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talkpolitics2011-04-07 11:25 am
mintogrubb.livejournal.com) wrote in talkpolitics2011-04-07 11:25 am
Entry tags:
Do we need Public Service Cuts?
In the Uk, we call CEOs 'Company Directors' - but the fact is , they still earn far more than the people at the bottom of the pay scale. i forget where i read it, to be honest, but I'm pretty sure that they used to earn about 20- 30 times as much as the people on the bottom a few decades back - but now in the UK, they earn almost 100 times as much as the poorest workers do.
the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The problems happen when people like 'Fred the shred' take out loads of midddle layer people and pocket the difference. It isn't that the organisation got better, it's just that the workload for middle layer managers increased, and there was less payout on wages and salaries.
And for this, Fred gives himself a bonus.
now the Cameron government is in on the act. The "Big Society" simply means that one guy gets paid a few grand a year to mow the grass on the village playing field. the government fire him and get some other guy to do it on a voluntary basis, and the other guy goes on Welfare.
So, instead of paying a bit of income tax, he is now picking up taxpayers money instead - but the government is still saving money on one side of the balance sheet and not telling us the rest.
What ought to be happening is a big investment to keep people in work - useful, community based services instead of the arms industry, for sure, but paid employment trumps a welfare payout, right?
And this could be afforded if we closed the tax loopholes. The fact is that if you live in the UK, you can simply sign everything over to your wife, have yourself be paid a salary by a limited company that she owns, and stuff all the excess money into an off shore tax haven, where it collects minimum taxes and you can pick it up and take it with you when you choose to retire. I kid you not, this really happens.
A system whereby CEOs could only earn 10 times what their lowest paid worker earns would handle the wealth distribution problem better than taxing the rich directly- yes, let the bankers have a hundred grand in salaries and a big bonus besides - so long as the workers who make it happen share the wealth and get at least 10% of what the fat cats earn.
And why not close the tax loopholes too? Rather than closing schools and hospitals that serve the whole community, we should be closing tax loopholes that only serve the very rich. rather than putting people out of work, we should be putting our house in order and having a more equal pay scale, with less of a gap between the top and bottom earners in our society.
We are not all in this together - some of us are going first class and the rest of us are travelling in steerage.
the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The problems happen when people like 'Fred the shred' take out loads of midddle layer people and pocket the difference. It isn't that the organisation got better, it's just that the workload for middle layer managers increased, and there was less payout on wages and salaries.
And for this, Fred gives himself a bonus.
now the Cameron government is in on the act. The "Big Society" simply means that one guy gets paid a few grand a year to mow the grass on the village playing field. the government fire him and get some other guy to do it on a voluntary basis, and the other guy goes on Welfare.
So, instead of paying a bit of income tax, he is now picking up taxpayers money instead - but the government is still saving money on one side of the balance sheet and not telling us the rest.
What ought to be happening is a big investment to keep people in work - useful, community based services instead of the arms industry, for sure, but paid employment trumps a welfare payout, right?
And this could be afforded if we closed the tax loopholes. The fact is that if you live in the UK, you can simply sign everything over to your wife, have yourself be paid a salary by a limited company that she owns, and stuff all the excess money into an off shore tax haven, where it collects minimum taxes and you can pick it up and take it with you when you choose to retire. I kid you not, this really happens.
A system whereby CEOs could only earn 10 times what their lowest paid worker earns would handle the wealth distribution problem better than taxing the rich directly- yes, let the bankers have a hundred grand in salaries and a big bonus besides - so long as the workers who make it happen share the wealth and get at least 10% of what the fat cats earn.
And why not close the tax loopholes too? Rather than closing schools and hospitals that serve the whole community, we should be closing tax loopholes that only serve the very rich. rather than putting people out of work, we should be putting our house in order and having a more equal pay scale, with less of a gap between the top and bottom earners in our society.
We are not all in this together - some of us are going first class and the rest of us are travelling in steerage.
So many words.
Instead, you prefer to repeat variations on your theme of 'ZOMG TAXAYSHUN IZ BAD U GAIZ! NO GOOD KAN KUM UV IT!!1'
Telling.
Re: So many words. So few words to work with.
If you have a point to make, make it. If you think there is an issue that you raised that I didn't address, state it. Self-congratulatory rhetoric does nothing but impress the simple-minded. On the off chance that you weren't just engaging in exhibitionistic rhetorical onanism, I will break down what you said line by line and address it again, just so we're clear.
Labor is turned into profit through voluntary transactions where each party to the transaction has the opportunity to apply a subjective valuation to the objects of the transaction compared with the subjective values of the opportunity costs experienced by the traders involved in the transaction. A bald assertion by a politician that "The taxpayers received more in value from the productive work of the government employee than the tax money they paid" is merely an assertion by a politician spending someone else's money. No politician is able to objectively evaluate the myriad opportunity costs experienced by all the taxpayers with reference to the work performed by the government employee — that is one of the biggest reasons why government should be kept small and the division of labor left almost entirely to individuals acting freely in the market. It is the reason that socialism fails so spectacularly when it is seriously attempted. The concept explaining this is called The Economic Calculation Problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem) and this problem inheres in all transactions made by command as opposed to conducted voluntarilly. You cannot evaluate a transaction where no choice of alternatives is possible or the choices are artificially foreclosed by fiat.