How do they benefit more from those then the poor? In either case you would have anarchy or you would see little fiefdoms crop up probably led by the folks with the most money...I'd like to see your beloved CEOs run their industries without government-supplied police, courts, jails, military protection, firemen, road infrastructure, public education, and so on, and so forth.
You know, there's an idea I can get behind.Originally Posted by Lewkowski
I want my very own fiefdom. With serfs, and heresy trials for anyone who worships any other god besides me. It would be fun.
The folks with the most money would probably not be the same ones that are now - without courts and whatnot whomever is the best thief and able to inspire the most fear would have the most money. Your heroic upper class would be completely lost.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Or they'd just use their money to hire mercenaries...
Hope is the denial of reality
That's only if their money is still worth the money it is printed on. I'd imagine that it wouldn't be.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Please explain how someone who makes less money by definition uses more government services. If they are on welfare, they probably aren't paying taxes at all.
How many rich people do you know that have all or even most of their money in cash/banks?
Hope is the denial of reality
How are they planning on paying their mercenaries, then? Pussy, gold, jewels, land?
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Houses, land, factories, foreign currency, information, etc.
Hope is the denial of reality
And what's to stop the mercenaries from just taking what they want since they are the strong ones?
edit: Are we actually having this discussion, or am I imagining it?
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Corporate dystopias ITT
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Anarchy and the barter system are wonderful things.
Coordination problem. Different mercenaries don't get along, and they usually prefer a certain paycheck to a revolt. Don't see why things would be any different than under feudalism.
Hope is the denial of reality
Well actually....the futile...errr feudal era in Japan was mostly based on trust unlike Europe's feudal era which was based on contracts and legally binding pieces of parchments.
Funny, you don't think it takes a lot of trust to rely on a piece of paper in an environment where the majority of the people couldn't even write their own names?
Congratulations America
Buddy, don't attack what i say; this happened in Japan, work was actually done without having any legally binding contract involved. I'm going to infer the cultural and ideological difference between European (white supremacist and social Darwinist) and the Japanese (Confucianism, Neo-Confucianism, Zen Buddhism, and piety, and etc...). Japan doesn't become a dong until the late 1700th century after it's period of isolation.
And i'm guessing contracts occurred mostly between nobles and if they did occur between peasants and elites, then the elites had mercenaries, if you follow what i'm saying.
The problem Lolli mentioned is real. Keeping one's mercenaries in check was a major headache and security concern.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Ssshhh, watching an Ostjude defending the SA is the Mons Olympos of hilarity
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Stock up on guns 'n ammo?
No, especially since most of what you say is just a list of meaningless words when it comes to Asia and nonsense when you talk about Europe.
Congratulations America
I didn't say otherwise, but they were used, and they gave one a huge advantage over those who could not afford them.
Hope is the denial of reality
Instead of hiring armies of CPAs and lawyers to "legally" dodge taxes, they'd probably hire actual armies. And your average gun hand's hourly rate is much lower than your average lawyer's... and both are equally treacherous and untrustworthy.
Well, for one thing, feudal serfs had a tax rate well below 40%. That tickles me... our "benevolent" governments take more from us than evil tyrants took from their "citizens." Ain't progress grand?
Depends entirely on when and where we're talking about.
In the European tradition, being a mercenary involved a lot of reputation - if you betrayed the guy who hired you or ran away from battle, it became very hard to find anyone who'd actually hire you for anything... so those types quickly turned to banditry and became roving criminal bands hunted by the King's men... and other mercenary companies hired by local nobles. Most mercs actually did what they were paid to do, in order to have the opportunity to earn their keep with future employment. There's a rather nice quote in War Made New (Max Boot) about the credo of the European mercenary - something along the lines of "I care not who pays me, but I will fight with honor and skill for whomever he may be." (I'd provide an exact quote, but I just have the physical copy of the book, not the ebook, so I'm not skimming through 600 pages to find the precise wording.)
And that system didn't fall apart until the onset of industrial (Napoleonic) warfare, where individual skill became practically unimportant, and soldiers were expected to march into volleys of shot and musket fire and take 40% casualties. Mercs may not have a reputation for being nature's smartest bulbs, but they were complete morons either.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
This article from a right-leaning economist has a very good point, in my opinion. Basically, VAT's are regressive but suffer from the same propensity for loopholes as other taxes. Except that the competitive advantage of getting a loophole could be massive.
Any VAT-payers here with any views on this? Actually, come to think of it...if the Europeans could summarize the income taxes in their areas I would be curious.
* OPINION
* APRIL 5, 2010
Small Bras and the Value-Added Tax
Taxing consumption sounds easy. Wait until government starts to carve out the political exceptions.
By IRWIN STELZER
So we are to have a European-style value-added tax (VAT). That's the emerging consensus in Washington as people come to recognize the reality of the deep financial hole into which the Obama administration has dug us.
The Congressional Budget Office reckons we will be Greece by the end of the decade, owing the world—mostly the Chinese—a sum equal to 90% of our gross domestic product. The rating agencies are warning that our AAA rating is at risk. The bond vigilantes are saddling up.
No surprise the administration's first step has been to soak the rich, using the health bill to increase taxes on capital gains, interest and dividends by high-income earners, to be followed by an increase in their marginal income tax rates to 39.6% from 35% (and their long-term capital gains rate to 20% from 15%) by year's end.
Every percentage point in tax would bring in $100 billion per year. European-level rates of 20% would net the U.S. Treasury $2 trillion, more than enough to cover the deficit—other things being equal, which they probably won't be, since higher, tax-inclusive prices will dampen spending and some products will be exempt.
The tax sounds simple, but don't be fooled. Because both upper- and lower-income families pay the tax at an equal rate, the VAT is considered regressive; that is, it hits the poor harder than the better-off. So it is the practice in countries such as Britain to exempt food, which lower-income families spend a greater proportion of their income on. The technical term is "zero rating," meaning that exempt items are taxed at a "zero rate."
However, wait until the folks at the IRS get their hands on the regulations for the application of the new tax. They will undoubtedly turn to their more experienced British counterparts for guidance.
"Food of the kind used for human consumption," to a British bureaucrat, is something "the average person, knowing what it is and how it is used, would consider it to be food or drink; and it is fit for human consumption. . . . The term includes . . . products like flour, which, although not eaten by themselves, are generally recognized food ingredients . . . [but] would not usually include . . . dietary supplements, food additives and similar products, which, although edible, are not generally regarded as food."
And so, in the United Kingdom, according to the regulations of Her Majesty's Inland Revenue Service, crackers made from tapioca starch carry no tax; prawn crackers made from cereals do. Frozen yogurt that needs to be thawed before eating is zero rated, frozen yogurt bears the tax. Get it? If you don't, too bad—Her Majesty's tax collectors are not in the habit of offering an explanation for their regulations.
Food for animals creates other problems. If it is "suitable for all breeds" it is taxed, but if "it is held out for sale exclusively for working dogs" it is not, unless, of course, "it is biscuit or meal," in which case it is taxed.
So dog food for "sheepdog breeds" is taxed, but dog food for "working sheep dogs of any breed" is not; food for greyhounds is taxed, food for "racing greyhounds" is not. This may be the only tax in Britain that favors work over leisure.
Clothing also presents a problem for the British tax man. Two problems, actually.
First, what is clothing? Well, sailors' lifejackets are clothing because they "have the form and function of clothing," but "buoyancy aids" are not. Second, since children's clothing is zero-rated, what fits into that category?
Bras up to and including size 34B; body stockings that measure no more than 27½ inches shoulder to crotch; babies' shawls but not "mother-and-baby shawls intended to wrap around both mother and child." There's more, lots more, but you get the idea.
This process of writing regulations for the VAT man when he cometh is more than merely amusing. For one thing, it confers enormous power on faceless bureaucrats.
They can hand a competing product the advantage in the U.K. of a price 17.5% lower (in Sweden it's 25%) than a close substitute. That invites both lobbying and corruption and sheer, inexplicable arbitrariness. Get your "sweetened dried fruit" deemed to be "held out for sale as snacking and home baking" and your product will bear a tax and have to compete on grocers' shelves with zero-rated "sweetened dried fruit held out for sale as confectionary/snacking." Peddle your sandwiches "as a general grocery item" and consumers pay no tax, but offer them as "part of a buffet service" and the VAT man wants his 17.5%.
Manufacturers twist and turn and juggle their product specifications and processes, not to find the most efficient way of making things but the surest way of obtaining a zero rating. The resulting inefficiencies cannot be measured accurately, but they certainly contribute to Europe's lagging productivity and increasing inability to compete in world markets.
For a long time conservatives favored some sort of VAT, on the theory that it is better to tax consumption than jobs. But that support was based on the theory that taxes on incomes would be reduced to offset the increase from VAT.
That is not to be, given the preferences of the Obama team and the state of the nation's finances. But what is to be is the reason liberals love VAT: It is easy to raise the rate, a bit at a time, unnoticed by the voters—just as a frog put into a pot of boiling water will immediately try to jump out, but placed in cold water that is only gradually heated it may not notice until it's too late.
So there is a VAT in our future, and like other taxes, it will have unfortunate consequences. Since there is world-wide experience with this tax, none of those consequences can be deemed "unintended"—they are already out there for all to see.
Mr. Stelzer is director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...357241946.html
Dread, didn't I mention we already have that problem in PA? Since we don't tax food or clothing, but the lobbyists had a hand in crafting the definitions (popcorn is not food but potato chips are....)
Yup, I just wanted to get some more commentary on that aspect from people who pay full-on VAT's like this.
It really does make the flat income tax with virtually no deductions seem appealing. Remove the fat and the lobbying from the system.
How? I'm pretty sure I read the book correctly when i took AP World History....
I can't decide if you actually care or are interested in any of this, but if you are you should really do a lot more reading than just your assigned textbooks.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
I would if i had time...5 aps, two honors, junior year, sats, satIIs, soccer, piano, mun, science olympiad, and other crap i forgot = fml.
I haven't read a book for pleasure since last summer. I'm so far behind on them Twilight books...
I meant on subjects that interest you, which would actually help you with the AP exams as well (assuming those are the subjects that interest you).
You just don't know vindication until you take an AP exam, and an essay question choice is the exact same thing as a very large research paper you had written.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Asian parents. Good college. Enough said. I kind of lost my interest in most subjects. I want to be an economist; i've read the An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations a while back and i plan on reading his other book sometimes this summer.
A view on this article is that it is bullshit. It takes a few of the (rare) examples that are on an edge, and then expands that to all VAT, and goes on a wild claim that manufacturers become inefficient for rebranding their goods, which is completely false.
Besides, what's the difference between sales tax and VAT in the sense that it is regressive? It's always paid on sales. VAT is just shifted only to the end user, instead of cumulative, as far as I know.
http://www.belastingdienst.nl/variab...l#P3488_148989
It's not very vague, in the Netherlands, and the exceptions are few. It's, to say the least, a bit of stretch to assume that manufacturers will rebrand items and lose productivity because of it.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
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