has been higher.

Although you're still plenty generous in other aspects and even appear to be compensating some for that financial giving loss in other areas, you've built a logical argument to defend eliminating a form of selflessness in your life.

Being a good person and trying to have a net positive impact are values of mine.  Donating money to charity is not, and never has been.

If anything, I feel like most donations are done as a form of indulgence, allowing people to sleep well at night while living wasteful destructive lifestyles.

UPDATE: from the newest forum post on the topic " Studies have found that people who do a good deed will use that as an excuse to cut back on other good behavior"

What we practice daily with enough time starts to alter our ideals. My worry is that by eliminating the full balance of charity in all aspects of your life, you'll eventually cease to value the importance of financial giving.

Exactly.  What we practice daily.  Just having an automatic monthly debit from a bank account or paycheck is not really practicing daily.  I try to live by my values in every way, at all times.  I am not personally worried about the slippery slope threat, as I have made it this far in life without compromising my values.

If we're to advocate selfless acts and charitable giving as a necessity in our pursuit of FI and daily living, then it's important to define what that really is and how it impacts us and others. Unfortunately, it cuts deep to the heart of the matter with people because it highlights the selfishness in their own lives, and people don't like being judged (even if it's merely by their own conscience). I'm not exempt from this in my own life. This discussion has added an insight into where I can improve things myself and perhaps where I even need to back off a bit from being too generous in some other aspects of my life. Instead of perhaps recognizing this, many people would rather instead argue and defend their selfish choices without admitting that they're being selfish and that perhaps what generosity they are providing in life might be for terrible reasons that could result in a terrible outcome because they don't completely understand the purpose.

I totally agree.  I don't know if I came across defensive; it wasn't my intention.
I still am just failing to see why money specifically gets its own special category that is supposed to be qualitatively different than anything else.
By that reasoning, a monk who takes a vow of poverty, lives in a room with a bed, table, chair, and nothing else, and spends every waking other helping those in need, is in some way immoral or not doing enough, because they aren't giving money.

Money is just a placeholder for goods and services.  They are interchangeable - literally.  If I work for a nonprofit residential facility for severely handicapped youth for 5 hours (at already below market rates) and then only charge them for 3 hours, how is that different from if I just gave them a check for a hundred dollars?
I don't see the difference.
Then extend that same reasoning to volunteering.
Giving money isn't a different form or aspect of charity, its just donating time via your workplace, and adding in an extra step.


That said, I will say this:  this thread and yours on charity have inspired me to actually do something I have been putting off for a couple months for "when I had time" (which would have been in the fall), which is to sign up for a volunteer shift for The Green Branch, reading to children at a local farmer's market.  All the clients who need a weekend spot will just have to wait.

Incidentally, to all those who find giving money is an important part of your life, here is one more option for where to give: http://www.greenbranchlibrary.org/
(Disclaimer - I was formerly on the board of directors)

[Bakari]

No.  I meant what I said: I think there is no way to sustain the current population indefinitely at ANY standard of living.  The issue is ongoing food supply.

Now I admit that I can't point to any "Do The Numbers" analysis that proves this, but neither do I know of any that disproves it, or has a sound methodology for finding a sustainable number.  But there is a lot of suggestive evidence.  Consider for instance the urbanization of the third world, and the fact that feeding much of this urban population depends on unsustainable agricultural practices.  Ergo, if we lose first-world, unrenewable resource-dependent farming methods, most of the urban population will starve.

We can also look at history, and what low-tech farming methods did to the environment of the Middle East and North Africa.  Civilizations grew in Mesopotamia, then collapsed when farming & grazing turned formerly fertile land into arid wasteland.  The same happened in North Africa, first as Rome used it as the grainery for Italy; later as grazing by nomadic herdsmen and their flocks turned grasslands into desert.  We can even see that the same thing happened in the America West: areas that were once grassland are now sagebrush desert. 

Put all this together, plus many other things - e.g. the rate of ocean fishery depletion - and it seems pretty obvious that current populations aren't sustainable.

Hmm.  Now that is a very interesting proposition, and one I don't think I've heard before.
I'd say it is certainly obvious that the Earth could not sustain the entire world at 1st world standard of living.
It is even more obvious that, even at a 3rd world level of subsistence, it would not be sustainable given infinite population growth.
Since we currently are on a trajectory towards both of those things at once, we have a problem.  Somethings got to give.

But if, hypothetically, we halted all population growth and all economic development, even turned back first world development (de-develop?)
Given the external inputs to modern ag, you could be on to something.

On the other hand, I suggest for your consideration:

-meat consumption provides roughly 1/10th the amount of final food calories per unit of land then plant consumption.  If the first world cut back its consumption to the level of most of the 3rd world, this would free up an enormous amount of food for the world.

-our high external input ag practices are done because supply and energy are cheap, and they require less labor.  Less resource intensive techniques exist.  They require more labor.  For most of history most labor was in ag, and there is no inherent reason it couldn't return if need be.

-modern permaculture also addresses the destructiveness of third-world "low-tech" practices that destroy soil

-if all else fails, people are working on hydroponic based skyscraper industrial vertical "farms" that could (hypothetically) provide more calories from less input or waste than anything that exists today.

You could still be right, but I'm not convinced that it is "obvious" that you are.
Afterall - despite the failures you mention in ancient history, humans ended up surviving.  Just like the people who think the apocalypse is coming on such-and-such a date, why should this time be any different than all those other times the world didn't end?

[Daley]

I'll definitely grant that possibility, even that it happens in the real world.  Where we really differ is your assertion that the right thing for the wrong reasons "fixes nothing".  It can have an enormous positive impact on the real world!

But as it was pointed out rather recently, sometimes there's darker, unintended consequences of even the most good natured of those efforts... like third world clothing drives and the decline of textile jobs. They may not immediately be visible consequences, but not all purely good intended charitable actions result in purely positive consequences.

I didn't say anything about the emotional benefit of giving.  I was contrasting the emotional aspect of the concept of giving with the practical, utilitarian aspect of the end result.   It seems like the mindset of the giver matters more to you and Sol than does the actual impact it has on the person in need.

It should be to a reasonable extent, IMHO. Greater good means just that. What good have you truly done if you extract the drowning girl only to unintentionally abandon her with her lungs half-full of water surrounded by a flock of pissed off Canadian geese? Or as has already been pointed out, you head out to save her when you can't swim yourself? If you do it for the right reason, understand the limitations and stick it out to the bitter end, you're far less likely to fail at performing the very act you choose to make. I view charitable giving in a very holistic manner that requires understanding the point and purpose of the act in life, doing it selflessly, knowing yourself and your strengths and weaknesses, and being willing to take responsibility with and learning from your actions. Can you entirely do that with a split-second life-and-death decision? You can if you truly know yourself and know you can help effectively. This is what I feel paralyzes so many people into inaction during such events or making very, VERY stupid decisions. They don't actually know what they're doing.

It can be a slippery slope.  But it goes both ways.  The charity that jumps into community service before doing any fund raising won't be serving the community very long.  The teacher that tries to single-handedly fix the problems of every inner-city student is the one that burns out after 3 years (I know some of them).  As a utilitarian, I really believe it is better for the world if, by delaying donations now, the grand total amount of my contributions at the end of my life has been higher.

Talking about founding charities and doing ongoing charitable acts as a part of your life's routine aren't entirely the same thing, but it does highlight the necessity of balancing between the level of commitment provided and the necessity of meeting immediate responsibilities. It can be a slippery slope without due diligence.

Being a good person and trying to have a net positive impact are values of mine.  Donating money to charity is not, and never has been.

Donating money to charity has never been a value of yours?

I used to give more - until I learned the idea of early retirement!  Since then I'm reluctant to give up any potential "employees".  I expect this to change if/when I hit FI.

Exactly.  What we practice daily.  Just having an automatic monthly debit from a bank account or paycheck is not really practicing daily.  I try to live by my values in every way, at all times.  I am not personally worried about the slippery slope threat, as I have made it this far in life without compromising my values.

Agreed, auto debits eat away at the purpose as one should make the effort and take the time to do it instead of having it just be done automagically. It doesn't mean that financial giving cannot still have a positive impact or shouldn't be practiced.

I totally agree.  I don't know if I came across defensive; it wasn't my intention.
I still am just failing to see why money specifically gets its own special category that is supposed to be qualitatively different than anything else.
By that reasoning, a monk who takes a vow of poverty, lives in a room with a bed, table, chair, and nothing else, and spends every waking other helping those in need, is in some way immoral or not doing enough, because they aren't giving money.

Money is just a placeholder for goods and services.  They are interchangeable - literally.  If I work for a nonprofit residential facility for severely handicapped youth for 5 hours (at already below market rates) and then only charge them for 3 hours, how is that different from if I just gave them a check for a hundred dollars?
I don't see the difference.
Then extend that same reasoning to volunteering.
Giving money isn't a different form or aspect of charity, its just donating time via your workplace, and adding in an extra step.

Didn't necessarily think you were being defensive, and it wasn't my intent to make you feel as such. As much as money is a placeholder for goods and services, it only represents a portion of our life's fruits and some places need goods and services more than manpower. Sol's more the one banging on the "just give money" drum. My drum beat's more of a "give appropriately across all facets of your life - which includes money" groove. My advocation is to include cash finances along with other forms of charity as a means to keep a generous spirit active in all portions of your life. Sometimes a drowning girl needs a flotation device more than a strong swimmer.

As for the monk defense, we're not monks that swore to a life of poverty. Even still, the monks are technically giving away any money earned on top of the goods and services donated. It may all technically be coming out of the same pot, but it's still expressed in as many useful functions as is available and can be used by their beneficiaries, including cash.

That said, I will say this:  this thread and yours on charity have inspired me to actually do something I have been putting off for a couple months for "when I had time" (which would have been in the fall), which is to sign up for a volunteer shift for The Green Branch, reading to children at a local farmer's market.  All the clients who need a weekend spot will just have to wait.

Incidentally, to all those who find giving money is an important part of your life, here is one more option for where to give: http://www.greenbranchlibrary.org/
(Disclaimer - I was formerly on the board of directors)

Rock on, brother. :)

[Jamesqf]

But if, hypothetically, we halted all population growth and all economic development, even turned back first world development (de-develop?)
Given the external inputs to modern ag, you could be on to something.

I think so, but I'm certainly not claiming omniscience :-)  But let me ask you this: if we have the power to wave our magic wands and do things like halt population growth and de-develop, why would we WANT to maintain the Earth's population at its current level?  Wouldn't it be a much nicer place to live with fewer people, few if any urban areas (no child should have to grow up in a city), and a lot more wild areas?

(And for the nit-pickers, of course I'm not suggesting that we kill off people to reach whatever target population we want, but attain it naturally by adjusting birth rates.)

-meat consumption provides roughly 1/10th the amount of final food calories per unit of land then plant consumption.  If the first world cut back its consumption to the level of most of the 3rd world, this would free up an enormous amount of food for the world.

Yes/no.  If you limit yourself to first-world, grain-fed production methods, you're probably right.   However, in a 3rd world context, grazing animals provide an efficient way of producing high-quality food from marginal land.  In North America, for instance, deer & buffalo, or even to some extent cows, can graze on lands that can't be used for food crops even with 1st-world tech.

-our high external input ag practices are done because supply and energy are cheap, and they require less labor.  Less resource intensive techniques exist.  They require more labor.  For most of history most labor was in ag, and there is no inherent reason it couldn't return if need be.

And for much of history, that "more labor" was slave or serf labor.  Look up the word latifudia sometime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latifundium

-if all else fails, people are working on hydroponic based skyscraper industrial vertical "farms" that could (hypothetically) provide more calories from less input or waste than anything that exists today.

Which seem to ignore a pretty obvious fact: plants work via photosynthesis, and there's only so much sunlight per unit area to power it.  Ever been in a dense forest?  If so, you may have noticed that there are few if any plants growing at ground level: all the action is high in the tree canopy, because that's where the sunlight is.

Afterall - despite the failures you mention in ancient history, humans ended up surviving.  Just like the people who think the apocalypse is coming on such-and-such a date, why should this time be any different than all those other times the world didn't end?

Except that while humans as a group survived, a lot of the individuals involved didn't.  THEIR world ended, sometimes along with their culture & civilization.  The difference this time is the interconnectness of the world: a thousand years ago, Europe, Asia, and Africa were unaffected by, and unaware of, the ecological collapse & subsequent famines that destroyed the Mayan civilization.  That wouldn't be the case today, as the effects would be known & felt throughout the world.

[boy_bye]

I think so, but I'm certainly not claiming omniscience :-)  But let me ask you this: if we have the power to wave our magic wands and do things like halt population growth and de-develop, why would we WANT to maintain the Earth's population at its current level?  Wouldn't it be a much nicer place to live with fewer people, few if any urban areas (no child should have to grow up in a city), and a lot more wild areas?

are you kidding about this? just because YOU don't want to raise your kids in a city doesn't mean no one does! i and many people i know would much rather live in a city than in a small town -- any day of the week, any time of the year, kids or not. be careful not to extrapolate how all people should live from your personal preferences.

there's also the fact that, BY FAR, cities are the greenest way for people to live. population density supports walking/biking, streamlined distribution, and far less energy use. it also means that wilds can be kept wild, rather than being used for parking lots / highways / housing / big box stores.

if our future is going to be green at all, it's going to be city-based.

a few more things floating around the thread.

* it doesn't matter at all what we would wish our world to look like if we had a magic wand. how is that even a useful thought experiment? we have no magic wands, and everyone will have a different idea of what they'd want to see anyway.

the important question is: what is happening in our world right now, good and bad? how can we put more juice into the good and less into the bad, on a personal level and on a community level and on a societal level?

we are right smack where we are. dreaming about what if we weren't has no useful purpose, in my opinion. even if we could come to a consensus about what we'd rather see, there's absolutely no way of enacting it.

fwiw, here's what my magic want would create. and what my hands can actually help create here and now, including all the people who are on the planet already.

* we are NOT heading toward unlimited population growth. in the first world, birth rates are barely at the replacement rate -- look at all of france's pro-natal policies. why would they put those in place if their population was growing exponentially? it's not.

in the 3rd world, as economies develop / cultures evolve / women gain more power, the birth rate will drop. this has already started in india. the issue in the coming decades is how will 1st world countries support all the old people when we are projected to have so few young people? immigration becomes even more important in an aging society. check out what stewart brand has to say about this.

[tooqk4u22]

I said it was the least we ever had.  I was comparing to the US in the past, not to other countries.

I missed that part of your position and I can't disagree with that view.

Corporate taxes are on corporations, not individuals.  It just means that the return investors get is lower, that's not the same as actually paying a tax out of one's income.

Technically your right but it still goes into one pot but I stated it in context of your position that the wealthy pay low taxes as many of the wealthy own companies that pay taxes which is lowers the income they take home.

And those numbers seem pretty dramatic, and like they support your argument, when you take them out of context like that!

The top 1% holds 35% of all wealth.  The top 5% hold 62% of wealth.  The top 10% have 73% of all wealth.  And the roughly 50% who pay no income tax?  They have less than 1% of all wealth, with a net worth of zero or less.
Looking at it that way, our taxes aren't progressive at all, they are basically flat.  So I don't see how our current system is even remotely unfair to the rich.

I don't see how it was taken out of context they are fact based numbers, just because people have more wealth doesn't mean they don't pay thier fair share.  You have to keep in mind that much of the wealth gap was created through the use of leverage, productivity gains, and importing cheap crap from overseas, and outsourcing jobs - these people would still be extraordinarily wealthy many times more than the ordinary person even if taxes were higher. 

If you want argue about closing loopholes and limiting unncessarty subsidies and imposing regulations/taxes the foreign bullshit - ok even though it would likely have unintended consequences but as it relates to income taxes they are already way too progressive.  I hate the idea of attacking people because they have money.  So Mark Zuckerberg created facebook and is now a billionaire, when the IPO was done should the government have said well $1B is too much why don't you keep $100K and we'll take the rest because your rich and there is more to come for you.

wait, so you acknowledge that government has a legitimate role to play in society, and that mandatory taxes are an appropriate way to pay for projects for the common good?  Then what are we even arguing about?

I never said there shouldn't be taxes, but we disagree on how much those taxes should and how they are used. 

That's what I meant by "We, as a society, get to decide what a business can and can't do."  Collectively people can (via their elected representatives) decide to prevent Walmart from opening up in their town.  Which means business does not get to do whatever it wants.  That's all I was saying.

but it takes one person to start it and I still don't believe it is right that a town can prevent walmart or any other use from opening if it complies with already in place zoning and regulations.  Again, the issue is not walmart it is the people that shop there, if it was so terrible, so evil, then nobody would shop there and they would go down. 

I'll be the first....I vow not to shop at walmart. Maybe it will catch on.

[Bakari]

we are right smack where we are. dreaming about what if we weren't has no useful purpose, in my opinion. even if we could come to a consensus about what we'd rather see, there's absolutely no way of enacting it.

It servers the purpose of solidifying what actions we need to take to at least move in that direction.
For example, on the surface it may feel like the most charitable thing to do is provide food for the hungry in a land that can't produce enough food for itself, but thinking about a point like James made might indicate you will do more good in the long run by providing family planning methods and education.  Providing food may actually help increase the population even farther past what the local land is capable of providing for.

* we are NOT heading toward unlimited population growth. in the first world, birth rates are barely at the replacement rate -- look at all of france's pro-natal policies. why would they put those in place if their population was growing exponentially? it's not.

France is not the entire 1st world.
In the US - the country with the highest per capita resource use in the world, the (native) population is increasing by 1.6 million a year (that's not considering immigration).
The very nature of population growth means that ANY net positive population growth is exponential.  That is a mathematical fact.  Given that the average American uses roughly 20 times the resources than a person in the third world, our population growth is equivalent to roughly 32 million 3rd world people a year.



[/quote]

And those numbers seem pretty dramatic, and like they support your argument, when you take them out of context like that!

The top 1% holds 35% of all wealth.  The top 5% hold 62% of wealth.  The top 10% have 73% of all wealth.  And the roughly 50% who pay no income tax?  They have less than 1% of all wealth, with a net worth of zero or less.
Looking at it that way, our taxes aren't progressive at all, they are basically flat.  So I don't see how our current system is even remotely unfair to the rich.

If you want argue about closing loopholes and limiting unncessarty subsidies and imposing regulations/taxes the foreign bullshit - ok even though it would likely have unintended consequences but as it relates to income taxes they are already way too progressive.  I hate the idea of attacking people because they have money. 

(emphasis mine)

So you are claiming that.  OK, so did you actually look at the numbers I posted?  And compare them to your numbers?  Did you not notice anything about them?  Forget about the percent of the population each group represents.
The people who have 35% of all wealth pay 37% of taxes
The people who have 62% of all wealth pay 59% of taxes
The people who have 73% of all wealth pay 70% of taxes.
The people who have 0% of  all wealth pay 0% of taxes.
That is not a progressive system!  That is pretty much flat.
It doesn't even take into account Sol's point about the diminishing marginal utility of additional wealth.
but wait!
Remember I pointed out that the the top bracket only covers the top 1%?
The top 0.1% has roughly 23% of all wealth - but they only pay 17% of taxes, and it gets more recessive after that.
The top 0.0001% collectively holds 1-2% of the nations wealth, but only pays 0.001% of income taxes (including capital gains taxes, dividends, etc)

[Jamesqf]

are you kidding about this? just because YOU don't want to raise your kids in a city doesn't mean no one does! i and many people i know would much rather live in a city than in a small town -- any day of the week, any time of the year, kids or not. be careful not to extrapolate how all people should live from your personal preferences.

Along the same lines, many people would rather consume Big Macs & beer than a healthy diet, sit on the couch watching TV rather than exercising, and indeed, max out their credit cards on consumer spending rather than saving & investing.  Does that mean these things are good for them?  Neither is it good for children to be raised in cities.

Note that I mean good in an objective sense: the consequences of people doing what they'd rather do are measureable adverse effects on health (or wealth).

there's also the fact that, BY FAR, cities are the greenest way for people to live. population density supports walking/biking, streamlined distribution, and far less energy use. it also means that wilds can be kept wild, rather than being used for parking lots / highways / housing / big box stores.

This is false.  It only applies (if in fact it does, as the studies I've seen seem to leave out a lot in order to bias the results in favor of cities) to cities versus suburbia, when in my view suburbia is only another kind of city.

if our future is going to be green at all, it's going to be city-based.

* it doesn't matter at all what we would wish our world to look like if we had a magic wand. how is that even a useful thought experiment? we have no magic wands, and everyone will have a different idea of what they'd want to see anyway.

* we are NOT heading toward unlimited population growth. in the first world, birth rates are barely at the replacement rate -- look at all of france's pro-natal policies. why would they put those in place if their population was growing exponentially? it's not.

This is not true.  Look at real population growth figures.  As for why France has pro-natal policies, perhaps it's because their politicians are jingoistic nativist idiots.  Why do so many American politicians oppose any sort of family planning?

in the 3rd world, as economies develop / cultures evolve / women gain more power, the birth rate will drop.

Dropping doesn't matter, unless and until it drops to or below replacement rate.  Otherwise the growth's still exponential.

...how will 1st world countries support all the old people when we are projected to have so few young people?

Get rid of age discrimination, and "retirement" policies that convince people to voluntarily toss themselves on the trash heap long before they wear out.

[tooqk4u22]

So you are claiming that.  OK, so did you actually look at the numbers I posted?  And compare them to your numbers?  Did you not notice anything about them?  Forget about the percent of the population each group represents.
The people who have 35% of all wealth pay 37% of taxes
The people who have 62% of all wealth pay 59% of taxes
The people who have 73% of all wealth pay 70% of taxes.
The people who have 0% of  all wealth pay 0% of taxes.
That is not a progressive system!  That is pretty much flat.
It doesn't even take into account Sol's point about the diminishing marginal utility of additional wealth.
but wait!
Remember I pointed out that the the top bracket only covers the top 1%?
The top 0.1% has roughly 23% of all wealth - but they only pay 17% of taxes, and it gets more recessive after that.
The top 0.0001% collectively holds 1-2% of the nations wealth, but only pays 0.001% of income taxes (including capital gains taxes, dividends, etc)

Just because the amount of taxes a group pays is a similar percentage as the amount of wealth they control doesn't make them correlated.  Also, wealth is not income and income is not wealth - Obama claims the cutoff for wealthy is $250k - this is not wealthy but it will certainly translate to wealth if it is not squandered and as long as it is earned consistently, but if it is only earned for one year no way. This also dismisses the notion of accountability, and choosing to live below your means. 

Again, wealth for individuals and their heirs is created through investing involving the use of leverage, productivity gains, and importing cheap crap from overseas, and outsourcing jobs. No different than the tools/strategies everyone on this board is using to get to FIRE.  Make a dollar, save a dollar, invest a dollar, have more dollars, and so on and so on.  Furthermore, much of the taxable income from the wealthy is in the form of capital gains and dividends, which have lower tax rates - xyz Billionaire owns 10,000,000 shares of home depot and therefore would get $11,600,000 a year in dividends at 15% tax rate.  Why is this wrong.  Can he not lose his investment like you or I.  Nevermind that home depot paid income tax equal to 37% so combined that is 52% tax rate.  This is also the case if they own a company.  Althoug below a certain income an individual wouldn't have to pay the 15% on the dividend. 

MMM worked hard, saved and invested, took risks (lost some/won some) and put his family in a position that he doesn't have to work - therefore he is wealthy (definitely a relative term) but yet he pays little taxes (even wrote an article on it) so I suppose your position is that he should be taxed far more aggesively and anyone else like him should be as well.

The marginal utility argument is BS, yes the concept is true that there are diminishing returns, but that doesn't mean that one's money should be taken away simply because they have more than YOU.  Sure I wouldn't mind being in that category of wealth, but you know what it is possible.  People start companies, make investments (i.e. take risks) and they should be rewarded for it and when they achieve it they shouldn't be penalized for it. 

[Jamesqf]

Would you invest in a prostitution ring if it promised a %50 APY return? It could sure speed up your attaining FI, but at what expense to the goal of making the world a better place?

Yes, I would, assuming of course that I was confident that I could evade any legal sanctions.  I mention this because it illustrates the differences in ideas of morality: I don't see anything wrong with prostitution, and think the world would be a better place if it were legal, and more people had more practical opportunity for sex.  If in addition I can earn a spectacular rate of return on my investment, that's just gravy :-)

Let me make the intention behind my remark more explicit: Would you invest in a sex slave prostitution ring if it promised a %50 APY return? The whole "differences in ideas of morality" is a red herring.

No, the difference in ideas of morality is the crux of the issue - unless I've entirely lost the main thread, which is always a possibility.  Was not the thrust of the original post the idea that investing for FI/RE might be immoral, because it profits from the (in his view) immoral acts of the companies which make up the mutual funds in which we invest? So if I don't consider those acts to be particularly immoral, that whole argument falls flat for me.  (Of course your moral values may differ.)

Now to digress...  No, I wouldn't invest in the sex slave prostitution ring, not only because the slavery aspect would be immoral by my values, but because I can't see how it could be a good investment, and so would suspect a scam.  I've always had a degree of skepticism about this sort of sex trafficing: given the costs and what I think would be a highly negative customer experience, I just don't see how it could compete with willing sex workers.

[boy_bye]

hairshirt environmentalism makes my eye twitch.

isn't it possible that there might be a way to live on this planet, all 7 billion of us, and have access to goods and services and forms of energy that not only do not continue to destroy the planet, but in fact prop it up? might it be possible to redesign the way we do things in such a way that adds value and diversity to the biosphere instead of destroying it?

i believe it is possible. more than that, it is happening already. see: worldchanging and whole earth discipline and google "bright green environmentalism."

now, if sacrifice-based environmentalism could work, then i'd be all for it. but the thing is -- no one is buying it.

and you absolutely cannot expect folks in the developing world, who've never had access to the kind of affluence we have, to give it up before they even taste it. to me, THAT is immoral. they deserve every opportunity for comfort and education and health that we've had.

the trick is to create a new kind of prosperity that is not based on having a massive house and owning every last thing in the world, but is based on freedom and mobility and opportunity. these are all things that cities help create, and things that are already happening. more than previous generations, millennials are uninterested in driving and owning stuff. a new kind of prosperity is emerging.

now, there's a possibility that everything may crash, and we'll have to pick up the pieces, but i'm more optimistic than that. i think that we can embrace clean energy, cradle-to-cradle design, high-population-density living, genetic engineering, and all the other tools of 21st century technology and culture to not only stop doing bad things to the environment, but also to actually support its healing and growth.

now for some replies.

Along the same lines, many people would rather consume Big Macs & beer than a healthy diet, sit on the couch watching TV rather than exercising, and indeed, max out their credit cards on consumer spending rather than saving & investing.  Does that mean these things are good for them?  Neither is it good for children to be raised in cities.

Note that I mean good in an objective sense: the consequences of people doing what they'd rather do are measureable adverse effects on health (or wealth).

what evidence do you have to support the statement that it's objectively better for children to not grow up in cities? it sounds a lot like an opinion to me, and not one that more than half of the world's people -- who voluntarily live in cities -- support.

people doing subsistence farming in rural areas all over the world are saying fuck that and voting with their feet and moving to cities. if it's objectively so much better for children to grown up in the country, why would they do that?

i have seen evidence that children need to spend time in nature, but there are ways to achieve that and still maintain the population density that's needed for public transport and shared resources.

This is false.  It only applies (if in fact it does, as the studies I've seen seem to leave out a lot in order to bias the results in favor of cities) to cities versus suburbia, when in my view suburbia is only another kind of city.

again, show me something that supports this. are you saying that the way human beings "should live" is loosely packed and rural? if so, how are these people supposed to access the goods and services they need to support their lives without driving?

there are more reasons to bank on cities than just logistics, too. when you live in a city, you bump up against people who don't look like you or think like you. new ideas and projects and breakthroughs are born from these interactions. not gonna happen living with your family on a farm.

This is not true.  Look at real population growth figures.  As for why France has pro-natal policies, perhaps it's because their politicians are jingoistic nativist idiots.  Why do so many American politicians oppose any sort of family planning?

"It takes 2.1 live births per mother to keep a population stable. Here are the total fertility rates in the world's most populous countries: China (1.54); India (2.62); the United States (2.06); Indonesia (2.25) and Brazil (2.18).

From my hometown paper

Also on Wikipedia, stats from the World Bank.

Dropping doesn't matter, unless and until it drops to or below replacement rate.  Otherwise the growth's still exponential.

that is a nonsensical statement. of COURSE a dropping birth rate matters. it shows the trends and the machinations of how a developing society works. look at figure 2 on this page -- birth rates in india are dropping rapidly as the country develops.

this is the pattern -- it happened in europe, it happened in the states, it it how things work. countries develop, birth rates drop. judging by the shape of the graph, at some point fairly soon those birth rates will dip below replacement levels.

Get rid of age discrimination, and "retirement" policies that convince people to voluntarily toss themselves on the trash heap long before they wear out.

funny, when you say age discrimination, i think of the fact that far more resources are spent on old people in our country than on the young. in fact, over the past couple of decades, the old have been methodically selling out the younger generations.

"In 1984, American breadwinners who were sixty-five and over made ten times as much as those under thirty-five. The year Obama took office, older Americans made almost forty-seven times as much as the younger generation."

Read more in The War Against Youth in Esquire.

tl;dr: the future is not about getting everyone to agree to consume less. it works for some of us, but the vast majority of people are 100% uninterested. so, if we want to work with that reality, we need to figure out ways to close the loop, redesign our wasteful industrial processes, and deliver prosperity to every human being on the planet. me and my magic wand are interested in nothing less.

[darkelenchus]

No, the difference in ideas of morality is the crux of the issue...

I don't disagree with this, but...

unless I've entirely lost the main thread.

You seemed to have missed this:

Also, sol's injunction, "Just donate" requires that it be agnostic to any value system (hence the manner in which I formulated (1)). If you think, say, donating to the Objectivist foundation will make the world a better place, then by all means do so. This may conflict with his and I.P. Daley's emphasis on selflessness, but if the more fundamental message is "Just donate," this means that the core of this discussion isn't about rival value systems (e.g. altruism vs. egoism) so much as it is about the dilemma of pursuing early retirement potentially at the expense of (or, worse, in contradiction to) your value system.

And by "value system," I don't mean mere private/personal goals and such, but what you will for the world.

Now, I disagree with the notion that "just donate" can be value-system agnostic (hence my multi-layered example of "donating" to the Objectivist Foundation), but that was the intention of the original post.

So if I don't consider those acts to be particularly immoral, that whole argument falls flat for me.  (Of course your moral values may differ.)

Hopefully the above explains why your point is a red herring. The particular example is used to elicit a conflict in investing behavior with a conflict in value system. If that particular example doesn't do it for you, then use another one that does. Everyone's got a value system, even - to quote the second best movie of all-time - "fucking nihilists."

[unitsinc]

hairshirt environmentalism makes my eye twitch.

isn't it possible that there might be a way to live on this planet, all 7 billion of us, and have access to goods and services and forms of energy that not only do not continue to destroy the planet, but in fact prop it up? might it be possible to redesign the way we do things in such a way that adds value and diversity to the biosphere instead of destroying it?

i believe it is possible. more than that, it is happening already. see: worldchanging and whole earth discipline and google "bright green environmentalism."

now, if sacrifice-based environmentalism could work, then i'd be all for it. but the thing is -- no one is buying it.

and you absolutely cannot expect folks in the developing world, who've never had access to the kind of affluence we have, to give it up before they even taste it. to me, THAT is immoral. they deserve every opportunity for comfort and education and health that we've had.

the trick is to create a new kind of prosperity that is not based on having a massive house and owning every last thing in the world, but is based on freedom and mobility and opportunity. these are all things that cities help create, and things that are already happening. more than previous generations, millennials are uninterested in driving and owning stuff. a new kind of prosperity is emerging.

now, there's a possibility that everything may crash, and we'll have to pick up the pieces, but i'm more optimistic than that. i think that we can embrace clean energy, cradle-to-cradle design, high-population-density living, genetic engineering, and all the other tools of 21st century technology and culture to not only stop doing bad things to the environment, but also to actually support its healing and growth.

I too once felt like you did. That technology would save the day and that we'd invent amazing new methods of energy and everything that humans could need to get us all to a very high standard of living.

But the more I read, I just can't buy it. It is 100% impossible to create something from nothing. We simply can't make clothes, and fuel, and food, and toys out of thin air. No matter how advanced we become, things just don't work that way.

Infinite growth on a finite planet just can't happen. Even if we stopped growing(everything, population, food/water usage, energy usage) we still can't sustain what we are doing for very long.

But there is no magical technology anywhere in the works right now to solve our issues. And using the argument that "no one is buying it" seems a bit like a cop out of finding a way to get people to really see the big issues.

A 5 year old doesn't really understand why he has to go to school, but he has to do it regardless.


If you're interested in real numbers on alternate energies and growth and similar stuff, here are some links.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/
http://dalynews.org/

[Jamesqf]

hairshirt environmentalism makes my eye twitch.

Mine too.

isn't it possible that there might be a way to live on this planet, all 7 billion of us, and have access to goods and services and forms of energy that not only do not continue to destroy the planet, but in fact prop it up? might it be possible to redesign the way we do things in such a way that adds value and diversity to the biosphere instead of destroying it?

I don't see how.  If nothing else, there's the simple matter of living space.

now, if sacrifice-based environmentalism could work, then i'd be all for it. but the thing is -- no one is buying it.

This is what I just don't understand.  What exactly am I supposed to be sacrificing?  I have worked pretty darned hard for most of my life in order to acquire some semblence of this lifestyle.  To me, the folks who live in tiny urban apartments, or spend hours commuting from suburbia on crowded freeways, are the ones being sacrificed.

the trick is to create a new kind of prosperity that is not based on having a massive house and owning every last thing in the world, but is based on freedom and mobility and opportunity.

So far we agree.  I have a fairly small house, on a fairly large piece of land by (sub)urbanite standards.  I have freedom: I can hike, bike, ski, climb mountains, ride the horse for hours and not see another soul but my riding companions...  I have mobility: I can drive without being stuck in traffic, bike if I like, get to an airport with little more hassle than the average urbanite...

these are all things that cities help create, and things that are already happening. more than previous generations,

This is old tech.  For most of human history, people had to crowd into cities in order to cooperate effectively.  A lot of them died in those urban pestholes, which is why there was a continuous rural->urban migration, as young people went to the city to make their fortunes, and the tiny fraction who actually did that left again.  Nowadays most of us don't actually need to do that.  I've lived in northern Nevada for years, while telecommuting to work in places from Silicon Valley to Switzerland.

what evidence do you have to support the statement that it's objectively better for children to not grow up in cities? it sounds a lot like an opinion to me, and not one that more than half of the world's people -- who voluntarily live in cities -- support.

You'd have to do a lot of reading for the evidence, as AFAIK there's no one place that collects it.  But consider just the fact that children who are raised with a certain amount of dirt and contact with animals (which is far more likely in rural areas) have stronger immune systems, less asthma, etc.

As for half of the world's people VOLUNTARILY living in cities, I strongly doubt that that is the case.  Often they are forced to do so, either by economics or by being forced off their lands by government.

people doing subsistence farming in rural areas all over the world are saying fuck that and voting with their feet and moving to cities. if it's objectively so much better for children to grown up in the country, why would they do that?

First, you are apparently assuming that subsistence farming is the only way to live outside of cities.  When that is no longer the case, things may change.  Why do you think people who make fortunes buy estates in the country?  Second, since when do all parents, or even a majority, choose to do what's best for their children?

It takes 2.1 live births per mother to keep a population stable. Here are the total fertility rates in the world's most populous countries: China (1.54); India (2.62); the United States (2.06);

If that were true, the US population would be stable, or actually declining.  US census figures say that it is growing.

funny, when you say age discrimination, i think of the fact that far more resources are spent on old people in our country than on the young. in fact, over the past couple of decades, the old have been methodically selling out the younger generations.

And why so?  Because the older generations have been sold on the idea that they ought to retire at a given age, and in fact DESERVE to retire.  But along with that, we've gotten a whole bunch of social and legal pressures that often force them to retire.  Now obviously, when people are prevented from supporting themseves by working, they will vote to be supported by public resources.

"In 1984, American breadwinners who were sixty-five and over made ten times as much as those under thirty-five."

Those "breadwinners" made up what small fraction of the 65 and over population?  How about the rest, who were prevented from working by age discrimination, and so mostly lived on small Social Security payments?

...and deliver prosperity to every human being on the planet.

Fine, but as above, what's prosperity?  To me, having to endure life in say a Manhattan apartment, even if that apartment happens to be a 5th Avenue penthouse, is poverty indeed.

[velocistar237]

isn't it possible that there might be a way to live on this planet, all 7 billion of us, and have access to goods and services and forms of energy that not only do not continue to destroy the planet, but in fact prop it up? might it be possible to redesign the way we do things in such a way that adds value and diversity to the biosphere instead of destroying it?

I doubt it. Jacob started ERE because of this issue, and he recommends reading Overshoot by William Catton. I only managed to get through the first chapter before it was due back at the library. The gist of that chapter is that humans have always increased their population to the level that technology can handle, at which point the death rate increases and the population stabilizes. The last big technological boost to carrying capacity was modern agriculture, and we're about to test the limits on that in a few years. If these droughts hold up, we might hit that point even sooner.

[sol]

If anything, I feel like most donations are done as a form of indulgence, allowing people to sleep well at night while living wasteful destructive lifestyles.

I think you have to be pretty smug to assert that people who perform charitable acts that you do not are doing it out of selfishness.  That's ballsy.  How dare they attempt to do good?

By that reasoning, a monk who takes a vow of poverty, lives in a room with a bed, table, chair, and nothing else, and spends every waking other helping those in need, is in some way immoral or not doing enough, because they aren't giving money.

This whole argument, along with the one about measuring your morality by how much you keep vs how much you give, seems to me to be entirely besides the point.  I'm not really arguing about the best way to give, I'm saying giving is worthwhile in whatever means you can handle.  Money is just the easiest hurdle for most people to tackle, and an important first step. 

I also think that lots of people say "I give time instead of money" as an excuse to not give money, because they are greedy bastards.  They basically value money more than their time, so they give what they think is cheap.

now, if sacrifice-based environmentalism could work, then i'd be all for it. but the thing is -- no one is buying it.

Bakari is buying it.  He seems to be saying that earning and spending 20k/year and giving away nothing is morally superior to earning 100k and giving half away and spending half, because you have "taken" more regardless of how much you've given.  This seems in direct conflict with his earlier statements that the ends justify the means and a person making the right moves for the wrong reasons is still doing good. 

Care to clarify for me, B?

[Bakari]

So you are claiming that.  OK, so did you actually look at the numbers I posted?  And compare them to your numbers?  Did you not notice anything about them?  Forget about the percent of the population each group represents.
The people who have 35% of all wealth pay 37% of taxes
The people who have 62% of all wealth pay 59% of taxes
The people who have 73% of all wealth pay 70% of taxes.
The people who have 0% of  all wealth pay 0% of taxes.
That is not a progressive system!  That is pretty much flat.
It doesn't even take into account Sol's point about the diminishing marginal utility of additional wealth.
but wait!
Remember I pointed out that the the top bracket only covers the top 1%?
The top 0.1% has roughly 23% of all wealth - but they only pay 17% of taxes, and it gets more recessive after that.
The top 0.0001% collectively holds 1-2% of the nations wealth, but only pays 0.001% of income taxes (including capital gains taxes, dividends, etc)

Just because the amount of taxes a group pays is a similar percentage as the amount of wealth they control doesn't make them correlated. 

I have no idea what you are trying to get at.  I never said they were correlated. 
You claimed that federal income taxes are "way too progressive".
I am showing you the actual numbers.  If you consider the amounts of wealth that each group of tax payers has, our taxation system IS NOT progressive.  It is flat for incomes between $0 and $300,000 and it is extremely REgressive after that point.  This isn't a value judgement.  This is numbers. 
You were the one who brought up the issue of what percent of total tax is paid by the wealthy.
I'm pointing out it is proportionate to how much they have.

Also, wealth is not income and income is not wealth

Right.  Which is the reason why a nominally progressive structure ends up being flat - income tax is based on income, even though how wealthy a person is depends on... well... how much wealthy they have.  A person with a billion dollars has no need to have a 9-5 job.  They may have no income, but they are still using just as much common infrastructure.

Furthermore, much of the taxable income from the wealthy is in the form of capital gains and dividends, which have lower tax rates

yep, thats the other reason the super wealthy actually pay lower overall tax rates than the merely well-off.  As you say, 100-200k a year isn't necessarily rich.  That could include doctors and lawyers and engineers who actually have jobs and contribute directly to society.  A billionaire doesn't need to have a 9-5, and for some reason our politicians have decided that passive income deserves to be taxed less than earned income.

- xyz Billionaire owns 10,000,000 shares of home depot and therefore would get $11,600,000 a year in dividends at 15% tax rate.  Why is this wrong.  Can he not lose his investment like you or I.  Nevermind that home depot paid income tax equal to 37% so combined that is 52% tax rate.

wow, seriously?  There is so much wrong with your math!
First of all, you are making a rather baseless assumption that if the corporation didn't have to pay taxes they would pass 100% of the tax savings on to higher dividends, rather than say, lower prices, or higher salaries, or internal improvements. 
Secondly, the percentages don't add!  A dividend is just a fraction of the actual share price, which may or may not accurately reflect the actual finances of the underlying company (since the status of the overall market as well as investors opinion of the company).  The elimination of corporate tax would increase the cash the company had, which might increase the share price, which in turn could increase the dividend those shares paid - but it wouldn't increase it by 37%.

MMM worked hard, saved and invested, took risks (lost some/won some) and put his family in a position that he doesn't have to work - therefore he is wealthy (definitely a relative term) but yet he pays little taxes (even wrote an article on it) so I suppose your position is that he should be taxed far more aggressively and anyone else like him should be as well.

At the very least I'm saying he shouldn't be taxed less
Again, my whole point was in responding to your claim that our tax system is "too progressive"
I definitely think 300k shouldn't be the top bracket.  I don't think there should be any top bracket.  If it were up to me, it would be a formula which uses a mathematical limit, where it would only reach 100% at infinity dollars.

The marginal utility argument is BS, yes the concept is true that there are diminishing returns,

Well, here is where we can simply agree to disagree.  You are clearly an individualist.  I believe that sometimes the overall good of everyone outweighs personal freedom.  But that is a moral / philosophical debate without a "right" answer, and I'm just posting this to point out what is, not debate what should be.

but that doesn't mean that one's money should be taken away simply because they have more than YOU.

Just because YOU think that selfishness is the only motivation anyone has for anything doesn't mean everyone else sees the world the same way.  How does how much I have or not have have anything to do with anything?
How do you reframe that rationalization when its Warren Buffet pointing out that taxes on the super rich are regressive?

  People start companies, make investments (i.e. take risks) and they should be rewarded for it and when they achieve it they shouldn't be penalized for it.

Again, that is you injecting your personal value system into it.  Taxes aren't a penalty.  They are a way for a complex advanced society to provide for common goods that the market will not.  You have already acknowledged that role.

Perhaps you would only be happy with a tax system where everyone paid the exact same amount in dollars, regardless of income level or total wealth?

[Bakari]

By that reasoning, a monk who takes a vow of poverty, lives in a room with a bed, table, chair, and nothing else, and spends every waking other helping those in need, is in some way immoral or not doing enough, because they aren't giving money.

I also think that lots of people say "I give time instead of money" as an excuse to not give money, because they are greedy bastards.  They basically value money more than their time, so they give what they think is cheap.

I think you have to be pretty smug to assert that people who perform charitable acts that you do not are doing it out of selfishness.  That's ballsy.  How dare they attempt to do good?

;)

I wasn't saying that everyone who donates is using it as an excuse to not do anything else, I was saying that some people do.  Like you said "Money is just the easiest hurdle for most people to tackle".  That doesn't mean it isn't a positive thing.  I'm just asking you to acknowledge those people who choose to go further than the easiest step, regardless of whether they skip that first step or not.

In other words:

I think there are a lot of different opinions here about what charity entails and each person's plan of action is going to be different.  While sometimes forcefully verbalizing my own views, I wouldn't presume to tell other people how to act on their own value systems. 

I was responding to what I felt was some people here presuming to tell other people how to act on their own value systems.

now, if sacrifice-based environmentalism could work, then i'd be all for it. but the thing is -- no one is buying it.

Bakari is buying it.  He seems to be saying that earning and spending 20k/year and giving away nothing is morally superior to earning 100k and giving half away and spending half, because you have "taken" more regardless of how much you've given.  This seems in direct conflict with his earlier statements that the ends justify the means and a person making the right moves for the wrong reasons is still doing good. 

Care to clarify for me, B?

I don't see the conflict.  In order to simplify, lets pretend the world has 100k in total resources (remember, money is a placeholder for tangible goods and services needed or desired by humans - and although it grows with technology, at any given moment there is a finite amount)
If you take and spend 20k, that leaves 80 k for everyone else.
If you take 100 and give half back, that leaves 50k for everyone else.
The ends is you have more resources at the expense of everyone else.
You did the wrong thing, even if it was for the right reason (earning more specifically so you could give more)

I'll elaborate more in my numberline post.

[Bakari]

Poverty is not in itself proof of morality.

It most certainly isn't!

In fact, there are plenty of poor people who use their poverty as an excuse to rationalize immoral things like violence and theft and environmental degradation.

My primary reason for mentioning my own background is that I often feel I have a totally different outlook on money than many of the people here, which may be one part of why I end up so often disagreeing with people when we seem to share similar basic principals and goals.

I should probably confess that although my lifestyle is frugal, my end goals do include being mega-wealthy, like dynasty-building disgustingly filthy rich kind of wealthy.  I think it's a necessary prerequisite to enacting real change.

In that context the initial idea behind the OP of "mustache may be evil" makes sense: putting off doing good in order to do good may be counter-productive.

But I don't see wealth as a means of change.

Consider the people known for enacting real change: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, Fredrick Douglas, Mahatma Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, Siddhartha Gautama (known colloquially as " Buddha"), Jesus of Nazareth...
None of these people needed wealth to make a tangible positive impact on the world.
Now compare them to some of the people who are known as "philanthropists" - people who give lots of cash to charity by virtue of the fact that they have enormous wealth (but who never give so much away that they themselves are no longer wealthy) - what real, lasting, positive impacts can you point to any of them having on the world?



Another reason for my mentioning poverty is various opinions expressed in this and other threads to the effect of "anyone who is poor in America is that way because of bad spending choices" or possibly "poor educational decisions" or in one way or another, entirely their own fault; therefore it does not reflect any inherent injustice in our system.

I know from personal experience that this is not true.  We didn't have cable TV growing up, or cars, or new clothes, or new anything.  We didn't have a microwave, or one of those fancy TVs with a remote control (ours had a knob; we got it for free).
My father had a Master's degree (and not in something stupid like art history) but he found it hard to get work being one of the only Black men in an industry where a (99% white male) union got to make unilateral decisions of who got which job
(he works on international container ships and is just below the ship's captain in rank - and a lot of people were uncomfortable with the idea of a Black man in a command position, with an entire ship full of white guys who had to do what he told them).
Therefore, in between jobs, he was always doing different odd-jobs, starting little businesses - and then he would finally get a spot on a ship, and the side business would die with him away for half a year.
After my parents divorce my mother went back to school - which meant that welfare cut the portion of payments that was supposed to cover her living expenses, because they mandated that she spend at least 40 hours a week looking for a job - any job - rather than "waste" time getting educated.  So we just got by on even less, and she eventually got her master's degree and went to work for social services.
The family was able to eventually get out of poverty - but only because the safety net was available.  Even the reduced benefits were enough to allow my mother to finish college, as opposed to just finding a minimum wage job so everyone could eat, which would have kept us at that same level for ever.

[Bakari]

While I'm on the topic;

I don't feel I or anyone else should have to be taxed to support people who don't want support themselves.  I don't want to be accountable for adults who don't want to be accountable.  Is that wrong, does that make me a bad person, or even an EVIL one? I think not.

Difficult things happen and there so many ways and circumstances that cause people to become homeless and this is not a judgement on that.  There should be temporary services/safety nets available to help these people when times get bad, and there are such services and resources but many seem to become permanent in nature and are available without question in perpetuity.

Do you actually know anyone who has been on unemployment, or have any idea how it works?
Someone who never works is not able to get unemployment.  Someone who quits, or is fired, is not eligible.  How much you get is directly proportional to how much you put in - both in terms of your salary (and therefor how much you paid in each month) and in terms of how long you were working.  If someone does get laid off through no fault of their own, and has been paying into the system long enough, then they get a check every month IF AND ONLY IF they can prove that they are actively searching for a new job.  Have you ever seen the episode of Seinfeld were George wants Jerry to pretend to be Vandalay Industries in case the unemployment office calls?  You have to give them a list of places you have applied, every month, and they may randomly check up on your list at any time.  If you are determined to not be seriously looking for work, you not only get cut off, but you may have to pay back what you got.  Even if you are actively looking for work, if you don't have enough years of working behind you, you will get cut off anyway.  And then come next April, all those checks count as income, and you have to pay taxes on it. (And incidentally, no, I have never used it myself)

As far as welfare goes, even before the "welfare reform" under Clinton, the average welfare recipient was on it less than 2 years, and then got off and never used it again.  Now (thanks to the public perception that welfare users are taking advantage of tax payers and therefor the system needed "reform") it's everyone, because 2 years is the cap.  And, as I mentioned above, just like with unemployment, you have to show that you are actively looking for work and going to school in order to have a chance at getting out of poverty and contributing something meaningful to society doesn't count.

The supposed abuses of the system which taxpayers have to cover really just don't happen.
Of course you can dig up dramatic examples here and there, but they are rare enough to be negligible.  Conservative talk show hosts, and occasionally politicians, love to stir up indignation about how your tax dollars are going to support all these deadbeats.  The reality is that the grand total federal budget for welfare is all of $168 billion.  Sounds like a lot, but that's out of a $3.8 trillion budget - in other words, about 3%.
(Note that the official budget numbers combine lots of things together under the heading "welfare" - including worker / employer funded things like UI and worker's comp).

We could eliminate all welfare, and it would make a difference of about 3%.  If 1 in 100 abuse the system, then ferreting out those few people might save 0.03% - or it might cost more than it saves.  Its simply a non-issue.

Now if you really want to eliminate government waste, you need to start by looking at where the money is going.  Health care is a huge one, and of course almost all independent analysis finds that those costs would drop if we had nationalized health care.  Not counting health care, military spending is higher than every other category combined. In fact, our military budget is higher than every single other nation in the entire world combined. Of that, more goes to buying technologically advanced vehicles and weapons - in other worlds goes ultimately into the pockets of the CEOs and investors of defense contractors - than goes to paying personnel salary; in order to fight an advanced enemy equally as imaginary as all the people supposedly taking advantage of welfare and unemployment. 

[Bakari]

Getting back to the original topic...


Where was I?
Oh, right, poverty.

Being poor doesn't automatically make you a good person.
But it does make it much more likely that they have a smaller "footprint".
Our ecological footprint isn't just an issue because of all the poor animals.  We humans, no matter how sanitized and orderly the cities we live in are, no matter what technology we come up with, are still biological creatures.

I would gladly see the entire planet go up in flames if it ensured the continued survival of the human race.

That makes no sense.  We are dependent on other life forms.  We can't make food out of rocks and air.  We don't even have a way to support a couple of people for a couple of years outside the ecosphere without constructing an entire artificial ecosystem (i.e. mission to mars).
So obviously our footprint, our use of resources on a finite planet has EVERYTHING to do with our impact on the rest of humanity.

Bakari ... seems to be saying that earning and spending 20k/year and giving away nothing is morally superior to earning 100k and giving half away and spending half, because you have "taken" more regardless of how much you've given.

I see this entire issue as a sort of a karmic numberline.

0, in the middle, would be if a person had exactly no impact on the word around them, positive or negative (or if there positive and negative exactly canceled out).
The more you use, the more destruction you do (directly or indirectly), the more your pointer slides down the number line into the negative.  The more good you do, in whatever form, the more it heads towards positive.
Each of us starts out only taking, but until we get into at least our teens, we don't really have a choice, so maybe we can decide to reset it to zero from the time our choices are our own.
Most of us moves rapidly into karmic debt right off the bat, by virtue of the lifestyles we all take for granted.  We have a long way to go just to reach neutral.  But the less resources one has, the slower they move down.  It isn't because they are a "better" person, but the negative impact they have on the world is smaller.  Which is why we expect ourselves in the first world to donate to hungry people in other countries, but we don't expect the people of Somalia to donate 10% of their income to feed the homeless in the US.

This numberline analogy may make my point from my last long post clearer.  The goal for each of us moral citizens should be to have as positive a number as possible.
Mathematically, whether you are adding a positive, or taking away a negative, the result is the same.
If you have a gigantic optional negative, and a tiny optional positive, you will have the greatest net effect by subtracting the negative.

Now, emotionally it feels more proactive, more tangible, more satisfying, to add a positive, even if its a tiny one.  That's what I see

Give something now.  Half a percent would be an optimistic goal for such people, though well within the market variability they otherwise accept for growing their portfolio.  Even 0.1% is a huge step better than nothing.

as being - adding a tiny positive.

Don't rationalize it away by saying you give your time,

But if the point is to make the world a better place, then the focus needs to be on what is most effective, not what feels better to the giver.
This is why I pointed out those particular 5 things that have the biggest negative impact.  I don't think anyone is going to give away 100% of their money and devote 100 hours a week to helping others.  Which means that everyone draws a line somewhere, between what they are willing to give and what they reserve for their own life.
I'm saying to prioritize whatever will have the biggest effect on your personal karmic numberline - and that for most of us that is eliminating our giant negatives.

That isn't to say don't donate, I'm not discouraging volunteering, or arguing against any other form of charity.  I'm saying that if the goal is to make the world a better place, or make life better for humanity, or whatever you want to call it, focus on where you can make the biggest difference first, and then add in whatever bonus things appeal to you.

[Bakari]

And to be clear:

I'm in no way perfect and would never claim to be.

Of my own list:
1) Don't have kids;
I don't have any - although its possible I might by now, had I chosen my first wife more carefully (or if Roe v Wade had turned out differently!) and I'm still not 100% sure if I ever will.  I feel very conflicted about it.  I have always wanted to, and on the one hand if I only have one then between me and my partner, we are personally at less than replacement rate.  On the other hand, lots of other people have more than one, and its the overall average that counts.  On the other hand, it shouldn't be my personal responsibility to sacrifice extra because so many other people aren't doing their part.  On the other hand, its thinking like that which keeps people from enacting positive change.  At this point in my life, its a moot point anyway.

2) Don't eat meat (unless you personally killed it);
I'm vegetarian, but the main reason is because I have been my entire life, and the thought of eating flesh is about as appealing as the thought of eating cockroaches or kittens is to most Americans.  I only buy eggs from cage-free farms, but I don't always get organic dairy products (cheese, yogurt, and ice cream).  I need to start.  I have known this for a while.

3) Don't drive a car;
My truck runs on 100% biodiesel made from recycled vegetable oil.  This is better than running on petrol.  But it would not be sustainable if scaled up to US consumption levels, so I don't consider it benign.  However, I only drive the truck for work, and it is displacing jobs that would have been done with a petrol powered vehicle, so maybe it counts, I don't know.  But I also have a motorcycle.  It gets ~70mpg, and I rarely drive it - but rarely is a lot more than never.  Nor can I claim that I never drive it when there is a viable alternative.

4) Don't fly on planes;
I have been good about this since I learned just how dramatic the impact of air travel is - a single round-trip international flight can contribute as much to climate change as an entire year of an average commute in an average sedan.  In other words, the move up the karmic numberline caused by riding a bike to work everyday is completely canceled out if you fly several places a year for travel and vacation and family visits.  I have been on planes since learning this, but only for Coast Guard duty, which isn't voluntary.

5) Spend less on new items than you donate each year;
Well, obviously I don't quite make that one, since I donate only slightly above $0 with any regularity.  I came up with that idea as a result of this thread.  I like it.  I just might do it.  My spending on new things is low enough that it will probably be affordable.


And finally: In answer to this question

Was anyone actually made a change in their life after reading these threads over the past week or so?

1) I signed up for a volunteer shift with Green Branch
2) I realized that - now that I have a bike trailer - I can get food from the independent natural grocery several miles away, instead of the supermarket which is walking distance from home.  It only occurred to me because this thread made me question what I could be doing better in my own life.
3) see 5, above.

[grantmeaname]

In fact, our military budget is higher than every single other nation in the entire world combined. Of that, more goes to buying technologically advanced vehicles and weapons - in other worlds goes ultimately into the pockets of the CEOs and investors of defense contractors - than goes to paying personnel salary; in order to fight an advanced enemy equally as imaginary as all the people supposedly taking advantage of welfare and unemployment.

It's 2/3s what every other nation combined spends. Still egregious, and still excessive, but not more than every other nation combined.

[Bakari]

It's 2/3s what every other nation combined spends. Still egregious, and still excessive, but not more than every other nation combined.

meh, my numbers are out of date.  It was true a few years ago, but I guess China has been increasing their spending faster than we have.

[tooqk4u22]

I never said they were correlated. 
You claimed that federal income taxes are "way too progressive".
I am showing you the actual numbers.  If you consider the amounts of wealth that each group of tax payers has, our taxation system IS NOT progressive.  It is flat for incomes between $0 and $300,000 and it is extremely REgressive after that point.  This isn't a value judgement.  This is numbers. 
You were the one who brought up the issue of what percent of total tax is paid by the wealthy.
I'm pointing out it is proportionate to how much they have.

So you arguing that you never said they were correlated by saying that they are correlated.  Yes I brought it up and yes I am saying they are not correlated they are coincidence, too many variables contribute to the concentration of wealth and that doesn't mean that the system is not progressive. 

Also, wealth is not income and income is not wealth

Right.  Which is the reason why a nominally progressive structure ends up being flat - income tax is based on income, even though how wealthy a person is depends on... well... how much wealthy they have.  A person with a billion dollars has no need to have a 9-5 job.  They may have no income, but they are still using just as much common infrastructure.

If a billionaire and a non-billionaire drive down a highway for 60 miles, are they not using the common infrastructure in the same amount so why should the billionaire pay more.  Sidenote: tolls on said highways are actually one of the least regressive forms of taxation.

wow, seriously?  There is so much wrong with your math!
First of all, you are making a rather baseless assumption that if the corporation didn't have to pay taxes they would pass 100% of the tax savings on to higher dividends, rather than say, lower prices, or higher salaries, or internal improvements. 
Secondly, the percentages don't add!  A dividend is just a fraction of the actual share price, which may or may not accurately reflect the actual finances of the underlying company (since the status of the overall market as well as investors opinion of the company).  The elimination of corporate tax would increase the cash the company had, which might increase the share price, which in turn could increase the dividend those shares paid - but it wouldn't increase it by 37%.

The math is correct, your added assumption is wrong.  I never said that the total corporate income was taxed at 37% plus 15% just the portion that is distributed out via dividends.

And if there were no taxes or they retained more cash companies wouldn't necessarily lower prices, higher more people, pay higher salaries - also those are dictacted by what the market will bear (supply and demand).  Companies are not in the business of arbitrarily being stupid with money, that is the government's role.  Companies are sitting on more cash then they ever have and yet jobs and incomes continue to decline. 

If it were up to me, it would be a formula which uses a mathematical limit, where it would only reach 100% at infinity dollars.

That would be good for capital investment, I take the risk you take the reward....great formula.  Can you and I structure that deal today between us, I will take you up on the deal straight away.

Just because YOU think that selfishness is the only motivation anyone has for anything doesn't mean everyone else sees the world the same way.  How does how much I have or not have have anything to do with anything?
How do you reframe that rationalization when its Warren Buffet pointing out that taxes on the super rich are regressive?

Again, that is you injecting your personal value system into it.  Taxes aren't a penalty.  They are a way for a complex advanced society to provide for common goods that the market will not.  You have already acknowledged that role.

Perhaps you would only be happy with a tax system where everyone paid the exact same amount in dollars, regardless of income level or total wealth?

Where to begin.....first of all lets be clear on one thing....WARREN BUFFETT IS A BIG FUCKING HYPORITE!!!!!!! Throughout the history of his company he utilized every avenue of the tax code to grow his company and his wealth....and now as he is approaching his death bed he purports that the system is unfair.  His company never paid dividends because he believed he could do better by reinvesting but also because retaining the capital has more favorable tax treatment.  He put all is money in a charitable trust, earmarked for the Gates Foundation, but still controls it and doesn't pay any taxes on any income that the trust earns (unless it is distributed out to him).  Not to mention he is using it as a means to escape the death tax - if his estate went to his heirs almost have of his wealth would go to the government.  Lest not forget that he was one of least charitable people on the planet while he was growing his company because he arogantly thought he could do better with the money and have more to give later.  So I call BULLSHIT on Buffett and his sudden care for the world and lower income taxpayers.  It is nothing more that marketing genious to cover up a history of benefiting from the code and system.

Setting that aside I don't feel that I am being selfish or that people shouldn't consider the greater good and I never said taxes aren't necessary.  Taxes are necessary but you and I will likely disagree about what and how they should be used for - but that is not a debate for here. 

I disagree with the fact that people should have to pay more because they have more.  If anything you are injecting YOUR personal values on me, whereas I feel that people should have the freedom to choose and execute on their own personal values.

That said I will acknowledge that there is a signifcant imbalance in wealth and income distribution currently which is attributed to to a number of reasons noted above but also due to the fact that our economy is more service oriented as apposed to production oriented.  You believe that taxing these people further will solve the problem, and it might temporarily, but if you are just taking it and giving it to those less fortunate it solve it.  Also the wealthy through lawyers, accountants, and connections will always find ways to minimize their tax burden and the politicians are in bed with them - it is not coincidence that almost all politicians exit thier posts with more wealth or more lucrative positions.  Pay to play is the way - I HATE OUR POLITICIANS and how they transact business. Like the article i posted about capitalism there is a complete loss of virtue in our political system.  Because of this we also absolutely have a spending problem (due to what, when, inefficiencies, waste, fraud) that needs to be addressed.

[tooqk4u22]

As far as welfare goes, even before the "welfare reform" under Clinton, the average welfare recipient was on it less than 2 years, and then got off and never used it again.  Now (thanks to the public perception that welfare users are taking advantage of tax payers and therefor the system needed "reform") it's everyone, because 2 years is the cap.  And, as I mentioned above, just like with unemployment, you have to show that you are actively looking for work and going to school in order to have a chance at getting out of poverty and contributing something meaningful to society doesn't count.

The supposed abuses of the system which taxpayers have to cover really just don't happen.
Of course you can dig up dramatic examples here and there, but they are rare enough to be negligible.  Conservative talk show hosts, and occasionally politicians, love to stir up indignation about how your tax dollars are going to support all these deadbeats.  The reality is that the grand total federal budget for welfare is all of $168 billion.  Sounds like a lot, but that's out of a $3.8 trillion budget - in other words, about 3%.
(Note that the official budget numbers combine lots of things together under the heading "welfare" - including worker / employer funded things like UI and worker's comp).

We could eliminate all welfare, and it would make a difference of about 3%.  If 1 in 100 abuse the system, then ferreting out those few people might save 0.03% - or it might cost more than it saves.  Its simply a non-issue.

Yes actually I do know people that are unemployed and the system is corrupt.  I know people that are collecting or have collected who have quit, been fired, or laid off.  It doesn't matter because there is no oversight.  It is all automated now as far as monitoring once you get it....go online or make phone call....check the box that says you looked for work (no proof needed)....receive check in mail a few days later. And how much you get is not directly proportionate to how much you make....there are caps on how much you can collect but no caps on the income that is taxed.  And if you were unemployed you fall under the government level where it would be taxed, it would be different if you found a job that paid well.  Also the requirement to collect unemployment is having worked six months out of the last twelve since the downturn benefits were extended perpetually - there are plenty of people that have been collecting unemployment for the last five years - although that is supposed now ended or coming to an end but it is an election year so the could be extended.  Why would I look for a job, especially if I was a lower paid employee.  Financial Sam has showed is showing how all this is the case as we speak. Also do you think it is a coincidence that SSI Disability claims have skyrocketed since the downturn and as the unemployment benefits expire....no oversight here either.

As for the federal budget amount how much these things represent of it - and keep in mind that of $3.8B budget $1.3B is being funded with debt (very anti-MMM) - sure welfare may be 3% but if you take 10 spending categories of similar amounts that each have a some fraud and waste it adds up quickly.  And for the record I never brought welfare into the equation and did in fact say there needs to be some form of social safety nets, but they have to be efficiently run, monitored for waste and fraud, and not be perpetual or otherwise easy to get on and off of recurringly.

Now if you really want to eliminate government waste, you need to start by looking at where the money is going.  Health care is a huge one, and of course almost all independent analysis finds that those costs would drop if we had nationalized health care.  Not counting health care, military spending is higher than every other category combined. In fact, our military budget is higher than every single other nation in the entire world combined. Of that, more goes to buying technologically advanced vehicles and weapons - in other worlds goes ultimately into the pockets of the CEOs and investors of defense contractors - than goes to paying personnel salary; in order to fight an advanced enemy equally as imaginary as all the people supposedly taking advantage of welfare and unemployment.

This is definitely an issue for another thread but the short story is that SSI, SSDI, Healthcare, and interest on our debt makes up the 49% of our budget and when you look at the defense portion of the budget most of it is for payroll, pensions, benefits, and repairs and maintence and not nearly as much as you suggest is going into new weapons (but there is some) and is far is it going into the CEO's pockets then there is another discussion.  These government contractors are in many ways quasi government companies (because they don't sell to anyone else), offer similar benefits and yet their executives and shareholders get rewarded handsomely, some of which is driven by the theoretical $500 hammer. .

Also nationalized health care won't solve the problem and BTW we alread have it even prior to obamacare, which incidentally the result of which has caused insurance costs to rise and others to cancel their plans already and it is not even fully in effect yet.  To my point, if we already have a health care budget item in medicare (and more in medicaid at the state level) such that the old and the poor are already taken care of then we have socialized medicine but with adjucnt that people can choose to get better service if they have the means to do so, and this doesn't even factor in the emergency room visits by people who can't/won't pay.  Ignoring the merits for or against socialized medicine and Obamacare all I am saying is that it might have been a better idea to fix and improve the current system before creating a new additional one - some of those savings and improvements could have been used to fund additional programs. 

[grantmeaname]

when you look at the defense portion of the budget most of it is for payroll, pensions, benefits, and repairs and maintence and not nearly as much as you suggest is going into new weapons (but there is some) and is far is it going into the CEO's pockets then there is another discussion.  These government contractors are in many ways quasi government companies (because they don't sell to anyone else), offer similar benefits and yet their executives and shareholders get rewarded handsomely, some of which is driven by the theoretical $500 hammer. .

1. Defense contractors do sell to other nations as well as private parties. Such sales make up 26% of Lockheed Martin's budget, for example.

2. You could benefit from spending some time with the military's budget. Use this snazzy infographic I was so kind as to find for you: adding up just procurement and R&D, and not looking for subcategories of the other categories related to weapons research and acquisition, I'm getting $186.5B, which is over a quarter of the armed services' budget including wartime allocations or over a third the military budget without those allocations.

it might have been a better idea to fix and improve the current system before creating a new additional one - some of those savings and improvements could have been used to fund additional programs.

Let me make sure I read this right. You're suggesting that of the 535 members of Congress, their thousands of employees and aides, the incredible community of genius think tanks and policy analysts, consumer organizations representing patients, and professional organizations representing medical professionals, nobody stopped to seriously consider modifications to Medicaid and Medicare or any other alternative to the PPACA and determine which, if any of them, should be put in place?

[tooqk4u22]

1. Defense contractors do sell to other nations as well as private parties. Such sales make up 26% of Lockheed Martin's budget, for example.

Ha ha fine, but still the majority is for government and of the rest how much is for our allies.

2. You could benefit from spending some time with the military's budget. Use this snazzy infographic I was so kind as to find for you: adding up just procurement and R&D, and not looking for subcategories of the other categories related to weapons research and acquisition, I'm getting $186.5B, which is over a quarter of the armed services' budget including wartime allocations or over a third the military budget without those allocations.

I have looked at the budget.  Keep in mind that you wouldn't include all the procurement because some of it is for food, clothing, etc as well as items needed to repair and maintain vehicles, weapons, housing, etc. The figure for acquiring and developing new weapons is more like $100B, still a lot but people always through around the total figure of $800-900B. 
[/quote]

Let me make sure I read this right. You're suggesting that of the 535 members of Congress, their thousands of employees and aides, the incredible community of genius think tanks and policy analysts, consumer organizations representing patients, and professional organizations representing medical professionals, nobody stopped to seriously consider modifications to Medicaid and Medicare or any other alternative to the PPACA and determine which, if any of them, should be put in place?

Yes actually I am suggesting that, or a more likely scenarion of all those morons looking at it and and making any 1000s of recommendations (most of which likely are to ensure their own continuing existance) that was evaluated by the politicians that have polls saying don't touch medicare because if you do you won't get eleceted/re-elected.  Every politician knows that medicare is a polital fireball.

[grantmeaname]

I have looked at the budget.  Keep in mind that you wouldn't include all the procurement because some of it is for food, clothing, etc as well as items needed to repair and maintain vehicles, weapons, housing, etc. The figure for acquiring and developing new weapons is more like $100B

Clearly you didn't take the time to look at the infographic, because none of those are listed as procurement costs. Food is listed as a personnel cost. Maintenance and repair come out of the "Operations and Maintenance" category. Housing is not even remotely a procurement cost, and how you count "weapons" as a different thing than "weapons is totally beyond me. Like I said above, if anything $186.4B is a conservative estimate.

still a lot but people always through around the total figure of $800-900B.

Nobody here has thrown that figure around. What your friends outside this discussion say has no bearing on this discussion.

Yes actually I am suggesting that, or a more likely scenarion of all those morons looking at it and and making any 1000s of recommendations (most of which likely are to ensure their own continuing existance) that was evaluated by the politicians that have polls saying don't touch medicare because if you do you won't get eleceted/re-elected.  Every politician knows that medicare is a polital fireball.

Politicians are careful to consider the political ramifications of their actions? What a brave statement.

[tooqk4u22]

I have looked at the budget.  Keep in mind that you wouldn't include all the procurement because some of it is for food, clothing, etc as well as items needed to repair and maintain vehicles, weapons, housing, etc. The figure for acquiring and developing new weapons is more like $100B

Clearly you didn't take the time to look at the infographic, because none of those are listed as procurement costs. Food is listed as a personnel cost. Maintenance and repair come out of the "Operations and Maintenance" category. Housing is not even remotely a procurement cost, and how you count "weapons" as a different thing than "weapons is totally beyond me. Like I said above, if anything $186.4B is a conservative estimate.

still a lot but people always through around the total figure of $800-900B.

Nobody here has thrown that figure around. What your friends outside this discussion say has no bearing on this discussion.

Yes actually I am suggesting that, or a more likely scenarion of all those morons looking at it and and making any 1000s of recommendations (most of which likely are to ensure their own continuing existance) that was evaluated by the politicians that have polls saying don't touch medicare because if you do you won't get eleceted/re-elected.  Every politician knows that medicare is a polital fireball.

Politicians are careful to consider the political ramifications of their actions? What a brave statement.

How very passive aggressive of you and while nobody explicitly had THROWN around that figure it was implied in Bakari's comment that the US defense budget is more than all the other nations combined.  The fact is Barkari was making a comment about how large the defense budget is and implied that most goes to new weapons and the like, and I was stating that is not in fact the case.  And while I had the general range of figures in mind you were put forth the effort and proved my case with more detail - thank you. So even if it is $186B that still would not be enough to qualify as most of the defense spending. Setting that aside I didn't make representations on whether or not defense spending was too high or low, but did suggest that we may not be getting our money's worth given the inefficiencies and egregious contract amounts. 

Also he segwayed that into the fact that the money just flows into the CEO's hands and I essentially agreed and suggested they are quasi government entities and couldn't exist without the government, which results in waste/fraud.  I still believe that to be the case even though 26% of Lockheeds revenue comes from elsewhere, which by the way per your own link is incorrect - 74% came from Military where as 85% came from the US Government, foreign govt was 13% and commercial was 2%. Your link, not mine but wow clearly not at all dependant on the US to be a going concern.  As much as I think the govt is highly inefficient and wasteful I think these private-public concerns are even worse and surely allows for room for improvement.

And for the record, you have way too much faith in the virtues and inteligence of our political representatives. I have little faith and believe a wholesale change is needed on both sides of the aisle.   

[grantmeaname]

you have way too much faith in the virtues and inteligence of our political representatives.

Nobody's told me that before. Shirley, you mistake me for someone else.

[tooqk4u22]

you have way too much faith in the virtues and inteligence of our political representatives.

Nobody's told me that before. Shirley, you mistake me for someone else.

Then clearly I must have missed the intended sarcasm in your prior comments.......and don't call me Shirley. :)

[grantmeaname]

I think it should be clear to most everyone that politicians are self-serving opportunists (I would add 'bottom-feeding' to that list, but some would disagree). But statecraft is in some sense a technical process, and if there were a more effective and less costly alternative to the PPACA, I have to believe that someone in the statecraft and related industries would have noticed it. Even if you were only in it for yourself and your ego, wouldn't you rather be remembered for effective legislation than ineffective legislation? Moreover, the PPACA was passed at the height of Obama's political power: it's the one thing that he expended the most of his political capital for, and he was willing to lose control over his Democratic Congress for the remainder of its term just to get it passed. If he weren't sure that PPACA was the optimal solution to the problem, why would he have been willing to make such great sacrifices for it?

[tooqk4u22]

I think it should be clear to most everyone that politicians are self-serving opportunists (I would add 'bottom-feeding' to that list, but some would disagree). But statecraft is in some sense a technical process, and if there were a more effective and less costly alternative to the PPACA, I have to believe that someone in the statecraft and related industries would have noticed it. Even if you were only in it for yourself and your ego, wouldn't you rather be remembered for effective legislation than ineffective legislation? Moreover, the PPACA was passed at the height of Obama's political power: it's the one thing that he expended the most of his political capital for, and he was willing to lose control over his Democratic Congress for the remainder of its term just to get it passed. If he weren't sure that PPACA was the optimal solution to the problem, why would he have been willing to make such great sacrifices for it?

I don't do things for how I will be remembered, I do things for what I view is best. Unfortunately, politicians do not take this view.  Obama ONLY got it passed because of democratically controlled congress not because he was willing to risk losing control of it, and the fact that he had to expend most of his political capital at the height of his power certainly suggests that it was not the best course of action.  The problem is that people in general don't like making hard choices and decisions, which is further compounded when it involves the well being of others and themselves, which is further compounded exponentially when it involves self-serving opportunistic bottom-feeding blood suckers. It is also the reason our tax code is so big and complicated because nobody ever wants to go back and touch/fix/improve anything, its just easier to add to it and we all pay for it - either through higher taxes or poor execution and service, and usually both.

[Bakari]

OK, so obviously we disagree on a fundamental level about the proper balance between individualism and collectivism - but at least we can both see that we both find some value in both.

But I'm thinking part of this back and forth may actually be a semantic issue.

If a billionaire and a non-billionaire drive down a highway for 60 miles, are they not using the common infrastructure in the same amount so why should the billionaire pay more.

I disagree with the fact that people should have to pay more because they have more.

Let me see if I understand you correctly...

You are not actually arguing for a flat tax rate - as in, one where people at every level of income pay the same percentage of their income.  You are arguing for a flat tax amount, where everyone pays the same total dollar amount, and income is totally irrelevant.

Our current system is nominally progressive - the wealthy are not just supposed to pay a greater total amount, they are supposed to pay a higher percentage.  Most libertarians and conservative capitalists argue that the rich shouldn't have to pay a higher percentage.  They still acknowledge that they should have to pay a higher total amount.

Lets look at some real numbers:
Lets say libertarians got their way and we completely eliminated healthcare and welfare (all forms) as well as cut back the military budget to a level competitive with China.  That frees up 2 trillion dollars, leaving a budget of 1.8 trillion.
Divided by 196 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 65 means a tax bill of roughly $9000 each.

Correct me if I am mistaken, but it seems like you are saying that:
a person who makes $14,500 per year (minimum wage) should pay $9000 in taxes (leaving him $5,500 to live on) and
a person who makes $300,000,000 (average income of the Forbes 400) should also pay $9000 in taxes (leaving her $299,991,000 to live on - not counting the 1-60 billion she already has)

If it were up to me, it would be a formula which uses a mathematical limit, where it would only reach 100% at infinity dollars.

That would be good for capital investment

How would additional tax brackets that included a million, ten million, 100 million, and 1 billion in anyway affect capital investment?
Are you suggesting that only billionaires invest?
That seems a silly implication, esp. given the forum we are on right now?
Are you suggesting that no one would invest if they didn't think they could one day reach infinity dollars?
You must realize that even if there were no taxes at all, no one is ever going to have infinity dollars, right?

[grantmeaname]

Clearly you've never heard of the Weimar republic. Everybody there had infinity dollars!

[tooqk4u22]

I am not arguing for or against a particular tax structure and was initially illustrating that the high earners pay the majority of taxes, which is due to making most of the income but also because they pay per a progressive system (the more you make the more they take) and half of the population pays no federal tax so it is not a fair system.  And that the majority a signifcant portion of the spending benefits more heavily those that don't pay the taxes. 

My main issue is that we don't have a tax revenue problem, we have a spending problem so I am not saying cut taxes for the wealthy just don't raise them any further. 

In a theoretical sense your example about each person paying $9k for their share of the system actually does make sense, again in a purely theoretical sense and not me advocating sense.  In theory it is no different then buying food or going to the movies...you don't pay more or less for those things (assuming same things - not guci vs. walmart) because of your income.  But that wouldn't work, actually it might because government would be far smaller because the people that it serves the most may actually decide to be mindful of the dollars. 

A flat tax percentage, to me, would be the most fair because everyone would pay based on thier income, even though the wealthy would be more advantaged because more of their income is discretionary, and half the voting block that doesn't pay anything may decide that efficiency and value from spending may be more important, as it is they are not vested in the effectiveness of government but they are dependant on it.  Of course, for me I would want all the loopholes closed that wealthy people and corpations use.

But as I started with my main point is not to change the system as it stands and focus on being more efficient and less wasteful - and that is in all areas whether they are democrat or republic favored - defense, health care, SSI & SSDI, # of govt jobs and their pay and benefits and pensions), whatever - go through them all and do better is my point.

I wasn't suggesting that only billionairs invest, but if they or anyone esle believes that the tax man will take all of my gain then they simply won't make the investment. 

[grantmeaname]

I am not arguing for or against a particular tax structure and was initially illustrating that the high earners pay the majority of taxes, which is due to making most of the income but also because they pay per a progressive system (the more you make the more they take) and half of the population pays no federal tax so it is not a fair system.

Half of the population only holds 2.5% of the wealth (check out wikipedia when it comes back online). Them not paying tax is a drop in the bucket and is absolutely insignificant in comparison to even slight changes in the way the other half of America (and, with them, 97.5% of the nation's wealth) are treated by tax policy. Ease off the Limbaugh and quit thoughtlessly repeating irrelevant and misleading statistics.

And that the majority a signifcant portion of the spending benefits more heavily those that don't pay the taxes.

We'll ignore for a second that that's not even a sentence. Your argument that most government spending only benefits the bottom 50% of the nation is totally specious. Welfare and social security benefit the entire nation by ensuring survival for everyone. They allow entrepreneurs to welcome risk to extreme levels in their lives. They allow corporations to pay miserably low wages that are declining at an incredible rate, because there's still a livable floor below. Medicare and medicaid ensure a minimum level of health for our population, something everyone benefits from. The CDC eradicated smallpox for everyone, not just the poor, and Bill Gates himself will not catch smallpox as a result. The EPA keeps our country habitable despite the externalities not accounted for before the closure of industrial extraction and production facilities: here in the Midwest we've got the strip mines, while the plains have open pit mining of lead and other toxins. Commerce depends on roads, and our society depends on the rule of law and the enforcement agencies that the rule of law depends on. Effective commerce depends on a relative lack of corruption enforced by organizations like the GAO and the SEC. I can go on, and I'd be happy to, but I'm sure by this point you've realized a handful of ways in which people other than your imaginary welfare queens benefit from government spending.

My main issue is that we don't have a tax revenue problem, we have a spending problem so I am not saying cut taxes for the wealthy just don't raise them any further.

 
Unless you have some incredible cogent argument that you've been hiding all this time, I'm not convinved the two are distinguishable from each other. We have an outsized government budget relative to its tax income, and addressing either, or both, would solve the problem. There are nations that tax much more heavily than we do (cf. Europe), so clearly it would not be impossible for us to increase taxes in order to help narrow the revenue-expenditure gap. Since the wealthy top half of the nation controls 97.5% of the assets, even confiscating every cent owned by the poor would only increase the funding available to the government by something on the order of 12%, so if we're raising taxes and we want it to have any budgetary impact, we've got to raise taxes on the wealthy.

But that wouldn't work, actually it might because government would be far smaller because the people that it serves the most may actually decide to be mindful of the dollars.

Would you make up your mind and then type whichever half of the sentence you actually believe?

A flat tax percentage, to me, would be the most fair because everyone would pay based on thier income, even though the wealthy would be more advantaged because more of their income is discretionary, and half the voting block that doesn't pay anything may decide that efficiency and value from spending may be more important, as it is they are not vested in the effectiveness of government but they are dependant on it.

Again, we'll ignore for a moment that that's not actually a sentence. Why is it fair for the wealthy to be more advantaged when the United States is already the fourth most-unequal economy in the world?

But as I started with my main point is not to change the system as it stands and focus on being more efficient and less wasteful - and that is in all areas whether they are democrat or republic favored - defense, health care, SSI & SSDI, # of govt jobs and their pay and benefits and pensions), whatever - go through them all and do better is my point.

Like I said Friday: statecraft is a scientific and refined actual discipline, and there's an entire ecosystem of highly compensated and highly competent professionals examining every single step that anyone in the government takes. If you think that the entire governing community has never thought to "do better" and that our budgetary problems can be cured by diligently looking for waste, and further that nobody in this giant, genius, fast-paced industry is doing so currently, you're entirely delusional. If that were the case, wouldn't you have found and presented some sort of statistical or anecdotal evidence suggesting that waste was 1) a tractable problem with 2) a fiscally meaningful size?

I wasn't suggesting that only billionairs invest, but if they or anyone esle believes that the tax man will take all of my gain then they simply won't make the investment.

That is not how progressive tax structures work. It is not a bad idea to make more money unless a marginal tax bracket has a rate of more than 100%. This is basic math. If you are a billionaire, you understand basic math; therefore, if you are a billionaire, you do not believe that all the gain will be taken by the 'tax man'.
Remember, too, that billionaires are far from the only investors. Think about investment banks, venture capital companies, pension funds, nonprofit endowments...

[tooqk4u22]

Half of the population only holds 2.5% of the wealth

You guys keep bringing wealth and tax rates into the equation, I have never once said that wealth wasn't concentrated at the top and in fact I even think I said that the gap is too disproportiante. 

Clearly you view that tax rates are far too low on anyone who is successful and that is the only reason why they become wealthy.  If that is the case the MMM should be paying a lot more than he does and has demonstrated that it is possible to live well and actually even save/invest some at that low income, of course that is largely attributed to paying almost no income taxes even though you could argue he is wealthy, so first of all ....wealth is not the same as income. So the question is for the lower 50% why aren't they saving more, investing more.  Basically you are saying I want to penalize the poor and you are saying you want to continue to reward them for being anti-MMM.

Capital (human or financial) is invested to create income, which is then is used to accumulated wealth. 

Pardon the language, but you are out of your FUCKING MIND if you are using Europe as an example....horrendessly low growth, high unemployment, supported by excess sovereign debt.....and that is before and what lead up to the current issues.

And that the majority a signifcant portion of the spending benefits more heavily those that don't pay the taxes.

Your argument that most government spending only benefits the bottom 50% of the nation is totally specious.

If you are going to make accusations please at least do it correctly, so re-read my comment .

Also, in the spirit of being completely antagonistic in a devil's advocate kind of way, I would argue that if the smallpox or other disease weren't eradicated the global population and resource depletion that environmentalists are so worried about would not exist.



I have accused you before of having way too much trust and confidence in our government, which you denied and yet your comments once again tell a different story. 

And nevermind that the main point of my position is that government is inefficient and stupid with the existing resources, so I want that to change before/if they get more to spend.  If someone posted on this board that they make a lot of money, have a big mortgage, four high priced cars, went to disney three times, and maxed out all of their credit cards and then asked if they should apply for a line of credit to keep it going I am guessing the answer would be no, you should cut back, get rid of the cars, stop the trips, sell the house. 

The problem here is that you live in a world of theory and not in one of application - typical professor mentality.  Don't get me wrong it is great to have people that want to be thinkers for a living and extol their values on others, but god forbid they actually try to live by thier logic in the real world.   

[grantmeaname]

Clearly you view that tax rates are far too low on anyone who is successful and that is the only reason why they become wealthy.

Those are not my views, and the second half of the statement does not follow from the first.

so first of all ....wealth is not the same as income. So the question is for the lower 50% why aren't they saving more, investing more.

We've been over this before. Income is an unrepresentative yardstick to use when examining prosperity and inequality because the very rich have little income relative to their assets, which is why people who study prosperity and inequality use wealth in their analyses, not income. If you have a problem with that, then use the slightly different numbers for income, which we've repeatedly explained are inaccurate. It won't invalidate a single thing I've said.

Basically you are saying I want to penalize the poor and you are saying you want to continue to reward them for being anti-MMM.

No, I'm not saying that. I did not say that. I have not said that. I will not say that.

Pardon the language, but you are out of your FUCKING MIND if you are using Europe as an example....horrendessly low growth, high unemployment, supported by excess sovereign debt.....and that is before and what lead up to the current issues.

You must be reading into what I said, because I nowhere said anything about growth, unemployment, or debt, and nowhere did I suggest that Europe was the paragon of human economic achievement or even a model to emulate. Quit foaming at the mouth, and slow down and address the points I actually made?

If you are going to make accusations please at least do it correctly, so re-read my comment.

Sure. Although I'd like to point out your comment would be more intelligible if you spelled things correctly and adhered to the norms of English grammar, writing complete sentences with one predicate and one subject each.

And that the majority a signifcant portion of the spending benefits more heavily those that don't pay the taxes.

Majority.

Also, in the spirit of being completely antagonistic in a devil's advocate kind of way, I would argue that if the smallpox or other disease weren't eradicated the global population and resource depletion that environmentalists are so worried about would not exist.

I agree. That does not relate to my comment in any way, though.

...

You completely sidestepped what I said. Show me the evidence that government waste is a problem of large magnitude that can be addressed in a meaningful way for reasonable costs, and that such a solution is not currently in place or being implemented. Otherwise, you're just talking out your ass.

[tooqk4u22]

We've been over this before. Income is an unrepresentative yardstick to use when examining prosperity and inequality because the very rich have little income relative to their assets, which is why people who study prosperity and inequality use wealth in their analyses, not income.

So we agree. Income and wealth aren't the same thing and if the wealthy have very little income relative to their wealth then how will taxing more solve the issue - oh, it won't.  I wasn't arguing that income or wealth inequality didn't exist, but please explain the basic premise that we should be able to take more from those who have more and why that is ok and beyond the fact that it is for the greater good.  If you have a house, and I don't, why can't I have a piece of your house because in that scenarion you are more wealthy than I. Other than the size of dollars involved, how is this scenario any different? Think about the principle of the argument, and not the social impact of the argument.

You must be reading into what I said, because I nowhere said anything about growth, unemployment, or debt, and nowhere did I suggest that Europe was the paragon of human economic achievement or even a model to emulate. Quit foaming at the mouth, and slow down and address the points I actually made?

There are nations that tax much more heavily than we do (cf. Europe), so clearly it would not be impossible for us to increase taxes in order to help narrow the revenue-expenditure gap.

Yes I am reading into what you said,  the above previous comment suggests that you feel doing what Europe does is acceptable - sure they have higher taxes but all the other issues that I indicated as well. Therefore, if higher taxes were the solution then Europe wouldn't have its issues.

You completely sidestepped what I said. Show me the evidence that government waste is a problem of large magnitude that can be addressed in a meaningful way for reasonable costs, and that such a solution is not currently in place or being implemented. Otherwise, you're just talking out your ass.

I could ask and say the same of you.  Just because you feel it is effiecient doesn't make it so, and citing that we have 1000's of representatives, think tankers, and the like involved in the process also doesn't make it so.  Also, it is not just waste that is the issue, it is also inefficiencies, mismanagement, fraud, high salaries/pensions/benefits, too many employees, and quite honestly poor math and assumptions, etc.  This is about the things the governement buys, who they employ and how, the services it provides, and how it makes decisions.  SSI is good example - life expectancy has increased far more than the age for SSI eligibility yet politicians won't touch it because it is the population closest to SSI is not only the largest generation but it also has the greatest likelihood to actuallty vote....parlays into medicare. 

The problem is that there is one-upsmanship when it comes to spending....republicans spend record amounts, then democrats say we can do better, then republicans say oh yeah we will show you, and on and on and on.  Paul Ryan's budget proposal was vilified by democrats and toxic to republicans, and yet unlike what most think it didn't actually CUT spending it simply slowed the growth when compared to Obama's.  At best Republicans are hypocrites. 


The US has spending problem and I am not talking about WHAT it is spending it on just the manner in which it is being spent.  It is crazy how you think the government can do anything more efficiently and cost effectively than private enterprise, that is just nonsense - again I am not debating what it is spending it on, that is a different but related topic.  What government can do is fund things that economically not viable from a private invest perspective, some of which are worthwhile and some are not, all I ask is that it is done in as cost effective way as possible.

[grantmeaname]

So we agree. Income and wealth aren't the same thing and if the wealthy have very little income relative to their wealth then how will taxing more solve the issue - oh, it won't.

That's a really good point. Because household spending can't be taxed, or inheritance, or capital gains, or corporate earnings. That's why the entire US tax revenue comes from income tax on earned income by private individuals.

Think about the principle of the argument, and not the social impact of the argument.

The social impact is the principle of the argument! That's what literally this entire thread is about!

Yes I am reading into what you said,  the above previous comment suggests that you feel doing what Europe does is acceptable

No, it doesn't suggest that, especially when I explicitly told you that it was misreading the argument to interpret it in that way. I mean exactly what I said: that societies can still function under a higher tax burden, and so increasing the total tax burden on the private sector is not impossible. I said "it would not be impossible." Those were my exact words! Why you continue to insist that I sneakily meant something other than what I said instead of reading the sentence with the plain common-sense usage of the actual words I wrote is beyond me!

Therefore, if higher taxes were the solution then Europe wouldn't have its issues.

I didn't say higher taxes would fix all problems. I distinctly and clearly said that higher taxes were one possible solution to one specific problem. It's as if you went to the ER with a broken rib and the attending told you he wouldn't do anything about it because he still couldn't cure cancer even if he did set your rib.

[About evidence] I could ask and say the same of you.

Are you six years old? "I know you are but what am I?"
Every time you or anyone else has asked, I've brought the requested evidence forward. Like the time that Nevada's STRS was in a non-crisis, for example, or the time the Belvedere couple tore down a century-old piece of this nation's heritage. Do you remember how I was using actual numbers and facts to support my argument?

Just because you feel it is effiecient doesn't make it so

That's not what I said. Again, please respond to the words I say and not the words you imagine I say, because they're clearly very different. I said that neither you nor anyone else I've read has ever presented a compelling and achievable way to reduce government waste, or a compelling argument that the problem is large in magnitude.

Also, it is not just waste that is the issue, it is also inefficiencies, mismanagement, fraud, high salaries/pensions/benefits, too many employees, etc.

Those are synonyms and types of government waste. I'm not sure how you think they're different, but you can assume that I've been referring to all of them each time I've said waste.

The problem is that there is one-upsmanship when it comes to spending....republicans spend record amounts, then democrats say we can do better, then republicans say oh yeah we will show you, and on and on and on.

Do you have any evidence to support this view?

It is crazy how you think the government can do anything more efficiently and cost effectively than private enterprise.

Please show me anywhere, ever, where I said anything to this effect. The forum has a built-in search tool, which you'll find very helpful. Perhaps you're thinking of something sol said?

[tooqk4u22]

The social impact is the principle of the argument! That's what literally this entire thread is about!

You're right.  We have completely taken this thread in way different direction and have morphed it into thread about arguing for the sake of arguing - guilty.  We can take this into different discussion or not.  I don't disagree that you very good at bring facts and statistics to the equation, which is great, I have also done the same and have also pointed out that some of the references (yours and others) are not correct and mine have been wrong or could have been interpreted differently as well.  You have to appreciate that statistical data can almost always be massaged to support any side of an argument (I am not saying you have done this but some of the sources may) and there are times when accurate or reliable data is not readily available and one needs to formulate opions based on information that is anecdotal or intuitive in nature based on observed trends.  And sometimes there are things observed that for various reasons can't be shared.

Separately, you consistently respond to comments like I didn't say/imply/mean that when I suggest that that you did, and maybe you didn't actually say/imply/mean it but your style suggests that you say/imply/mean something different - like in the "read between the lines" sense.  Like in the Europe example - sure you did say it was not impossible to increase taxes but it was in the context of refuting my position of we shouldn't increase taxes (BTW I never said taxes couldn't be increased) and when doing so it naturally implies that that your bias is that Europe's approach is a positive alternative and if doesn't then at best you are really just arguing to argue by extractin one individual point.  Taking an affirmative position would minimize this.

So to be clear my position is that the government is inefficient and wasteful (in the broad sense) and that taxes shouldn't be raised until this is addressed - this is not an indictment on what they spend it on, that is a different discussion, but how they spend it.  I know you'll ask for facts but I think you know the reality...and see my SSI example in my prior comment.

[Bakari]

I wasn't suggesting that only billionairs invest, but if they or anyone esle believes that the tax man will take all of my gain then they simply won't make the investment.

That is not how progressive tax structures work. It is not a bad idea to make more money unless a marginal tax bracket has a rate of more than 100%. This is basic math. If you are a billionaire, you understand basic math; therefore, if you are a billionaire, you do not believe that all the gain will be taken by the 'tax man'.

I remember overhearing more than one person saying something along the lines of "there is no point to playing the lottery - because even if you win, the government will just take half of it anyway."
Ignoring for the moment the statistical unlikelihood of winning...
This would be that "bad at math" type of thinking
So, if you win a million dollars, you "only" get to keep $500,000 - and this is not better than not getting $500,000?
Might explain why the people who say things like this are always poor people...

If the marginal tax rate on income over 10 million dollars is 90%, that means an investor still gets another million dollars a year.  If generating income of an additional million dollars in a year isn't motivation, what is?