All your questions are answered here: www.fairtax.org
A good read, something to dabble on. Thanks
You can see immediately why that makes the system much worse because people can survive on the same amounts of expenditure. A person on $30k a year can live on $20k of expenses and so can someone making $100m a year. If you remove the income tax rates, it just allows the wealthy to grow their income to even more obscene levels while contributing hardly anything to public services. It's dressed up to look like it's 'fair' by suggesting someone who earns $100m should contribute similar amounts to public services as someone on $30k and they shouldn't. They should contribute more because the system has rewarded them more and the additional expense is still a fractional amount of their earnings and doesn't affect their quality of life one bit.
A transaction tax can take away income tax too but it taxes every transaction as it goes into someone's assets so someone doing enough transactions should pay enough through compound transactions to pay an actually fair amount. They may have to scale the rate based on individual transaction size to even it out but it would mostly be transparent.
Thanks for your take on this. Yes, it indeed seems ridiculous and preposterous to throw our current whole system out the window and implement an untested system, in any country for that matter.
I think we're all better off with the current system and keep on refining it. Adjust it to (global) changes accordingly, all with the understanding that we might never 'get the perfect system' in place - it's all we can do, really.
I think we're all better off with the current system and keep on refining it. Adjust it to (global) changes accordingly, all with the understanding that we might never 'get the perfect system' in place - it's all we can do, really.
I think the current system is bad too. It relies on companies being ethical and has an arbitrary timeframe implemented. Everybody just accepts that financials and taxes are to be sorted on a yearly basis but there isn't much reason to do this. Relying on businesses tracking their own expenses and then reporting them honestly/accurately isn't working as they exploit international laws. If the taxes were taken off during every transaction, there's no timeframe. Shops have to keep revenue for the year and then right at the end work out the profit and take a chunk out of it for taxes and pay it manually. With a transaction system, as soon as you pay for some soup, 1% of it can get skimmed and sent by a financial institution to fund public services. Every single day tax money would be collected to fund public services. Someone doing a $100k transaction would have to pay a percentage immediately or wouldn't be allowed to do the transaction. There's no volunteering of financial reporting, it works internationally, it works if you switch currencies. There's no notion of theft any more than sales tax and the percentage could be lower than sales tax. It could put an end to high frequency traders trying to compound their growth percentages because they'd have to pay 1% on each transaction, which might be more than their profit.
This system could be implemented in a single town to see how it works and scale it up but they have to get rid of physical cash. They'd have to switch to paying by mobile phone or something.
Thanks for your take on this. Yes, it indeed seems ridiculous and preposterous to throw our current whole system out the window and implement an untested system, in any country for that matter.
I think we're all better off with the current system and keep on refining it. Adjust it to (global) changes accordingly, all with the understanding that we might never 'get the perfect system' in place - it's all we can do, really.
I think the current system is bad too. It relies on companies being ethical and has an arbitrary timeframe implemented. Everybody just accepts that financials and taxes are to be sorted on a yearly basis but there isn't much reason to do this. Relying on businesses tracking their own expenses and then reporting them honestly/accurately isn't working as they exploit international laws. If the taxes were taken off during every transaction, there's no timeframe. Shops have to keep revenue for the year and then right at the end work out the profit and take a chunk out of it for taxes and pay it manually. With a transaction system, as soon as you pay for some soup, 1% of it can get skimmed and sent by a financial institution to fund public services. Every single day tax money would be collected to fund public services. Someone doing a $100k transaction would have to pay a percentage immediately or wouldn't be allowed to do the transaction. There's no volunteering of financial reporting, it works internationally, it works if you switch currencies. There's no notion of theft any more than sales tax and the percentage could be lower than sales tax. It could put an end to high frequency traders trying to compound their growth percentages because they'd have to pay 1% on each transaction, which might be more than their profit.
This system could be implemented in a single town to see how it works and scale it up but they have to get rid of physical cash. They'd have to switch to paying by mobile phone or something.
Marvin, you have a problem with almost anyone you consider "rich."
Marvin, you have a problem with almost anyone you consider "rich."
I'm not sure how that came from what I wrote there but it's clear that the whole system needs a balance. It's not about hating on anyone for being rich any more than hating on a pimp for exploiting impoverished women. The circumstances shouldn't exist for the exploitation to take place. The rich would still be rich under a more balanced system and still live a very lavish lifestyle.
The danger in how the system works now is that the reward system is heavily weighted towards certain job roles, more and more towards roles in the financial industry and executives/managers. These job roles typically create nothing of direct value, they just place bets on or direct the people who do. That creates the perception that these people are the value creators. Let's have an experiment then and ship them all off to their own little island with all their riches and executive titles and see what happens. What happens is they realize that without the people at the bottom, they can't do anything at all. They aren't engineers, artists or anything else. They'd all die within a week because the money they have is only as good as what they can exploit with it and with no one to exploit, they have nothing.
The way this message gets through is with labor strikes:
This can bring their companies to a standstill and that's when they see that without these people going about their business every day, they don't get the billions in profits so give something back. Rather than minimum wage increases, perhaps there ought to be laws that say a company should give workers shares in the company so that it's a reward based system. If the company profits are down, there's no increase in wages. If the company makes billions off the backs of these workers, they get a dividend reward. It can be non-voting shares but the share amount should be based on their role in the company. There would have to be safeguards in the event that shares go up dramatically and the workers all just cash in and retire but that wouldn't be such a bad thing as it creates new jobs for new workers to go through the same process.
I'm not sure how that came from what I wrote there but it's clear that the whole system needs a balance. It's not about hating on anyone for being rich any more than hating on a pimp for exploiting impoverished women. The circumstances shouldn't exist for the exploitation to take place. The rich would still be rich under a more balanced system and still live a very lavish lifestyle.
The danger in how the system works now is that the reward system is heavily weighted towards certain job roles, more and more towards roles in the financial industry and executives/managers. These job roles typically create nothing of direct value, they just place bets on or direct the people who do. That creates the perception that these people are the value creators. Let's have an experiment then and ship them all off to their own little island with all their riches and executive titles and see what happens. What happens is they realize that without the people at the bottom, they can't do anything at all. They aren't engineers, artists or anything else. They'd all die within a week because the money they have is only as good as what they can exploit with it and with no one to exploit, they have nothing.
The way this message gets through is with labor strikes:
This can bring their companies to a standstill and that's when they see that without these people going about their business every day, they don't get the billions in profits so give something back. Rather than minimum wage increases, perhaps there ought to be laws that say a company should give workers shares in the company so that it's a reward based system. If the company profits are down, there's no increase in wages. If the company makes billions off the backs of these workers, they get a dividend reward. It can be non-voting shares but the share amount should be based on their role in the company. There would have to be safeguards in the event that shares go up dramatically and the workers all just cash in and retire but that wouldn't be such a bad thing as it creates new jobs for new workers to go through the same process.
You can quote any source you want, but when it comes down to stealing the fruits of someone else's labor for your own selfish desires or needs, that is just plain wrong. The US should adopt the FairTax and eliminate all attempts at social engineering and political payback with the use of exemptions, write-offs, incentives, etc. The tax code is a disgrace and by allowing politicians to corrupt things to the point of endangering the economy and viability of businesses that operate in the US, things must drastically change.
Fast food workers who push for higher wages will be replaced with automation. Their labor is not worth what the president and these unions (the real source behind this "movement" to increase wages) are pushing. As costs of labor exceed the alternatives, the alternatives will be used.
when it comes down to stealing the fruits of someone else's labor for your own selfish desires or needs, that is just plain wrong.
You're describing the same problem I am but redefining the theft and labor. If someone invests capital in a successful company like Apple (e.g Icahn) and the tens of thousands of employees work away while Icahn is off lying on a beach, how can you call any gain he makes from the stock going up fruits of his labor? He's on the beach, he's not contributing to the value increase in the stock at all.
Hedge fund managers are betting with the money from their investors, they don't have to pay for losses, they just gain hugely from the profits.
If that's the only industry that eventually makes a reasonable work/reward ratio, is everyone supposed to migrate to being a hedge fund manager? We just end up with a whole world filled with gamblers passing each other's money around.
Having risk-free job roles like hedge-fund management are the kinds of job roles you would condemn in government and yet you'd applaud a hedge fund manager for taking home billions in a year doing only good for himself and especially if they paid no tax. This obviously makes no sense because you promote self-interest so why would you feel better about someone doing no good for you and condemn the government taking money from them to support you? The latter is in your self-interest.
The US should adopt the FairTax and eliminate all attempts at social engineering and political payback with the use of exemptions, write-offs, incentives, etc. The tax code is a disgrace and by allowing politicians to corrupt things to the point of endangering the economy and viability of businesses that operate in the US, things must drastically change.
Businesses helped put the incentives into the tax code so I don't see how businesses are going to struggle. I agree with changing the tax structure but not the way you'd like as your suggestion is designed to skew income inequality far worse than it already is.
Fast food workers who push for higher wages will be replaced with automation. Their labor is not worth what the president and these unions (the real source behind this "movement" to increase wages) are pushing. As costs of labor exceed the alternatives, the alternatives will be used.
I'm all for robots replacing menial jobs but for some reason you have a desire to punish poorer workers and create a whole class of destitute people. I don't see what's to be gained from that. Do you think that the world would be a better place if you have just a fraction of the population with more wealth than they know what to do with and over half of the entire population in poverty and homeless? This is close to the situation now taking into account the whole world, not just developed world. People don't just die y'know, that would just create a completely unmanageable situation for the wealthy and poor alike and assets would be seized by the government one way or another to fix it because that's what they are there to do - maintain a civil society.
You don't place an upper bound on how much an individual needs to own and I don't understand why. The world has limited resources, what's the benefit in ownership of most of it going to a tiny fraction of people? The whole reason the resources are there is to improve the quality of life so if someone has an amazing quality of life then taking significantly more than that is unnecessary and only serves to create a lower quality of life for someone else. That just seems sadistic.
I think we're all better off with the current system and keep on refining it. Adjust it to (global) changes accordingly, all with the understanding that we might never 'get the perfect system' in place - it's all we can do, really.
I think the current system is bad too. It relies on companies being ethical and has an arbitrary timeframe implemented. Everybody just accepts that financials and taxes are to be sorted on a yearly basis but there isn't much reason to do this. Relying on businesses tracking their own expenses and then reporting them honestly/accurately isn't working as they exploit international laws. If the taxes were taken off during every transaction, there's no timeframe. Shops have to keep revenue for the year and then right at the end work out the profit and take a chunk out of it for taxes and pay it manually. With a transaction system, as soon as you pay for some soup, 1% of it can get skimmed and sent by a financial institution to fund public services. Every single day tax money would be collected to fund public services. Someone doing a $100k transaction would have to pay a percentage immediately or wouldn't be allowed to do the transaction. There's no volunteering of financial reporting, it works internationally, it works if you switch currencies. There's no notion of theft any more than sales tax and the percentage could be lower than sales tax. It could put an end to high frequency traders trying to compound their growth percentages because they'd have to pay 1% on each transaction, which might be more than their profit.
This system could be implemented in a single town to see how it works and scale it up but they have to get rid of physical cash. They'd have to switch to paying by mobile phone or something.
That's an interesting take you have there. That might work; are there any people in government dabbling on this idea?
Getting cash out of our system is another thing entirely; its ramifications will be vast, but I've heard it before, many times actually. The first European country to adopt cash was Sweden, and now it looks like they might be the first to drop it, with Bjoern Ulvaeus (ABBA) being a proponent:
Marvin, you have a problem with almost anyone you consider "rich."
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpamSandwich
You can quote any source you want, but when it comes down to stealing the fruits of someone else's labor for your own selfish desires or needs, that is just plain wrong. The US should adopt the FairTax and eliminate all attempts at social engineering and political payback with the use of exemptions, write-offs, incentives, etc. The tax code is a disgrace and by allowing politicians to corrupt things to the point of endangering the economy and viability of businesses that operate in the US, things must drastically change.
Fast food workers who push for higher wages will be replaced with automation. Their labor is not worth what the president and these unions (the real source behind this "movement" to increase wages) are pushing. As costs of labor exceed the alternatives, the alternatives will be used.
There's a problem in responding to anything like this. You essentially put forth a line in the sand mentality, so you aren't really discussing any of it, merely rationalizing preconceived notions. I've done the same thing without realizing it, but it's so obvious here. I'm surprised you don't see this in your own words. As for automation (not sure why you mentioned that), it's inevitable in some areas. I would suggest to you that it's important to consider what will constitute either entry level work or (in relative terms) unskilled labor for the next generation rather than focus on protectionism and whether something can be automated. I'm also with Marvin on high frequency trading. Its purpose is merely to siphon currency, much like other modern financial products. I also don't understand why you respond that way to Marvin. He's one of the most polite people on here, far more than myself.
That might work; are there any people in government dabbling on this idea?
I doubt the government would be considering such a setup because for one thing, they've demonstrated they are in the back pocket of the financial industry so I expect them to maintain a system that doesn't harm them. The tax system also has controls in that they can tax certain products more highly than others like fuel, cigarettes, alcohol. They could still do this with a transaction tax but that would need to be accounted for - in a supermarket bill for example, cigarette and alcohol products would have to slightly increase the transaction fee.
The government also gets some benefits from yearly reporting because they can see which businesses are doing best and which are doing worst and which might be up to no good and make decisions on ways to help grow ones that are doing badly. This can also be done with transactions but there would have to be some privacy implemented.
Getting cash out of our system is another thing entirely; its ramifications will be vast, but I've heard it before, many times actually.
I think it could be very simple to get rid of cash, even for older people. Consider a small device less than 1/4 the size of a pocket calculator, very thin and with a thumbprint scanner or pin code buttons (thumbprint is better to prevent over-the-shoulder pin code stealing). Every transaction terminal would have a cellular or wifi connection of some sort. If someone needs to send cash to someone, they can just type the amount and validate with the pin and/or thumb. In a store, the amount would show on the device and again just type a code or use the thumb to validate it. An old person can easily press their thumb on a scanner and there can be similar withdrawal limits you get with a bank e.g $250 per day. If someone tried to mug an old person, the worst they could do is force them to send $250 to another digital device but they'd have to be near a data connection and the digital destination would be known.
The cash would come from an account with a bank or even things like Paypal. It would be like online banking, which currently uses small devices to log on but it would just be direct. Obviously people with smartphones can use those but for others, there can be this device and it can store multiple account links in different institutions.
I also don't understand why you respond that way to Marvin. He's one of the most polite people on here, far more than myself.
I think he's polite enough too, he just sticks to his opinion, which is fine. Different ways of thinking justify themselves through different outcomes. To people who admire and pursue the acquisition of wealth, systems that promote that would be favored. To people who put the welfare of human beings first would similarly favor systems that promote this. These two systems conflict a lot of the time and probably always will because it's a genetic conflict. Every day we have to make decisions between actions that promote our own success and well-being and ones that promote the common infrastructure that is necessary for that success to be meaningful. We don't all simply act in our own self-interest with no thought to other people because someone who did that wouldn't pay for anything, they'd just take it; they wouldn't be polite, they'd use force.
It's like a sports event. To win a race, someone can easily injure the other competitors and cross the line first. That would be acting entirely in their self-interest if simply crossing the line was the goal. That's how the finance industry thinks. Acquiring money is the goal no matter if weapons are being traded, if they are laundering drug money, if they are manipulating interest rates etc. There's no thought to the damage in achieving the goal. But winning a race like that isn't meaningful and the crowd watching would say it's not fair. This is what the current public opinion is of the finance industry among other things. What makes it worse is that the beneficiaries expect adulation for what they perceive to be success but they only get it from people who respect their goal.
There are criticisms to be made at both ends of the spectrum. There's a documentary showing an outcome where people take advantage of welfare:
There are stories about how self-made millionaires take advantage of the system too:
None of the outcomes there are good but the system we operate under can't unfairly promote one of them. Even if every one of say 50 families in that street lived on £500/month welfare for 50 years, that £15m is still tiny compared to the $200m that the broker there defrauded investors out of. We can't have a system that puts teenagers in prison for walking around with a handful of drugs but look the other way when a stock broker is using huge amounts of class A drugs:
"In some respects, my life was even worse than that. Although I'd say I did more quaaludes than cocaine."
We can't put a bank robber in prison for years if they steal only as much cash as they can carry and look the other way when banks defraud customers to the tune of billions. That's an unfair system.
"Debt is how the rich extract wealth from the rest of us, at home and abroad. Western capitalism is running out of serfs, slaves, colonies, immigrants, child labour and women as chattels. A new underclass must be created. Debt is the weapon of choice. Medical bills underlie more than 60% of bankruptcies in the US. The level of student debt has reached an eye-watering $1.2tn.
This is why the debate on the back-door privatisation of medical and education services in this country matters so much. The extraction of profit from these two key areas changes the social contract in a fundamental way. The idea is no longer that the state will educate you and keep you healthy, so that you may continue to contribute with both your work and your taxes. It has mutated instead into "you will borrow money from the state's private partners in order to become educated and stay healthy, so that you may continue to contribute to their bottom line". All of the 99%, in a very real way, work in part for an assortment of financial institutions, largely invisible and certainly unaccountable.
Iceland's – strangely unreported – decision to write down mortgage debt for its citizens, undermines that notion. A rejection of traditional systems of credit and money as a response to austerity, such as in the barter markets of Volos in Greece and Turin in Italy undermines that notion. The Rolling Jubilee project undermines that notion in a significant way, by asking the sizzling question: "If a corporation is prepared to accept five cents on the dollar in exchange for our debts, if that is our debt's open market value, how much do we really owe?""
I doubt the government would be considering such a setup because for one thing, they've demonstrated they are in the back pocket of the financial industry so I expect them to maintain a system that doesn't harm them. The tax system also has controls in that they can tax certain products more highly than others like fuel, cigarettes, alcohol. They could still do this with a transaction tax but that would need to be accounted for - in a supermarket bill for example, cigarette and alcohol products would have to slightly increase the transaction fee.
The government also gets some benefits from yearly reporting because they can see which businesses are doing best and which are doing worst and which might be up to no good and make decisions on ways to help grow ones that are doing badly. This can also be done with transactions but there would have to be some privacy implemented.
So much for everyone wanting to create a better world for all, in spite of some ramifications it may have that would work out negatively for some. Good point though.
I think it could be very simple to get rid of cash, even for older people. Consider a small device less than 1/4 the size of a pocket calculator, very thin and with a thumbprint scanner or pin code buttons (thumbprint is better to prevent over-the-shoulder pin code stealing). Every transaction terminal would have a cellular or wifi connection of some sort. If someone needs to send cash to someone, they can just type the amount and validate with the pin and/or thumb. In a store, the amount would show on the device and again just type a code or use the thumb to validate it. An old person can easily press their thumb on a scanner and there can be similar withdrawal limits you get with a bank e.g $250 per day. If someone tried to mug an old person, the worst they could do is force them to send $250 to another digital device but they'd have to be near a data connection and the digital destination would be known.
The cash would come from an account with a bank or even things like Paypal. It would be like online banking, which currently uses small devices to log on but it would just be direct. Obviously people with smartphones can use those but for others, there can be this device and it can store multiple account links in different institutions.
While that may indeed be a solution, I think you (we?) are looking at this with our IT cap on. The elderly do not like change, in general. Take away cash and they'll be stupefied. No matter how simple tech may be designed, many elderly will adopt it slowly.
Comments
All your questions are answered here: www.fairtax.org
A good read, something to dabble on. Thanks
You can see immediately why that makes the system much worse because people can survive on the same amounts of expenditure. A person on $30k a year can live on $20k of expenses and so can someone making $100m a year. If you remove the income tax rates, it just allows the wealthy to grow their income to even more obscene levels while contributing hardly anything to public services. It's dressed up to look like it's 'fair' by suggesting someone who earns $100m should contribute similar amounts to public services as someone on $30k and they shouldn't. They should contribute more because the system has rewarded them more and the additional expense is still a fractional amount of their earnings and doesn't affect their quality of life one bit.
A transaction tax can take away income tax too but it taxes every transaction as it goes into someone's assets so someone doing enough transactions should pay enough through compound transactions to pay an actually fair amount. They may have to scale the rate based on individual transaction size to even it out but it would mostly be transparent.
Thanks for your take on this. Yes, it indeed seems ridiculous and preposterous to throw our current whole system out the window and implement an untested system, in any country for that matter.
I think we're all better off with the current system and keep on refining it. Adjust it to (global) changes accordingly, all with the understanding that we might never 'get the perfect system' in place - it's all we can do, really.
I think the current system is bad too. It relies on companies being ethical and has an arbitrary timeframe implemented. Everybody just accepts that financials and taxes are to be sorted on a yearly basis but there isn't much reason to do this. Relying on businesses tracking their own expenses and then reporting them honestly/accurately isn't working as they exploit international laws. If the taxes were taken off during every transaction, there's no timeframe. Shops have to keep revenue for the year and then right at the end work out the profit and take a chunk out of it for taxes and pay it manually. With a transaction system, as soon as you pay for some soup, 1% of it can get skimmed and sent by a financial institution to fund public services. Every single day tax money would be collected to fund public services. Someone doing a $100k transaction would have to pay a percentage immediately or wouldn't be allowed to do the transaction. There's no volunteering of financial reporting, it works internationally, it works if you switch currencies. There's no notion of theft any more than sales tax and the percentage could be lower than sales tax. It could put an end to high frequency traders trying to compound their growth percentages because they'd have to pay 1% on each transaction, which might be more than their profit.
This system could be implemented in a single town to see how it works and scale it up but they have to get rid of physical cash. They'd have to switch to paying by mobile phone or something.
As the saying goes, "you can't fix 'stupid'."
Marvin, you have a problem with almost anyone you consider "rich."
I'm not sure how that came from what I wrote there but it's clear that the whole system needs a balance. It's not about hating on anyone for being rich any more than hating on a pimp for exploiting impoverished women. The circumstances shouldn't exist for the exploitation to take place. The rich would still be rich under a more balanced system and still live a very lavish lifestyle.
The danger in how the system works now is that the reward system is heavily weighted towards certain job roles, more and more towards roles in the financial industry and executives/managers. These job roles typically create nothing of direct value, they just place bets on or direct the people who do. That creates the perception that these people are the value creators. Let's have an experiment then and ship them all off to their own little island with all their riches and executive titles and see what happens. What happens is they realize that without the people at the bottom, they can't do anything at all. They aren't engineers, artists or anything else. They'd all die within a week because the money they have is only as good as what they can exploit with it and with no one to exploit, they have nothing.
The way this message gets through is with labor strikes:
http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/07/news/companies/fast-food-worker-strikes-150-cities/
This can bring their companies to a standstill and that's when they see that without these people going about their business every day, they don't get the billions in profits so give something back. Rather than minimum wage increases, perhaps there ought to be laws that say a company should give workers shares in the company so that it's a reward based system. If the company profits are down, there's no increase in wages. If the company makes billions off the backs of these workers, they get a dividend reward. It can be non-voting shares but the share amount should be based on their role in the company. There would have to be safeguards in the event that shares go up dramatically and the workers all just cash in and retire but that wouldn't be such a bad thing as it creates new jobs for new workers to go through the same process.
I'm not sure how that came from what I wrote there but it's clear that the whole system needs a balance. It's not about hating on anyone for being rich any more than hating on a pimp for exploiting impoverished women. The circumstances shouldn't exist for the exploitation to take place. The rich would still be rich under a more balanced system and still live a very lavish lifestyle.
The danger in how the system works now is that the reward system is heavily weighted towards certain job roles, more and more towards roles in the financial industry and executives/managers. These job roles typically create nothing of direct value, they just place bets on or direct the people who do. That creates the perception that these people are the value creators. Let's have an experiment then and ship them all off to their own little island with all their riches and executive titles and see what happens. What happens is they realize that without the people at the bottom, they can't do anything at all. They aren't engineers, artists or anything else. They'd all die within a week because the money they have is only as good as what they can exploit with it and with no one to exploit, they have nothing.
The way this message gets through is with labor strikes:
http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/07/news/companies/fast-food-worker-strikes-150-cities/
This can bring their companies to a standstill and that's when they see that without these people going about their business every day, they don't get the billions in profits so give something back. Rather than minimum wage increases, perhaps there ought to be laws that say a company should give workers shares in the company so that it's a reward based system. If the company profits are down, there's no increase in wages. If the company makes billions off the backs of these workers, they get a dividend reward. It can be non-voting shares but the share amount should be based on their role in the company. There would have to be safeguards in the event that shares go up dramatically and the workers all just cash in and retire but that wouldn't be such a bad thing as it creates new jobs for new workers to go through the same process.
You can quote any source you want, but when it comes down to stealing the fruits of someone else's labor for your own selfish desires or needs, that is just plain wrong. The US should adopt the FairTax and eliminate all attempts at social engineering and political payback with the use of exemptions, write-offs, incentives, etc. The tax code is a disgrace and by allowing politicians to corrupt things to the point of endangering the economy and viability of businesses that operate in the US, things must drastically change.
Fast food workers who push for higher wages will be replaced with automation. Their labor is not worth what the president and these unions (the real source behind this "movement" to increase wages) are pushing. As costs of labor exceed the alternatives, the alternatives will be used.
You're describing the same problem I am but redefining the theft and labor. If someone invests capital in a successful company like Apple (e.g Icahn) and the tens of thousands of employees work away while Icahn is off lying on a beach, how can you call any gain he makes from the stock going up fruits of his labor? He's on the beach, he's not contributing to the value increase in the stock at all.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/hedge-fund-moguls-pay-has-the-1-looking-up/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Hedge fund managers are betting with the money from their investors, they don't have to pay for losses, they just gain hugely from the profits.
If that's the only industry that eventually makes a reasonable work/reward ratio, is everyone supposed to migrate to being a hedge fund manager? We just end up with a whole world filled with gamblers passing each other's money around.
Having risk-free job roles like hedge-fund management are the kinds of job roles you would condemn in government and yet you'd applaud a hedge fund manager for taking home billions in a year doing only good for himself and especially if they paid no tax. This obviously makes no sense because you promote self-interest so why would you feel better about someone doing no good for you and condemn the government taking money from them to support you? The latter is in your self-interest.
Businesses helped put the incentives into the tax code so I don't see how businesses are going to struggle. I agree with changing the tax structure but not the way you'd like as your suggestion is designed to skew income inequality far worse than it already is.
I'm all for robots replacing menial jobs but for some reason you have a desire to punish poorer workers and create a whole class of destitute people. I don't see what's to be gained from that. Do you think that the world would be a better place if you have just a fraction of the population with more wealth than they know what to do with and over half of the entire population in poverty and homeless? This is close to the situation now taking into account the whole world, not just developed world. People don't just die y'know, that would just create a completely unmanageable situation for the wealthy and poor alike and assets would be seized by the government one way or another to fix it because that's what they are there to do - maintain a civil society.
You don't place an upper bound on how much an individual needs to own and I don't understand why. The world has limited resources, what's the benefit in ownership of most of it going to a tiny fraction of people? The whole reason the resources are there is to improve the quality of life so if someone has an amazing quality of life then taking significantly more than that is unnecessary and only serves to create a lower quality of life for someone else. That just seems sadistic.
That's an interesting take you have there. That might work; are there any people in government dabbling on this idea?
Getting cash out of our system is another thing entirely; its ramifications will be vast, but I've heard it before, many times actually. The first European country to adopt cash was Sweden, and now it looks like they might be the first to drop it, with Bjoern Ulvaeus (ABBA) being a proponent:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sweden-moving-towards-cashless-economy/
I got that link from this article:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1697102-the-future-of-money-is-digital-not-physical
Marvin, you have a problem with almost anyone you consider "rich."
You can quote any source you want, but when it comes down to stealing the fruits of someone else's labor for your own selfish desires or needs, that is just plain wrong. The US should adopt the FairTax and eliminate all attempts at social engineering and political payback with the use of exemptions, write-offs, incentives, etc. The tax code is a disgrace and by allowing politicians to corrupt things to the point of endangering the economy and viability of businesses that operate in the US, things must drastically change.
Fast food workers who push for higher wages will be replaced with automation. Their labor is not worth what the president and these unions (the real source behind this "movement" to increase wages) are pushing. As costs of labor exceed the alternatives, the alternatives will be used.
There's a problem in responding to anything like this. You essentially put forth a line in the sand mentality, so you aren't really discussing any of it, merely rationalizing preconceived notions. I've done the same thing without realizing it, but it's so obvious here. I'm surprised you don't see this in your own words. As for automation (not sure why you mentioned that), it's inevitable in some areas. I would suggest to you that it's important to consider what will constitute either entry level work or (in relative terms) unskilled labor for the next generation rather than focus on protectionism and whether something can be automated. I'm also with Marvin on high frequency trading. Its purpose is merely to siphon currency, much like other modern financial products. I also don't understand why you respond that way to Marvin. He's one of the most polite people on here, far more than myself.
I doubt the government would be considering such a setup because for one thing, they've demonstrated they are in the back pocket of the financial industry so I expect them to maintain a system that doesn't harm them. The tax system also has controls in that they can tax certain products more highly than others like fuel, cigarettes, alcohol. They could still do this with a transaction tax but that would need to be accounted for - in a supermarket bill for example, cigarette and alcohol products would have to slightly increase the transaction fee.
The government also gets some benefits from yearly reporting because they can see which businesses are doing best and which are doing worst and which might be up to no good and make decisions on ways to help grow ones that are doing badly. This can also be done with transactions but there would have to be some privacy implemented.
I think it could be very simple to get rid of cash, even for older people. Consider a small device less than 1/4 the size of a pocket calculator, very thin and with a thumbprint scanner or pin code buttons (thumbprint is better to prevent over-the-shoulder pin code stealing). Every transaction terminal would have a cellular or wifi connection of some sort. If someone needs to send cash to someone, they can just type the amount and validate with the pin and/or thumb. In a store, the amount would show on the device and again just type a code or use the thumb to validate it. An old person can easily press their thumb on a scanner and there can be similar withdrawal limits you get with a bank e.g $250 per day. If someone tried to mug an old person, the worst they could do is force them to send $250 to another digital device but they'd have to be near a data connection and the digital destination would be known.
The cash would come from an account with a bank or even things like Paypal. It would be like online banking, which currently uses small devices to log on but it would just be direct. Obviously people with smartphones can use those but for others, there can be this device and it can store multiple account links in different institutions.
I think he's polite enough too, he just sticks to his opinion, which is fine. Different ways of thinking justify themselves through different outcomes. To people who admire and pursue the acquisition of wealth, systems that promote that would be favored. To people who put the welfare of human beings first would similarly favor systems that promote this. These two systems conflict a lot of the time and probably always will because it's a genetic conflict. Every day we have to make decisions between actions that promote our own success and well-being and ones that promote the common infrastructure that is necessary for that success to be meaningful. We don't all simply act in our own self-interest with no thought to other people because someone who did that wouldn't pay for anything, they'd just take it; they wouldn't be polite, they'd use force.
It's like a sports event. To win a race, someone can easily injure the other competitors and cross the line first. That would be acting entirely in their self-interest if simply crossing the line was the goal. That's how the finance industry thinks. Acquiring money is the goal no matter if weapons are being traded, if they are laundering drug money, if they are manipulating interest rates etc. There's no thought to the damage in achieving the goal. But winning a race like that isn't meaningful and the crowd watching would say it's not fair. This is what the current public opinion is of the finance industry among other things. What makes it worse is that the beneficiaries expect adulation for what they perceive to be success but they only get it from people who respect their goal.
There are criticisms to be made at both ends of the spectrum. There's a documentary showing an outcome where people take advantage of welfare:
There are stories about how self-made millionaires take advantage of the system too:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2541365/EXCLUSIVE-A-new-7-5m-Miami-home-250-000-Rolls-Royce-The-luxurious-life-real-life-Wolf-Wall-Streets-partner-crime-theres-victims-owed-200m-it.html
None of the outcomes there are good but the system we operate under can't unfairly promote one of them. Even if every one of say 50 families in that street lived on £500/month welfare for 50 years, that £15m is still tiny compared to the $200m that the broker there defrauded investors out of. We can't have a system that puts teenagers in prison for walking around with a handful of drugs but look the other way when a stock broker is using huge amounts of class A drugs:
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/feb/28/wolf-of-wall-street-jordan-belfort-sex-drugs
"In some respects, my life was even worse than that. Although I'd say I did more quaaludes than cocaine."
We can't put a bank robber in prison for years if they steal only as much cash as they can carry and look the other way when banks defraud customers to the tune of billions. That's an unfair system.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/13/occupy-wall-st-debt-buying-heart-capitalism
"Debt is how the rich extract wealth from the rest of us, at home and abroad. Western capitalism is running out of serfs, slaves, colonies, immigrants, child labour and women as chattels. A new underclass must be created. Debt is the weapon of choice. Medical bills underlie more than 60% of bankruptcies in the US. The level of student debt has reached an eye-watering $1.2tn.
This is why the debate on the back-door privatisation of medical and education services in this country matters so much. The extraction of profit from these two key areas changes the social contract in a fundamental way. The idea is no longer that the state will educate you and keep you healthy, so that you may continue to contribute with both your work and your taxes. It has mutated instead into "you will borrow money from the state's private partners in order to become educated and stay healthy, so that you may continue to contribute to their bottom line". All of the 99%, in a very real way, work in part for an assortment of financial institutions, largely invisible and certainly unaccountable.
Iceland's – strangely unreported – decision to write down mortgage debt for its citizens, undermines that notion. A rejection of traditional systems of credit and money as a response to austerity, such as in the barter markets of Volos in Greece and Turin in Italy undermines that notion. The Rolling Jubilee project undermines that notion in a significant way, by asking the sizzling question: "If a corporation is prepared to accept five cents on the dollar in exchange for our debts, if that is our debt's open market value, how much do we really owe?""
So much for everyone wanting to create a better world for all, in spite of some ramifications it may have that would work out negatively for some. Good point though.
While that may indeed be a solution, I think you (we?) are looking at this with our IT cap on. The elderly do not like change, in general. Take away cash and they'll be stupefied. No matter how simple tech may be designed, many elderly will adopt it slowly.