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The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

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Re: The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

Unread postby MrBill » Mon 24 Apr 2006, 14:13:23

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou keep saying things like this, but the data doesn't seem to back you up.
For instance Luxembourg, Norway, and Switzerland all have higher per capita GDP production than the US, but both Luxembourg and Norway have higher tax rates. Denmark and Sweden have slightly less per capita production than the US, but denmark has the worlds highest tax rates, and Sweden's tax rates are higher than the US tax rates by far. Yet, in these more socialist countries, poverty is not nearly the issue it is in a less socialized country like the US? How can it be that higher tax rate countries are meeting the needs of their people better than lower tax rate countries? Can it be that you are incorrect in assuming the infallibility of your assumptions?


When comparing GDP per capita it is often useful to compare purchasing power parity which drastically reduces Nordic countries with high levels of taxation AND high living costs. Also, it is not easy to compare relatively small countries with large countries in either population terms or in landmass terms. Actually, direct comparisons between non likes should be avoided or at least qualified.

Sometimes it is easier to fall into cliches like, It is better to be rich in America and poor in France, as they throw some light on a complex problem. In America you get to keep more of what you earn, in countries like France even if you are not productive you get to keep more than if you were not productive in the USA. There lies some difference between cultures. Do you reward laziness or risk taking? Do you penalize failure or hardwork and creativity?

There are also many in Switzerland who would like to pay less for housing, less in taxes, less for assylum seekers and have more after tax income for themselves. Especially as many Swiss banks for example now have more employees in London than in Zurich due to labor restrictions and Swiss banks have systematically closed down branches in Geneva, Lugano, Basil, Bern, Zug, Locarno, St. Gallen, etc. I know families who cannot afford to ski in Switzerland anymore, so they take their ski holidays in France or Austria. Maybe they feel less tax and lower costs would be better for their own society than higher taxes and less variation in income? maybe they would prefer fewer auslanders? Do you know?

Open societies in Scandinavian countries have become less of welfare states and less open to immigration as they realized that there would always be those who took advantage of their hospitality. also your examples ignore high immigration rates into the USA and also high levels of illegal immigration into the States.

Luxembourg is just a city state like singapore with 400 banks. Of course, their per capital income is high in comparison. I understand your points, but when you paint with such a wide brush you cover over a lot of cracks.
The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
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Re: The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

Unread postby jaws » Mon 24 Apr 2006, 15:34:44

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bdmarti', 'Y')ou keep saying things like this, but the data doesn't seem to back you up.
For instance Luxembourg, Norway, and Switzerland all have higher per capita GDP production than the US, but both Luxembourg and Norway have higher tax rates. Denmark and Sweden have slightly less per capita production than the US, but denmark has the worlds highest tax rates, and Sweden's tax rates are higher than the US tax rates by far. Yet, in these more socialist countries, poverty is not nearly the issue it is in a less socialized country like the US? How can it be that higher tax rate countries are meeting the needs of their people better than lower tax rate countries? Can it be that you are incorrect in assuming the infallibility of your assumptions?
Data can be deceptive. In theory the U.S. has a lower rate of direct taxation, but when you add up all indirect taxation the tax burden becomes very high. For example the government places a long list of restrictions on what the health care market is allowed or not allowed to do, thus raising the cost of health care for everyone. This is a tax on health care that is not taken into account by the official tax rates.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')nce again you state these things as if they are facts, when really they are unsubstantiated assertions.

A person having 1 billion dollars does not make them by definition "one of the most productive men in the economy." A vegetable laying on a table, with thousand dollar bills stuffed in his mattress could have a billion dollars and yet produce exactly nothing. Being rich doesn't make one productive.
A person earning 1 billion dollars does make them highly productive. If they are forbidden from keeping what they earn, and their heirs from keeping what they inherited, then this productive person will not produce as much and society as a whole will be the poorer for it.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')urthermore, if we all profit from each other's wealth and capital accumulation, then why would it matter if we moved that wealth from person 1 to person 2, or from rich moron to the government? The same amount of capital remains.

If we were content with keeping the same amount of capital we would have never progressed past the stone age. The goal is to increase our capital, and government raiding the capital producers is going to have the reverse effect.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f Friday produces 12 mangos per day from the tree does he "own" the tree? Wht happens with someone better comes along?
Let's say a boatload of stangers arrives on the island with Friday and Robinson, and they bring with them Farmer Bob. Farmer Bob can produce 1 million mangos per day from the same tree that Friday owns, but unfortunatly for all the strangers, Friday doesn't want to sell his tree for arbitrary reasons.
You're assuming irrationality on Friday's part, thus that he is non-human. You can't use "arbitrary reasons" in economic reasoning.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he strangers bring with them no wealth, and Friday just likes owning his tree. What could they possibly offer him to make him sell the tree? When the Strangers offer to lease the tree for 15 mangos/day or even 1000/magos per day or 100,000/day , friday might agree, but he still owns his tree. he NEVER needs to sell it. Friday can make a lease on the tree that extends to his children and children's children such that they never need work ever again, because others will always farm their tree and pay them for it.

Let's just take a moment to recognize that under such a program, Friday himself produces NOTHING, and yet he can forever remain the wealthiest person on the island.

Friday produced the trees that the survivors needed to survive. Before they came along he was living a perfectly peaceful life. Now that the survivors have arrived they need to change Friday's way of life in order to survive themselves. Luckily for Friday there is an extremely productive farmer among them, and thus if Friday cooperates with them and exchanges with the farmer by allowing him access to his trees in exchange for some of the harvest he will be better off, and the survivors will be better off not having to fight Friday.

Friday benefits from his past work tending for the trees. It so happens that due to a stroke of luck this past work is highly valuable for someone else, and thus Friday can earn an astounding profit from his work. But it was still his work to trade for, and both parties still benefit.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') socialist society would allocate the Tree directly to Farmer Bob, and everyone could get all the mangos they could eat, and pay Farmer bob in fish or whatever it is they produce.
That's wishful thinking. A socialist society cannot allocate the trees to anyone since it does not own them. It must first expropriate Friday by fighting him off, and Friday will fight back. Since the survivors are in poor physical condition from their experience, and Friday has become lean and fit from adapting to this condition, there is a good chance Friday will be able to kill off many of the survivors before they overpower him. Should the remaining survivors kill off Friday they will then have to decide how to allocate the trees. Now why would they just allocate them all to the productive farmer? They all want their cut of the loot, whether or not they are the most productive. The strongman who won the battle (the dictator or "chairman") will impose his will on all the others, saying he will care for the property himself and hire the farmer as his associate. The dictator and to some extent the farmer will be extremely wealthy. The others will be reduced to servitude.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f Friday owns the tree, and Friday owns the fishing lagoon. He can charge poor robinson a tax for using either his tree or his lagoon. It could be that Friday charges a fee such that Robinson can get only what he needs, and never more wealth to store. It is this type of problem that socialism attempts to address.

If Friday owns the trees and the lagoon it is still better for him to cooperate and trade than to lock out the others. Always, always, always better. There is no possible way that this could be otherwise. It would violate a logical theorem, and would thus be completely irrational.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')t some point, clearly scarcity becomes an issue, and we must allocate the capital objects to the best workers. You can trust the market to do this and enter capitalism, or you can trust the government to do this via a number of possible plans. Both systems can and will fail quite often.
Scarcity isn't an issue "at some point". Scarcity is an issue ALWAYS. The moment you stop enforcing property rights a conflict will occur. You can't just have a starting run without property rights, then at some point along the way allocate property. Without property rights there will be no wealth produced at all and your society will collapse and starve entirely.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')owever, it is clear that under a system where workers all have access, or at least potential access, to the same capital items, the best WORKER will become the wealthiest, as they can produce the most and trade for what they want.
In a free market all workers have a potential access to capital items. They can trade for them, they can take loans on them, and as such the best workers will become the wealthiest.

In a socialist system the dictator controls access to capital items, and thus favoritism and corruption will determine who becomes the wealthiest.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hen my choices are not, fish in the communal lagoon or pick from the communal tree, but rather give up 10% of my wealth to the owner of the tree, or give up 10% of my wealth to the owner of the lagoon for the chance to work there...well, then the worker has little choice at all. In all cases with a competent capital owner, the capital owner will remain wealthier than the simple worker. The market doesn't address this problem on it's own.This is not a problem, you're confusing the issue. If the capital owner is the competent owner, there is only to lose by allowing other workers to use it. They will be less productive and society will grow poorer for it. All workers should maximize their comparative advantage, and forcing productive people to give up their property to less productive people is a violation of comparative advantage.
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Re: The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

Unread postby MyOtherID » Tue 25 Apr 2006, 02:07:09

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bdmarti', 'Y')ou keep saying things like this, but the data doesn't seem to back you up.
For instance Luxembourg, Norway, and Switzerland all have higher per capita GDP production than the US, but both Luxembourg and Norway have higher tax rates. Denmark and Sweden have slightly less per capita production than the US, but denmark has the worlds highest tax rates, and Sweden's tax rates are higher than the US tax rates by far. Yet, in these more socialist countries, poverty is not nearly the issue it is in a less socialized country like the US? How can it be that higher tax rate countries are meeting the needs of their people better than lower tax rate countries? Can it be that you are incorrect in assuming the infallibility of your assumptions?
Data can be deceptive. In theory the U.S. has a lower rate of direct taxation, but when you add up all indirect taxation the tax burden becomes very high. For example the government places a long list of restrictions on what the health care market is allowed or not allowed to do, thus raising the cost of health care for everyone. This is a tax on health care that is not taken into account by the official tax rates.


Jaws, you really don't understand this subject well at all, and your dogmatism is a poor substitute for comprehension. Your statement that the health care market is restricted by government and acts as an indirect taxation is a straw man argument (in fact, it's the absence of a single-payer system that leads to enormous inefficiency and money waste, but ironically the last thing you'd support is a single-payer system, right?). BDMarti is perfectly correct in his statement that countries with more socialist leanings DO in fact take better care of their citizens generally. That's also been my personal experience, having lived in the USA and other countries. I know this conclusion irks you and flies in the face of your pristine but esoteric model of how the universe works, but get over it please.
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Re: The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

Unread postby Decontaxable » Tue 25 Apr 2006, 11:54:00

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MyOtherID', '(')in fact, it's the absence of a single-payer system that leads to enormous inefficiency and money waste, but ironically the last thing you'd support is a single-payer system, right?). BDMarti is perfectly correct in his statement that countries with more socialist leanings DO in fact take better care of their citizens generally. That's also been my personal experience, having lived in the USA and other countries. I know this conclusion irks you and flies in the face of your pristine but esoteric model of how the universe works, but get over it please.


You are absolutley wrong on this one, as was hillary.

A single payer system will give you the worst care possible. Competition and freedom will give you the best health care possible.

Amrica is almost under a single payer system now WHAT?!? you say? yes we are and the care is getting worse and Worse.

In trying to HELPnhealth care, the REPUBLICANs and REAGAN (see, i'm NOT a republican, am I?) Started a FQIC federal funding program to hel[pp the poor. This sound sgood you say! problem is, they are a government entity and they pay on per visits and people seen
(Look out)


I am in the tail end of a dying health care syste, the last independant father son ddoctor team working for cash and giving deductions for the poor just got swallowed up by the FQIC government COMMUNITY HEALTH SYSTEM!

This will be the destruction of america.

example, seeing a gallbladder doing a test and us and scheduling a surgery in the old days, you submitted the costs of the test to insurance.

TODAY the INSURANCE COMPANY decide what PERCENTAGE they pay you wether you are on the APPROVED LIST OF DOCTORS FOR THEM (which you never are) and then make you fill out forms of necessity.
He ot 18 dollars back for a two day work up jsut to diagnose Gallbladder...

the insurance companies KNOW if they can discourage finding gall bladders you can't have as many surgeries right?

now in the PUBLIC health care building down the street funded entirely by MIGRANT VISITS they count the number of visists per day and pay them for their visits! they have a 50 thousand square foot building of glass and steel in a town where there is brick mortar and across the stree is called LITTLE MEXICO!

the specialists get 75 dollars A VISIT even if they dont do anything! and IF they order tests or do surgery they get penalized!

Consequence is:

When people get sick when they are diabetic when they ahve new babies they are scheduled MONTHLY wehter they need it or not! each visit brings in tons of tax dollars.!

the clinic made 7 million prophet last year, the hospital is in the red.

the well people are scheduled over and over to KEEP THEM TUNED the really sick ones they send to the emergency room to do the diagnostic ultrasounds.

You know they treat lots of gallbladders with pillls and tell them to CALL THE ER WHEN THEY GET WORSE which they will.

they hire PA's whom they have to pay way less and they can still legally CHARGE DOCTORS RATES! (this should be a crime but it isnt)

lots of pas looking and giving pills and the sick ones go to the ER. then the dos acre reluctant to admit cause they get dinged.


anyway the specialists see WELL BABIES for 75 a pop while the sick ones go to the pa,s whats worong with this picture?
(They pay less for sick visits than a well baby physicalso amazing ly they do well baby physicals...


oh dear I cant tell you everything, but the only old doc sold out to this clinic.

THEY JUST RECIEVED A GRANT of 3 million to hire more doctors which they dont even need!

The people who work their (Mostly relatives of people who run the place can drive company cars, have cell phones and and have credit cards.)

the old doc and son team couldnt pay their secretaries and just sold thir colinic
their average visits by self billing were about 22 dollars per patien average, and the community clinic was over a 1hundere per patient.

they saw well patients for over a hundred and the sick ones pay less.

all cause the insurance companies can legally decide whow much they want to pay.

Insurance companies have the politicians in their oppocket and this will never change.

so the government gives GRANTS to the community clinics that treat mostly INDIGINTS and they get free drugs, meds everything which I cant even afford.
plus milk for the babies.

sall sounds good right?

well the building is beutiful they have DOZENS of doctors and they all see well patients.

the ER is srtuggling sees the dregs and the rteally sick ones.
SELF PAYING PATIENTS who have gone to that clinic have been sent to the ER (20 times as expensive) cause the government will not supr fund them.

no friends the one payer system will never work...
never, its a rip off

you mucst work for the government and you are not in the trenches.


now to nail the point, My friend was in France:

the SOCIALIST STATE!

My friend who is a surgeon saw a lady who was obese, over forty lots of gas and abd pain for over two years! every time she ate pizza and cheeze she got SICK! I mean a medical student in the US knows this is a gall bladder. but her FRENCH STATE PHYSICIAN has been trying tons of meds and many things for GASTRITIS (irritated stomach) That doctor should have his licensed revoked for malpractice. but THEY WONT DO IT!

all the other doctors in France, if that person is not politically connected will continue the same diagnoses! How do I know? she went to other doctors!
(How they sleep I dont know)
But WHY?

Because in France, every test they do and every surgery performed comes out of the doctors paycheck to a degree, the less ttests they do and the less surgeries they perform the more they make and THE LESS DEMERITS THEY GET!

so if a case becomes political or popular or a few complaints,k then they finally do the surgery, but if you are poor or unkonwn best expect to never get it right.

this is just one case, everyone knows it is difficult to get anything really done that is major over there,

this is a single payer system.

This is what we are headed for
BE PREPARED FOR OLOUSY HEALTH CARE IN THE VERY NEER FUTURE when the dems take over congress.

Be prepared to be paying doctor wages for seeing a PA (get real there is no comparison between the too in experience, or why couldnt they just cur the doctor program to 2 years and stick them all in clinics?)

yes you are being charged DOCTOR time for NON DOCTOR FUMBLING and you will end up in the ER who are struggling and going under.

When the government finally takes over all health care, you can bet each docotr will be paid NOT TO DO SURGERY (incentives) and for sure not to find anything)
(as long as possible without getting into truoble anyway)

so you who have the big ideas and big words who think a single party payer will work, man you dont have a clue, and you WILL SOON SEE.

it is 90 percent already single payer and the care is worsening.

so now they have big studies showing ALL THE DRUG ERRORS! why?
INCOMPETENCE wich is groeing

know what their answer for drug errors is?
COMPUTERIAED and DIGITIZE everything so you can be micromanaged
wich will (if I had a day) make absolutely everything much much much worse.

sorry.

Peak oil;?
HA we have something worse.
PEAK HEALTH CARE and we hit peak in 1985.

Have a nice day, oh, and don't get sick ok?
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Re: The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

Unread postby MyOtherID » Tue 25 Apr 2006, 19:36:16

Decontaxable, I couldn't make head or tail of your ravings, and I repeat: as a person who has intimately experienced the US as well as a single-payer system (universal health care), I vastly prefer the latter. They are chalk and cheese. I cannot think of one thing about the US system that I like. In addition, in a system like they have in Australia, which is a clever mix of public and private, you can elect to go private and pay out of your own pocket if you feel you are waiting too long for elective treatment.

Single-Payer Health: Cheaper, Better, More Competitive
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Re: The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

Unread postby Imcal » Wed 26 Apr 2006, 01:37:08

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bdmarti', 'I')f Friday produces 12 mangos per day from the tree does he "own" the tree? Wht happens with someone better comes along?
Let's say a boatload of stangers arrives on the island with Friday and Robinson, and they bring with them Farmer Bob. Farmer Bob can produce 1 million mangos per day from the same tree that Friday owns, but unfortunatly for all the strangers, Friday doesn't want to sell his tree for arbitrary reasons.
You're assuming irrationality on Friday's part, thus that he is non-human. You can't use "arbitrary reasons" in economic reasoning.

Perhaps Friday enjoys watching starving people. In that case not selling (or employing or otherwise interacting with the newcomers, save to keep them away from the tree(s) he claims as his) would be perfectly rational. Assumption of rationality is not a very good one anyway. Either you have to stretch "rational" to include all human activity (past, present and future) or concede that humans can be irrational. What use is a definition of rationality that goes: "Everything that humans do is rational."?

The theory of first ownership Jaws proposes is not the only one in existance either. Some libertarians assert that Friday has to compensate others if he wishes to appropriate natural resources. Locke wrote that appropriation is just only if there is as much and as good left for others (Locke, his qualifier is obviously not going to work in the present day world where resources are increasingly scarce). Simply adopting a philosophical view like the theory of first ownership that Jaws endorses does not make it the right or the only one in existance.

This is getting way off-topic, though. Libertarianism is a novel concept but not very relevant to the present day world. I rank it right up there with the more extreme forms of socialism.

I'd say the thread has been well derailed :oops:. I'll go back to burning the collected works of Rothbard and Kirzner now.
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Re: The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

Unread postby MrBill » Wed 26 Apr 2006, 06:36:30

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 's')o you who have the big ideas and big words who think a single party payer will work, man you dont have a clue, and you WILL SOON SEE.

it is 90 percent already single payer and the care is worsening.

so now they have big studies showing ALL THE DRUG ERRORS! why?
INCOMPETENCE wich is groeing

know what their answer for drug errors is?
COMPUTERIAED and DIGITIZE everything so you can be micromanaged
wich will (if I had a day) make absolutely everything much much much worse.

sorry.

Peak oil;?
HA we have something worse.
PEAK HEALTH CARE and we hit peak in 1985.

Have a nice day, oh, and don't get sick ok?


Thanks for your post. Have to agree. Cannot compare non-likes, but ya, makes a huge difference if you live in a country with marginal tax rates of 40%, 45% or 50%+, and you have to add total taxes, plus healthcare, plus unemployment insurance, pension contributions and any other check-offs like solidarity taxes to the total tax bill to get your net take home pay, which is the number that counts.

Free healthcare isn't free if you cannot get it when you want it, or if you have to pay an extra 15% of your income to live in a place that offers it.

I have seen comprehensive private healthcare plans that are portable, offer treatment anytime/anywhere in the world and are cheaper than government plans.

Give me transparency and let me make my own decisions instead of forcing me into a one size fits all plan.
The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
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Re: The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

Unread postby bdmarti » Wed 26 Apr 2006, 10:37:40

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', ' ')I understand your points, but when you paint with such a wide brush you cover over a lot of cracks.


The issue I was taking with what Jaws had to say was that high taxation "caused" impoverishment.

The high living costs in nordic countries would be relevant only if there were high levels of impoverishment, and the high cost of living in conjuntion with the high taxation were causing said impoverishment. These nordic countries have little poverty by a number of measures, and as such, it is hard to make the leap to high taxation "causing" impoverishment.

Small states contol immegration better. This is not relevant to what I'm talking about. The question is, is the existing populace being impoverished as a direct result of high taxation, and the answer seems to be no. It is a different point entirely to say that a country is being impoverished because a lot more poor people are immigrating there. Immigration is a different problem from taxation causing poverty. Besides that Luxembourg, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, and Canada all have higher rates of foriegn population than the US, and yet again we see some higher tax, lower poverty countries on the list.

What the Swiss wish to buy, but can't aford doesn't concern me until we are defining what they can't buy as impoverishment. Since I currenlty am using a definition of impoverishment that doesn't include the ability to afford particular ski trips, I feel perfectly comfortable with using the swiss as an example of high taxation and low "impoverishment."

The point I was making was that high taxation does not directly cause impoverishment. I stand by that point.

A better causality might be: improper and inefficient allocation of resources can lead to impoverishment. However, I think both socialist and very free markets can fail to allocate resources well, and so I find it foolish to attempt to attach a poverty causality to socialism, when that isn't the real problem.
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Re: The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

Unread postby bdmarti » Wed 26 Apr 2006, 11:57:49

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'T')his is a tax on health care that is not taken into account by the official tax rates.


Here we agree on something, but alas, we still lack evidence of taxation causing impoverishment.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') person earning 1 billion dollars does make them highly productive.


"Earning" and "Owning" are not the same thing. The situation being discussed is an individual "having" or "owning" 1 billion dollars, we never determined if he earned it or not.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
') If they are forbidden from keeping what they earn, and their heirs from keeping what they inherited, then this productive person will not produce as much and society as a whole will be the poorer for it.


Again, you assert this, but we still lack evidence that this is so. And besides that we still aren't even close to agreement that the billionear in question is "productive", we simply agree that he has a billion dollars.


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')If we were content with keeping the same amount of capital we would have never progressed past the stone age. The goal is to increase our capital, and government raiding the capital producers is going to have the reverse effect.


This is an assertion, and I don't assume it it true.
While many times government may spend capital less efficiently than the market, there are examples where the government has done a good job of spending capital, and we as society have been the richer for it.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou're assuming irrationality on Friday's part, thus that he is non-human. You can't use "arbitrary reasons" in economic reasoning.


Excuse me? You assuming rationality on the part of any given producer or consumer is irrational in itself.
If you would like to claim that all producers and consumers behave rationaly, then I think you are a fool. Rationality of consumers is the exeption, and not the rule. Arbitrary wants and desires drive all consumers, and rarely will a producer be motivated by monetary profit alone, but he will also value leisure, laws, and other arbitrary considerations.
I can and will use "arbitrary reasons" because every single consumer and producer in the world has and uses arbitrary reasons for nearly every single thing they do.
I want cake. It is therefore rational that I pursue cake. However it is also, by definition, arbitrary!
I don't need to define why Friday does what he does. He does it for whatever reasons suit him. Maybe he's just an ass or maybe he can't stand the thought of someone else owning his tree, or maybe, quite rationally, he realizes that he can forever get his mangos so long as he DOES NOT sell his tree.
The point is, and it is an irrefutable point, that you can't count on Friday to be motivated by whatever profit motive your market supplies. Friday can be arbitrarily motivated by any number of other arbitrary reasons, and thus he may value his tree higher than anything else in the world.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Friday produced the trees that the survivors needed to survive....
Friday benefits from his past work tending for the trees. It so happens that due to a stroke of luck this past work is highly valuable for someone else, and thus Friday can earn an astounding profit from his work. But it was still his work to trade for, and both parties still benefit.


The Mango tree might predate Friday by 50 years or more. It was deliverd to the island by bird poop and grew quite happily on it's own before there was any Friday.
This assertion that the Mango tree would not be there without friday seems silly. Friday is earning a profit not from his work, but simply from being there first.
There is something to be said for precident, but there is also something to be said as far as the needs of the many outweighing the wants of the few.

If we can all eat from the mango tree provided Farmer Bob tends it, but Friday is an ass and doesn't want to let him, how can it be considered moral or correct that we sit by and starve just to allow Friday to exert his so called right over the mango tree? IF Friday were rational, and reasonable, and he traded with us, then we could all be better off even if friday owned the tree, however, it is not guarunteed that Friday is either rational or reasonable.
Friday could get greedy...Farmer Bob could sleep with Friday's wife...any number of things can and will happen that might prevent Friday from trading with us fairly. At such a point, a point at which it is clearly by the group's definition, irrational for Friday to be behaving as he is, should we kill him? Is that the moral thing to do...but what if that pisses off friday's kid and then he too doesn't let us use his tree? Friday might value watching us starve...he might value revenge...he might be some sick bastard....I don't care...I just know that Friday doesn't have to trade with us...ever. and in such a circumstance, the morality of respecting property rights becomes rather questionable.
and since we can come up with a near infinite number of cases where an owner feels they are maximizing the value of their property for whatever aritrary reasons they give value too, but at the same time, we as society feel the owner's use of property is irrational...what should we do?
An eccentric owner might like to have a million acres of clear grassland that he rides his horse on once a year...at the same time...cities can be overpopulated and land prices rise and housing costs rise, and the meat prices may rise because there is not enough land to graze on...and all the while, the eccentric land owner doesn't need to sell. He NEVER needs to sell. He values his horse ride above all the money we can offer him, and he values his horse ride above all our needs. Is he rational? Is it not up to him to determine what it is he values most? Is this not a requirement of free markets, and yet isn't this by definition ARBITRARY?


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hat's wishful thinking... The dictator and to some extent the farmer will be extremely wealthy. The others will be reduced to servitude.


I understand what you are saying. However, what you are saying is not what must happen, but only one possibilty of what might happen. If friday is a socialist who has always wanted a community, he could give his tree up to the group and never even contest his property rights.
Lot's of things could happen.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')If Friday owns the trees and the lagoon it is still better for him to cooperate and trade than to lock out the others. Always, always, always better. There is no possible way that this could be otherwise. It would violate a logical theorem, and would thus be completely irrational.


Wrong. You are just plain wrong.
Only Friday can tell us what he values most. If Friday values never having any human contact most, then it is rational that he let everyone on the island starve. I can make up dozens more things that Friday could value more than extra mangos and fish...all of which cause Friday to not trade for more mangos and fish. You can keep trying to define such things as irrational if you like, but who are you to judge the value system of Friday?
And anyways, the point is not that everyone can't be better off if Friday trades, for I agree that they can provided Friday has similar values or at least wants that the market can meet, the point is that Friday can always and forever remain the wealthiest person on the island even while he never works at all...and that looks to be immoral and I questions such abuses of property rights.


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Scarcity isn't an issue "at some point". Scarcity is an issue ALWAYS. The moment you stop enforcing property rights a conflict will occur. You can't just have a starting run without property rights, then at some point along the way allocate property. Without property rights there will be no wealth produced at all and your society will collapse and starve entirely.


You assert this with no proof. You say that we will all starve, and yet such actions would require that we all act irrationally, and inhuman, which you have told me is forbidden in economic discussions.

If we as society agree that the tree and lagoon are communal, and we further agree that Farmer Bob is the best man to run the tree for now, we can all work to produce things Farmer bob wants to trade for mangos. I can build a shelter or weave baskets...who cares. The point is, nobody indivudally owns the tree, and yet society can function.
Should farmer bob get lazy, greedy, or die...we as a society can choose the next best person or method to maximize production of the tree..rather than let farmer bob give it to his lazy and incompetent son or whatever poor choice he might make.

Your assertion that we will all starve requires that we all prevent farmer bob from using the tree even though it by definition means we all starve. That's irrational.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')In a free market all workers have a potential access to capital items. They can trade for them, they can take loans on them, and as such the best workers will become the wealthiest.

That's a pleasant theory, but it's not true.
Take for instance any factory in the history of the world. Take the most productive worker from that factory. IS that worker the factory owner? Will that worker become the factory owner? The answer is rarely has this ever happened.
I might produce more widgets each day than anyone else, but I'll get paid the same salary as everyone else. Even if we assume I get paid by the piece...the owner of the widget machine still remains wealthier than me all the while.

I could go to the bank with 10 years of factory records that show I produce 50% more widgets than any other worker and ask for a loan on a widget machine and when a widget machine is highly priced enough, they will laugh me out of the bank. Even with a solid business plan that shows I can repay the loan provided someone buys my widgets at a price near what other widgets sell for, it's still not easy to get a loan.

Should I be lucky enough to get a loan to buy a widget machine I must now produce enough widgets to pay for not only my needs, but pay back the bank, and I must do this while competing with the other widget company, who as the established widget maker likely has lower costs and broader market penetation. As such, I am likely going to fail...most small businesses do fail, and many small businesses are service based because the capital costs are too high for unestablished businesses to ever get loans for things like machinery.

A free market would require very freely moving capital and very rational consumers and producers. The world has never seen much of any of these things.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')In a socialist system the dictator controls access to capital items, and thus favoritism and corruption will determine who becomes the wealthiest.


Here you foolishly associate favoritism and corruption with socialism.
Socialism does not cause, nor does it exclusivly harbor either favoritism or corruption.
Wouldn't favoritism be an irrational behavior? As such a thing, don't you exclude it from economic discussion? Why is it here?
Same for Corruption...Why do you so readily dismiss my example of Friday being corrupt in a free market, and yet claim that corruption will rule a socialist market?
This feels like a double standard to me.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his is not a problem, you're confusing the issue. ... All workers should maximize their comparative advantage, and forcing productive people to give up their property to less productive people is a violation of comparative advantage.

No sir, you are confusing the issue.
One more time: Owing something does not make one, by definition, more productive than anyone else.
Stop confusing "ownership" with "productivity", as they aren't the same thing.
Take any capital item...mago tree, tractor, anything...line up the owner of that item next to 1000 random people and you might find 10 people that are able to utilize your chosen capital item more productivly than the owner, hell, it might be that all 1000 people could get more production than the current owner.
His owning the item doesn't make it, or him, productive.

and just because under subjective valuation systems it might be considered rational for him to thus allow someone else to use his capital, he doesn't have to share that value system and he doesn't have to let anyone else use his capital.
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Re: The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

Unread postby bdmarti » Wed 26 Apr 2006, 12:09:21

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Imcal', '
')I'd say the thread has been well derailed :oops:.


I'd say you're right on that one.

It's been mostly civil and interesting though, and I hope others haven't been too bothered by our tangential discussion of the merits and lack therof of different socio-economic systems.

I'm all for talking more about the economy being bad...or about the theory so long as people aren't complaining.
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Re: The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

Unread postby MyOtherID » Wed 26 Apr 2006, 13:26:37

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'F')ree healthcare isn't free if you cannot get it when you want it, or if you have to pay an extra 15% of your income to live in a place that offers it.


In Australia you pay something like 1-2% tax on annual income for free healthcare. Your 15% figure is probably a worst case scenario from .. what country?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') have seen comprehensive private healthcare plans that are portable, offer treatment anytime/anywhere in the world and are cheaper than government plans.


Which plan would that be?

You cannot escape the simple logic that with a single payer system you have only one bureaucracy, whereas with systems like the US you have tens of thousands of health bureaucracies, leading to GROSS inefficiency. In addition, when you have a single payer system, drug companies can be forced to lower prices since they are dealing with one buyer. It's not a coincidence that drug prices are higher in the USA than anywhere else on Earth.
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Re: The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

Unread postby MrBill » Wed 26 Apr 2006, 15:02:28

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bdmarti', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', ' ')I understand your points, but when you paint with such a wide brush you cover over a lot of cracks.


The issue I was taking with what Jaws had to say was that high taxation "caused" impoverishment.



What the Swiss wish to buy, but can't aford doesn't concern me until we are defining what they can't buy as impoverishment. Since I currenlty am using a definition of impoverishment that doesn't include the ability to afford particular ski trips, I feel perfectly comfortable with using the swiss as an example of high taxation and low "impoverishment."

The point I was making was that high taxation does not directly cause impoverishment. I stand by that point.

A better causality might be: improper and inefficient allocation of resources can lead to impoverishment. However, I think both socialist and very free markets can fail to allocate resources well, and so I find it foolish to attempt to attach a poverty causality to socialism, when that isn't the real problem.


No, you are wrong. Very wrong! If you cannot work to earn your leisure than what is the point of working? I want to decide how I spend the fruits of my labor. I do not want the government deciding for me how they spend my labor.

If we live in a society then we may have an obligation to contribute to its upkeep and to help those less fortunate than ourselves. But some governments seem to be able to achieve those modest goals with only 40% taxation while others need 55%. What is 15%? Almost 2-months extra work per year. And if you work 50+ hours a week and get no more than 20 days of vacation then an extra 40-days per year to support economic migrants and assylum seekers is a great deal to ask citizens to voluntarily pay for.

At a certain point excessive marginal tax rates trigger tax avoidance rather than wealth accumulation and then society is poorer as less tax receipts come into the government's coffers and the cost of enforcement goes up (the Laffer Curve).

Ayn Rand wrote quite eloquently about wants versus needs. In a system where the government confiscates wealth to give to the needy, there is always someone in more need, so mere wants are ignored. They are never important enough. But there is more to life than working 50+ hours a week just to support others. There has to be something in it for the taxpayer. Their hobbies and interests.

In the developed, secular world where we believe in human rights and democracy and respects other people's beliefs that may be different than our own we have somehow convinced ourselves that we owe an obligation to take care of those who for religious, cultural or ethnic reasons seem to think it is perfectly okay to have more children than they can support or indeed than their own country can support, and the end result is the mess that we find ourselves in.

If I (or we) cannot promote democracy, women's rights, population and birthcontrol, reduce the spread of communicable diseases, pevent illegal overfishing, logging and poaching for those religious, cultural or ethnic reasons then why do we have to allow illegal immigration or assylum seekers to take advantage of programs that were set up to benefit our own communities and citizens? As harsh as that sounds, if we cannot tell these countries what to do, then why should we pick-up the pieces?

So direct taxation may not cause poverty, but there is a limit to how much citizens should be expected to pay. If you're working harder and harder just to stay where you are, then the answer is lower taxes and fewer income transfers and entitlement programs, not more.
Last edited by MrBill on Thu 27 Apr 2006, 04:19:05, edited 1 time in total.
The organized state is a wonderful invention whereby everyone can live at someone else's expense.
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Re: The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

Unread postby bdmarti » Wed 26 Apr 2006, 18:02:25

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', '
')No, you are wrong. Very wrong!


Wrong about what? In your entire rant you didn't show me to be wrong about anything.

If you define impoverishment to be: the government taking away my means to procure any paritcular thing I may have wanted, then sure, taxation causes impoverishment, but such a thing is an absurd definition.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Fcuk (perfume) everyone! Maybe your needs are my wants? Maybe I want something you think is stupid? Ayn Rand. Read it!


I've read Ayn Rand. Do you have a point? I agree with much of what Rand has to say, but this in no way equates to it being true that taxation causes impoverishment by any sane definition of the word.
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Re: The Economy must be doing worse than we're told

Unread postby kabu » Wed 26 Apr 2006, 19:53:05

Where the fuck's my rebuttal, anyway? :lol:
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