James, by your logic there should be no taxes at all then

Frankly, James, at this point I'm torn. I don't know whether you're a terrible economist or a terrible person. For your sake, I will lean towards the former, although your arguments incline me to lean the latter.

Hey, just to throw it out there really quickly, Orthaic and I had a discussion about what taxes there should be and the extent those taxes should go to which goes in depth in what you two are talking about right now. It's in a thread I created, "the role of government in a free society" if you gentlemen care to take a look at it.

@goldfinger

"Okay JY, let's have it your way.

"Let's have everyone's family cover their own healthcare costs, or rely on charities."

or let their loved ones die.

"Where does that leave us after one generation? Two?"

essentially the 19th century. i don't see healthcare as a necessity, i see it as a benefit that you can have added. if i can afford, i can improve my health. if we discover a trillion dollar cost for an extra 100 years of life, will everyone has a right to it? or is it and added factor?

"What state will the economy be in then? With probably 70-80% of the country in personal bankruptcy?"

you're assuming the population will ALL go into debt.

we just need cheaper healthcare

there's a way to get cheap health insurance in a purely competitive market, and the ACA went exactly in the opposite direction.

insurance companies aren't the problem: in Germany and Switzerland they RELY off of competitive insurance companies.

our insurance companies make about a 2.2% return on revenue, they're about 35th on the most profitable businesses. meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies are at number 3, with a 19.9% return, and medical products and equipment industry was right behind it, with a 16.3 percent return

In the U.S., insurers negotiate with hospitals and drug companies on their own - and they pay more as a result. In fact, because of their weak negotiating position they frequently use whatever price Medicare is paying as a baseline and then, because they lack the power to strike a similar deal, add a percentage on top.

in single payer systems i other countries, the gov't sets the price.

in our country: neither the free market NOR the gov't sets the price. this is BAAAAD for costs

so the solution? ask a Trump supporter!

a VERY common response by Trump supporters (if you don't call them nazis, racists, bigots, homophobes right off the back) is that we need to stop giving monopolies to these out of control pharmaceutical companies, while butchering insurance companies. and who do they blame? Hillary, the woman who accepted millions in campaign donations from pharmaceutical companies #ClintonFoundationFunFacts look at how much money was pulled out after she lost.

If we lower costs enough, then we won't have to restrict people's freedom, and we'll be better off with healthcare costs than countries with smaller, more homogeneous populations.

of course, this only addresses symptoms of problems. it costs up to 2.6 billion dollars to get a new drug onto the market!

http://csdd.tufts.edu/news/complete_story/tufts_csdd_rd_cost_study_now_published

clearly we need to address the fact that this is not just inflation driven, and regulations are making these investments expensive.

most pharma-companies are massive internationals and patent laws on drugs don’t apply overseas, PLUS they get smaller profits due to lower prices as set by foreign governments.

The USA with a 20% return is why investing in pharmaceuticals is so lucrative. but imagine if the USA also capped prices, and your 1.2 billion dollar investment (out of pocket cost) only yields 2% return instead of 20%? who is taking that risk???

nobody smart: i.e. the gov’t. the gov’t MUST subsidize, and eventually, nationalize. this is because of massive overregulation.

it used to be “buyer beware” but now it’s “we’re from the gov’t and we’re here to help” (Reagan rolling over in his grave).

Of course this wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for bankruptcy loopholes and the like to get out of lawsuits. I propose two markets, and FDA regulated, and a completely unregulated, free, buyer beware market. now you can still sue if a family member dies, and they can’t weasel out of money (we’ll have to change some statutes) but this way, drugs get put out on the market quickly and cheaply.

furthermore (i like that word a lot) nationalization stops competition, which will stifle creativity in drug creation.

with these 2 markets, i think we’ll very quickly see which one starts succeeding: turns out “freedom” is a pretty good thing. who knew?

furthermore,


"What will life look like for the poor? The rich? Is that fair?"

actually, that IS fair. we live as long as we can, as long as we are able, and as long as we have the will to continue. anything we can fairly obtain to extend our lives we reach for.

but it is unfair to force others to help extend your life. force is the key factor here

"but do you support federal minimum wages? surely we can agree that across various markets of the USA, many wage increases would have regressive effects, even if the aggregate effect were positive"

If the aggregate is positive, why do I care? The federal minimum wage is often lower than that of the states anyways, so I don't see why it matters. In some rural markets, sure it will create some distortions, but frankly those are also markets where people could benefit from price inflation.

"Manwe, how can you not see that as relevant? A 20% flat tax is infinitely more oppressive on someone who makes $20k a year and pays $10k in rent than on someone who makes $60k a year and pays 20k in rent"

Because both of them are paying the same percentage of their earnings in taxes. The dollar amount that is left over to pay for whatever they want to pay for is just not relevant. If the guy making $20k and paying $10k in rent thinks he needs more money for other things, he can A. Get a job paying more money or B. Find a place charging cheaper rent. But, why should the other guy have to take some of the tax burden off of him just because he wants more money? Doesn't everybody want more money? As long as they pay the same percentage on their income, I don't see how it is unfair.

@goldfinger

"James, by your logic there should be no taxes at all then"

ugh, i already addressed this. i'm fine with taxes, but not over taxation.

"Frankly, James, at this point I'm torn. I don't know whether you're a terrible economist or a terrible person. For your sake, I will lean towards the former, although your arguments incline me to lean the latter."

not wanting to take from others? not wanting to infringe on the rights of others? of course this gets boiled down to ad hominems. i should have known.

James, your argument is that people should let their loved ones die. Not my words, yours.

You are a terrible person. Rethink your life's priorities

@goldfinger

""but do you support federal minimum wages? surely we can agree that across various markets of the USA, many wage increases would have regressive effects, even if the aggregate effect were positive"

If the aggregate is positive, why do I care?"

because you are enacting policy that is directly disadvantaging others... jesus are you REALLY that utilitarian?

"The federal minimum wage is often lower than that of the states anyways, so I don't see why it matters."

it doesn't... until Bernie sanders gets up on stage and demands 15$ an hour. that is not your argument i know, but it's a common one nowadays.

"In some rural markets, sure it will create some distortions, but frankly those are also markets where people could benefit from price inflation."

um... what rural markets do you frequent? if i go down to visit my sister through arizona, drive through rural parts of Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico. Source me whatever local price indexes you're looking at, because i'm seeing different things

@goldinger

"James, your argument is that people should let their loved ones die. Not my words, yours.

You are a terrible person. Rethink your life's priorities"


If i had a choice, let my little brother Gavin die, or throw hundreds of millions into poverty... SHOULD I BE ALLOWED TO MAKE THAT CHOICE?

by your logic YES.

I'm afraid i'd kill, i'd kill innocent people to protect the ones i love. i'd murder every last person on this damn website to keep my little brother from dying.

But the gov't CANNOT allow me, to infringe upon other people's rights, simply because i love my brother.

in the moment... feeling those emotions i would give you another argument. i'd give you an argument of force, of theories of power and slavery and dominance.

but we can't allow our gov't to behave in such a way

"our insurance companies make about a 2.2% return on revenue, they're about 35th on the most profitable businesses. meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies are at number 3, with a 19.9% return, and medical products and equipment industry was right behind it, with a 16.3 percent return"

Insurance companies have a 2.2% profit margin on average? Haha, they'd be better off just putting all of their money into treasury bonds at that rate, even at historically low rates.

i need to sleep... this has to be my last post.

do the means justify the ends? a right to life, cannot infringe upon other's rights to liberty, to life... to do so is to go back to archaic days of lords and serfs, where rights are null and void.

a government that protects people's rights, must not only secure their rights, but protect them from one another.

i do not advocate for mass murder, even to protect loved ones. even when saying that i know i'm a hypocrite of circumstance, as i'd do anything for those i'd love. the government has the duty to stop me though.

i can't deceive myself on that account

@Manwe - Okay, so we have to address a few other issues here. Namely mobility and education.

Let's say you don't have a college degree. Work as a bartender in Manhattan, living paycheck to paycheck. You live in the cheapest borough - the Bronx - but rent still eats up $8k a year. Feeding yourself costs $3k a year. Transportation to your job is another $1k a year. You make $20k. A 20% tax would have you owing $4k. That's $16k of what you made that year, already gone. And frankly I'm low-balling costs. That's not including a phone. Internet. Water, electric, heating, sewer. In this case you essentially have zero savings. That means if you quit your job to find another, you don't eat. That means you can't afford to take time off to search for new apartments. That means you are priced out of starting a family.

For the millions and millions of poor in this nation, they do not have the options of mobility. They do not have the luxury of switching to a better paying job, and moving to cheaper housing often means leaving their community.

And you say that $4k doesn't mean as much to a person in that situation as it does to a more wealthy person? That one person would not get a greater return out of a $4k raise than the other? Basic utility curves would suggest otherwise. And common sense too

@Manwe
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-01-08/what-liberals-don-t-get-about-single-payer

Alright James. Starting to swing back to the "you're a terrible economist" line of thought.

Entitlements are putting millions into poverty. Never have, and never will. Besides the very wealthy, the majority of this nation will receive more from entitlements than they put in. And the choice you speak of between poverty and life should never be made a choice to begin with.

Let me put it a different way, that maybe you will respond better to. Let's say you're a prudent individual and save $400k for retirement by the time you retire. Should you be rewarded for your prudence by seeing all your money drain away into nothing? Until you're bankrupt and go begging to your kids to take care of you? Or should you rather get a steady additional income from social security, and have your medical costs subsidized, so you can live in comfort and not in stress, and perhaps pass down some of your savings to your grandkids.

Also, at the very least you should support social security, which is forced savings, not a real tax, for most. The majority of the population would otherwise not save appropriate amounts of money to survive into retirement, healthy or no

*entitlements are not putting

Jeez, first line and I get it wrong

"@Manwe - Okay, so we have to address a few other issues here. Namely mobility and education.

Let's say you don't have a college degree. Work as a bartender in Manhattan, living paycheck to paycheck. You live in the cheapest borough - the Bronx - but rent still eats up $8k a year. Feeding yourself costs $3k a year. Transportation to your job is another $1k a year. You make $20k. A 20% tax would have you owing $4k. That's $16k of what you made that year, already gone. And frankly I'm low-balling costs. That's not including a phone. Internet. Water, electric, heating, sewer. In this case you essentially have zero savings. That means if you quit your job to find another, you don't eat. That means you can't afford to take time off to search for new apartments. That means you are priced out of starting a family.

For the millions and millions of poor in this nation, they do not have the options of mobility. They do not have the luxury of switching to a better paying job, and moving to cheaper housing often means leaving their community.

And you say that $4k doesn't mean as much to a person in that situation as it does to a more wealthy person? That one person would not get a greater return out of a $4k raise than the other? Basic utility curves would suggest otherwise. And common sense too"

I'd change that example to make rent at least $12k, and add on a kid so food expenses go up to maybe about $5k. That way, that person is left with $1k of debt instead of $4k in savings (ignoring all other expenses besides food, housing, and travel). This better illustrates the hardship that some people face.

But, there's no way in hell I would give that person a lower tax rate. Because the tax rate is not the problem. The problem is that basic natural resources have been rounded up and horded before this person was even on the planet. The government should be providing them with basic food and housing since they obviously can't afford those things without taking on debt. After moving those expenses to $0, this person would have $15,000 to spend on whatever they please. The issue is not the tax system, it is that the government doesn't have its spending priorities straight.

Tax revenue as % of GDP is a relevant statistic:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

Same with effective tax rates by income group (ignore the title, it's based on post-recession malaise):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/04/11/your-taxes-are-really-low-in-one-chart/?utm_term=.4e2f58a94a13

Here's a chart of revenue trends as % of GDP by type of tax:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/source-revenue-share-gdp

But I see we're off-topic by now.

@JamesYanik
"we just need cheaper healthcare

there's a way to get cheap health insurance in a purely competitive market, and the ACA went exactly in the opposite direction.

insurance companies aren't the problem: in Germany and Switzerland they RELY off of competitive insurance companies."

You have your international comparison exactly backwards. Germany has universal multi-payer supported by an individual mandate (getting insured is compulsory), an employer mandate (employers have to offer certain types of insurance coverage), and a public option (used by just shy of 90% of the population, btw).

That's basically what the ACA would have been if Democrats didn't have to worry about obstruction; as it was, the ACA that got passed was a step towards such a system, but with no public option and a weak individual mandate. Both individual mandate and employer mandate will be substantially weakened by Trump.

"um... what rural markets do you frequent? if i go down to visit my sister through arizona, drive through rural parts of Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico. Source me whatever local price indexes you're looking at, because i'm seeing different things"

It's pretty simple. Rural is cheaper than urban, yeah? Raise all prices and wages in rural areas. What happens? Asset prices will rise too. The majority of these people's wealth is in real estate, not in the stock market or anything. In a strict sense, there *shouldn't* be any real effects, but we know that's not true. Service industry will most likely be unaffected. But anything involving good produced out of the area will be affected.

Let's say wages are doubled. Yeah, your $2 Yeungling at the pub might become $4. But the price the pub paid for the Yuengling won't go up by near as much. Rural markets are small, after all. So the pub owners profits increase. Let's say you have 10% of your income set aside for international travel. Well that amount of money just doubled. Walmart won't be doubling the prices of it's goods. Maybe a bit of an increase to match more urban areas, but not all that much. Let's say you mortgage your house. Asset prices are surely going up, so you have a larger line of credit available to you.

The only thing I see as a problem is in production industries - chiefly farming - where management, for whatever reason, is unable to raise output prices.

So, Manwe...You would want to increase entitlement spending as well as increase taxes, and have entitlements primarily be on-line, is what you're saying?

@gold

they're not putting them in, they're keeping them there. they're creating dependency, and they make it so getting full time jobs, a car, new residence, will cut entitlements. these are called welfare traps.

furthermore, you say "should" once again... it's such a damning word. at least the principle behind SS is to return your money back again... even if it we're looking at cut benefits as a long term solution.

and to your earlier comment to @Manwe

"Let's say you don't have a college degree. Work as a bartender in Manhattan, living paycheck to paycheck. You live in the cheapest borough - the Bronx - but rent still eats up $8k a year. Feeding yourself costs $3k a year. Transportation to your job is another $1k a year. You make $20k. A 20% tax would have you owing $4k. That's $16k of what you made that year, already gone. And frankly I'm low-balling costs. That's not including a phone. Internet. Water, electric, heating, sewer. In this case you essentially have zero savings. That means if you quit your job to find another, you don't eat. That means you can't afford to take time off to search for new apartments. That means you are priced out of starting a family.

For the millions and millions of poor in this nation, they do not have the options of mobility. They do not have the luxury of switching to a better paying job, and moving to cheaper housing often means leaving their community.

And you say that $4k doesn't mean as much to a person in that situation as it does to a more wealthy person? That one person would not get a greater return out of a $4k raise than the other? Basic utility curves would suggest otherwise. And common sense too"

economic stability = progressive tax rate
individual liberty = flat tax rate

the old conundrum. in any case, let's say 0% taxes for the first 20,000$ of income. that's always been my proposal.

furthermore, rent prices? a problem VERY much connected to gov't reg.s on prices.

and a 20,000$ a year job? as a permanent employment structure - in manhattan? no, full time employment in manhattan (with your costs of living) you can easily have higher wages than that. the reasons for poverty are simple, extraordinary low education (below high school), children before a sustainable income base is established, and number 3 is they can't even keep a full time job.

mobility is the number one problem here; local municipalities funding education have a better track record than the dep. of education, and tax for public school are fine. education is only becoming a more dominant factor in two ways: high skilled labor is the future of manufacturing in america

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/america-is-still-making-things/512282/?utm_source=twb

, although college degrees are becoming more and more useless. clearly specialization of fields is the future, and widespread education isn't exactly a good answer to that. pseudo apprenticeships seem to be a way forward though, but i'm too dazed to consider this stuff

also i lied about sleeping i think

@gold

i see what you mean with rural price inflation, though in the areas of agriculture, you'd be surprised at prices in rural areas. smaller businesses run localized monopolies, and thus prices are force-jacked up. big-corps don't see investing in these places as prudent, so there's a strict dichotomy of either really high or really low prices in rural areas.

@lethologica

"You have your international comparison exactly backwards. Germany has universal multi-payer supported by an individual mandate (getting insured is compulsory), an employer mandate (employers have to offer certain types of insurance coverage), and a public option (used by just shy of 90% of the population, btw).

That's basically what the ACA would have been if Democrats didn't have to worry about obstruction; as it was, the ACA that got passed was a step towards such a system, but with no public option and a weak individual mandate. Both individual mandate and employer mandate will be substantially weakened by Trump."

ACA was an in-between bill all the way, but in any case, healthcare costs in those other countries are done by gov't price caps, as well as non-profits fighting down prices

did you read the rest of what i said? if it weren't for profit margins in America, healthcare costs would be all the higher in Europe

"So, Manwe...You would want to increase entitlement spending as well as increase taxes, and have entitlements primarily be on-line, is what you're saying?"

No. We would have to break down "entitlement spending" before I could tell you exactly which way I would want it to go as whole, it's just too vague and broad, some would go up, while others may go down. Taxes in general need to come down, though they would probably go up for some who are paying low taxes as a result of deductions and loopholes that would no longer be present. And I don't know what you mean by entitlements being on-line.

@Leth

tax revenue as a % of GDP is marginally significant, you still need to adjust for the current tax rate that the ∆tax rate is being applied upon, and also you can't tax gov't expenditures, which are a part of GDP - in varying amounts for different countries

"on-line" = in-kind, Manwe. Didn't see that autocorrect

Without bothering to read from the start. Yes, taxes on the wealthy are too low. Especially if we're going to give them an even greater share of government benefits, which is exactly what spending on national defense is. National defense is a form of life+wealth protection for everyone in the nation. Everyone gets whatever wealth they have protected from an invading power. If there was no national defense, you could purchase insurances to insure against loss of your life+wealth. For a very poor person, life+wealth insurance would be cheap, because there is little value to protect. But for a billionaire, it would be very expensive insurance. However, through national defense, the poor effectively subsidize the insurance of the wealthy - what a wonderful welfare system for the wealthy we've got there, who get to freeload on the other 99%.

@slypups

um... yeah go ahead and read from the start.

also, insurance is risk assessment, and only protects from catastrophe rather than providing a tangible benefit... so your freeloading thing makes no sense. in terms of tangible monetary gain, the 99% freeloads off of the 1% in many aspects.

of course i'd rather not use the word "freeload" in either sentence

You clearly are unaware of other forms of insurance then, if you thinks it takes a catastrophe for them to pay out, or if you think you can't make a tangible benefit off them. Derivatives are a thing