--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Actually it would be interesting to hear someone delinate a clear
distinction between taxation on money and taxation in kind.
There is no clear distinction.
Fred Foldvary
there does seem to be, on some emotional level, a difference
David
There is no
--- john hull [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Aren't payments in kind worth less than payments in
cash, when the value is a significant portion of one's
income, because they impose the consumption decision
(for lack of a better term) on the individual?
Yes, assuming no tax difference.
Many payments
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Actually it would be interesting to hear someone delinate a clear
distinction between taxation on money and taxation in kind.
There is no clear distinction.
Money is a medium, and the underlying reality is goods exchanging for other
goods. If you have a ticket for
In a message dated 12/4/02 1:14:42 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Actually it would be interesting to hear someone delinate a clear
distinction between taxation on money and taxation in kind.
There is no clear distinction.
Money is a medium, and the underlying
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
'Actually it would be interesting to hear someone
delinate a clear distinction between taxation on money
and taxation in kind.'...I'm inclined to think there
is no clear distinction,which is why I asked the
original author of the comment (js I believe) to
provide one.
I apologize for being flip. I hope I did at least get
a smile.
Seriously, I think that I tend to believe, and I think
what Machiavelli was driving at, is that in a free
society we all agree to participate peacefully and not
try to usurp power and authority. The 2000 election
was a good example,
--- Alypius Skinner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
if a state did not exist, one would soon emerge because the stateless
society would be so obviously suboptimal for an economy beyond the level of
the hunter gatherer.
~Alypius Skinner
If this is indeed obvious, please provide the explanation,
Alypius Skinner wrote
So the real
question is whether the optimal balance would be one of no public
redistribution or some public redistribution. If there were no public
redistribution, there would be no need for a state, yet if a state
did not
exist, one would soon emerge because the
--- Jacob W Braestrup [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
My point with the example is this: when there are so
many things in life that are blatantly unfairly (if
you believe in equality) distributed among us, [1]why
this preoccupation with wealth / income -
[2]especially when it is conceeded that effeorts
--- Grey Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
(1)you can choose to be homeless, take no jobs nor
responsibility, and peacefully beg from others who,
if it's voluntary, can give to you (or not) with no
moral problems. (This includes living with parents or
other loved ones, from whom receipt of resources
--- Alypius Skinner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
But what if this ugly guy isn't rich--oh! You mean
pecuniary benefits taken from *other* people--purely
through voluntary donations of course. After all, you
consider force to be (morally?) bad. I'm just
looking for some consistency here.
That's
--- david friedman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Suppose we instead assume that everyone has the same
ability to convert leisure into income
I'm not disputing the logic. The assumption does seem
awfully unrealistic. All zygotes are created equal,
except the ones with the wrong number of
--- Jacob W Braestrup [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
'John Hull wrote:...'
Assuming you are not just joking, this implies that
things such as ability to atract mates should be
taken into account when redistributing income today.
Mostly joking. I was more concerned with the idea
that forcing marriage
--- john hull [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
why this preoccupation with wealth / income?
One reason is that income can buy other things.
For example, beauty is unequally distributed, but much of beauty is created
rather than natural; the wealth can afford better hair stylists, have
plastic surgery,
--- david friedman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Suppose we instead assume that everyone has the same
ability to convert leisure into income
The assumption does seem awfully unrealistic.
-jsh
It has its limitations, but workers are quite able to control their amount
of leisure on several
--- david friedman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Suppose we instead assume that everyone has the same
ability to convert leisure into income
I'm not disputing the logic. The assumption does seem
awfully unrealistic.
So does the assumption needed to make the more conventional version
of the
In a message dated 12/2/02 3:58:43 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
--- Grey Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
(1)you can choose to be homeless, take no jobs nor
responsibility, and peacefully beg from others who,
if it's voluntary, can give to you (or not) with no
moral problems. (This includes
In a message dated 12/2/02 4:03:15 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
--- Alypius Skinner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
But what if this ugly guy isn't rich--oh! You mean
pecuniary benefits taken from *other* people--purely
through voluntary donations of course. After all, you
consider force to be
--- david friedman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
My point is that moral worthiness isn't being
predicated of the newborn infant or fertilized ovum
but of the adult that it turned into. Whatever the
reasons are that I am cruel and dishonest, cruel and
dishonest people deserve to have bad things happen
--- david friedman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
My point was that, while the first cause, considered
alone, leads to the conventional conclusion that we
can increase utility by transferring from rich to
poor, the second leads to the opposite conclusion.
Oh, okay. My bad. Sorry about that.
-jsh
Alypius Skinner wrote
Thus some sort of
balance must be struck between compassion for our fellow man and
maintaining
the incentives for temptation-prone people (who are often the same as
the
incompetent or semi-competent people) to resist temptation.
But where do you suppose such a balance
Jacob W Braestrup wrote:
Alypius Skinner wrote
Thus some sort of
balance must be struck between compassion for our fellow man and
maintaining
the incentives for temptation-prone people (who are often the same as
the
incompetent or semi-competent people) to resist temptation.
But
Wei Dai wrote:
People don't mind competition if it's voluntary, but you can't opt out of
economic competition. I think it's a necessary evil, not something to be
desired for its own sake. Clearly some people do enjoy competition, and
they should certainly be able to participate, but what's
But nobody has challenged you, Wei: do you know anybody admirable who
hates competition? Ghandi comes to mind as a stereo-type, living in
rags,
spinning his own cotton threads, a very unhappy wife ...
Yes, perhaps the stereotype of Ghandi, but not the historical Ghandi. The
real Ghandi lived
Wei Dai wrote:
you can't opt out of economic competition.
Sure you can opt out. Reduce your expectations. Settle for less.
Prof. Bryan Caplan
Since many resources and goods are scarce and rival, in the broadest
economic sense, nobody can opt out of
What is all this focus on money? -
why strive for equality only on that parameter and not the
more important ones??
- jacob braestrup
Let me expand on this point a little.
All economists are familiar with the standard declining marginal
utility argument for income redistribution. I'm not sure
On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 10:57:53AM -0800, Anton Sherwood wrote:
Reminds me of a story in one of the sf magazines - an abnormally
cheerful man was found to have an abnormally high level of endorphins,
and was compelled to take treatment to compensate, because we can't have
people running loose
William Sjostrom wrote:
Does it change the way the world behaves?
A totally different question. Even if you are the pinnacle of moral
knowledge, the world could ignore you. It hardly shows you're wrong.
Suppose, according to some moral code, you are right, but no one pays you
any
--- Jacob W Braestrup [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Would we ever say: Uhhh, this guy is ugly and no
good, bad mannered and ill tempered - but, it's no
fault of his own, and he REALLY doesn't enjoy the
competition for sexual partner forced upon him by
society, so why don't we just force this beautiful
--- david friedman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
To put it differently, once you take the determinist
position
And if we take the free will position, can't we just
as easily come to the defense of Aristotlean (sp?)
physics where a thrown rock moves of its own impetus
until it 'decides' that it
If there
were no efficiency consequences, why not equalize incomes? The answer,
I maintain, is that more able and hard-working people deserve more.
I don't see why,
efficiency aside, more able and hard-working people deserve more. Being
more able and hard-working should be reward
I propose that for next semester Alan Blinder and I exchange faculty
positions. Blinder can assume my three-course load at Dayton and I'll
assume his one(?) course load at Princeton. Blinder can eat greasy
cheeseburgers in the Dayton cafeteria, and I'll dine on lobster savannah in
the
On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 08:38:26PM -0500, Bryan D Caplan wrote:
1. The less fundamental reason to be hard-hearted is that soft-
hearted people - even comparatively reasonable ones like Blinder - are
hypocrites. They fret and fret about poor Americans, but barely even
remember the existence
2. The more fundamental reason to be hard-hearted is that the
Principle of Equity fails to recognize differences in MERIT. If there
were no efficiency consequences, why not equalize incomes? The answer,
I maintain, is that more able and hard-working people deserve more.
They earned it. It
34 matches
Mail list logo
