GameboyRMH said:... Society requires people's work to function..
I think that I found where we disagree on a very basic level. A well functioning society that works the way most people like requires work from most people. Society, in its most base meaning and realized in almost any one of an infinite possible iterations has no such requirement. We can function without so many rules, it just wouldn't be to your (or the majorities?) particular liking...
In reply to GameboyRMH :
I would argue that is less a moral ideal than a philosophical one. Most poor people don't hate rich folk for being rich and buying rich people things. It's something they aspire to. Once in awhile it is even achieved. But a wholesale removal of such material things would be a challenge far beyond the scope of a simple tax discussion.
That said, as I've gotten older I start to agree with tb - how much is enough? I have so many "things" yet the level of enjoyment I get from them is limited due to a simple lack of time.
GameboyRMH said:Enyar said:I get where you're coming from, I just don't think you should legislate your way into deciding how rich someone should be or what toys they should have. If people were smarter we would be taking advantage of a system already in place to control this now. VOTE WITH YOUR WALLETS PEOPLE!!!
What's a practical alternative to legislation? Not one that requires me to vote with my wallet so that I have to live like the Unabomber to carry it out in my attempt to boycott every company with an overpaid CEO. That's so impractical that at scale, it's impossible.
Let the market decide
GameboyRMH said:... Society requires people's work to function.
I don't actually think that is correct.
First off, I think it is backwards. Society is not some pre-existing entity that determines how people need to interact with it. PEOPLE create societies as a means of peaceably coexisting and nurturing community and individual needs and growth.
But even if I take it at face value, I don't think society needs people to work. Society needs people to produce.
Production may be making physical products, or it may be contributing to the health and welfare of the society.
We have decided to measure ourselves by the money we receive in exchange for the hours we spend. That's why we get upset when CEOs receive huge compensation for minimal hours.
Society needs people to bring wisdom, knowledge, experience, creativity, inspiration, innovation, encouragement, human interaction, shared ethos, community purpose, and sometimes (but not necessarily) work.
We err when we convert the hours we have into an hourly dollar quantity.
In the construction world in which I have lived most of my life, I am always uneasy converting my value to dollars per hour. And somehow, we reward hours after the first 40 with time and a half (which means I am not going to be productive during the first 40 hours). I'd much rather be paid for my productivity, or my knowledge or skill. Don't pay me $20 per hour to hang doors. Pay me $20 per door to hang them, and let ME determine how quickly and efficiently I can hang them (and therefore how much I get paid). Don't pay me $25 per hour to supervise a jobsite. Pay me a solid percentage of the value of the project to get it done in a timely and professional manner because of my advanced skill set, so I can complete it and move on to the next job.
tb said:It is interesting that I am also thinking about immutable traits, like how I am the same person now as 39 years ago. I am not convinced that my income is a suitable metric to use in order to treat me differently on an annual basis... The annual basis makes a little sense but I still have not been told why income inequality should equal legal inequality. If we taxed people based on height you and I would either be in trouble or doing really well, depending...
If it is all about dollars made, Why? There is much more to life than numbers on a sheet of paper...
The reason for setting your tax bracket based on dollars of income rather than some other thing like height really comes down to fairness and practicality.
It's fair because it's a very easy trait to change - there are ways to effectively make less, most directly charging less for your services, so you're never forced into a higher tax bracket. Also because the government can be sure they're taking a fraction of something somebody has (or should have unless they've forgotten they have to pay taxes and spent it all!) rather than asking for something somebody may not have (for example if more height meant a higher tax bracket, I'd immediately be up E36 M3 creek, while Peter Dinklage would be laughing all the way to the bank).
It's practical because it's a very direct and very fair way to address income inequality. You only have to know how much a person made each year and you don't have to touch what they already have. Any other method would require more knowledge, would be more invasive and would have a greater potential for unintended side-effects.
Also sadly there's not much more to life than those numbers on a sheet of paper. Money determines the limits of everything you can (legally) do in life and how well it can go for you. You can even be made taller or shorter with enough money, although it's a very painful set of operations.
In reply to SVreX :
Well said, as usual.
Why did so many people decide that money was so damn important. It never tucked me in at night...
tb said:GameboyRMH said:... Society requires people's work to function..I think that I found where we disagree on a very basic level. A well functioning society that works the way most people like requires work from most people. Society, in its most base meaning and realized in almost any one of an infinite possible iterations has no such requirement. We can function without so many rules, it just wouldn't be to your (or the majorities?) particular liking...
Makes sense. I assume a vast majority of people would prefer a well-functioning society, I know I would!
In reply to GameboyRMH :
A huge percentage of people eat at McDonalds even though it is mostly E36 M3ty poison, don't confuse popular with correct!
But really, I appreciate the intelligent explanation. Our differences are minor.
Actual offer: I will give anyone every cent I have if they can make me healthy again and never regret it. I will not hold my breath...
SVreX said:GameboyRMH said:... Society requires people's work to function.I don't actually think that is correct.
First off, I think it is backwards. Society is not some pre-existing entity that determines how people need to interact with it. PEOPLE create societies as a means of peaceably coexisting and nurturing community and individual needs and growth.
But even if I take it at face value, I don't think society needs people to work. Society needs people to produce.
Production may be making physical products, or it may be contributing to the health and welfare of the society.
We have decided to measure ourselves by the money we receive in exchange for the hours we spend. That's why we get upset when CEOs receive huge compensation for minimal hours.
Society needs people to bring wisdom, knowledge, experience, creativity, inspiration, innovation, encouragement, human interaction, shared ethos, community purpose, and sometimes (but not necessarily) work.
We err when we convert the hours we have into an hourly dollar quantity.
In the construction world in which I have lived most of my life, I am always uneasy converting my value to dollars per hour. And somehow, we reward hours after the first 40 with time and a half (which means I am not going to be productive during the first 40 hours). I'd much rather be paid for my productivity, or my knowledge or skill. Don't pay me $20 per hour to hang doors. Pay me $20 per door to hang them, and let ME determine how quickly and efficiently I can hang them (and therefore how much I get paid). Don't pay me $25 per hour to supervise a jobsite. Pay me a solid percentage of the value of the project to get it done in a timely and professional manner because of my advanced skill set, so I can complete it and move on to the next job.
You're right that society really needs production rather than work, although production is the result of work - it might be mutliplied by some kind of technology, which is also the result of work - so there's not a huge difference between the two.
But I'm wary of rewarding production rather than work because it's so easy to misattribute the source of production, that's basically why such staggering inequality exists today, it's really the result of a form of plagiarism. It's much more difficult to misattribute work.
I know I pay too much!
Also, PLEASE no to luxury and vice purchases at higher percentages. That’s the only thing that keeps some of us going!! 
FWIW:
I find it highly amusing that I pay professionals a lot of money to do this E36 M3 when they are probably not as smart as my racing buddies...
Only on GRM can you get an amateur bout of Marx & Engle vs. Hobbes & Locke debated more clearly than proper oil selection!
In reply to GameboyRMH :
What about the engineer/programmer that designs a machine that can pump out widgets for a tenth the cost and ten times as fast. Does he get a 10th of the wage of the luddite who is making them by hand?
Enyar said:In reply to GameboyRMH :
What about the engineer/programmer that designs a machine that can pump out widgets for a tenth the cost and ten times as fast. Does he get a 10th of the wage of the luddite who is making them by hand?
He should get an amount of pay that is commensurate to the level of skill required to design the machine and the time it took to do it. I'm not saying that manual labor is more valuable than knowledge work - although building something complicated by hand can also be skilled work that deserves high pay.
In reply to GameboyRMH :
But isn't that we have already? We've decided that the guy who designed the widget machine should make much more than the backyard widget maker. If the widget engineer/programmer spent 500 hours designing and building the machine, but then sat on his ass for the next 40 years while his machine pumped out 100 widgets a day for a dollar a piece...does he still get paid for that last widget or not?
I know plenty of people that produce with very little and even more people that work their ass off and produce nothing. It's ridiculous to me to value work over production. Sounds communist!
I can't get behind this weird idea that somehow a McDonalds worker who can't figure out how to get a burger right has any right to set an earning baseline for someone who is running a nuclear reactor or discovering the cure for cancer.
You can equivalate pay after you equivalate duty, sacrifice, and commitment.
Now if you want to set a minimum that your society is going to accept that keeps the young, old, sick, stupid and lazy alive that's admirable, but if you want to limit how high someone willing to go above and beyond can get then I can't possibly agree.
And the issue with taxes is that we all have to contribute, but those who can afford to get very little back from the transaction can't stand the idea of someone else getting even more, and those that want more are seldom the ones who would have to pay for it.
Enyar said:But isn't that we have already? We've decided that the guy who designed the widget machine should make much more than the backyard widget maker. If the widget engineer/programmer spent 500 hours designing and building the machine, but then sat on his ass for the next 40 years while his machine pumped out 100 widgets a day for a dollar a piece...does he still get paid for that last widget or not?
Perhaps by coincidence, since there isn't as much of a work/pay disparity in the middle ranges of people who claim to work for a living, relatively speaking. There's a relatively small problem at the lower end of worker pay and a galactic monster of a problem at the upper end.
oldopelguy said:I can't get behind this weird idea that somehow a McDonalds worker who can't figure out how to get a burger right has any right to set an earning baseline for someone who is running a nuclear reactor or discovering the cure for cancer.
You can equivalate pay after you equivalate duty, sacrifice, and commitment.
The burger-flipper isn't setting the nuclear reactor operator or cancer researcher's pay, all of society is (as in, all voters). But he could be an excellent and dedicated burger-flipper, BTW.
I find it hilarious that you bring up duty, sacrifice, and commitment in regard to pay, since there seems to be something of an inverse relationship between all 3 of those things and pay. If you mess up (or even fail to overextend yourself) in a low-paying job, you get E36 M3canned, but do it as a CEO (who most likely went through life never having to sacrifice or commit to anything and doesn't understand the concept of duty) and you get a golden parachute worth more than that E36 M3canned worker could've made in his life at that job if he had all the duty, sacrifice and commitment in the world.
In reply to GameboyRMH :
If it were such a big problem, why aren't people lining up in droves to get those high paying low effort jobs?
I don't think it's as big of a problem as you think.
Enyar said:In reply to GameboyRMH :
If it were such a big problem, why aren't people lining up in droves to get those high paying low effort jobs?
I don't think it's as big of a problem as you think.
It's a big problem. People ARE lining up for those jobs, everyone would like to be a CEO, but only a few get chosen...by other CEOs on the board of that company. The CEOs are all on the boards of each other's companies, and they all vote each other's pay up.
Yes, it completely defies "free market" forces, funny how that works...
jj said:frenchyd said:so let’s assume you make 800 million dollars this year. If you do your taxes correctly you can qualify for food stamps or welfare!! Technically you aren’t in the top percentage.
Do you have a source for this statement? I live in a mobile home, but make way to much to get food stamps.
Google Warren Buffet and taxes.
SVreX said:Flat tax does not mean the same tax on all products. It means everyone pays the same tax on the same products.
A flat tax could easily also be progressive.
For example, if groceries and clothing were taxed at 0%, most consumer products were taxed at 15%, luxury boats, cars and planes were taxed at 35%, and vices were taxed at 75%, we would instantly have a progressive flat tax system. The rich and the poor would all pay the same tax rate, but we could direct the progressiveness by the products selected. Most of us would pay 15% on the majority of our purchases except groceries.
It would NOT be a greater impact on the poor.
Progressive tax rates and flat tax are NOT mutually exclusive.
Why not compromise? A small simple 2% sales tax on everything. From the roll of steel GM buys to stamp out fenders to the bubble gum your kid buys. Everything no exception.
Then an income tax set high enough so the working poor pay no taxes while the very richest pay 15%.
No 77,000 pages of exclusions. No exceptions, no exclusions.
Make it an ego thing. The top tax payers get a gold star or get to eat at the White House etc.
GameboyRMH said:Enyar said:In reply to GameboyRMH :
If it were such a big problem, why aren't people lining up in droves to get those high paying low effort jobs?
I don't think it's as big of a problem as you think.
It's a big problem. People ARE lining up for those jobs, everyone would like to be a CEO, but only a few get chosen...by other CEOs on the board of that company. The CEOs are all on the boards of each other's companies, and they all vote each other's pay up.
Yes, it completely defies "free market" forces, funny how that works...
You would think that if that were the case and price didn't match performance that shareholders would quickly fix that.
frenchyd said:SVreX said:Flat tax does not mean the same tax on all products. It means everyone pays the same tax on the same products.
A flat tax could easily also be progressive.
For example, if groceries and clothing were taxed at 0%, most consumer products were taxed at 15%, luxury boats, cars and planes were taxed at 35%, and vices were taxed at 75%, we would instantly have a progressive flat tax system. The rich and the poor would all pay the same tax rate, but we could direct the progressiveness by the products selected. Most of us would pay 15% on the majority of our purchases except groceries.
It would NOT be a greater impact on the poor.
Progressive tax rates and flat tax are NOT mutually exclusive.
Why not compromise? A small simple 2% sales tax on everything. From the roll of steel GM buys to stamp out fenders to the bubble gum your kid buys. Everything no exception.
Then an income tax set high enough so the working poor pay no taxes while the very richest pay 15%.
No 77,000 pages of exclusions. No exceptions, no exclusions.
Make it an ego thing. The top tax payers get a gold star or get to eat at the White House etc.
What do we do with the massive deficit that comes with that plan?
Enyar said:GameboyRMH said:It's a big problem. People ARE lining up for those jobs, everyone would like to be a CEO, but only a few get chosen...by other CEOs on the board of that company. The CEOs are all on the boards of each other's companies, and they all vote each other's pay up.
Yes, it completely defies "free market" forces, funny how that works...
You would think that if that were the case and price didn't match performance that shareholders would quickly fix that.
Most of a CEO's pay is in stock options, so it doesn't appear to the shareholders as a labor cost. And they don't care about where the labor costs go, so much as the total labor cost.
Enyar said:You would think that if that were the case and price didn't match performance that shareholders would quickly fix that.
You would absolutely think that. That's how capitalism and the free market are supposed to work. I love those things, (cue Austin Powers voice, "Groovy, Yay Capitalism!"), they foster innovation and replace deadweight.
Now consider the alternative. I just received the agenda for the annual shareholder meeting of one of the companies I invest in. Three groups own 33% of the stock (this is a very large, NYSE listed company, not a small business). Those three groups are 1.) the Chairman of the Board, 2.) the CEO, and 3.) the rest of the Board of Director members. This means that before anyone else has a say, one-third of the votes are already cast. It takes a simple majority to decide most issues. The next 5 largest investors are all large investment holding companies (Vanguard, BlackRock, BOA, etc.) that typically take a passive approach and either waive or pass their voting rights to someone more familiar with the company (such as a Board Member). If you add all of those groups up, that is......72.45% of outstanding shares spoken for. So not much hope for change. And that's not capitalism, that's crony capitalism. And, contrary to my first paragraph, I berkeleying HATE crony capitalism.
As I get older, I begin to think more and more that the game is rigged. It is not that you can't win, this is still America and opportunities abound, but the game sure is biased against you if you're in the bottom 90%.
If you've got 15 minutes, the Last Week Tonight segment on the Wealth Gap is worth a watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfgSEwjAeno
TLDR, skip to the lottery segment (time starting at 12:04) at the end.
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