out of the box thought on taxes

Originally Posted by indago
You are denying, then, that the price paid in the marketplace for the property is the market price?

But I didn't make a claim on the market price: the market did...

 

It can be used for productive purposes without the user having to meet the extortion demands of a greedy, thieving parasite.

Consider a mountain pass between two countries. It is unowned, so the merchant caravans pass through it unhindered. Now suddenly a bandit comes along, and claims to own the pass. He charges the caravans "rent" to use it.

It is self-evident and indisputable that the pass was of more use unowned. The only one it is now more useful to is the bandit.

You are destroyed.

 

Making certain lands public makes sense, but making all lands that way really doesn't.

I wouldn't want my front yard to be public. That would be rather annoying if some vagrants decided to squat there and I would have no legal means to remove them.

 

No, you are just lying. You asked me to imagine that someone was stupid enough to pay so much for the land that they would be guaranteed to lose money. That is not the market price.

 

Only in your wildest and most delusional hallucinations.

 

<sigh> You know better than that, because I have explained this all to you before. Paying the land rent to the community of those whom you deprive of the land gets you exclusive use of that land in return. That's what makes you willing to pay so much. Are you really unaware of the leasing of public land in places like HK? Do you think HK landholders have a problem with squatters?

 

You are obviously delusional! And, you are not only delusional, you have a reading comprehension problem. A price was set for the property, and a buyer paid the price and obtained the property. I am sure that anyone &#8212; other than you &#8212; could comprehend this simple transaction.

Maybe you could go back and re-read what was written, and maybe, just maybe, you might arrive at a different conclusion.

 

The landowners reciprocates no benefits back to society through wealth creation in return for the land rent he collects.

Just like landowners who gobble up other people's taxes, since other people's taxes increase the value of their land.

Thanks for providing the evidence that it's rent seeking.

 

I figured the land rent in the current system was simply property tax.

I don't see how leasing the land is a preferable system unless the lease is really cheap or you don't plan on staying on the property for very long.

How does it work in HK?

 

I most certainly was.

Undoubtedly.

Yes, but his core arguments remain unrefuted.

Hong Kong proves you wrong.

Maybe because you want to live in a nice place without having to pay for a ticket on the landowners' escalator? There are nice houses on leased land in many places, including HK. Why do you think there is no point in owning a house unless you can use it to rob the productive?

 

Again, more specifics on the HK system would be preferable.

What I do know about HK is that it has a rather high population concentration and a relatively high cost of living. In an environment where land is very scarce and population is very high, a lease system could probably work better.

I just don't see how this would apply to America other than in places like NYC.

 

I'm not even sure what that means.

It's better because the landholder doesn't get to extort money from the producer, who also doesn't have to support an idle mortgage lender.

You buy a long-term lease. It's actually far more complicated, inefficient and corrupt than it needs to be, especially since the handover to China in 1997 -- but even with all that, it still works very, very well.

 

<yawn> As I scored 170/170 on the GRE verbal, that is unlikely.

No, no such transaction occurred. You merely asked me to imagine that it could occur. But there is no reason to think it actually could.

I'm sure that anyone -- other than you -- could comprehend that that simple "transaction" is just some $#!+ you made up.

Nope. I don't need to re-read it, and the conclusion remains: you are trying to substitute your false claim about what transactions would occur for actual facts and logic that would justify their occurrence.

Suppose a rich, greedy fool spends $10M to retrieve a hatpin from the wreck of the Titanic. He wants a reasonable profit, so he sets the price of the hatpin at $11M. In this imaginary scenario, some bigger fool actually buys it from him for $11M, making that the market price. You claim that this imaginary transaction shows that the actual market price of hatpins from the Titanic is $11M, because the owner of a hatpin from the Titanic can decide what its market price will be based on the costs he has incurred and the level of profit he desires. But in fact, that claim is just some stupid $#!+ you made up, and has no basis in fact.

 

And thus be available for productive use, rather than being hoarded idly by a greedy parasite. Right.

 

I invite you to look up whatever information about HK you think you need.

Yeah, and where they speak Chinese. That has to be crucial, too.

Lots of people live and do business on leased land outside NYC. Casinos on Indian Reserves are all on leased land, as are the houses and other buildings. A cousin of my dad's lives in a nice house on Indian Reserve land. Hasn't been scalped yet.

 

It depends on the enterprise. Many large corporations work on the "profit margin" in which case they merely pass the costs on to the consumer.

Of note labor costs are not just driven up by unions nor is any enteprise mandated to accept increases in wages demanded by the unions. The only power a union has is it's ability to strike at the end of a contract period. A strike is technically a "voluntary termination of employment" by the union employees and the enterprise can simply replace the workers at that point. The cost to the enterprise is that they have to retrain the new workforce to meet the needs of the enterprise. Based upon a cost/benefit analysis the enterprise can either reach a contract agreement with the union or hire new workers. In either accepting or rejecting a union contract offer the enterprise must obviously evaluate the impact on pricing and it's ability to maintain it's profit margin.

Regardless of all of the details ultimately the increases in the cost of production for whatever reason lead to greater profits over the long term for any enterprise working on a profit margin. If that wasn't the case they couldn't maintain the profit margin and would eventually go out of business after the profit margin disappears completely.

This thread is really about proposals for taxation based upon crony capitalism though and not unions. Most exporting enterprises are large corporations and when we discuss taxation we have to compare corporate taxes to sole proprietorship taxes. Currently a sole proprietor of a small enterprise pays roughly double the tax rates of a corporation so the small privately owned enterprise is paying the price for the preferential tax treatment of the corporations and that is crony capitalism.

 

In fact we have that already because all states (to my knowledge) have property taxes.

It is also unconstitutional for the federal government to impose property taxes. The federal government is currently limited to imposing "uniform taxes or apportioned taxes" (Article I Section 8 ) and income taxes that do not have to be apportioned (16th Amendment).

Discussions of unconstitutional federal taxation is really moot as the requirements for ratification of a Constitutional Amendment are typically too high especially when it comes to taxation. In the history of the US only the 16th Amendment gave the Congress a new authority for taxation.

 

Prices are not so elastic. Prices should always be set to maximize gross revenue. Raising prices hurts volume and competitiveness. Even industries without an obvious competitor have to compete with everyone else vying for the consumers dollars. Buy a Microsoft Office license or get a dog? is one I had to contemplate a few months ago. Her name is Dolly.

I agree that disparate tax schemes for different entities is cronyism. I take some exception to the taxes amount. The sole proprietor doesn't have to pay tax twice on their money. That soc security portion is a racket though.

 

Hello Dolly. LOL

The statement "Prices should always be set to maximize gross revenue" isn't true and differences between Microsoft v Apple exemplified this. Microsoft's success was based upon relatively low profit on a very high volume while Apple's success was based upon relatively small volume with a high profit. There are two different strategies where the bottom line in profits compete. It is gross profit and not gross revenue that the enteprise is ulitmately concerned with. Earning 5% on $100 million is the same as earning 10% on $50 million in sales.

It is this disparity between corporate taxation v small business taxation and investor taxation v worker taxation that I oppose because it favors the "large" and the "wealthy" minorities over the average person in America. The vast majority of Americans are getting screwed for the benefit of a small elite group.

 

You are making a similar argument that was made by the United States Solicitor General before the Supreme Court of the United States, an argument that was totally demolished by the Court.

The Solicitor General for the government, in an amicus curiae brief, had made the argument: "The Sixteenth Amendment removed the restriction of apportionment as to such income taxes as before were subject thereto." The Court, in their opinion, in which there was no dissent, and noting this "confusion", declared this to be an "erroneous assumption" on the part of the government, and "wholly without foundation". The Court declared that "it was settled that the provisions of the Sixteenth Amendment conferred no new power of taxation"; and that the amendment simply prohibited the income tax from being taken from the category of indirect taxation, and being placed into the category of a direct tax.

240 US 103

POSTING



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Doesn't matter what you think you scored anywhere! You're here now, and in a state of delusional hallucination.

I didn't ask you to imagine anything! You are hallucinating!

 

My bad gross profit was the term to use. Either way both companies price to recieve the most they can already and simply driving up wages will not necessarily lead to an ability to drive up prices.

I agree all income should be taxed the same way, except an inflation deduction or an inflation allowance added to the basis of capital gains to match a yearly inflation index given to other income to recognize the long term investment. That would make it truly equal on both sides.

 

Unfortunately, a sales tax hits hardest on those least capable of paying it.

We could:

Limit insider compensation
Impose stricter limits on retained earnings
Impose very high taxes on retained earnings in excess of the limits.

These would have the impact of "encouraging" corporations to maximize profits paid to investors

Then

Set the corporate tax at zero; and
tax the first $100k of investment income at 15% and the remainder as regular income.

The net effect is to encourage businesses to either reinvest profits or pass them on to stockholders and encourages stockholders to reinvest profits to minimize taxable income.

None of these, though, would impact our ability to compete.

 

Correct. We should eliminate all regressive taxation.

Very acceptable. Taxation should be very progressive on individuals and off shore money should not be subject to taxation if returned to the US.

 

Your logic and understanding of LVT, rent-seeking and economics in general are far superior to most people on this thread. Rich landlords oppressing the po-folks is a thing of the past and federal laws make such a special class of people very unlikely to come about in the future. When you said LVT could be used to some extent, provided proper and just payment is made to the current land owner is essential for any assumption of LVT as a viable tax. Keep up the good work.