A thread dedicated to identifying ideas for change. If some one idea generates a lot of traffic we can split it off to its own thread.
Starter post.
IDEA 1 - REPLACE INCOME TAX WITH A PRODUCTIVITY TAX
PROBLEM: A taxi driver pays income tax, a self driving taxi will not. A cashier pays income tax, self check out does not. Increased robotics, which lay no income tax displace workers who do. With the lost job government revenue goes down, and it assumes a burden to assist the unemployed. It incentivizes business to make people redundant. Income tax is often used for social engineering.
SOLUTION: Tax production; the act of driving or hiring a car, the act of accounting the bill, the assembly of a value added product. This will provide a more stable tax base, incentivize government to increase productivity, encourage hiring more people.
What are your ideas?
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Fixing America
Fixing America
by Newfie » Mon 15 Jul 2019, 07:13:40
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Re: Fixing America
by Tanada » Mon 15 Jul 2019, 10:11:47
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'A') thread dedicated to identifying ideas for change. If some one idea generates a lot of traffic we can split it off to its own thread.
Starter post.
IDEA 1 - REPLACE INCOME TAX WITH A PRODUCTIVITY TAX
PROBLEM: A taxi driver pays income tax, a self driving taxi will not. A cashier pays income tax, self check out does not. Increased robotics, which lay no income tax displace workers who do. With the lost job government revenue goes down, and it assumes a burden to assist the unemployed. It incentivizes business to make people redundant. Income tax is often used for social engineering.
SOLUTION: Tax production; the act of driving or hiring a car, the act of accounting the bill, the assembly of a value added product. This will provide a more stable tax base, incentivize government to increase productivity, encourage hiring more people.
What are your ideas?
Starter post.
IDEA 1 - REPLACE INCOME TAX WITH A PRODUCTIVITY TAX
PROBLEM: A taxi driver pays income tax, a self driving taxi will not. A cashier pays income tax, self check out does not. Increased robotics, which lay no income tax displace workers who do. With the lost job government revenue goes down, and it assumes a burden to assist the unemployed. It incentivizes business to make people redundant. Income tax is often used for social engineering.
SOLUTION: Tax production; the act of driving or hiring a car, the act of accounting the bill, the assembly of a value added product. This will provide a more stable tax base, incentivize government to increase productivity, encourage hiring more people.
What are your ideas?
It is considerably worse than the case you make above because you not only lose the formal income tax of the employee, you lose both the employee and employer portions of the Medicare tax, both the Employer/Employee portions of the Social Insurance tax, and on top of all that money you lose the social benefits of face to face employee/Customer interaction. Ole Retired Widow MacGreedy didn't buy her groceries for the week, instead she would buy her groceries every day as going to the store gave her interaction with other human beings. Heck not that long ago there was a kind of 'coffee club' at the MacDonald's near where I was working where a half dozen senior citizens would gather to drink a morning pint of coffee and chat. It wasn't because the coffee was the best in the world, it was because the restaurant made a point of providing a clean easy to access space at a low price point for entry.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alfred Tennyson', 'W')e are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: Fixing America
by Newfie » Mon 15 Jul 2019, 10:47:22
Here in Atlantic Canada it’s Tims. More than once I’ve waltzed into Tims at 7am and asked to be included in the coffee clutch because I had a problem and needed local knowledge. “Who’s the best diesel mechanic around?”
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Re: Fixing America
by Plantagenet » Mon 15 Jul 2019, 13:28:06
I think the best way to fix America is to make it a lot more like Europe.
Keep the best parts of American political philosophy but borrow ideas from Europe that work and will fix some of our problems.
1. We can learn a lot from Europe when it comes to taxes. They use a Value Added Tax which taxes each step of a product's manufacture and sale. This is a little like the Productivity tax being discussed above. We can just copy Europe and learn from how they do it.
2. Make gas taxes much higher so gasoline is much more expensive. This is effectively a "carbon tax." This will tend to push people out of cars and into mass transit.
3. Make mass transit cheap and modern and efficient. In Europe they have high speed rail and city trams and very effectively local bus transport that can get you just about anywhere.
4. Put the public housing out in the suburbs. Rather then allow beautiful cities to crumble into decay, preserve and modernize the cities, centralize them around High speed rail and mass transit. Where public housing is necessary put it in the suburbs away from the vibrant city centers.
5. Use some of that VAT tax revenue to nationalize health care.
6. Use the rest of the VAT tax revenue to support pensions and social services.
7. Downsize the defense budget and avoid getting entangled in foreign wars.
IMO, it's simple to "fix" America. All we have to do is copy the good things from Europe.
Cheers!
Keep the best parts of American political philosophy but borrow ideas from Europe that work and will fix some of our problems.
1. We can learn a lot from Europe when it comes to taxes. They use a Value Added Tax which taxes each step of a product's manufacture and sale. This is a little like the Productivity tax being discussed above. We can just copy Europe and learn from how they do it.
2. Make gas taxes much higher so gasoline is much more expensive. This is effectively a "carbon tax." This will tend to push people out of cars and into mass transit.
3. Make mass transit cheap and modern and efficient. In Europe they have high speed rail and city trams and very effectively local bus transport that can get you just about anywhere.
4. Put the public housing out in the suburbs. Rather then allow beautiful cities to crumble into decay, preserve and modernize the cities, centralize them around High speed rail and mass transit. Where public housing is necessary put it in the suburbs away from the vibrant city centers.
5. Use some of that VAT tax revenue to nationalize health care.
6. Use the rest of the VAT tax revenue to support pensions and social services.
7. Downsize the defense budget and avoid getting entangled in foreign wars.
IMO, it's simple to "fix" America. All we have to do is copy the good things from Europe.
Cheers!
Never underestimate the ability of Joe Biden to f#@% things up---Barack Obama
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Keep running between the raindrops.
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Keep running between the raindrops.
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Re: Fixing America
by Outcast_Searcher » Mon 15 Jul 2019, 14:26:05
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'H')ere in Atlantic Canada it’s Tims. More than once I’ve waltzed into Tims at 7am and asked to be included in the coffee clutch because I had a problem and needed local knowledge. “Who’s the best diesel mechanic around?”
Um. Speaking of knowledge, that's coffee klatch. (I just looked it up to verify).
Sorry - the irony of the internet and the vast deterioration of languages skills re using the wrong word for things frequently, including in formal articles by "professional" writers (given the ability to look things up) is a pet peeve of mine.
But definitely yes -- as the world gets more complex, the ability to gain knowledge from peers is ever more important. To me, the ability to view a number of Youtube videos on various how-to's is invaluable. (Of course, you need to see more than one, to ensure the presenter has a clue what they're doing).
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: Fixing America
by Outcast_Searcher » Mon 15 Jul 2019, 14:33:30
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', '
')IDEA 1 - REPLACE INCOME TAX WITH A PRODUCTIVITY TAX
PROBLEM: A taxi driver pays income tax, a self driving taxi will not. A cashier pays income tax, self check out does not. Increased robotics, which lay no income tax displace workers who do. With the lost job government revenue goes down, and it assumes a burden to assist the unemployed. It incentivizes business to make people redundant. Income tax is often used for social engineering.
SOLUTION: Tax production; the act of driving or hiring a car, the act of accounting the bill, the assembly of a value added product. This will provide a more stable tax base, incentivize government to increase productivity, encourage hiring more people.
')IDEA 1 - REPLACE INCOME TAX WITH A PRODUCTIVITY TAX
PROBLEM: A taxi driver pays income tax, a self driving taxi will not. A cashier pays income tax, self check out does not. Increased robotics, which lay no income tax displace workers who do. With the lost job government revenue goes down, and it assumes a burden to assist the unemployed. It incentivizes business to make people redundant. Income tax is often used for social engineering.
SOLUTION: Tax production; the act of driving or hiring a car, the act of accounting the bill, the assembly of a value added product. This will provide a more stable tax base, incentivize government to increase productivity, encourage hiring more people.
So just for clarity, are we talking about what I'd call a "robot tax" here? Because, to the extent automation is going to replace jobs, it will be an autonomous system, which I'm loosely referring to as robots, which will be doing the work.
I think this makes a lot of sense, and whoever owns the robots or the means of production and is garnering the profits, will be paying the tax.
And I presume the productivity tax for people who still work will still strongly resemble an income tax in its effect, if I understand your proposal -- since work for pay will presumably be "productivity', whether it's art or plumbing, for example.
Last edited by Outcast_Searcher on Mon 15 Jul 2019, 14:46:41, edited 1 time in total.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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