Time to tax wealth - Covid cost Solution

FVP3

sabat wrote: »

To put it in context, an Irish family in publicly funded accommodation on social welfare is a member of the global wealthiest 1%.

I'd like to see the workings out there. I bet the top 10-20% in China are far richer earn far more than the Irish poor, and thats about 1% of the world population. The 1% figure I see are generally based on stats from 1992 or something.

But it doesn't matter anyway because the top 1% of the world population aren't rich, unless you think that you need to earn <0.01% of the richest person and have <0.001% of their wealth to be rich.

Income != wealth either. The personal wealth of the "Irish family in publicly funded accommodation on social welfare" is probably a few hundred euro.

Numbers are hard.

Wanderer78

TheCitizen wrote: »

This private sector good public sector bad is a poor wholly inadequate mantra. There are somethings you can't privatise and privatising everything for the sake of it is a disastrous and at times extremely inefficient practise.

its a crook of ****, we clearly need both, and both have inefficiencies

sabat

FVP3 wrote: »

I'd like to see the workings out there. I bet the top 10-20% in China are far richer earn far more than the Irish poor, and thats about 1% of the world population. The 1% figure I see are generally based on stats from 1992 or something.

But it doesn't matter anyway because the top 1% of the world population aren't rich, unless you think that you need to earn <0.01% of the richest person and have <0.001% of their wealth to be rich.

Income != wealth either. The personal wealth of the "Irish family in publicly funded accommodation on social welfare" is probably a few hundred euro.

Numbers are hard.

An annual income of about $30k is the figure.

FVP3

sabat wrote: »

An annual income of about $30k is the figure.

Income != wealth as I said. Im still dubious about that though, when I look at china's recent growth.

Being in the top 1% of power law distributions doesn't mean you are privileged in that distribution of income or wealth, or whatever. You are quite often hugging the bottom with the other schlebs.

Without knowing how income ( or whatever is being measured) is distributed above that level you cant say anything about the top 1%. On the app store you are probably barely making minimum wage, while the top ten or so rake in billions. The top 1% of islands in size are tiny and barely inhabitable.

A better way is to agree on a figure, since we are talking about wealth not income, a millionaire might work.

According to this

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/22/global-millionaires-just-09-population-now-own-nearly-half-worlds-361-trillion

millionaires make up 0.9% of the worlds population ( which doesnt really jive with the income figure you came up with).

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/22/global-millionaires-just-09-population-now-own-nearly-half-worlds-361-trillion

Lyan

@FVP3

I dislike the term trickle-down and I've never come across it in a text book. It seems to be a leftover phrase from the Reagan era politics. I've only ever seen critics of laissez faire markets on the internet use it. So I try to work with it instead of complicating things by expanding the points of debate.

Wanderer78

Lyan wrote: »

@FVP3

I dislike the term trickle-down and I've never come across it in a text book. It seems to be a leftover phrase from the Reagan era politics. I've only ever seen critics of laissez faire markets on the internet use it. So I try to work with it instead of complicating things by expanding the points of debate.

you are aware, reagan politics hasnt gone away, yea?

Lyan

Wanderer78 wrote: »

you are aware, reagan politics hasnt gone away, yea?

I'm sure you understood what I meant.

KyussB

FVP3 wrote: »

I don't think Mark knows much about economics. Just that right is right.

not the controlling deficits is, in practice, something that right wing parties are very good at.

I'm not full on MMT myself though, although clearly in an era of cheap interest rates the obsession about 100% of GDP is nonsensical. I think Governments should run a surplus, or very small deficit, at the height of a boom.

Ya as long as there's the Euro, and the current EU-treaty-bound restrictions in place, it's hard to apply the full-on proscriptive side of MMT - but its descriptive side, is just modernized macroeconomics, so is ideal for understanding economies, even within the restrictions of the EU.

If a sector in the economy is overheating bad enough, then definitely, the taxes used to dampen that down can lead to a surplus - despite a low deficit at times of Full Output, being the norm - that would just be incidental, though, since the balance of the budget wouldn't be a factor in determining policy

Junkyard Tom

Cordell wrote: »

It's been around since we got out of the caves

Chimps don't live in caves, do they have stalls selling bananas to each other?

Regardless, the free market is a concept - it's not a real thing. People who say 'leave it to market' may as well say 'it's in God's hands'.

Anonymous authoritative power/knowledge. 'Lord Market' takes care of the economy - just leave it to him little people, 'Market' knows best. All hail Market!

KyussB

FVP3 wrote: »

Trickle down isn't even a term accepted by supply side economists, it's weird therefore for someone to defend the term.

( I mean it's clear that the trickle in trickle down means very little wealth getting to the bottom stratum of society. Supply side economics claims otherwise, that tax cuts to businesses immediately help workers by making them more likely to be employed. I think that is dubious of course).

My favourite quote on trickle-down economics:
"If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows." ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Lyan

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Chimps don't live in caves, do they have stalls selling bananas to each other?

Regardless, the free market is a concept - it's not a real thing. People who say 'leave it to market' may as well say 'it's in God's hands'.

Anonymous authoritative power/knowledge. 'Lord Market' takes care of the economy - just leave it to him little people, 'Market' knows best. All hail Market!

I like to use a computer anaolgy to explain this. Imagine you have an incredibly complex problem. It's so complex that no individual or team can possibly hope to tackle it. In this case the problem is the distribution and utilisation of the entire planets resources. Perhaps you could assign a super computer to work out this task, but no computer in the world could work out that problem. Such a task would require an artificial intelligence of post-singularity tier power. Now let's say our super computer is a government. They can give a go at the problem but it is extremely hardware limited and can only do so much. Now a solution to large computing problems in the world is instead of using one centralised computer you instead use a decentralised network of many different computers. In our market anaology our individual computer in a decentralised network is a person. Millions of people working together on their own inititive(though competitively), many people self-specialising in every single niche, the mind-boggingly large and diverse demand and complicated infrastructure can be managed.

So no, it's not God or a invisible hand, it's just a naturally occuring, self-improving Darwinism system in action.

Junkyard Tom

Lyan wrote: »

So no, it's not God or a invisible hand, it's just a naturally occuring, self-improving Darwinism system in action.

I like analogies and metaphors but what we have now is no more 'naturally occurring' than a massive pair of fake tits.

GreeBo

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

I like analogies and metaphors but what we have now is no more 'naturally occurring' than a massive pair of fake tits.

If it's not natural then who or what is making it?
If your answer is "people being people" then it is natural.

Lyan

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

I like analogies and metaphors but what we have now is no more 'naturally occurring' than a massive pair of fake tits.

I don't think what we have now is an ideal free market. I am unsure what you mean though. In what sense do you think it not natural?

Junkyard Tom

Lyan wrote: »

I don't think what we have now is an ideal free market. I am unsure what you mean though. In what sense do you think it not natural?

The idea that so-called 'free markets' are 'natural' is ridiculous, reductive, and the notion tends to be used to try to justify practices that don't need to be how they are.

Lyan

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

The idea that so-called 'free markets' are 'natural' is ridiculous, reductive, and the notion tends to be used to try to justify practices that don't need to be how they are.

Nothing told people to go out and build, trade, develop, and innovate. Humans have universally done it, regardless of culture, since the intelligence for such ventures developed. Whether the results are positive or not is a matter of opinion, but I do believe the evidence we have shows laissez faire societies work best for increasing prosperity and reducing suffering over time.

markodaly

KyussB wrote: »

You're pretty much just asserting the opposite of what I've said, without anything to back that. You're not looking to debate, you're just sticking to a narrative.

In fairness, you are proposing some new voodoo economic rules for funding nation-states. It is up to you to convince the rest of us.

If you cannot answer simple questions from random people on boards, how do you think you would fair when confronted by questions from people who know much much more about economics than you or I?

As for backing things up... yes, I am still reading all the peer-reviewed material you have provided to back up your own ideas. (which is nothing)

markodaly

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Chimps don't live in caves, do they have stalls selling bananas to each other?

Regardless, the free market is a concept - it's not a real thing. People who say 'leave it to market' may as well say 'it's in God's hands'.

Anonymous authoritative power/knowledge. 'Lord Market' takes care of the economy - just leave it to him little people, 'Market' knows best. All hail Market!

In fairness, there are very very few people that advocate that type of absolutism when it comes to free markets.

The issue is though when pen-pushers want to try and play god with economics they are usually messing with something much more powerful and complex than they can understand.

We all know that the type of Soviet-era central command and control type market just does not work, at all.
Very very few people advocate an utter free market entirely for all industries.
The question is the balance and where that lies.

markodaly

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

The idea that so-called 'free markets' are 'natural' is ridiculous, reductive, and the notion tends to be used to try to justify practices that don't need to be how they are.

You are confusing 20th-century dogma with anthropology.

Humans have traded with each other for tens of thousands of years.
It's kinda innate and lets us go off and specialise in respective roles and develop certain skills as otherwise, we would have all had to spend x hours per day farming to feed ourselves.

jimmycrackcorm

FVP3 wrote: »

Literally the way capitalist economies have always been run. Debt is generally rolled over until it is easy to pay off without substantial increases in taxes in the rollover year. The 1833 debt for slavery was paid off in 2015.

Th UK debt for WWII borrowings was only paid off in 2006 after 50 years. No one batted an eyelid.

Debt isn't an issue. What debt is used for is the problem. Emergency situation like a war, or dealing with a killer disease, yes. Free Gaffs for a never ending supply of homeless Karens.... hmm.

FVP3

Lyan wrote: »

I like to use a computer anaolgy to explain this. Imagine you have an incredibly complex problem. It's so complex that no individual or team can possibly hope to tackle it. In this case the problem is the distribution and utilisation of the entire planets resources. Perhaps you could assign a super computer to work out this task, but no computer in the world could work out that problem. Such a task would require an artificial intelligence of post-singularity tier power. Now let's say our super computer is a government. They can give a go at the problem but it is extremely hardware limited and can only do so much. Now a solution to large computing problems in the world is instead of using one centralised computer you instead use a decentralised network of many different computers. In our market anaology our individual computer in a decentralised network is a person. Millions of people working together on their own inititive(though competitively), many people self-specialising in every single niche, the mind-boggingly large and diverse demand and complicated infrastructure can be managed.

So no, it's not God or a invisible hand, it's just a naturally occuring, self-improving Darwinism system in action.

I too read that book by Hayek. Unlike you I thought it was weak cheese.

If the free market is so good at self regulating and equilibrium how come it needs bailouts? It seems that every so often, in your analogy, the governing body of the computer network need to shut down the network because it doesn't in fact self regulate but in fact goes into positive reinforcement loops which crashes the network.

What if we legislated for circuit breakers to stop this ( they do actually do this in financial trading for actual real computers), something like keeping the Glass-Steagall Act intact. And of course to continue the analogy, this network of computers is networked by some governance body which all the computers vote for, without which it couldn't trade at all.

And you seem to posit an idea of millions of computers of equal power. In fact there would be nodes of extremely powerful computers sucking up the "wealth" or bandwidth of the network, and these powerful computers would be the ones responsible for the network collapse. The governing body would occasionally go in an fix the network at a cost, and also help the powerful computers survive, at a financial cost to the other computers.

I think it might be time for the governing body to tax the powerful computers more, back to the thread.

KyussB

markodaly wrote: »

In fairness, you are proposing some new voodoo economic rules for funding nation-states. It is up to you to convince the rest of us.

If you cannot answer simple questions from random people on boards, how do you think you would fair when confronted by questions from people who know much much more about economics than you or I?

As for backing things up... yes, I am still reading all the peer-reviewed material you have provided to back up your own ideas. (which is nothing)

I've stated the mechanics of how government finances already work, and have always worked - and other posters have clarified aspects of that for you, too.

I've answered a bunch of your questions - but I don't believe you ask questions genuinely seeking answers, you seem to ask them to create a rhetorical platform, for trying to assert your narrative - pretending the questions were never answered, so you can drive discussion around in circles.

Other posters who disagree with me or don't fully agree with me, ask me questions genuinely seeking answers - and I'm more than happy to answer them. If someone's just asking me questions for rhetorical purposes, though - I'm just going to focus on highlighting that, as it's usually very obvious.

KyussB

markodaly wrote: »

In fairness, there are very very few people that advocate that type of absolutism when it comes to free markets.

The issue is though when pen-pushers want to try and play god with economics they are usually messing with something much more powerful and complex than they can understand.

We all know that the type of Soviet-era central command and control type market just does not work, at all.
Very very few people advocate an utter free market entirely for all industries.
The question is the balance and where that lies.

Which for many posters, anything left of where they think the 'balance' lies, immediately becomes Soviet-era central command and control economy - proving they aren't interested in discussing anyting, just in trying to enforce what is and isn't 'acceptable' to discuss.

markodaly

KyussB wrote: »

I've stated the mechanics of how government finances already work, and have always worked - and other posters have clarified aspects of that for you, too.

I've answered a bunch of your questions - but I don't believe you ask questions genuinely seeking answers, you seem to ask them to create a rhetorical platform, for trying to assert your narrative - pretending the questions were never answered, so you can drive discussion around in circles.

Other posters who disagree with me or don't fully agree with me, ask me questions genuinely seeking answers - and I'm more than happy to answer them. If someone's just asking me questions for rhetorical purposes, though - I'm just going to focus on highlighting that, as it's usually very obvious.

Grand, pontificate away on a soapbox, but it seems you are dodging pretty basic questions, questions you cannot really answer.
Again, you have put forward zero peer-reviewed research or papers on your position.

ELM327

markodaly wrote: »

Grand, pontificate away on a soapbox, but it seems you are dodging pretty basic questions, questions you cannot really answer.
Again, you have put forward zero peer-reviewed research or papers on your position.

It's exactly the same for all RBB schooled comrades.

markodaly

KyussB wrote: »

Which for many posters, anything left of where they think the 'balance' lies, immediately becomes Soviet-era central command and control economy - proving they aren't interested in discussing anyting, just in trying to enforce what is and isn't 'acceptable' to discuss.

That may be your own view on it, but you missed the most important word in my post which was 'balance'.
The argument is always about balance unless you are talking about an absolute statist Marxist vs an absolute free-market libertarian.
To prove my point and use your words against you, anything to the right of that balance is painted as a free-market zealot.

KyussB

markodaly wrote: »

Grand, pontificate away on a soapbox, but it seems you are dodging pretty basic questions, questions you cannot really answer.
Again, you have put forward zero peer-reviewed research or papers on your position.

You asked me questions - I answered them - you responded by asserting the exact opposite of what I answered, without providing any evidence - and now demand evidence for my answers, and are also saying I didn't answer them.

It's wind-up-merchant stuff. Other posters have even cited stuff, backing what I have said.

I'm pretty sure that a few posters are following a tactic, of trying to spin discussions in circles, to bring mod action on me tbh - precisely as has happened before.

Just to note: This poster that was labelling me both a Communist and a Nazi the other day.

markodaly

KyussB wrote: »

You asked me questions - I answered them - you responded by asserting the exact opposite of what I answered, without providing any evidence - and now demand evidence for my answers, and are also saying I didn't answer them.

Eh, you didn't answer them.
Take for example my question about 'Maximising GDP' about what it actually means... as its just a buzz word in this context.

You ignored it.

As I said before, you are the person advocating infinite and perpetual deficit spending with negative interest rates being the income we use the pay for things.

Carl Sagan once wrote..

"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

You have provided nada. That tells us everything.

FVP3

markodaly wrote: »

Eh, you didn't answer them.
Take for example my question about 'Maximising GDP' about what it actually means... as its just a buzz word in this context.

You ignored it.

Don't think he did. If means getting the most productive use out of the economy. Clearly in a recession that isn't happening. Factories lie idle, people are unemployed.

As I said before, you are the person advocating infinite and perpetual deficit spending with negative interest rates being the income we use the pay for things.

Whatever about the latter you are the one who didn't understand how the bond market even works a few posts ago. Debt is in fact rolled over. Deficits are common. In fact in the US its generally the Republicans who blow the budget.

https://www.thebalance.com/us-deficit-by-year-3306306

Therefore it is fairly common to have near infinite deficits and perpetual deficit, at least under right wing governments. Clinton seems to have run a surplus.

I am not arguing for MMT here by the way, however in an era of low interest rates debts arent that scary.

You have provided nada. That tells us everything.

He has explained his theory quite a a lot in here, whether you agree with it or not.

KyussB

markodaly wrote: »

Eh, you didn't answer them.
Take for example my question about 'Maximising GDP' about what it actually means... as its just a buzz word in this context.

You ignored it.

As I said before, you are the person advocating infinite and perpetual deficit spending with negative interest rates being the income we use the pay for things.

Carl Sagan once wrote..


You have provided nada. That tells us everything.

Here are the questions and my answers, up to the point I decided you're posting in bad faith:
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=113298157#post113298157
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=113298381#post113298381
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=113298611#post113298611
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=113298742#post113298742

I'm not debating further with someone who I believe posts in bad faith.