Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

[St. Clown]

Re: Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

Justice Learned Hand: Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. [emphasis added]
Helvering v. Gregory, 69 F.2d 809, 810-11 (2d Cir. 1934).


Who am I to argue?

Everytime I hear or read his name, I always think that Learned Hand is either the greatest or worst name someone could ever give his/her child. Talk about setting expectations!

 

[Rover]

Do you think reporters 'support' a story when they report it? Does the FAA "want to" see planes crash so that they can go out and investigate what went wrong?

You come across as a person who would curse out the canary in the coal mine for fainting like some weakling! The canary should just buck up and keep breathing in that carbon monoxide and like it too, right?

I'm merely asking for your opinion Fishy. No need to spaz out. Are you in favor of people renouncing their citizenship of the United States over money? Essentually turning their back on their country to lower their tax rate?

I find that disgusting, but that's just me I guess. To be clear though, if you run off to Canada to skip out on a war you don't believe in, you're a coward, but if you run to Switzerland to get a smaller tax bill, you're a Patriot??? Is that the opinion of conservatives?

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

To be clear though, if you run off to Canada to skip out on a war you don't believe in, you're a coward, but if you run to Switzerland to get a smaller tax bill, you're a Patriot??? Is that the opinion of conservatives?

An excellent point

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

Interesting to notice the effects of competition in the marketplace in real life, not just in textbooks or scholarly journals....

When we first moved to CT, it was basically Comcast or nothing. Even broadcast TV was hard to get on a reliable basis, given the state's geography and the location of the broadcasters.

Comcast service at that time was quite over-priced, but what really stood out was their atrocious level of customer "support": rude, uncaring, arrogant, "take it or leave it suckah!" attitude was pervasive throughout the company.[SUP]1[/SUP]

Several years ago, AT&T came into the market with UVerse. Their customer support was outstanding and their pricing was reasonable.

Since then, Comcast price increases have slowed dramatically, but what really stands out is how much better their customer support has become.









[SUP]1[/SUP] When I first got an internet modem from them, it didn't work right; the customer support person kept trying to tell me that I had to go to their website and download the appropriate drivers. It never did register on her that, since my modem wasn't working, it was impossible to download anything!

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

One part of Economics that is particularly challenging to understand are the effects of technological change, both short-term and long-term. However, a decent understanding of these effects is a vital component to informed public policy, and as one might expect, the lack of understanding shown by most of our politicians today leads them to propose exactly the opposite of what would be useful and helpful.

Somewhere in my paper archives I have a great essay by an economist whose surname I think begins with Z (Zinsser maybe? not sure). I'm going to paraphrase what I recall of it.

There's an island somewhere in the South Pacific. They have a subsistence-level economy. All the able-bodied men set out to sea each day in canoes, using hand-held lines to catch fish, and they barely catch enough each day to feed the tribe each evening.

One day, a young man is late to the boat launch. He's running along the path to the beach, and he runs right into a big spider web. He falls, and the lines he is carrying get tossed up into the air and become snarled. He looks at the lines, he looks at the tatters of the spider web, he looks at the snarled lines again, he looks back to the tattered spider web, and he gets an idea.

That evening, he and a friend try to weave the lines into a net. After a few trials, they are able to construct a net that works well enough to catch and hold fish. Now, using a net, it only takes a few canoes a few days to catch enough fish to feed the tribe for a week.

In the short run, the unemployment rate among fishermen skyrockets to 85%!

In the long run, of course, these industrious and enterprising islanders soon have a booming economy, as people who no longer have to fish all day every day, who are used to working hard, start doing other things instead.




I wonder, if they had some of today's politicians there, whether there'd be quotas imposed on how many fish a person could catch, in order to "protect jobs."

 

[LynahFan]

One part of Economics that is particularly challenging to understand are the effects of technological change, both short-term and long-term. However, a decent understanding of these effects is a vital component to informed public policy, and as one might expect, the lack of understanding shown by most of our politicians today leads them to propose exactly the opposite of what would be useful and helpful.

Somewhere in my paper archives I have a great essay by an economist whose surname I think begins with Z (Zinsser maybe? not sure). I'm going to paraphrase what I recall of it.

There's an island somewhere in the South Pacific. They have a subsistence-level economy. All the able-bodied men set out to sea each day in canoes, using hand-held lines to catch fish, and they barely catch enough each day to feed the tribe each evening.

One day, a young man is late to the boat launch. He's running along the path to the beach, and he runs right into a big spider web. He falls, and the lines he is carrying get tossed up into the air and become snarled. He looks at the lines, he looks at the tatters of the spider web, he looks at the snarled lines again, he looks back to the tattered spider web, and he gets an idea.

That evening, he and a friend try to weave the lines into a net. After a few trials, they are able to construct a net that works well enough to catch and hold fish. Now, using a net, it only takes a few canoes a few days to catch enough fish to feed the tribe for a week.

In the short run, the unemployment rate among fishermen skyrockets to 85%!

In the long run, of course, these industrious and enterprising islanders soon have a booming economy, as people who no longer have to fish all day every day, who are used to working hard, start doing other things instead.




I wonder, if they had some of today's politicians there, whether there'd be quotas imposed on how many fish a person could catch, in order to "protect jobs."

Why bother? Just confiscate all the fish and distribute them according to need. Unemployment isn't a problem as long as everyone has sufficient food and shelter, right?

 

[Rover]

Why bother? Just confiscate all the fish and distribute them according to need. Unemployment isn't a problem as long as everyone has sufficient food and shelter, right?

Isn't that what Jesus did, distributing the bread and fish to everyone until they were all fed? D@mn communist (ducks lightening bolt)

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

Isn't that what Jesus did, distributing the bread and fish to everyone until they were all fed?

You naturally overlooked the key difference: He did not take forcibly confiscate anyone else's fish to redistribute. He only distributed bread and fish that He "made" himself, starting from someone's voluntary contribution.

Many of us contribute to charities. There is nothing wrong with voluntary income redistribution (Romney blew a big chance by not pointing out loudly and repeatedly that his charitable contributions exceeded his income tax payments, for example). It's the forcible part that interferes with liberty, and it's often the way the money is used that really annoys people. I wouldn't mind the taxes I pay nearly so much if they money weren't squandered (speaking more locally than nationally, but even so....)

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

Unemployment isn't a problem as long as everyone has sufficient food and shelter, right?

I guess we need to agree to disagree here. For many people, there is a deep-rooted need to be productive, to live a life that has meaning and dignity, not merely to "take take take" but also to "give back" as well.

To fully participate in society, we are interdependent: we all trade something of value to others to get something of value from them in return. If one has nothing of value to offer, does that make them worthless? who wants to feel worthless? everyone should be able to develop some skill or trade so that they can feel that they have some value. We may all be God's children and are inherently valuable in that manner, but for most of us, that's not enough: we want to feel like we are worthwhile by what we contribute to others, we don't want only to have someone take care of us.

Anyone who has been a parent or caretaker has heard a small child say "I want to do it myself." Why then do we treat people in need as infants who are unable to do anything for themselves? isn't that degrading to them?

Merely providing people with sufficient food and shelter also sends a subtle message that they are worthless as people: how is it all that different from an animal shelter, if all you do is give people food and shelter and then stop there?

 

[LynahFan]

Re: Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

I guess we need to agree to disagree here. For many people, there is a deep-rooted need to be productive, to live a life that has meaning and dignity, not merely to "take take take" but also to "give back" as well.

I'm going to have to get on the phone to DOE and tell them that their $120M "Manhattan Project" for battery development is not enough - batteries still failing at an alarming rate...

 

[Rover]

You naturally overlooked the key difference: He did not take forcibly confiscate anyone else's fish to redistribute. He only distributed bread and fish that He "made" himself, starting from someone's voluntary contribution.

Many of us contribute to charities. There is nothing wrong with voluntary income redistribution (Romney blew a big chance by not pointing out loudly and repeatedly that his charitable contributions exceeded his income tax payments, for example). It's the forcible part that interferes with liberty, and it's often the way the money is used that really annoys people. I wouldn't mind the taxes I pay nearly so much if they money weren't squandered (speaking more locally than nationally, but even so....)

Yes but Fishy, if you give a man a fish he eats for a day, but if you teach him to fish he can feed himself. Clearly Jesus was enabling the 47%'ers to live off the dole instead of picking themselves up by their bootstraps, at least according to libertarian/conservative thinking.

 

[unofan]

(Romney blew a big chance by not pointing out loudly and repeatedly that his charitable contributions exceeded his income tax payments, for example)

Probably because then he'd have had to explain why he voluntarily didn't take as many deductions as he could have to artificially increase his tax rate so as to not run afoul of the Buffett scenario (ie, paying a lower rate than his secretary). I have no doubt he's since amended that return to claim those deductions now that he's no longer in the public eye.

He had no interest in focusing anything on his taxes.

I also don't really get the comparison. So he gives me away more than the government collects in taxes from him. Is that supposed to mean something? Kinda like comparing the price of gas to milk?

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

useful and insightful article about income distribution. I had speculated that perhaps the so-called "problem" of widening income differential had less to do with the top end of the scale and more to do with problems at the bottom end of the scale, and this article provides empirical evidence to support the latter: it appears that it is the deterioration in the quality of public education and its failure to provide elementary school graduates with basic life skills in reading comprehension and arithmetic that has caused income for those "on the bottom" to stagnate.

The first sentence is important to people who want to base public policy on what is effective in actually providing better income opportunities to all. Too much of today's debate is driven by uninformed prejudice or deliberate demagogery rather than by empirical evidence of what actually works.

data do not support the view that tax cuts in the past 30 years are responsible for the widening income distribution. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the distribution of market income before taxes widened in the 1980s and '90s by about as much as the distribution of income after taxes.

....

Widening income distribution can be a concern ... if it signals reduced income mobility and a growing inequality of opportunity. Consider data collected by Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez for the upper 10% and the lower 90% of the income scale. From the end of World War II until the mid-1960s, real income growth was strong for both groups and there was relatively little change in the distribution of income.

In the late 1960s and 1970s the growth of real income slowed dramatically for both groups.... Income growth sped up in the 1980s and '90s but was faster in the upper-income group than in the lower-income group. This is the period of the widening of the distribution. According to the latest data collected by Mr. Saez, real income of both groups has recently stagnated.

What caused the differential income growth in the 1980s and 1990s? Research shows that the returns to education started increasing in the 1980s. For example, the wage premium for going to college compared to high school increased. But the supply of educated students did not respond to the increase in returns. High-school graduation rates were declining in the 1980s and '90s and have moved very little since then. Test scores of American students fell in international rankings. With little supply response, the returns to those with the education rose more quickly, causing the income distribution to widen. [emphases added]

In other words, income is suppressed for those on the bottom because they lack access to quality education.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

In other words, income is suppressed for those on the bottom because they lack access to quality education.

Bull****.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

Bull****.

Thanks for proving the point!

 

[Rover]

Re: Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

Interesting study happened when my university took over the educational system for a nearby struggling city and managed it for 20 years.

At the end of the day, students scored about the same on average as they did when the school first took over. So, no improvement, right? Wrong. In fact students who stayed within the city's school system thru all grades did indeed show significant improvement. The problem was new students coming in for whom English wasn't their primary language. So, the quality of education in this country hasn't gone down. I'd say by and large its improved at least since the 80's. However public schools are dealing with a lot more people who weren't born here but who they are obligated to educate.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

Interesting study happened when my university took over the educational system for a nearby struggling city and managed it for 20 years.

At the end of the day, students scored about the same on average as they did when the school first took over. So, no improvement, right? Wrong. In fact students who stayed within the city's school system thru all grades did indeed show significant improvement. The problem was new students coming in for whom English wasn't their primary language. So, the quality of education in this country hasn't gone down. I'd say by and large its improved at least since the 80's. However public schools are dealing with a lot more people who weren't born here but who they are obligated to educate.

Never expected that you'd be one to criticize the paucity of results when teachers' union minions are left in charge. So results do matter after all.

 

[Rover]

Never expected that you'd be one to criticize the paucity of results when teachers' union minions are left in charge. So results do matter after all.

I don't believe the teacher's union was affected. More like the university replaced the school committee.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

Results are in from a real-life "laboratory test" on the efficacy of a minimum wage, and certified by Congress itself, no less!

Members of Congress ... [voted] Tuesday ... on a bill to delay federally mandated minimum-wage increases in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa, U.S. territories in the South Pacific. Congress agreed, 415-0, that a minimum-wage requirement can worsen economic mobility.

The government has historically granted the territories an exemption from minimum-wage requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The last federal increase in 2007, to $7.25 from $5.15, required CNMI and American Samoa for the first time to raise their minimum wage by $0.50 per year until it reached parity with the states.....

Even with the minimum wage currently only at $5.55 in CNMI after three increases, the requirement has caused so much economic tumult that Congress has now passed two pieces of legislation, in 2010 and on Tuesday, to extend the transition period for the islands.

That's because the minimum-wage hikes have slammed local economies, which were already reporting years of declining GDP when the increases began. Government Accountability Office studies have shown that wage floors tend to do precisely the opposite of what their supporters purport. Employment in CNMI fell by 35% between 2006 and 2009, while average inflation-adjusted earnings remained largely unchanged. In American Samoa, employment dropped 19% from 2008 to 2009 after just one increase. The GAO said employers took "cost-cutting actions," including "laying off workers and freezing hiring."

Congress upheld the GAO's findings—at least for now. [emphases added, snarky political asides removed]

415 - 0, eh?

 

[joecct]

Re: Strands in the Tapestry: the Business, Economics, and Tax Policy Thread

Results are in from a real-life "laboratory test" on the efficacy of a minimum wage, and certified by Congress itself, no less!



415 - 0, eh?

An Executive Order will raise the Minimum Wage to a "living wage" (whatever that is).