Feudalism
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Yes, I do even.
If I don't get this project done and make sales in about 3 days, I will be homeless. No joke. No exaggeration. My last job didn't give me any hours for 5 weeks. And there are no options for people who are overqualified in a city with very high unemployment.
Quality of life is going down.
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I went from a very cheap house shared with 5 other guys in a small-town rural area to a 600-square-foot single-bedroom apartment in the city with no roommates. I don't room with people I don't already know so I have to pay the full rent myself.
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Christians don't like money?
For the sake of derailment, I don't understand the notion that Christians less fit from an evolutionary perspective (despite some of them not believing in evolution). And not believing in birth control makes it very easy to have kids.
Knowledge isn't always a good thing. It can drive you crazy. Or sterile.
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Oh, wow. Six guys in a little house. Together...
I guess you wouldn't have
sexsix bedrooms if it was a small place. Maybe not even six beds...Did you have to share? With another man? Slept with another man?
Did he like to sleep au naturale, as they call it? Was he your bosom
bodybuddy?Sweat.
Beds.
Men.
[wipes sweat off forehead]
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If you get so easily excited about that... boy, wait until you discover porn!
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Sometimes I squeeze my wiener and I pee the stuff that comes out when I pop a zit.
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Well this thread got weird.
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You must be new here. Everything is weird.
...but it doesn't taste the same as the gunk that comes from popping zits.
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That's not a zit, that's blakeyrat's bile getting everywhere. Looks like zit juice however.
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Ok, well here's my suggestion: tax on all income at a flat percentage rate, effective from the date on the paycheck, and all taxpayers receive a monthly tax rebate at flat rate (i.e. everybody gets the same amount). Thus it would be effectively progressive but without the awkward edge cases. Also: people love tax rebates.
Which ‘ideas’ thread does this belong in?
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Ok, well here's my suggestion: tax on all income at a flat percentage rate, effective from the date on the paycheck, and all taxpayers receive a monthly tax rebate at flat rate (i.e. everybody gets the same amount). Thus it would be effectively progressive but without the awkward edge cases. Also: people love tax rebates.
Which ‘ideas’ thread does this belong in?
Looks like we need a Nonsensical Ideas That Somehow Still Make More Sense Than The Government Thread.
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Then you need to be ruthless about non-salary rewards and their tax status, for example with regards to salesmen who get paid a low flat rate and bonuses, or people who get stock options or health plans, or even things like gym membership.
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Ok, well here's my suggestion: tax on all income at a flat percentage rate, effective from the date on the paycheck, and all taxpayers receive a monthly tax rebate at flat rate (i.e. everybody gets the same amount). Thus it would be effectively progressive but without the awkward edge cases. Also: people love tax rebates.
Which ‘ideas’ thread does this belong in?
Progressive tax usually means that higher-income people pay a higher percentage of their income. What you're suggesting is usually referred to as a flat tax. But like @mott555 said, it's still an improvement on our current tax system.
Filed under: you've already taken my money, why do I have to spend an hour filling out this stupid form?
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Filed under: you've already taken my money, why do I have to pay someone $200 to spend an hour filling out
thisthese 20 stupid forms?FTFY
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tax = income * x - y
For positive y, tax is regressive. I must have not explained myself well enough; I was expecting more objections about what happens when income is below y/x.
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tax = income * x - y
For positive y, tax is regressive. I must have not explained myself well enough; I was expecting more objections about what happens when income is below y/x.
True, but what I was getting at was that x increases with income under a progressive tax system. What you're suggesting is O(n). The progressives would prefer something like O(n log n), or O(n2) if they could get away with it.
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The top marginal tax rate was like 85% in the 1960s. That very much did not stop American progress.
That said, there are conflating factors. Gasoline was cheap enough to plow through all kinds of inefficiency. A gallon of gasoline replaces 50 hours of manual labor, after all.
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Big O notation can be misleading for small n. It's possible to choose y and x large enough that the current top income brackets would be paying more tax and everyone else would be paying less tax than they currently are.
Now that may be taking it a bit too far, but tbh my vision for this scheme is to create something that might eventually replace both the current progressive taxation scheme and social welfare with something that is more economically sustainable, could conceivably be seen as intuitively fair, and never disincentivizes anyone from seeking additional income.
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my vision for this scheme is to create something that might eventually replace both the current progressive taxation scheme and social welfare with something that is more economically sustainable, could conceivably be seen as intuitively fair, and never disincentivizes anyone from seeking additional income.
Those goals are mutually exclusive. The closest you can get is random taxation.
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Those goals are mutually exclusive.
Good design involves choosing the best balance of tradeoffs between conflicting requirements.
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Then you have your answer, in the part you didn't quote.
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Firstly, I don't see how random taxation could replace both progressive taxation and social welfare. Secondly, I said intuitively fair, not theoretically fair. Third, I highly doubt that random taxation would ever fail to discourage a large section of the population from seeking additional income.
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I highly doubt that random taxation would ever fail to discourage a large section of the population from seeking additional income.
I don't see why, since additional income would not affect your tax liability. However, I am quite certain that no one would find it intuitively fair.
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Well, can you imagine working extra hard in anticipation of a big paycheck, then having it all taxed away from you? That would be demoralizing.
If you're going to do random taxation, you might as well go all out The Lottery style, because at least that way the losers are prevented from taking their revenge on society.
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Well, can you imagine working extra hard in anticipation of a big paycheck, then having it all taxed away from you? That would be demoralizing.
Yeah. I hadn't thought of the random number being updated at short intervals. I was thinking more of a "your tax {rate|liability} for the year will be Math.random()" sort of thing — random, but predictable once established.
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Well, can you imagine working extra hard in anticipation of a big paycheck, then having it all taxed away from you? That would be demoralizing.
That sounds like real life!
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I was expecting more objections about what happens when income is below y/x.
One of the major problems of a flat tax rate system is that the cost of collecting tax from a person is non-zero. If you've got a lot of people paying less in tax than it costs to collect it from them (protip: lots of people have very little income) then you've got a massive net loser. And it's a basic bureaucratic issue, irrespective of who the politicians are.(The other interpretation of “flat tax” — just making everyone pay exactly the same amount — is vastly horrible unless you've completely restructured the economy first. That's much more painful than adapting what “flat tax” means.)
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One of the major problems of a flat tax rate system is that the cost of collecting tax from a person is non-zero.
This is a problem all around, for any sort of tax. It simply won't work if people aren't willing to go along with the law. And then you likely have problems in other areas.
The other interpretation of “flat tax” — just making everyone pay exactly the same amount
I've never heard this applied to "flat tax." Is that a UK-ism?
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Yeah. I hadn't thought of the random number being updated at short intervals. I was thinking more of a "your tax {rate|liability} for the year will be Math.random()" sort of thing — random, but predictable once established.
Even then, there are arguments that could be made against it, even if we were to assume rational actors. To be honest, I'm struggling to see why random taxation could have ever been put forward as a useful strategy, except as part of a plan to discredit the very notion of taxation.
That sounds like real life!
See, this is exactly the thing I'm trying to avoid: if everyone was always taxed the exact same amount on every dollar earned, you wouldn't be feeling like the victim of random taxation right now.
One of the major problems of a flat tax rate system is that the cost of collecting tax from a person is non-zero. If you've got a lot of people paying less in tax than it costs to collect it from them (protip: lots of people have very little income) then you've got a massive net loser. And it's a basic bureaucratic issue, irrespective of who the politicians are.
That was what the ‘effective from the date on the paycheck’ part of my proposal was intending to address: ideally, the law would put the onus of tax collection on the employer (while still making it as simple for them as possible by being a flat rate). The idea is for it to just be an ingrained action, every time you pay someone, to immediately put x% towards their tax bill.
Then you need to be ruthless about non-salary rewards and their tax status, for example with regards to salesmen who get paid a low flat rate and bonuses, or people who get stock options or health plans, or even things like gym membership.
I think I read a book about that once, where some president's (Reagan iirc) campaign promises required both tax cuts and increased revenue, and the solution was to clamp down on tax dodgers. Perfect political move, imo, until the tea party came managed to make tax evasion as a political statement seem like a sane idea, of course.
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Even then, there are arguments that could be made against it, even if we were to assume rational actors. To be honest, I'm struggling to see why random taxation could have ever been put forward as a useful strategy, except as part of a plan to discredit the very notion of taxation.
Because it's the only tax scheme that doesn't distort economic behavior. It doesn't even incur deadweight losses.
See, this is exactly the thing I'm trying to avoid: if everyone was always taxed the exact same amount on every dollar earned, you wouldn't be feeling like the victim of random taxation right now.
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Nope, but the majority of people living at minimum wage sure would.
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I'm struggling to see why random taxation could have ever been put forward as a useful strategy,
I only said I didn't see why it would be a disincentive to earning more income, and you provided a scenario in which it plausibly would do so. I most certainly never thought it was a good idea in any form, but the way you quoted and replied to me might give the impression I did. Just wanted to clear that up.
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Because it's the only tax scheme that doesn't distort economic behavior. It doesn't even incur deadweight losses.
Failure to make sensible tradeoffs. Apparently someone decided that those were the only two criteria that mattered, and optimized for them disregarding all other costs.
Nope, but the majority of people living at minimum wage sure would.
Not in the context of my plan where a person's rebate could be higher than their tax payment.
Nope, but the majority of people living at minimum wage sure would.
And don't get me started on the minimum wage.
I most certainly never thought it was a good idea in any form
I didn't see it as that, I saw it as me trying to understand what random taxation was about, and you trying to help me.
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Because it's the only tax scheme that doesn't distort economic behavior.
Much of tax policy is designed specifically to distort economic behavior in ways that are considered desirable1, such as encouraging retirement savings or home ownership. Whether or not this actually works is almost certainly a topic for this thread, if not this one.
1 Of course, some of the distortions are considered desirable by politicians and the people who give them money, not necessarily by the general citizenry.
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Apparently someone decided that those were the only two criteria that mattered, and optimized for them disregarding all other costs.
Utility is the only criterion to optimize. Everything else is politics.
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Economic distortion and deadweight losses are not the only things wrong with the world.
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Perfect political move, imo, until the tea party came managed to make tax evasion as a political statement seem like a sane idea, of course.
I don't remember this at all, unless you mean the original tea party, in which case, TDEMSYR.
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I suppose you're right. I'm sorry, I get a bit carried away sometimes.
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That was what the ‘effective from the date on the paycheck’ part of my proposal was intending to address: ideally, the law would put the onus of tax collection on the employer (while still making it as simple for them as possible by being a flat rate). The idea is for it to just be an ingrained action, every time you pay someone, to immediately put x% towards their tax bill.
That's got quite a lot in common with the PAYE system used for much of peoples' income taxes here in the UK. It's not a flat percentage though; we have a series of increasing tax bands, with the top tax rate being quite high (but with that rate only being paid on the amount earned over the threshold so there aren't so many large jumps). This all means that people in the UK really mostly don't get that exercised over income taxes.
It's not all good though. The particularly iniquitous parts are just elsewhere (e.g., in benefit cutoffs at the low end, and the way property sales taxes work).
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Economic distortion and deadweight losses are not the only things wrong with the world.
Nope, they're not.
That doesn't mean we should lower everybody's welfare by optimizing for anything but welfare.
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That doesn't mean we should lower everybody's welfare by optimizing for anything but welfare.
I absolutely agree. What I am trying to dispute is whether random taxation would actually improve welfare. As I don't yet understand the reasoning behind random taxation in the first place, I can only guess as to what its flaws might be. I am confident, however, that whatever the argument in favor of random taxation is, it will turn out to be fundamentally flawed.
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The problem is that what everyone wants is fairness, but different people interpret that word in very different ways. Couple that with the way people like to be the top dog in their social circle, and stuff can get horribly out of hand.
Still, my take is that things are building up to a major correction in “the West” at the moment as the elite is getting more dismissive of the legitimacy of anyone else's needs and desires.
Those sorts of “major corrections” are generally very bad news.(Not the faintest idea what will set it off or when; I just see the conditions getting more and more primed.)
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Still, my take is that things are building up to a major correction in “the West” at the moment as the elite is getting more dismissive of the legitimacy of anyone else's needs and desires. Those sorts of “major corrections” are generally very bad news.
Sure seems that way. As they say, things that can't go on...don't.
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This post is deleted!
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This won't get old.
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Codpiece.
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Should we wander back to the Feudalism thread?
Yes, it is high time the Knights of WTF made an appearance there.
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Yes, it is high time the Knights of WTF made an appearance there.
Once my MUD code is a little more complete, we should really have a TDWTF deployment of it. Then the Knights of WTF can be a thing!
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In the spirit of the feudalism thread (and sorry, mott555, for replying to you - its the only email I got), I'd like to state my first hypothesis about the motivation behind that ‘men are from mars women are from Venus’ bit, the one that I dismissed as too paranoid, which is that rich people want men and women to be at each others throats, because if we're keep arguing misandry and misogyny at each other like the kids in the story we'll be too busy to stop and think why whoever's in charge would be giving us an A+ for our efforts.
