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talkpoliticsIn 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.
Economic ignorance -- popular can also be wrong
Date: 7/4/11 14:23 (UTC)The idea that a government worker "pays" taxes is symptomatic of the economic ignorance underlying "government services" in the first place. The hypothetical lawn guy is paid by the government in the first place. His entire wage is a net tax payout. Having this person "pay" taxes has the same effect, for him, as cutting his wages, but from the government's position, taxing him adds yet more bureaucracy and overhead to manage the tax accounting for the lawn guy.
No matter how you slice it, the lawn guy is a net tax consumer. He will never be a net tax payer in any sense other than someone's economic fantasies.
Economies are not closed systems, little mercantilist.
Date: 7/4/11 15:17 (UTC)Finished goods exceed the sum of the value of their components.
Every time money is spent between people for goods or services, regardless of its source, it creates additional wealth for whomever is turning a profit in the deal.
And those taxes paid in your example are no less real: ask those paying them.
Tell them how their taxes are fake. I'd wager you'd get at least a dirty look if not a punch in the nuts.
Cute cherrypick, dude.
Date: 8/4/11 02:22 (UTC)We're talking about the guy that turns his labor and skills and equipment into money that happens to have been originally taken in as taxes, and whether or not that man turned a profit, thereby generating wealth.
And we can clearly see that he did, given that you use a variation on the same transaction as your own positive example with the chair. Whether or not that money was originally ZOMG TAXES or not does not determine this. Whether there was a profit does. Basic capitalism.
"When the government spends on my behalf it's ignoring whether that's actually in my best interest."
Yeah, wow, it's almost like you're in some big group with a bunch of other people and we all have to pay in for our share and to compromise sometimes. Shit, someone should come up with a name for that. *implied facepalm*
"Indeed, there are plenty of examples of government giving money to a privileged few at the expense of the many."
I return to the 'user intent' argument so universally applicable, from firearms to cars to screwdrivers: the ability to use a tool for ill does not determine its inherent morality, nor does it outweigh quantifiable good done with same.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to finish up doing my business taxes.
Any responses will likely be delayed until my posterior heals some from my visit to H+R Block.
Re: Economies are not closed systems, little mercantilist.
Date: 9/4/11 02:52 (UTC)Well. Your countrymen figured out that there are things the government can do more efficiently than a bunch of individuals--yes, more efficiently--and passed laws to do so.
Their judgment is probably as good as your own.
Re: Economies are not closed systems, little mercantilist.
Date: 7/4/11 18:44 (UTC)Patently false. Government spending of tax money is most certainly not "money spent between people for goods and services" it is other people's money, taken with no regard to their own wishes, and spent upon goods and services a politician deems beneficial or necessary. Wealth is created when parties engage in voluntary trade to mutual benefit via the division of labor. Value is subjective. The only way to be sure that both parties have benefitted from a transaction is to establish that they traded their respective values after each has examined his own opportunity cost evaluation of the transaction and then voluntarilly participated in the trade.
Furthermore, what I said was true about Lawnmower Man. His entire salary is composed of tax money. What he "pays" in taxes could have just as easily been collected by the government simply by lowering his salary by some amount in the first place and the government merely retaining the difference, and that second approach would not have wasted resources used in overhead accounting when the government pays Lawnmower Man out of one hand and re-confiscates a portion of the money with the other. Lawnmower Man is, by nature of the transaction, a net tax consumer. He will never be a net tax payer unless the service he provides is objectively more valuable to the net tax payers (who do NOT work for government) than the salary the government pays Lawnmower Man. In addition to this, we have already established that this is not the case, specifically because
To compound folly, the original premise behind the post seems to be the fallacy that there are are a specific, set number of jobs in the world and that government politicians find and allocate them to people. In such a world, Lawnmower Man does inevitably go on welfare when dismissed by the government because of the original poster's hypothetical zero-sum game, not mine. The original poster implicitly assumes that there are no other jobs for Lawmower Man to take, no additional wealth for him to create, outside of cutting the grass on the village playing field. In actuallity, when the volunteer is found to mow the lawn for the government, essentially as a donation, then the tax payers pick up the value of the lawn service and Lawnmower Man is now free, not necessarilly to go on welfare, but to offer his services to someone else at profit to himself and them.
So many words.
Date: 8/4/11 02:11 (UTC)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.
Date: 9/4/11 03:11 (UTC)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.
Re: Economies are not closed systems, little mercantilist.
Date: 7/4/11 20:34 (UTC)And does not have a job , or the self esteem that often goes with it in our society. It would be better all round if society actually paid people to do what needed doing instead of hoping for retired and jobless people to step up and volunteer.
Re: Economies are not closed systems, little mercantilist.
Date: 9/4/11 09:23 (UTC)Re: Economic ignorance -- popular can also be wrong
Date: 7/4/11 21:02 (UTC)Re: Economic ignorance -- popular can also be wrong
Date: 9/4/11 02:46 (UTC)Re: Economic ignorance -- popular can also be wrong
Date: 9/4/11 09:28 (UTC)Oh, i get that the private sector people of both sexes are paying full whack, but they would not have jobs to go to if the government did not do things like
Educate majority of the work force
run the sanitation system
keep the roads in good repair
ensure that there were courts and a police service
And that's just off the top of my head.
The fact is that the Capitalists in the UK are getting something like 120 billion a year in tax relief, and I don't think we can afford to let them do this.
Re: Economic ignorance -- popular can also be wrong
Date: 9/4/11 23:15 (UTC)Re: Economic ignorance -- popular can also be wrong
Date: 8/4/11 09:22 (UTC)It is not like he has to be.
Ok, the private sector guys will pay the taxes that keep everything moving, but teachers, nurses, police and all the people who work for the government in the UK still put some tax money back in the kitty- they also provide a useful service - and so does the guy who cuts the grass.
Now, even if you keep the cops and nurses in a job , if you put the Lawnmower Guy on welfare, he pays NOTHING back. nothing at all.
And you get him sitting at home, losing self esteem , getting into alcohol abuse and all the rest of the stuff that soars when unemployment goes up.
Net consumers are not something we have to avoid, or reduce in our society. Teachers, GPs, firefighters and the police are mainly state paid with relatively few exceptions in the UK.
Welfare recipients, on the other hand, generate social problems rather than social services. poverty goes hand in hand with alcohol abuse, drug addiction , teenage pregnancies, crime - especially violent crime and other social evils.
Welfare dependency is what we need to address, and governmental services are ideally placed to make this happen.
Re: Economic ignorance -- popular can also be wrong
Date: 9/4/11 02:47 (UTC)If we eliminate Bob the Civil Servant's position, then we're not compensating whatever volunteer spends his time doing the job for free. And time is money, so we just taxed that volunteer for the job instead of spreading the cost around society.
The opportunity cost of relying on unpaid workers is entirely on those civic-minded volunteers. But if we use the state to accomplish the same ends with civil servants, we spread the cost around.
Re: Economic ignorance -- popular can also be wrong
Date: 9/4/11 03:26 (UTC)We can say that it is likely that at least some of the taxpayers will evaluate the mowed lawn as being worth more than the estimated share of their taxes that paid for it, but that still doesn't mean that the deal was the best one that could have been achieved for everyone. In fact, we have prima facie evidence to the contrary. The government was paying several thousand dollars to have the lawn mowed when someone was willing to do the job for much less — in fact, for free — he was willing to make a gift of his time to the people of the community.
Almost entirely true. Agreed. The people did not tax the volunteer, by definition. The volunteer made a gift of his time and effort. The point is though, because the transaction is voluntary, we know that the voluneer values the mowed lawn, or perhaps the perceived service to the community, more than he values the time he spent doing the work.
This is also entirely true. On the other hand though, in using confiscated money and substituting the judgement of a politician over the individual judgements of those who supplied the funds, value information about the worth of the labor is distorted or destroyed.
Re: Economic ignorance -- popular can also be wrong
Date: 9/4/11 08:53 (UTC)We cannot guarantee, or enforce it, that volunteeers wiill come and do this. Are we clear on what is happening, that the government is swapping trained employers for free lance volunteers who, doing it for nothing , will not turn up if they want to see a soccer match or go take their kid to the doctor, or just didn't feel like it today ?
Re: Economic ignorance -- popular can also be wrong
Date: 9/4/11 23:12 (UTC)Re: Economic ignorance -- popular can also be wrong
Date: 9/4/11 10:35 (UTC)Well, good luck with that.
the fact is that society needs people to provide infrastructure in very unglamourous and 'unprofitable' ways.
We ca eliminate the high cost of private sewarage by using public money. in fact , we did back in Queen Victoria's day.
Private money generally wants a quick return and a big payoff.
Generally, it is not interested in mowing grass. Or cleaning sewers, long term healthcare for the terinally ill and chronically sick, or running prisons and military operations.
It is much better at taking out tonsils, cosmetic surgery, providing food and clothes and can go as far as providing an education to those few who can afford it, but those are about it's limits.
I suggest we let the market do some things and the government stick to cutting the grass, and doing things that are long term and unglmourous leading to low profit margins but pay into the community in terms of public well being.
Re: Economic ignorance -- popular can also be wrong
Date: 9/4/11 23:36 (UTC)No, I am not saying that. I am saying that when a transaction is coerced the information about its value to the participants is distorted or distroyed.
We disagree about your "fact." There are plenty of economists who argue that your fact isn't as factual as you seem to believe that it is.
Suggest all you want. I'm just pointing out that it is a bad suggestion, based upon unsound economic understanding. Even so, letting the government do more and more has been very popular, it is what is happening now and it is going to crash, for perfectly understandable economic reasons.