Agree with Lawry on this. I used to pay my taxes right at the tax office. I was the only one, it seemed, who had a smile. The clerk asked why I was smiling and I said that I believed in the system and enjoyed the public goods that taxes brought.
arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of de Bivort Lawrence Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2012 8:32 PM To: Keith Hudson; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] What if the greedy rich paid their share? Many interesting thoughts and observations, here. Thanks Keith. I cannot agree with your last assertion, though, that "all of us" would given the opportunity evade taxes. At least some of us could, but don't. Leaving aside the inevitable reality that I disagree and sometimes strongly with some US Federal and State policies and expenditures, I feel that I get good good value for my taxes, and am happy to pay them. Cheers, Lawry On Apr 21, 2012, at 4:53 AM, Keith Hudson wrote: Natalie, But the sort of emotive talk by Les Leopold and others about wealth is of absolutely no constructive use. The rich may be greedy, but then so is everybody else given an opportunity. One never hears of an inheritance or a lottery win ever being turned down. Every single penny of the wealth of a rich person goes into jobs. It is either spent into the products or services of existing jobs, or it is invested, which produces new jobs, or it goes into philanthropy, which also produces jobs. Even wealth which goes into "dead" ends, such as personal ornamentation or luxury yachts involves jobs. Once again, as I'm continually saying on FW (but which hasn't been remarked upon, never mind disputed), the wealth of today's billionaires (well over 1,000 of them and growing fast) is not as disproportionate as the wealth of the 'robber barons' (Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc) of a century ago, nor that of the even wealthier landed aristocracy of previous agricultural times, nor that of the royalty of ancient empires. Overall, we are, in fact, steadily becoming more egalitarian. It's hard to believe perhaps but it is so. What makes us unhappy is that the wealth of some of the rich is constantly flaunted in the media. Emotionally we can't cope with this. The effect is that what biologists call a "super stimulus". We have no defences against this because although our genes know what "fair play" is (proven as an instinct in all primates as well as some monkeys) we've evolved for millions of years in environments in which great disparities in wealth were never possible. Emotionally we can't cope with examples of great disparity in wealth when it's thrust in front of us, whether of a next-door neighbour who flaunts it or the antics of distant billionaires. The rich can't be blamed for the growing structural unemployment in the advanced countries either. Without any overt conspiracy between them, each one of them will tend to park their investments with businesses that are maximally profitable at that time. And that means growing automation. Unless we extinguish our intellectual curiosity in our minds and the growth of the scientific method then automation has a long way to go yet. I'm greatly in favour of taxing the wealthy -- and heavily, too. But the only sure way of doing this so that it can't be evaded is to tax the status objects that are visible to us -- their personal ornamentations, houses, luxury yachts, etc. Some rich people might even welcome this form of taxation because being able to quote their tax band would only add even more status to themselves. But this tax will never happen because it doesn't give any opportunity for politicians to grant favours to the rich and thus be able to divert some of their wealth to themselves. All other, more sophisticated, forms of taxation give the opportunity for rich people to employ clever professionals and evade taxation. And you can't blame the rich for wanting to evade taxation. All of us would do so given the opportunity. Keith At 23:38 20/04/2012, Natalie wrote: What If the Greedy Rich Paid Their Share? 8 Things to Know About Wealth and Poverty in the US By <http://www.alternet.org/authors/8894/> Les Leopold We're far from poor -- we just have a wildly lopsided distribution of wealth that makes us seem poor. (snip) It wasn't an act of God, or the blind forces of technological change, or the mysterious movements of markets. Nor did the super-rich become enormously smarter than before. Instead, flesh-and-blood policy makers decided that deregulation and tax cuts should become the order of the day starting in the mid-1970s. The idea was that if we cut taxes on the super-rich and deregulated the economy (and especially Wall Street), investment would dramatically increase and all boats would rise. But as we can see from the chart below, the average worker's wage in real terms stalled and even declined after the mid-'70s. The fruits of productivity no longer were shared equitably. The enormous gap between the two lines (trillions of dollars per year) went almost entirely to the super-rich. The wealth of the wealthy skyrocketed, not by accident, but by policy design. "Greed is good" replaced the middle-class American dream. (snip) What Is Wealth and Who Has It? Wealth or net worth is the total value of what you own (your assets) minus the total value of your debts (your liabilities.) Our collective net worth is really huge. We're talking big, big numbers. As of the end of 2011, U.S. households had $30 trillion in private assets and $13.6 trillion in liabilities for a total net worth of $16.4 trillion ( PDF <http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/z1r-5.pdf> ). How much is that? It comes to an average of $141,000 per household - free and clear of any debts. (snip) full story with graph at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/155025/what_if_the_greedy_rich_paid_their_sh are_8_things_to_know_about_wealth_and_poverty_in_the_us (my comment) Apart from reversing market deregulation and tax exemptions for the wealthy, he may have mentioned that many industrialists are wealthy because government allows them, by virtue of promises like job creation and economic stimulus, to exploit the commons without much compensation. Such agreements result in unjustified tax exemption, despite immense profits. Corporations today fail miserably to employ or stimulate regional economies, as do ever floundering free-market entrepreneurs. http://capitalism-creates-poverty.blogspot.ca/2012/03/free-market-myths-no3- entrpreneurs.html Government should, on behalf of the people whose commons are being exploited, have recourse to tax the income (profits) of the corporation by the same measure as for individuals. If the corporation downsizes and ships most production overseas, citizens should have recourse, through government, not only to tax that income as well, but to revoke the agreement within the first year of outsourcing. With proper taxation of industry, there wouldn't be so much concentration of wealth. Further, if the commons were legally recognized as incorporate of predominately finite resources, we would be looking at sustainable, rather than exploitative, approaches toward extractions, and industry would be paying high taxes for the privilege of using public lands' raw materials. Natalia _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com <http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/> _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
