Posted on 08/03/2012 4:24:22 PM PDT by ExxonPatrolUs
Karl Smith’s co-blogger Adam asks ... [Is] being “free-market” compatible with the belief that a government should set top marginal tax rates to maximize revenue? If your argument is that the government should extract the maximum revenue from high income tax payers so as to reduce the tax payments on lower income tax payers then there is nothing in this that violates free market economics. Free market economists who also support a welfare state, are also conceding that taxes should be collected so as to mitigate the consequences of market outcomes on lower income people. Note, for example, that arguing for a 70% tax bracket is not necessarily arguing for a large government. One could support a small government and simply argue that it should be entirely paid for by the wealthiest members of society. One could argue also that very high marginal taxes at the top be balanced by strongly negative marginal taxes at the rest of the scale so that net tax collection is low. It is certainly true that the term “free market economist” is coming to mean someone who believes that the free market outcome is endowed with a moral good rather than just allocative efficiency.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Free market economists who also support a welfare state. . . are living oxymorons.
“Yes, Free Market Economists Can Support a 70% Tax Rate”
So can I, assuming it hits the people that DO NOT PAY TAXES at this point. It is CRITICAL that we get people back in “the system”.
Does not compute.
Fair taxation would be the same percentage of income or flat tax for everyone. THAT WOULD BE FAIR!
It ain’t a free market if the government confiscates 70% of the income.
That would be politically power inefficient however.
Let’s be honest, really honest... The most incredible genius of our founding fathers was basing the burden of the federal government on tariffs. It SEVERELY limited the ability of the federal government to mismanage daily life, and by extension, the economy.
There is no solution to this problem other than to strip MOST of the federal government out of our lives. I do not mind state contributions to a standing military, but if there is to be a primary tax authority, it should be the states, and not the federal government.
There is no better example than now as to why the current system is so destructive. Right now, the federal government is spending nearly 25% of the GDP, of which nearly half is borrowed money. If it were state vs state, obviously no state would be able to get away with this for long - too many businesses and private home owners would up and leave. They would see the destructive behavior for what it was, rather than ethereal money printed in the heavens and showered down upon the banks.
And of course, those who are taxing would be directly accountable to the people they tax. Again, right now, that’s not the case - a bunch of New Yorkers and Californians are perfectly happy to have their congresscritters tax the ever living daylights out of the entire nation.
We need to return to a tariff based tax system for the federal government - though I would not mind their cooperative management (through state contributions) for national defense, or even social security. But the ability of the federal government to directly tax a person, vs a good, has to stop. Too many from people from states that are already a financial disaster are determining the fate of prudent hard working people, and how much money they will be permitted to keep from their earnings.
This guy is an idiot. IT’S MY MONEY! HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT WE CAN SUPPORT 70%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Go Galt. Starve the B. Do it, before all asset values are sucked into the bureaucratic abyss. Many will awaken one day with nothing.
“Yes, Free Market Economists Can Support a 70% Tax Rate”
Absolutely they can: because they’re par-for-the-course, pinheaded economists.
If they actually produced something, rather than sit around and cluelessly jabber-on all day, they wouldn’t be economists.
And they wouldn’t support a 70% tax rate.
Here is an excerpt from an old thread, about an even older booklet called “The Revolution Was” written in 1939 about FDR and the New Deal. The booklet is long, but is a GREAT read, and it is ALL happening again. FDR was no idiot, and Obama isn’t either.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2185147/posts
PROBLEM NINE TO MAKE GOVERNMENT THE GREAT CAPITALIST AND ENTERPRISER
...Now regard the credit reservoir as a lake fed by thousands of little community springs, and at the same time assume the point of view of a government hostile to the capitalistic system of free private enterprise. You see at once that the lake is your frustration. Why? Because so long as the people have the lake and control their own capital and can do with it as they please the government’s power of enterprise will be limited, and limited either for want of capital or by the fact that private enterprise can compete with it.
So you will want to get rid of the lake. But will you attack the lake itself? No; because even if you should pump it dry, even if you should break down the retaining hills and spill it empty, still it would appear again, either there or in another place, provided the springs continued to flow. But if you can divert the water of the springs — if you can divert it from the lake controlled by the people to one controlled by the government, then the people’s lake will dry up and the power of enterprise will pass to government. And that is what was taking place before the war; notwithstanding the war, that is what still is taking place.
By taxing payrolls under the social security law of compulsory thrift and taking the money to Washington instead of letting the people save it for themselves; by taxing profits and capital gains in a system that is, or was, a profit and loss system; by having its own powerful financial agencies with enormous revolving funds.....
This was an entirely new power. As the government acquired it, so passed to the government the ultimate power of initiative. It passed from private capitalism to capitalistic government. The government became the great capitalist and enterpriser. Unconsciously business concedes the fact when it talks of a mixed economy, even accepts it as inevitable. A mixed economy is one in which private enterprise does what it can and government does the rest.
While this great power of capital formation was passing to the government the New Deal’s economic doctors put forth two ideas, and the propagandists implanted them in the popular imagination. One was the idea that what we were facing for the first time in our history was a static economy. The grand adventure was finished. They made believe to prove this with charts and statistics. It might be true. No one could prove that it wasn’t, because all future belongs to faith. The effect of this, of course, was to discourage the spirit of private enterprise......
The snippet you posted borders on incoherent.
A 70% tax rate will bring on a revolution!
Unmitigated horsesh#t.
It’s not April 1st, so there goes that excuse.
The Federal Government is a bloated overgrown behemoth that needs to see a Texas sized scalpel and the 9th and 10 th Amendments to cut it down to size.
It is a blob strangling the loifeblood of America, constraining its freedom, and ruining its free enterprise.
Anyone up for A GAO conference?
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