The New Exchange

You are not logged in. Would you like to login or register?



5/27/2015 7:15 am  #11


Re: Bernie Sanders Asks if American Economy is 'Moral'

And, I don't think that a 90% tax bracket is in any way fair. At least on earned income.  -  Goose

That statement gets mis-interpreted by some (not you or me) since it's not about a 90% tax bracket from the beginning.  Some think if someone makes a million dollars, 90% of that income would be collected as revenue.  Of course, we know that is not true.

Sanders believe a higher tax rate for the super wealthy on multi-million dollar incomes would encourage the super wealthy to re-invest in their business rather than pull the money out of it.  The money re-invested in their business/corporation would not be taxable income.

I agree with you that Sanders may have a positive effect on the political process since he is not running a negative campaign lobbing bombs at individuaks, but instead focuses on policy and issues.  I'm sure over the next year we will see him flesh out his ideas with specific details. While he's doing that, the others will be talking about Benghazi hearings, speaker fees, etc.  The only question left unanswered is what the public wants to hear about and what will the media focus upon.
 

Last edited by Just Fred (5/27/2015 7:16 am)

 

5/29/2015 9:08 am  #12


Re: Bernie Sanders Asks if American Economy is 'Moral'

Here's a worthy counter argument to the type of economy policy Sanders would champion. At the end of the day, Bernie brings up a number of good points about income inquality and lack of regulation on Wall Street. And while the gov't can do something about the latter, I'm not so sure about the former.

As of yesterday afternoon, a nonstop round-trip flight from New York City to Los Angeles on Independence Day weekend cost $484. That the price is so low is an incredible story in itself, one that is more important than most of what our children are taught in their history classes and one that we should not fail to appreciate, but it is a subject for another day. Consider, though, that that $484 is a messy number; it isn’t an even $500 or rounded to $480 or $485. Messy numbers are a sign of real calculation, and they are the opposite of political numbers: the first 100 days in office, the five-year plan, the $15 minimum wage.

..........Money is a medium of exchange, and prices are a form of communication. What do prices communicate? How much we value certain things relative to other things. This is really helpful: Everything in the economy is in reality priced in terms of other things — everything is relative to everything else — and price tags would look like the Library of Congress if we had to list the price of an airline ticket in wheat, coffee, gold, Bitcoins, signed Andy Warhol prints, Hermès scarves, etc. The underlying hierarchy of relative preferences does not change if you go from U.S. dollars to Swiss francs; you can play with the means of exchange all you like, but you’ll never arrive at a place at which people value a No. 2 pencil (the miraculous No. 2 pencil!) as much as they do a Rolls Royce automobile.

Right now, we are embroiled in a deeply, deeply stupid debate over whether to raise the statutory minimum wage to $15 an hour. (I write “statutory minimum wage” because the real minimum wage is always and everywhere $0.00 an hour, as any unemployed person can confirm for you.) Because everything in the economy is in reality priced relative to everything else, using the machinery of government to monkey around with the number of little green pieces of paper that attaches to an hour’s labor manning the register at 7-Eleven or taking orders at Burger King is, necessarily, an exercise in futility. The underlying hierarchy of values — the relative weighting between six months’ work washing dishes and six months’ tuition at the University of Texas — is not going to change. Prices in markets are not arbitrary — they are reflections of how real people actually value certain goods and services in the real world. Arbitrarily changing the dollar numbers attached to those preferences does not change the underlying reality any more than trimming Cleveland off a map of the United States actually makes Cleveland disappear.

Dollars are just a method of keeping count, and mandating higher wages for work that has not changed at all is, in the long run, like measuring yourself in centimeters instead of inches in order to make yourself taller, or tracking your weight in kilograms instead of pounds as a means of losing weight. The gentlemen in Washington seem to genuinely believe that if they measure their penises in picas they’ll all be Jonah Falcon — in reality, their interns won’t notice any difference.

Bernie Sanders, the Brooklyn socialist who represents Vermont in the Senate, generated a great deal of mirth on Tuesday when he wondered aloud how it is that a society with 23 kinds of deodorant and 18 kinds of sneakers has hungry children. Setting aside the fact that we must have hundreds of kinds of deodorant and thousands of choices of sneakers, Senator Sanders here communicates a double falsehood: The first falsehood is that the proliferation of choices in consumer goods is correlated with poverty, among children or anybody else, which is flatly at odds with practically all modern human experience. The reality is precisely the opposite: Poverty is worst where consumers have the fewest choices, e.g., in North Korea, the old Soviet Union, the socialist paradise that is modern Venezuela, etc. The second falsehood is that choice in consumer goods represents the loss of resources that might have gone to some other end — that if we had only one kind of sneaker, then there would be more food available for hungry children.

Lest you suspect that I am distorting the senator’s words, here they are: You can’t just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we are struggling with climate change and all kinds of environmental problems. All right? You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country. I don’t think the media appreciates the kind of stress that ordinary Americans are working on.

This is a very old and thoroughly discredited idea, one that dates back to Karl Marx and to the anti-capitalists who preceded him. It is a facet of the belief that free markets are irrational, and that if reason could be imposed on markets — which is to say, if reason could be imposed on free human beings — then enlightened planners could ensure that resources are directed toward their best use. This line of thinking historically has led to concentration camps, gulags, firing squads, purges, and the like, for a few reasons: The first is that free markets are not irrational; they are a reflection of what people actually value at a particular time relative to the other things that they might also value. Real people simply want things that are different from what the planners want them to want, a predicament that can be solved only through violence and the threat of violence. That is the first reason that this sort of planning leads to gulags. The second is that there are no enlightened planners; men such as Senator Sanders imagine themselves to be candidates for enlightened leadership, but put a whip in his hand and the gentleman from Vermont will turn out to be another thug in the long line of thugs who have cleaved to his faith. The third reason that this sort of planning always works out poorly is that nobody knows what the best use of resources actually is; all that the would-be masters know is that they do not approve of the current deployment of resources.

Markets adapt to political changes, and the hierarchy of values that distinguishes between an hour’s worth of warehouse management, an hour’s worth of composing poetry, an hour’s worth of brain surgery, and an hour’s worth of singing pop songs is not going to change because a politician says so, or because a group of politicians says so, or because 50 percent + 1 of the voters say so, or for any other reason. To think otherwise is the equivalent of flat-earth cosmology. In the long term, people’s needs and desires are what they are; in the short term, you can cause a great deal of chaos in the economy and you can give employers additional reasons to automate rote work. But you cannot make a fry-guy’s labor as valuable as a patent lawyer’s by simply passing a law.

This is not a matter of opinion — that is how the world actually works. One of the many corrosive effects of having a political apparatus and a political class dominated by lawyers is that the lawyerly conflation of opinion with reality becomes a ruling principle. Lawyers and high-school debaters (the groups are not alien to one another) operate in a world in which opinion is reality: If you convince the jury or the debate judges that your argument is superior, or if you can get them to believe that your position is the correct one, then you win, and the question of who wins is the most important one if you are, e.g., on trial for murder. But if you shot that guy you shot that guy, regardless of what the jury says — facts are facts. Galileo et al. were right (or closer to right) about the organization of the solar system than were Fra Hieronimus de Casalimaiori and the Aristotelians, and the fact that Galileo lost at trial didn’t change that.

 


I think you're going to see a lot of different United States of America over the next three, four, or eight years. - President Donald J. Trump
 

5/29/2015 10:49 am  #13


Re: Bernie Sanders Asks if American Economy is 'Moral'

Sanders is not anti-capitalist. He simply feels there needs to be some kind of regulation and oversight of the system.  Otherwise, we march down the road to plutocratic oligarchy.

 

5/29/2015 10:59 am  #14


Re: Bernie Sanders Asks if American Economy is 'Moral'

Just Fred wrote:

Sanders is not anti-capitalist. He simply feels there needs to be some kind of regulation and oversight of the system.  Otherwise, we march down the road to plutocratic oligarchy.

Well first, to be fair, there are a lot of regulations on the economic and banking systems right now. We have people like Bernie and Liz Warren to thank for that. Are they the right regulations and are they strong enough in every case? Probably not. 

Bernie is right when he says that money has corrupted politics and that in too many cases, even Democrats (see Senator Schumer, see forner Senator Clinton,are too cozy in their relationships with Wall Street lobbyists and corporate lobbyists in general)

But look, as much as I may agree with some of Sanders' views, the fact is that the man describes himself as a socialist. There is no denying this. And the dictionary definition of Socialism is....

-- A political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

-- 
=small(in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.


Now I don't want to say Sanders is a Marxist. I don't think he is. But I do think he is in the neighborhood of that line of thinking on economic policy and I find it concerning.


I think you're going to see a lot of different United States of America over the next three, four, or eight years. - President Donald J. Trump
 

5/29/2015 1:05 pm  #15


Re: Bernie Sanders Asks if American Economy is 'Moral'

Just Fred wrote:

And, I don't think that a 90% tax bracket is in any way fair. At least on earned income.  -  Goose

That statement gets mis-interpreted by some (not you or me) since it's not about a 90% tax bracket from the beginning.  Some think if someone makes a million dollars, 90% of that income would be collected as revenue.  Of course, we know that is not true.

Sanders believe a higher tax rate for the super wealthy on multi-million dollar incomes would encourage the super wealthy to re-invest in their business rather than pull the money out of it.  The money re-invested in their business/corporation would not be taxable income.

I agree with you that Sanders may have a positive effect on the political process since he is not running a negative campaign lobbing bombs at individuaks, but instead focuses on policy and issues.  I'm sure over the next year we will see him flesh out his ideas with specific details. While he's doing that, the others will be talking about Benghazi hearings, speaker fees, etc.  The only question left unanswered is what the public wants to hear about and what will the media focus upon.
 

You are correct, the 90% would only be for the top bracket.  But right now the top bracket starts at $400,000.  So after that 90% of someones income would be taxed at 90%.  If someone made $1 million, you would only be allowed to keep $60,000 if your income increased from $400,000 to $1 million.

Implementing this would have a huge negative effect on growing small businesses.  What incentive would they have to grow the business, and their income, if the Feds take 90% of it.  The investment of time and money wouldn't be worth it.

 

5/29/2015 1:24 pm  #16


Re: Bernie Sanders Asks if American Economy is 'Moral'

Brady Bunch wrote:

Just Fred wrote:

And, I don't think that a 90% tax bracket is in any way fair. At least on earned income.  -  Goose

That statement gets mis-interpreted by some (not you or me) since it's not about a 90% tax bracket from the beginning.  Some think if someone makes a million dollars, 90% of that income would be collected as revenue.  Of course, we know that is not true.

Sanders believe a higher tax rate for the super wealthy on multi-million dollar incomes would encourage the super wealthy to re-invest in their business rather than pull the money out of it.  The money re-invested in their business/corporation would not be taxable income.

I agree with you that Sanders may have a positive effect on the political process since he is not running a negative campaign lobbing bombs at individuaks, but instead focuses on policy and issues.  I'm sure over the next year we will see him flesh out his ideas with specific details. While he's doing that, the others will be talking about Benghazi hearings, speaker fees, etc.  The only question left unanswered is what the public wants to hear about and what will the media focus upon.
 

You are correct, the 90% would only be for the top bracket.  But right now the top bracket starts at $400,000.  So after that 90% of someones income would be taxed at 90%.  If someone made $1 million, you would only be allowed to keep $60,000 if your income increased from $400,000 to $1 million.

Implementing this would have a huge negative effect on growing small businesses.  What incentive would they have to grow the business, and their income, if the Feds take 90% of it.  The investment of time and money wouldn't be worth it.

I woud agree with Brady.
And, whether it's all your income, or just that above $400K, how could anyone call taxing it at 90%"fair".


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
 

5/29/2015 7:58 pm  #17


Re: Bernie Sanders Asks if American Economy is 'Moral'

 

5/29/2015 8:23 pm  #18


Re: Bernie Sanders Asks if American Economy is 'Moral'

Goose wrote:

Brady Bunch wrote:

Just Fred wrote:

And, I don't think that a 90% tax bracket is in any way fair. At least on earned income.  -  Goose

That statement gets mis-interpreted by some (not you or me) since it's not about a 90% tax bracket from the beginning.  Some think if someone makes a million dollars, 90% of that income would be collected as revenue.  Of course, we know that is not true.

Sanders believe a higher tax rate for the super wealthy on multi-million dollar incomes would encourage the super wealthy to re-invest in their business rather than pull the money out of it.  The money re-invested in their business/corporation would not be taxable income.

I agree with you that Sanders may have a positive effect on the political process since he is not running a negative campaign lobbing bombs at individuaks, but instead focuses on policy and issues.  I'm sure over the next year we will see him flesh out his ideas with specific details. While he's doing that, the others will be talking about Benghazi hearings, speaker fees, etc.  The only question left unanswered is what the public wants to hear about and what will the media focus upon.
 

You are correct, the 90% would only be for the top bracket.  But right now the top bracket starts at $400,000.  So after that 90% of someones income would be taxed at 90%.  If someone made $1 million, you would only be allowed to keep $60,000 if your income increased from $400,000 to $1 million.

Implementing this would have a huge negative effect on growing small businesses.  What incentive would they have to grow the business, and their income, if the Feds take 90% of it.  The investment of time and money wouldn't be worth it.

I woud agree with Brady.
And, whether it's all your income, or just that above $400K, how could anyone call taxing it at 90%"fair".

I also agree that the 90% tax burden is not the right soution either. 

I believe a lot of us, however, do agree that our tax structure as it stands needs a lot of revision. Even some of the wealthiest people in the US (Buffett is a prime example) believe that is the case as well. Even IF we taxed them at 90% you have to trust our government to do something that will help the middle and lower class with it. Not sure they have the best track record on that either. It is not as if the wealthy make a lot that the money that it is stashed away. They in turn most times either build bigger businesses and hire more or buy goods which creates jobs or invest it in other growing companies. The problem is more that the middle class jobs that used to be good paying have disappeared. Most of them are not coming back. The real challenge IMHO is how to we jump start good paying jobs for those who have been displaced and how do we train our up and coming generation for what lies ahead. 


 

Last edited by tennyson (5/29/2015 8:23 pm)


"Do not confuse motion and progress, A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress"
 
 

5/29/2015 9:04 pm  #19


Re: Bernie Sanders Asks if American Economy is 'Moral'

Bernie Sanders is way too socialist for me.  He makes Hillary Clinton look like a good candidate, and I really dislike Hillary Clinton.  I'm waiting for the Democrats to offer up a decent candidate.

 

5/30/2015 6:43 am  #20


Re: Bernie Sanders Asks if American Economy is 'Moral'

Bernie Sanders is way too socialist for me.  He makes Hillary Clinton look like a good candidate, and I really dislike Hillary Clinton.  I'm waiting for the Democrats to offer up a decent candidate.  -  Man

Not to stray too far from the original topic, but who do you see as a candidate you would champion?

I would also be interested what you feel should be the role of a democratic government in overseeing and regulating how business should operate.  Do you think we interfere too much?

Last edited by Just Fred (5/30/2015 7:14 am)

 

Board footera

 

Powered by Boardhost. Create a Free Forum