GAI - We have enough to share

[Guest eureka]

No, I am not joking. Show me a single. Cite one comparative study of international systems that supports the hypothesis that it is a disincentive to work. Cite one that shows tax policies are any deterrent to groth.

There is none. There is only the unsupported bunk of the "Right Wingers." There are studies of the opposite wrt tax policies. Ayrton Sen's is the most notable.

[Shady]

The main problem with discussing issues of economics with liberals is that they don't really know how the economy really works. They have no concept of the creation of wealth, and they have no concept that to have a strong, vibrant, growing economy that provides good jobs for people and taxes to the government, THERE NEEDS TO BE PEOPLE WHO BECOME WEALTHY, GASP, EVEN VERY RICH! Oh the horror, the horror.

The fact that liberals have no real idea about how the economy works can be illustrated in their ridiculous economic ideas. Let's increase taxes on evil corporations. Corporations then pass their costs onto the consumer, who pays more for a particular good or service. Therefore, brilliant liberals have only succeeded in taxing the regular consumer. Another idiotic idea is raising taxes in general. They actually think that raising taxes is a legitimate means of correcting government overspending, as if you can constantly raise taxes over and over and over. Have you ever heard of the phrase "you can't get blood from a turnip?" There's a pont where you reach (here's a economic term most liberals have never heard of) diminishing returns. There comes a point, whether it's a price of a good or service, or the rate of taxation, in which you actually find profits or revenues declining, even with rising prices or rising tax rates.

[Toro]

No, I am not joking. Show me a single. Cite one comparative study of international systems that supports the hypothesis that it is a disincentive to work. Cite one that shows tax policies are any deterrent to groth.

There is none. There is only the unsupported bunk of the "Right Wingers." There are studies of the opposite wrt tax policies. Ayrton Sen's is the most notable.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

First, who is Ayrton Sen? I did a Google search and couldn't find anything. I know who Ayrton Senna is, but I've never heard of Ayrton Sen. If you could supply a link, or at least a reference, I'll take a look at it.

Second, let me get this straight. You are saying that in the entire discipline of economics - where there are tens of thousands of papers published - there are NO studies concluding that lower taxes have no effect on growth? In fact, you are telling me that higher taxes are more likely to lead to growth? Are you sure?

[rbacon]

Buddy Communism doesn't work. You can paint it GREEN if you want but it is still Marxist. Not only does Communism not work but it kills people. Hitler 10 million dead. Stalin 60 million dead. Chairman Mao over 100 million dead. Don't you read history.

[Guest eureka]

Shady, step out in the open and let the sun shine in on your deprived sense(s). It is true that one cannot get blood out of a turnip. You can, however, get nutrition. There is no nutrition in your silliness: none for the mind, body, or soul.

[Guest eureka]

I should have said Amartya Sen. Some years ago, he presented to an International Conference of Economists in Sweden, a study comparing the growth and tax policies of the advanced nations. The conclusion was that there was no difference caused by rates of taxes on growth.

Not one of the economists questioned or disagreed with the conclusion. No Right Winger or Left Wonger.

[Guest eureka]

Rba. When you are old enough to have read and understood a little history, get back to me. Hitler was a Communist, was he. What colour?

[rbacon]

Socialism is considered another form of Communism. Look it up. Communism is just a little more lethal to those forced to live and die under it's well documented tyranny. So educate yourself.

[Guest eureka]

So, Hitler was a Socialist! And he was a Communist under another name. Tell me again, what Grade are you in?

[Toro]

I should have said Amartya Sen. Some years ago, he presented to an International Conference of Economists in Sweden, a study comparing the growth and tax policies of the advanced nations. The conclusion was that there was no difference caused by rates of taxes on growth.

Not one of the economists questioned or disagreed with the conclusion. No Right Winger or Left Wonger.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

But how do you know? But even if no one did take the time, that's different from saying that there are no studies saying lower taxes mean higher growth. There are, in fact, many that do.

[rbacon]

You reproach us with planning to do away with your property. Precisely; that is just what we propose.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

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We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.

Maurice Strong

[rbacon]

Business Under Nazis

by Ralph R. Reiland

In 1944, Ludwig von Mises published one of his least-known masterworks: Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War. Drawing on his prewar experience in Vienna, watching the rise of the National Socialists in Germany (the Nazis), who would eventually take over his own homeland, he set out to draw parallels between the Russian and German experience with socialism.

It was common in those days, as it is in ours, to identify the Communists as leftist and the Nazis as rightists, as if they stood on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. But Mises knew differently. They both sported the same ideological pedigree of socialism. "The German and Russian systems of socialism have in common the fact that the government has full control of the means of production. It decides what shall be produced and how. It allots to each individual a share of consumer's goods for his consumption."

The difference between the systems, wrote Mises, is that the German pattern "maintains private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary prices, wages, and markets." But in fact the government directs production decisions, curbs entrepreneurship and the labor market, and determines wages and interest rates by central authority. "Market exchange," says Mises, "is only a sham."

Mises's account is confirmed by a remarkable book that appeared in 1939, published by Vanguard Press in New York City (and unfortunately out of print today). It is The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism by Guenter Reimann, then a 35-year-old German writer. Through contacts with German business owners, Reimann documented how the "monster machine" of the Nazis crushed the autonomy of the private sector through onerous regulations, harsh inspections, and the threat of confiscatory fines for petty offenses.

"Industrialists were visited by state auditors who had strict orders to examine the balance sheets and all bookkeeping entries of the company or individual businessmen for the preceding two, three, or more years until some error or false entry was found," explains Reimann. "The slightest formal mistake was punished with tremendous penalties. A fine of millions of marks was imposed for a single bookkeeping error."

Reimann quotes from a businessman's letter: "You have no idea how far state control goes and how much power the Nazi representatives have over our work. The worst of it is that they are so ignorant. These Nazi radicals think of nothing except 'distributing the wealth.' Some businessmen have even started studying Marxist theories, so that they will have a better understanding of the present economic system.

"While state representatives are busily engaged in investigating and interfering, our agents and salesmen are handicapped because they never know whether or not a sale at a higher price will mean denunciation as a 'profiteer' or 'saboteur,' followed by a prison sentence. You cannot imagine how taxation has increased. Yet everyone is afraid to complain. Everywhere there is a growing undercurrent of bitterness. Everyone has his doubts about the system, unless he is very young, very stupid, or is bound to it by the privileges he enjoys.

"There are terrible times coming. If only I had succeeded in smuggling out $10,000 or even $5,000, I would leave Germany with my family. Business friends of mine are convinced that it will be the turn of the 'white Jews' (which means us, Aryan businessmen) after the Jews have been expropriated. The difference between this and the Russian system is much less than you think, despite the fact that we are still independent businessmen."

As Mises says, we are "independent" only in a decorous sense. Under fascism, explains this businessman, the capitalist "must be servile to the representatives of the state" and "must not insist on rights, and must not behave as if his private property rights were still sacred." It's the businessman, characteristically independent, who is "most likely to get into trouble with the Gestapo for having grumbled incautiously."

"Of all businessmen, the small shopkeeper is the one most under control and most at the mercy of the party," recounts Reimann. "The party man, whose goodwill he must have, does not live in faraway Berlin; he lives right next door or right around the corner. This local Hitler gets a report every day on what is discussed in Herr Schultz's bakery and Herr Schmidt's butcher shop. He would regard these men as 'enemies of the state' if they complained too much. That would mean, at the very least, the cutting of their quota of scarce and hence highly desirable goods, and it might mean the loss of their business licenses. Small shopkeepers and artisans are not to grumble."

"Officials, trained only to obey orders, have neither the desire, the equipment, nor the vision to modify rules to suit individual situations," Reimann explains. "The state bureaucrats, therefore, apply these laws rigidly and mechanically, without regard for the vital interests of essential parts of the national economy. Their only incentive to modify the letter of the law is in bribes from businessmen, who for their part use bribery as their only means of obtaining relief from a rigidity which they find crippling."

Says another businessman: "Each business move has become very complicated and is full of legal traps which the average businessman cannot determine because there are so many new decrees. All of us in business are constantly in fear of being penalized for the violation of some decree or law."

Business owners, explains another entrepreneur, cannot exist without a "collaborator," i.e., a "lawyer" with good contacts in the Nazi bureaucracy, one who "knows exactly how far you can circumvent the law." Nazi officials, explains Reimann, "obtain money for themselves by merely taking it from capitalists who have funds available with which to purchase influence and protection," paying for their protection "as did the helpless peasants of feudal days."

"It has gotten to the point where I cannot talk even in my own factory," laments a factory owner. "Accidentally, one of the workers overheard me grumbling about some new bureaucratic regulation and he immediately denounced me to the party and the Labor Front office."

Reports another factory owner: "The greater part of the week I don't see my factory at all. All this time I spend in visiting dozens of government commissions and offices in order to get raw materials I need. Then there are various tax problems to settle and I must have continual conferences and negotiations with the Price Commission. It sometimes seems as if I do nothing but that, and everywhere I go there are more leaders, party secretaries, and commissars to see." In this totalitarian paradigm, a businessman, declares a Nazi decree, "practices his functions primarily as a representative of the State, only secondarily for his own sake." Complain, warns a Nazi directive, and "we shall take away the freedom still left you."

In 1933, six years before Reimann's book, Victor Klemperer, a Jewish academic in Dresden, made the following entry in his diary on February 21: "It is a disgrace that gets worse with every day that passes. And there's not a sound from anyone. Everyone's keeping his head down."

It is impossible to escape the parallels between Guenter Reimann's account of doing business under the Nazis and the "compassionate," "responsible," and regulated "capitalism" of today's U.S. economy. At least the German government was frank enough to give the right name to its system of economic control.

* * * * *

[rbacon]

If you want to learn more about GREEN Communism/socialism/enviromentalismNew Age Religion read the link. See what Chairman MO STRONG has for you. http://arkofhope.org/ Wonder why Paul Martin is Mo Strong's protege and Paul Martin has a Native Medicine Man for a Spiritual advisor it is because he is a left wing ding a ling.

[Guest eureka]

This is becoming too funny for comment.

[August1991]

The following quote is rather long, but it's easy to read. The main point is to demonstrate that higher taxes are a disincentive to work.

Let’s begin by considering a commonly held view which says that labor supply is not affected by tax rates. In other words, this idea holds that hours worked in the market will remain steady when tax rates are either raised or lowered. If you are a policymaker and you subscribe to this view, then you can confidently increase marginal tax rates as high as you like to attain the revenues you desire. Not only that, but you can move those tax rates up and down whenever you like and blithely assume that this will have no effect on output. This is what economists and policymakers used to believe; unfortunately, many still do.

However, economic theory and data have come together to prove this notion wrong, and we have many different laboratories—or countries—in which we can view live experiments. The most useful comparison is between the United States and the countries of Europe because these economies share similar traits, but the data also hold when we consider other countries.

This issue is encapsulated in one question that is currently puzzling policymakers: Why do Americans work so much more than Europeans? The answer to this question is important because it suggests policy proposals that will improve European standards of living. However, an incorrect answer will result in policies that will only exacerbate Europe’s problems and could have implications for other countries that are looking for best practices.

Here is a somewhat startling fact: Based on labor-market statistics from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Americans aged 15 to 64, on a per-person basis, work 50 percent more than do the French (Prescott 2004). Comparisons between Americans and Germans or Italians are similar. What’s going on here? What can possibly account for these large differences in labor supply?

It turns out the answer is not related to cultural differences or institutional factors like unemployment benefits; rather, marginal tax rates explain virtually all of this difference. I admit that when I first conducted this analysis I was surprised by this finding, because I fully expected institutional constraints to be playing a bigger role. But this is not the case.

Edward Prescott Minneapolis Fed

[BHS]

I was going to comment on Amartya Sen's concept of "capabilities" but I got sidetracked by that Earth Charter thing. I'm going to go slit my wrists now.

[Toro]

Thanks August. I didn't really feel like digging.

[B. Max]

Livable Income For Everyone

We have an abundance of all material things in Canada so it is now time for us to share the wealth with all other Canadians and eventually all of those who live on our planet.

Canada needs to once again be the leaders in this revolution.  Goodness knows our fragile planet is looking for some new ideas instead of the same old, same old, boring, sterile ideas from the administrations South of the border.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If you want a share get out and earn it. Living off someone elses sweat and taking the food off their table is nothing but legal plunder when when done by the government. Not to mention the destruction it would cause to the economy. They had a saying in russia that came as a direct result of your type of thinking. They pretented to pay us, and we pretended to work.

[Guest eureka]

That, August, proves nothing. It is merely a statement. The hours of work are legilated in most countries and tax rates are not so very much different. In Europe there has been a conscious choice to take shorter hours and more living space.

These are social choices not tax choices.

However, I did not relate tax rates to work as a disincentive or otherwise. I related them to growth The findings are that they do not affect growth. Growth rates in various European countries are significantly different even where taxes are not dissimilar. There are other factors at play.

There are in quite recent history, examples of countries where hours were longer and tax rates higher. Productivity and growth in those countries moved significantly higher after the 40 hour work week became the legal norm. I give you Britain as one where the top marginal tax rate was at one time, shortly after the war, 95%. It did not stop people working hard.

I would think that non-Americans would dispute the idea of harder working Americans. That has always been a fiction. They work longer hours because the laws have not favoured those who work. They work longer hours because they must. Do they work efficiently or because they have an incentive to do so? I doubt it.

I have shown in other discissions that Americans have a higher effective tax rate than Canadians when health care is factored in. I have also written that the lowest 50% on the income scale in Canada pay less taxes than the same group of Americans. That will apply in several European countries, too. Has that been a disincentive for half of the American population?

There are still no studies that prove any advantage to lower taxed countries. Of course, some here will take that to mean tax at any absurd level. That is not worth discussing. What level would cause disincentive is unknowable since it has not been reached anywhere. It might even prove to be an incentive if it were necessary to sustain a desired standard of living.

[mirror]

Buddy Communism doesn't work. You can paint it GREEN if you want but it is still Marxist. Not only does Communism not work but it kills people. Hitler 10 million dead. Stalin 60 million dead. Chairman Mao over 100 million dead. Don't you read history.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Spoken like a true a freak dominion poster.

Hey pal, the friggin' cold war is over. Don't you get it.

Unfortuantely Bush & Co are driving the US towards fascism but hey, who cares about that, eh! Wake up, and start using some common sense instead of that drivel above.

[BHS]

Spoken like a true a freak dominion poster.

Hey pal, the friggin' cold war is over. Don't you get it.

Unfortuantely Bush & Co are driving the US towards fascism but hey, who cares about that, eh! Wake up, and start using some common sense instead of that drivel above.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Pot. Kettle. Black.

[Black Dog]

So, Hitler was a Socialist! And he was a Communist under another name. Tell me again, what Grade are you in?

Eureka: of course Hitler was a Communist! That's why he relied heavily on the Junkers and industrialists for the Nazi party's funds, openly denounced communism and, upon seizing power, rounded up the Communists and Socialists and had them killed! Uh...

The Nazis were Fascists, a statist ideaology distinct from socialism.

[Yaro]

Can we grow up a little? This thread is a rather sad display.

While I don't support the notion of direct GAI, I would like to see alot more incentive to automation and a serious reduction in the outflow raw resources. Lets start using our low population to our own advantage, I am thinking we should be on the forefront of automated weaponry.

[BHS]

Eureka: of course Hitler was a Communist! That's why he relied heavily on the Junkers and industrialists for the Nazi party's funds, openly denounced communism and, upon seizing power, rounded up the Communists and Socialists and had them killed! Uh...

The Nazis were Fascists, a statist ideaology distinct from socialism.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

In theory, if not in practice.

[Black Dog]

In theory, if not in practice.

In asmuch as Mao and Stalin were Communists in theory, but not in practice.

Anyway given that all western industrial democracies are socialist in large degrees, arguing that socialism doesn't work is to ignore its role in the success of our own societies.