On 12/18/2012 4:40 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Monday, December 17, 2012 8:02:12 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
On 12/17/2012 5:11 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
> Taxing the rich does not redistribute the income, it adjusts the
> expenses so that those who benefit disproportionately from the
public
> resources pay their share for an educated labor force, policed
cities,
> well maintained roads, bridges, ports, airports, the grotesquely
> hypertrophied military to enforce monopolistic trade policies
> worldwide, etc.
Hi Craig,
Could explain how it is that it is possible to "proportionally
benefit" from public resources? Are you saying that resources are the
natural property of the State and not of those willing to do the
investment of time and labor to exploit them?
In a democracy, they are the natural property of the taxpayers who pay
for their construction and maintenance. The Port of Los Angeles is not
the property of Onassis Shipping or whatever. If they are making hand
over fist and bring in a dozen more tankers a week - who pays for the
extra staffing of that? Who pays for the construction on the port to
be upgraded. This is how corporations remain so profitable - privatize
profit and socialize cost.
Hi Craig,
We are getting somewhere, but we need to stop and define some terms
so we don't just confuse things. What exactly is the definition of
"privatize profit and socialize cost" that we can agree upon?
"Privatizing profits" seems to mean, in the context of your frame, the
funneling of profits into the pockets of a few persons, perhaps
undeservedly. "Socializing costs" seems to imply the spreading of costs
to arbitrary many people, perhaps undeservedly.
So the key idea, if my interpretation is correct, hinges on the
definition of "deservedly" and its opposite, "undeservedly". This seems
to point to an idea of "fairness" that remains undefined. DO you care to
define a canonical measure of fairness?
By my logic, if the taxes of the public where taken from
individual
people, then the public resources belong proportionately to those
individuals that paid the taxes. This means that if Fred paid more
taxes
than Albert then the public resources belong that much more to
Fred than
Albert. Simple math... How do you calculate "benefit"?
It's easy to calculate benefit - you look at the books. You see how
much more money a corporation is making and how much more costs are
incurred by the government to underwrite that volume of gains.
We need to compare apples to apples here. Governements are only
bound, in their cost, by their ability to collect taxes, levies, fees,
etc. and can do so with the force of law. Private citizens, or any
collective thereof cannot use force unless allowed by the government to
do so, so their ability to recoup costs will always be some smaller than
the quantity that the government can collect. No?
Another way we can look at this is to consider the concept of
efficiency. Governments have fewer reasons to consider the efficiency.
When you can legally print money out of thin air, the need for
efficiency vanishes completely. Private citizens, nor their collectives,
can do no such thing!
I don't understand the collectivization of people into
equivalence
classes. Numbers are equivalence classes, not people! I am trying to
understand your thesis, not saying your wrong. ;-)
I'm open to being wrong, I just need to be pointed in the direction of
a reason why that might be the case.
What would be a clear indicator of "Craig being wrong"? You keep
shifting the argument frame around. Could you address the questions I
asked here now directly?
1) What is fairness?
2) Why does government not do at least what is it supposed to do?
Enforce its own laws equally.
--
Onward!
Stephen
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