patrick.net

Now why should the doctor or lawyer be paying 35% in income taxes while the billionare heir pays 15% or less?

My personal feeling is the we ought to adopt Mike Lees budget reform plan and have a flat tax, where everyone pays the same amount on all income on a 1 page tax form, but that's just me.

I'll go one better: we should not have an income tax at all, but only a flat 2% annual tax on assets.

That 2% tax on assets would provide as much revenue as all our income taxes, sales taxes, inheritance taxes, etc put together.

That 2% tax on assets would provide as much revenue as all our income taxes, sales taxes, inheritance taxes, etc put together.

mind sharing that link?

Patrick, I'm new here but it appears that you are a host of that web site. Could you do us a favor and state your original thesis right beneth the graph or above it?

What is your main poin in here?

GraooGra says

What is your main point in here?

That ought to be obvious by the "flavor" of the conversations.

Patrick - you might want to check this out:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2012/03/13/how-americas-wealthiest-get-rich/

and give us a list of how many of them inherited all their wealth without lifting a finger or firing off a neuron.

I'd bet the workers outnumber the slackers.

Just a thought.

Not expresing the point is a typical logical fallacy. It allows to move the argument into different subjects and directions.

Let's think about 2% tax on assets for a while.
Would you tax corporations for purchasing Furniture Fixtures and Machines or Plant and Property? Whould you tax everybody on their Savings Accounts and other liquid assets? What about sales tax, isn't it a tax on assets already?

Yes I was being sarcastic, but I do know some wealthy people who help support a whole hoard of slacker family members, x wives, children etc.

nosimpsonsneedapply says

That 2% tax on assets would provide as much revenue as all our income taxes, sales taxes, inheritance taxes, etc put together.

mind sharing that link?

http://patrick.net/?p=1133205

GraooGra says

What is your main poin in here?

It must be that I hate America and am a commie libtard, right?

No, just the opposite. We have a tax system right now that punishes work and rewards being a slacker owner of all the assets.

This started just because I happened to see that pie graph and submitted it as a link to the forum.

GraooGra says

Let's think about 2% tax on assets for a while.
Would you tax corporations for purchasing Furniture Fixtures and Machines or Plant and Property? Whould you tax everybody on their Savings Accounts and other liquid assets? What about sales tax, isn't it a tax on assets already?

Good question. Henry George would say you should not tax any capital (things created by people) but instead tax only land, which no one created.

But maybe a small tax on certain kinds of capital is also good, perhaps with an exemption up to the median amount of capital owned. So you'd pay no tax on the first $100K of asset or something like that.

Sales tax is a tax on transactions, not assets. Sales tax discourages commerce in the same way that income tax discourages work.

What you really want to discourage is non-productive rent-seeking.

Sales tax is a tax on transactions, not assets. Sales tax discourages commerce in the same way that income tax discourages work.

But if you don't have an income tax, then the sales tax encourages work and hiring (eliminating the overhead of income tax laws) while discouraging spending and encouraging savings.
Commerce itself is just the speed of money. A sales tax discourages the purchase of useless things that don't add to the future, while making government revenue tied to an appropriate rate of trade (the reason we have a Navy is to protect the shipping lanes, so a tax on commerce should pay for the Navy).
Adding a prebate feature (see fairtax.org) makes it progressive for those who give a damn about what it costs to live in poverty or on a fixed income.
It doesn't cost the government anything for me to own property. It costs when I demand them to make resources available through patent systems, oil wars, and protection services because I bought stuff to put ON the property.

Oh, and I forgot to add that commerce (a.k.a. "The Economy") is not something we should be making decisions on. It is a SIDE EFFECT of people living, working, and acting usefully. If they start living and working and acting based on the flow of cash, then the logic turns into circular reasoning influenced by crooked realtors and other marketing agents who play with our lizard brains.
People make decisions in one place: the checkout line. The cost of consumption/government/pollution cleanup should be immediately visible at that decision point, not buried behind a wall of Human Resources administration and income tax preparers and lobbyists.
Our votes are counted by the dollars we spend. Those votes should be informed choices, not impulse buys at 80% off the real costs.

First of all I went to the link which explain how this 2% tax on asset was created. I looked at the figure of 187 billion and I'm telling you the guy extracted that number from both houshold assets, government assets and all kinds of assets, not only stocks and bonds. It means you would tax gov assets with a tax and then they would also be consumers of their own tax. It doesn't make sense to me.

I think that by taxing assets you mean taxing investment income, stocks, bonds, all kinds of investments. People who invest they create capital which creates growth and ultimately jobs. Investors are risk takers and they should be also rewarded for it, not only punished. Also if you want to level out taxes for certain categories and according to you these categories which should pay more are not income producers then maybe there is the other method.... The biggest NON income producer but consumer and spender true taxation is government. Maybe we should limit that entity and we resolve problem with taxes.

Yes, the majority of rich or somewhat rich people earned their money.

It will be interesting to see the statistics in another 15 years or so, after the Rachel's Challenge (an anti-bullying effort in schools) settles into the next couple of crops of graduates.
"Earning" and "Coercing" wealth from an ignorant populace are two different things. On a field where bullying is rewarded and jack-assery pays top dollar, then the future looks quite different from one where people are aware of what's actually happening to their resources and time, and where cooperation has some merit over cutthroat isolation.
The Wealth Redistribution folks don't like to admit that their process is just as dependent on bullying as the "I've Got Mine" crowd's is.
Commerce is a luxury that doesn't have to be forced upon us through bailouts, tax loopholes and corporate welfare (the worst being sports arenas supported with local taxes on the premise of "job creation", I think).

Maybe this will help give some perspective:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/12/six-walmart-heirs-wealthier-than-bottom-30-percent.html

Six Wal-Mart heirs are wealthier than the entire bottom 30% in the US.

Six people, alone.

Good for them! Why we even talk about that? Are you directly affected that some heirs are wealthier than the rest of us? I don't envy them. Let them be.

GraooGra says

Good for them! Why we even talk about that? Are you directly affected that some heirs are wealthier than the rest of us? I don't envy them. Let them be.

We talk about it because one aspect of accumulating wealth (resources) is to KEEP THEM AWAY from everyone else. This is what makes the price go up when people need resources to live or work.
It isn't that people have so much more than everyone else, but that they have so much more than they need and they are keeping it away from those who could put the resources to good use.
This used to be a fundamental obligation of those who accumulated wealth through the work of communities and the resources of the commons: to give back more than they take so that there will be a future. When natural resources and human resources were relatively scarce, a lot could be said for the value of the entrepreneur who built a city around his factories. Now, however, most of those who are accumulating wealth are not doing so by putting humans to work with natural resources (making stuff that fills a real need): they are simply harvesting the flow of capital among the coerced consumers (see "Coercion" by Douglas Rushkoff). Those consumers are addicted to a sleep-work-spend treadmill that they have little chance of exiting and no leadership to teach them how or to question the status quo. The government and corporations (mostly the Bilderbergers) are now working late in dark smoky rooms trying to suck up the inertia of the post-Peak Oil activities, almost all of which are winding down. Whether consciously or subconsciously, people are starting to realize that the 1950's Consumer Economics Party is ending, and if the cops haven't shown up by now, those still alive will be cleaning up the house for a long, long time. The super-rich just move to a different island or give up their citizenship to avoid their obligation to the communities they harvested (see "extraction economics").

nosimpsonsneedapply says

Recently, PNC Wealth Management conducted a survey of people with more than $500,000 free to invest as they like, a fair definition of “wealthy,”

Hahahaha. $500k wealthy? Good one. Here is some perspective. Warren Buffett is wealthy. His wealth is equal to 100,000 $500k "weathly" folks added together.

If you have $500k you are as close to Warren Buffett as the guy who has a net worth of $5 is to you.

A guy with a net worth of ten bucks is twice as close to you economically as you are to Warren Buffett.

Do you actually think this economy will ever truly recover when the 20 wealthiest americans collectively have equal wealth with the bottom 150 million?

Think about it. How much better would the economy perform if half of the wealth of the top 20 went to the bottom 150 million? The top 20 would still be rich as hell. Their spending is most probably unaffected. If the bottom 150 million was suddenly 50% wealthier, what would they do with it? Who is going to spend more, the top 20 or the bottom 150 million?

GraooGra says

Good for them! Why we even talk about that? Are you directly affected that some heirs are wealthier than the rest of us? I don't envy them. Let them be.

I like your question because it brings up important issues that need to be evaluated honestly, not just emotionally.
What Net Future Usefulness is created by those heirs as they accumulate so much wealth? Or, as in most cases, are they just increasing the rate at which humans consume things, and then skimming money off the stream as it is created from natural resources and discarded in landfills?
What harm have we been done by such disproportionate ownership?
Two words:
Hillary Clinton

We talk about it because one aspect of accumulating wealth (resources) is to KEEP THEM AWAY from everyone else. This is what makes the price go up when people need resources to live or work.
It isn't that people have so much more than everyone else, but that they have so much more than they need and they are keeping it away from those who could put the resources to good use.
_____
What do you suggest then, they are 'filthy rich' lets take their "resources" and divide them equally? Who should decide what to divide? At what amount of their wealth you let them stay and at what you want them to share with the rest of us? Aren't Waltons entitled to passing on to their heirs the fruits of their labor they created? Who goes and who stays? What criteria would you use to decide?
Life is not fair and it is not equal and it never is going to be. You might be healthy and you take resources from a sick person. It is not just to that poor sick person, so let's take your kidney and give it to the sick... Do you see the slippery slope that kind of thinking leads us to?

they are simply harvesting the flow of capital among the coerced consumers (see "Coercion" by Douglas Rushkoff).

It sounds like Douglas Rushkoff thinks that regular people are stupid and they allow the other ones to coerce them.
Some maybe stupid and some are not. People overall have brains and make their own choices. Give them freedom to choose what they want. They would finally figure it out what is good for them and what is bad.

"What Net Future Usefulness is created by those heirs as they accumulate so much wealth?"

Again I give my kidney example. You need to define what is exactly "Net Future Usefulness" and who should check it and decide how to divide.

GraooGra - this is like talking to a wall. It's obvious that basic math is missing from this thread.

Auntiegrav - You could confiscate 100% of all the net worth of the entire country and not pay off the deficit, (there would be a Trillion of debt left over)and then what would you do the next year? Here's some math for you:

A dominant theme of President Obama's budget speech last Wednesday was that our fiscal problems would vanish if only the wealthiest Americans were asked "to pay a little more." Since he's asking, imagine that instead of proposing to raise the top income tax rate well north of 40%, the President decided to go all the way to 100%.

Let's stipulate that this is a thought experiment, because Democrats don't need any more ideas. But it's still a useful experiment because it exposes the fiscal futility of raising rates on the top 2%, or even the top 5% or 10%, of taxpayers to close the deficit. The mathematical reality is that in the absence of entitlement reform on the Paul Ryan model, Washington will need to soak the middle class—because that's where the big money is.

***
Consider the Internal Revenue Service's income tax statistics for 2008, the latest year for which data are available. The top 1% of taxpayers—those with salaries, dividends and capital gains roughly above about $380,000—paid 38% of taxes. But assume that tax policy confiscated all the taxable income of all the "millionaires and billionaires" Mr. Obama singled out. That yields merely about $938 billion, which is sand on the beach amid the $4 trillion White House budget, a $1.65 trillion deficit, and spending at 25% as a share of the economy, a post-World War II record.

Say we take it up to the top 10%, or everyone with income over $114,000, including joint filers. That's five times Mr. Obama's 2% promise. The IRS data are broken down at $100,000, yet taxing all income above that level throws up only $3.4 trillion. And remember, the top 10% already pay 69% of all total income taxes, while the top 5% pay more than all of the other 95%.

We recognize that 2008 was a bad year for the economy and thus for tax receipts, as payments by the rich fell along with their income. So let's perform the same exercise in 2005, a boom year and among the best ever for federal revenue. (Ahem, 2005 comes after the Bush tax cuts that Mr. Obama holds responsible for all the world's problems.)

In 2005 the top 5% earned over $145,000. If you took all the income of people over $200,000, it would yield about $1.89 trillion, enough revenue to cover the 2012 bill for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—but not the same bill in 2016, as the costs of those entitlements are expected to grow rapidly. The rich, in short, aren't nearly rich enough to finance Mr. Obama's entitlement state ambitions—even before his health-care plan kicks in.

So who else is there to tax? Well, in 2008, there was about $5.65 trillion in total taxable income from all individual taxpayers, and most of that came from middle income earners. The nearby chart shows the distribution, and the big hump in the center is where Democrats are inevitably headed for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks.

This is politically risky, however, so Mr. Obama's game has always been to pretend not to increase taxes for middle class voters while looking for sneaky ways to do it. His first budget in 2009 included a "climate revenues" section from the indirect carbon tax of cap and trade, which of course would be passed down to all consumers. Such Democratic luminaries as Nancy Pelosi have often chattered about a European-style value-added tax, or VAT, which from a liberal perspective has the virtue of applying to every level of production or service and therefore is largely hidden from the people who pay it.

Now that those two ideas have failed politically, Mr. Obama is turning as he did last week to limiting tax deductions and other "loopholes," such as for mortgage interest payments. We support doing away with these distortions too, and so does Mr. Ryan, but in return for lower tax rates. Mr. Obama just wants the extra money, which he says will reduce the deficit but in practice will merely enable more spending.

Keep in mind that the most expensive tax deductions, in terms of lost tax revenue, go mainly to the middle class. These include the deductions for state and local tax payments (especially property taxes), mortgage interest, employer-sponsored health insurance, 401(k) contributions and charitable donations. The irony is that even as Mr. Obama says he merely wants the rich to pay a little bit more, his proposals would make the tax code less progressive than it is today.

Mr. Ryan isn't proposing controversial entitlement reforms because he likes pointless political risk, or because he likes being berated to his face from a front row seat, as he was on Wednesday. Medicare and Medicaid spending are consistently growing two to three times faster than the rest of the economy, while Medicare's cash-in-cash-out financing model means that seniors collect far more in benefits than they paid in taxes over their working lifetime. The entitlement state was designed for another era.

***
Mr. Obama's speech was disgraceful for its demagoguery but also because it contained nothing remotely commensurate to the scale of the problem. If the President had come out for a large tax on the middle class, like a VAT, then at least the country could have debated the choice of paying for the government we have or modernizing it a la Mr. Ryan so it is affordable.

Instead the President will continue targeting the middle class for tax increases to pay for an entitlement state on autopilot, while claiming he only wants to tax the rich. Oh, and we almost forgot: Happy Tax Day.

Pop some popcorn:

http://youtu.be/3h8O7V-WxWQ

Here's the one I was actually looking for:

http://youtu.be/Z1j-cCaKvdo

GraooGra says

Are you directly affected that some heirs are wealthier than the rest of us?

Why yes, I am affected, and so are you.

Did you forget that every price you pay for everything you buy is directly determined by how much other people can pay?

That's fine, except when other people can pay a lot more than you without ever doing anything useful, perhaps by merely owning the very ground you live on.

Then you lose twice:

1. You pay them rent for land that they did not create.
2. They use that rent to drive up the cost of living for you.

If you're not rich, you clearly did not choose your parents very well.

Pretty much. Either you got lucky, or a silver spoon, or you stole technology or a business or business model from someone else.

Or you went to med or law school for many many unpaid years and just barely make it in to the 1% club.

nosimpsonsneedapply says

on't begrudge those of us that work 80+hrs a week

You are a crap parent, then. Simple. Family suffers the more you gecko types try and pretend you can take over the world with anything other than luck or theft.

Maybe this will help give some perspective:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/12/six-walmart-heirs-wealthier-than-bottom-30-percent.html

Six Wal-Mart heirs are wealthier than the entire bottom 30% in the US.

Six people, alone.

Honestly, its time to put a Wealth Cap in place. I call for 50 million being the maximum assets one person or family can own. Period. Its out of hand, the oligarchs are out of control. They money isnt so much the issue, its the massive political and corporate control these people have which makes them so annoying. I would have never imagined saying this a few years ago, but the people who have more than 50 million are time and time again, psychopathic thieving crazies hell bet on domination and power and they need to be stopped by the rest of us that have supported and be the instrument of creation for their massive wealth. Without us, they would be nothing, yet, they seem to be complicit and willing to treat us like nothing. Cap the wealth, its out of hand. its not free market, its total oligarchical collectivism at this point.

Mick Russom says

I call for 50 million being

*note, WORLD-WIDE. The globalist banking cartel should be turned around and used against these rats. No more shelters for the trillionaire oligarchs. 50M is enough.

1. You pay them rent for land that they did not create.
2. They use that rent to drive up the cost of living for you.

Its a tipping point. If the rentier class gets too big, whereby there are too many people living off of rentier and unearned income, which is net-zero in terms of productivity society collapses. Often violently. I've grown tired of the oligarchs kicking around the rest. Its time to figure out how to regulate it without devolving into quasi socialism or communism. One thing would be a once house, more than one = massive taxes. also a 50M wealth cap. that would halt inflation dead.

Now why should the doctor or lawyer be paying 35% in income taxes while the billionaire heir pays 15% or less?

Well, those billionaires create jobs, right? Like a butler, a personal assistant, a secretary, a bodyguard. Paying them as little as they can possibly pay them.

Billionaires have a choice, they choose to keep an unreasonable amount of money locked up under their control. You could give away all of it but 100M and live like a king, but no, they need the billions.

Eat the rich.

I don't understand how the right wingers say
1) The national debt is a big problem
2) Don't worry about how much money the rich have. It doesn't affect you.

A lot of the debt is owed to social security, because the gov't has been borrowing from that account. Effectively, the social security surplus has allowed the gov't to cut taxes on wealthy and make up the difference by taxing poor people under the social security banner. That game is about up.

Most of the rest of the debt is money the gov't owns it's own people. That means that instead of taxing the money needed to operate, the govt decided to keep taxes lower, and borrow the money instead. Well, if you don't mind federal debt, then keep taxes low, and borrow the difference. If you want to manage the debt, then take your money in taxes instead of borrowing.

This is getting better and better. Only a few hours away and we have voices of putting cup of 50 Mil and one house per millionaire and the rest is up for confiscation and collectivization.

Graooga said, "What do you suggest then, they are 'filthy rich' lets take their "resources" and divide them equally? Who should decide what to divide? At what amount of their wealth you let them stay and at what you want them to share with the rest of us? Aren't Waltons entitled to passing on to their heirs the fruits of their labor they created? Who goes and who stays? What criteria would you use to decide?"

This is why I like your original question about what harm does it do. No. I've pointed out before that redistribution doesn't work because it depends on the accumulation of wealth (and the associated overhead waste) in the first place. Useful activities are those which ADD to the future of the environment and the species more than they consume in resources. Natural systems have predators and other negative feedback mechanisms. I'm just saying we need an effective feedback mechanism that ensures the sustainability of our activities (something REAL, not the Invisible Hand Job). People are stupid. No smarter than yeast in the immediate term and more consumptive of their own future in the long term. Most don't know about the coercion methods they are inundated with, and are addicted to consumption of resources without any effective moderating forces. The wealthy are just King Consumers. I'm probably more aware than anyone I've met (except maybe my wife) of the methods used against us, but I'm as bad if not worse, as anyone else when it comes to falling for these tricks. I've just been graced with the luxury of time to think about them.
Most decisions are made by people based on whether we have money in our wallets and see something shiny or tasty on the shelf. The difference between these two things is what determines whether we waste resources or not (and for a few, effective parental or experiential conditioning against our animal nature...something amplified in commerce and marketing).
I suggest a sales tax appropriate to all overhead costs, raised until the air and water are clean. People will adapt to the "hardship" of not having so much commerce (they would have more money because they wouldn't be as motivated to spend it, and they would receive full pay for their work without income taxes). Sales taxes are a lot less regressive than a dead planet. Even the rich know that they need safety mechanisms in their factories (now) because the guy operating the press needs fingers to push the buttons.
The rich should be the first to initiate a feedback system (listen to Buffet), IF they were actually as smart and intentional as we are told they are ("If you're so rich, why ain't you so smart.").
You seem to think the poor are at fault for being ignorant and addicted to consumption in a system of ignorance and coercion that the rich created to get rich.
Yeah...right....and the German citizens were all Jew-haters and murderers.
Write this down and mull it over: "People do stuff. They have reasons for doing stuff. IN THAT ORDER."
When the aggressive strains of human beings know this, they take advantage of it in myriad ways. Most often through a story of some "threat" to our property or security that MUST be fought in some expensive way, but only if we all (except them) work together to fight it. The most hilarious was GW telling people to go out and buy stuff to fight tare-ists (before that, it was Loyalists, then Rebs, then the Kaiser, then the Nazis, then the Commies). The multiple facets of that propaganda are just jaw-droppingly bold. WE have to go out and consume the planet before the TERRORISTS destroy us.
sigh.

Did you forget that every price you pay for everything you buy is directly determined by how much other people can pay?
That's fine, except when other people can pay a lot more than you without ever doing anything useful, perhaps by merely owning the very ground you live on.
Then you lose twice:
1. You pay them rent for land that they did not create.
2. They use that rent to drive up the cost of living for you.

No every price is determine by supply and demend. If supply and demend is not CONTROLLED by anybody and anything then prices should reach equilibrium.

Now let's talk about "CONTROLLED" factor. Government can control with their fiscal policy and/or regulations, big business or 'billionaires' can control by creating monopoly or oligopoly of course. Monopoly and oligopoly is prohibited by law and should be looked after and prosecuted. There is also laissez-faire where everything rebalances finally and finds its way through the natural forces and when no one intervenes.

Basically your billinaires have to stop purchasing and renting houses because there is going to be too many of them and the majority of your renters would stop renting at the price they cannot afford any longer and it won't be a good business for investors either.

If you took all the cash from the "rich". People would strip all the goods out of the stores sit at home and belch. Drink beer buy all the autos up and would not go to work anymore. The "rich" would be fucked and would have to start all over again. The guy in the "youtube" is a classic pretzel headed butt kisser. In fact the guy is a tube as far as I'm concerned

The guys clearly kissing someones. He's trying to get ahead clearly, ass backwards of course. Send him this graphic. He can put on his TV so his family can admire it.

People think usury is commonality and cooperation. They suck your blood dummy. Go once again to a Large theological library. You will find they left and entire paragraph off. Labor in exchange for food or anything other goods are fixed at a equal exchange. Bargaining for goods is NOT. They did just the opposite. Throw the "socialism" misnomer in there. You going for whats right however what they set in front of you is twisted. The prices are still fixed in socialism to exact labor once again with lending and loans also. See deep down inside you know and most everyone else does. That socialism is closer to that paragraph they left out. They love to play with that. Because once again it winds up at usury. Your struggling for parity. The parity of that missing paragraph in the book. Anything beyond that winds up in division once again. People think my insults are funny and daring. Really they aren't all that daring. These people are lowlifes and nothing more.

What your thinking is possibly. I want the same deal as a Hebrew would get. in that book. Otherwise I'm not doing business. Thats smart. Your prerogative too. I know if I don't like the deal. I don't take it. Your not a drone. Then again at this point maybe you are. Don't feel too bad however. They eat their own too, daily.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/TgAlZFX1Rvw

So the way it should work. You may need food. However your entitled to half of what you labored for. NOT in exchange for "other" goods, especially from who you owe. So once again your not trading labor for goods. They will fix the price then your really fucked. However your entitled to half of what your labor produced so you can extract yourself from having to be in any kind of debt.

Point is to you well you live in an "idiot nation". They are all exchanging labor for goods. Not half of what they produced. Thing you need to do is go look in the mirror and say. Do I really want to work for the lowlifes like the rest of the idiots? Why make a deal with swindler or thief to begin with is the point. Its not smart.

A simple example of how far they will go. Take a grocery cart pusher. You might say thats nice. Giving the poor guy a jobbie. I look at it and say fuck their even screwing that guy too.

So heres a question for the unlearned of course. How do you split half the goods brought on by the labor of a grocery cart pusher. Thats the point. Here's where it gets highly embarrasing for the people of the United States. I see a people embarrased daily. Embarrassed to be doing what they do even. See the deal is when you exchange labor for goods via coupon. They can have you doing anything including cleaning toilets, shining shoes, sweeping floors etc. Once again these people deal in hard goods and assets. The core emination for everything they do. The people in this country can't even get that close to it so they pretty much "buff the wood" for the debt merchants. You think hey its swift for a country thats weaponized going in for goodies. However the country owes and owes and owes. In reality its default to the debt merchants. They let you think otherwise. That you make out well with the booty gotten. However all that does is sooth a big strong warriors ego thats in hock up to his gun turrets cause he just "shot off" all his borrowed ammo and well your further in debt also.

Mick Russom says

You are a crap parent, then. Simple. Family suffers the more you gecko types try and pretend you can take over the world with anything other than luck or theft.

That's pretty funny. With that kind of astute reasoning and psychic abilities to divine my family/parenting skills from afar you ought to be able to put poor GG to shame in a week in the options pits.

I think we are doing OK;
house paid for
cars paid for
no revolving debt
plenty in the bank for later
1 kid graduating early from UC with honors, with just enough student loan debt so they will "need" to get a job - the other about to go national with their apparel designs. I hope they both make 10X what I did.

I only work now because I want too.

Perhaps you were talking to yourself? You might try working for a change - it's a great character builder..

nosimpsonsneedapply says

Mick Russom says
You are a crap parent, then. Simple. Family suffers the more you gecko types try and pretend you can take over the world with anything other than luck or theft.

I don't know this guy Mick but I know your intent. I had a guy that owed me on a mortgage. One of my rentals. One day he had me on one phone and a guy on another line from his work. He was going on and on about how much he made last week. Talking about 25k or 30k. All the time this guy is 3 months behind on making his payments to me. I'm sitting there going what the fuck is this bullshit with this stockbroker fuck anyway. Hes behind on me and he's behind on one of my other friends he had 2 rentals with. WTF. Christ I even thought hey fuck I'm tempted to. Then again. I've known to many guys like him. Your right that entire movie Wall Street was to get people interested. More importantly the swindel the stock market is took off not long after that movie. Its nothing but paper with no asset attached.

ArtimusMaxtor says

Its nothing but paper with no asset attached.

Nothing is worth any more than what we all (or at least one buyer and one seller) agree it is worth on any given moment in time. That holds true for paper or tulips or gold coins or brick and mortar.

Have house prices dropped 50% or more in some markets in the last 6 years?

Seems to me if a house was built in 2005 and sold in 2006 it would be the same house in 2012 - just selling @ half off.

YMMV of course.

Good question. Henry George would say you should not tax any capital (things created by people) but instead tax only land, which no one created.

But maybe a small tax on certain kinds of capital is also good, perhaps with an exemption up to the median amount of capital owned. So you'd pay no tax on the first $100K of asset or something like that.

Sales tax is a tax on transactions, not assets. Sales tax discourages commerce in the same way that income tax discourages work.

What you really want to discourage is non-productive rent-seeking.

George had some very good points.

I think, however, we must be careful to consider what productivity we gain by forking over too much to government. Government is, in its most basic form, nothing more than concentrated force. After all, everything government does can be done voluntarily through free association and liberty. What government provides is a stick of enforcement for a prevailing wisdom -- or a connected political body / beneficiary class. The latter tends to dominate government, keeping much of the benefits for itself, while placating the masses just barely enough to avoid being overthrown.

Not that I have a problem with George's land value tax ideas, though.