On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:00:24 -0700, the renowned JosephKK
On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 18:28:31 -0400, Spehro Pefhany
On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:05:08 GMT, the renowned James Arthur
Richard The Dreaded Libertarian wrote:
James Arthur wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
James Arthur wrote:
"Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James
Goodfellow, when his careless son happened to break a pane of glass?
...."
But think of how many jobs Green Energy will create.
I thought of it already...Hillary mentioned it as an economic + climate
plan, which we could then sell to the rest of the world and...cash in!
Obama too. He proposes $150e9 to help green Detroit.[1]
The premise is that money or corporations are holding back progress.
And that other countries are too dumb to do smart stuff.
Conclusion: Let's give money to corporations!
Reminds me of the World's Fair in New Orleans, where everyone was going
to get rich providing services to each another.
Or their casino mania: "We'll all get rich gambling in one another's
casinos--we can't lose!"
Ah, reminds me of the classic techniques to increasing the GDP and
reducing unemployment:
1. Have ten million people dig holes, and another 10 million fill them.
2. Everybody washes their neighbor's dishes for $40 an hour.
That's wrong-headed. The problem is the *gap* between rich and poor.
And there are a lot fewer rich than poor, so, as a practical matter, I
propose a *maximum* wage. About, say, $40/hr.
Penalties for hard work and overtime.
That ought to make everyone happy.
Oh, feh. For almost 100 years they've been trying to tax the income of
the rich, who have consistently found loopholes.
Loopholes schmoopholes. Compare % of total taxes paid to the % of
population for each income group:
http://perotcharts.com/category/challenges/taxation/
We need to lose the income tax, and instead, tax _outgo_:
Buy a $300,000 house, pay $30,000 purchase tax.
Buy a $300,000,000 mansion, pay $30,000,000 purchase tax.
Buy $300,000,000,000 worth of stocks & bonds & commodities & crap,
pay $30,000,000,000 purchase tax. ;-)
It could be just that simple.
I'm down with it. The simplified accounting alone would
save Americans not less than 2 weeks' overhead a year.
That's a 4% GDP boost.
Cheers,
James Arthur
Anthing like that kind of a tax on financial markets would cause an
instant *depression*.
Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
Even a 1/100 of 1 % transaction tax would take a lot of noise out of
the financial markets.
Not sure about that.. there are roughly 0.1% - 1% costs associated
with buying and selling securities just from the buy-sell spreads and
market-maker mechanism, with commissions on top. AFAUI, the UK has a
0.5% "Stamp Duty" levied on share transactions, and London is
certainly a competitive financial center.
As to the effect.. not sure it's positive. A high cost of
buying/selling might make people hold off to try and make back losses,
which could result in a mass capitulation and bigger drop than would
otherwise happen.
Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany