From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Apr 08 2003 - 08:39:03 MDT
Damien S. writes
> On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 09:48:37PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> > observations, IQ) of brain surgeons, but instead most importantly
> > require the perception that if they work hard, and play by the
> > rules, then they'll get all that they deserve.
>
> The small percentage of the population which pays the most tax may be getting
> their income from rent and its equivalent (I own this, pay me) rather than
> from direct work itself.
We definitely have to get past that this is an unworthy way
of contributing to an economy. Whatever we may think of some
occupations, e.g., making a fortune by installing violent
video games for teenagers, or collecting rents on properties
one owns, any effort to remold economies into "preferred"
directions is harmful. The sad story of what happens when
property rights are infringed, from Plymouth colony to the
takings of the 1990's, is well documented in "The Noblest
Triumph" by Thomas Bethell.
Administering property, as well as being involved in very
abstract and high level economic activity such as securities
markets, has to be seen as absolutely vital, and is one of
the main symptoms of what's wrong in developing countries.
> And the people at the bottom can use incentives too, such as the belief that
> their hard work will make them better off. But someone on minimum wage
> doesn't need taxes to keep them from barely breaking even
Taxes should be much lower for *everyone*. The way that they
wreck the incentives of those at the bottom is not by extracting
large amounts of money from the poor (as has been discussed), but
by providing the appearance that the great gobs of money extracted
from the well to do will be spent on them either in social programs
now or retirement money in their old age. This just does not
encourage the right behavior.
> > tax rules above, we place our entire world on a lower exponential
> > growth pattern, with severe consequences (in the long run) for
>
> "In the long run we are all dead."
Keynesianism, which brought us such novel phenomena as stagflation,
and has now (one hopes) been completely discredited, perhaps did have
a tendency to look only at incentives over the life time of a single
individual, whereas in business and national life a lot really is
accomplished (amazingly) by much longer term incentives.
> possibly not true if a Singularity actually happens, but people are
> concerned with having fair and decent lives in the short run.
Yeah, but we should not try to form policy based on short-run
incentives. The long term horizons of business should be matched
by long term national policy.
Lee
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