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President Trump

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The Don said:
OK, that makes sense...



Well that doesn't sound fair at all. Why isn't a much fairer system of subsidy, or better yet a single payer system.



How did a question about whether a small increase in income tax decreases productivity become about Obamacare ?
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Well, I was trying to explain things and give some facts. A less jaded person might have expected some gratitude rather than a snide remark, but such is the ISF unfortunately. Anyway, Obamacare has exacerbated implicit marginal tax rates a lot, and this has disincentivized work. The CBO did an analysis which I delved into deeply in another thread. It was the basis for the claim that Obamacare would lead to 2,000,000 fewer jobs in the US over the next 10 years. Roughly half of that was due to what is called the substitution effect (which means people will substitute more leisure time for work when the return on work is lower), and the other half was due to what is called the income effect (which means people who have higher income due to subsidies and government benefits will work less because they don't need to in order to maintain an acceptable standard of living).
 
sunmaster14 said:
... what is called the income effect (which means people who have higher income due to subsidies and government benefits will work less because they don't need to in order to maintain an acceptable standard of living).
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Does that apply only to these sources of higher income? What about recipients of interest on investment or dividends on equities, who can maintain an acceptable standard of living? Do they work less than they otherwise would if they received no income except wages?
 
Argumemnon said:
Well, why don't you help me out, sport?
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well check out bob001's argument against it, which is basically completely 100% wrong and is the exact argument the other way. he says 'no one is talking about {extreme examples}' and then claims that the effect isn't there for less extreme examples. this is fundamentally wrong. if the effect exists at the extremes, why would it disappear at some arbitrary 'non-extreme'?

the effect is only at the macro level. and there will be ways to reduce or distort the effects, mainly the inflexibility of most labour contracts. if you want to start arguing about the laffer curve, fine, but no one has even mentioned that term yet...the difference there is it takes account of tax revenues, which we don't seem to be considering here, but it takes the idea that higher tax results in less work/productivity as a given.
 
Bob001 said:
And yet, the economy collapsed in 2007-8, when taxes were lower, and it's booming today, after the Bush cuts ended. The economy soared through '60s, when rates were extortionate by current standards, and lagged during the '70s, after rates dropped. The point is that people and businesses make economic decisions based on numerous factors other than the tax rates.
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and this bit - apparently completely unfamiliar with the concept of ceteris paribus...another example of somehow arguing against yourself
 
sunmaster14 said:
The paper is written from the perspective of maximizing tax revenue, which, in my view, is a stupid goal.
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yes, stupid as a goal in and of itself but...

sunmaster14 said:
The goal of tax policy should be maximizing economic productivity and the nation's standard of living.
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I suspect this must be the point where you and I will disagree, since there must be one, as you support trump ;)

I think the goal of government should be to provide social safety nets, social cohesion, and equality of opportunity (basically, as far as is feasible, be a counter to the inherent unfairness of life) and that tax policy should simply be a means to that.

I do not agree that economic productivity in and of itself is a good thing (if too much of what is produced goes to too few or undeserving people), I do agree with the second part but suspect we might define it differently.
 
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i c wot u did there

i think it is important. we have here a trump supporter who seems to have a better grasp of fundamental economic concepts than some trump opposers, who I otherwise tend to agree with (and fortunately sunmaster is still being ridiculously thin-skinned and snide so we're not fully twilight zone just yet) - I think it is worth exploring further, on topic to 'president trump'

(wasn't bob001 a johnson supporter? or am I thinking of someone else? and he's arguing that higher taxes don't reduce economic output?)
 
Stacko said:
The grift continues.

At least he's declining the $400,000 salary. :rolleyes:
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In addition to the rent he collects Donald will have personnel to make sure Melania doesn't step out of line. I half-expect him to start keeping concubines - or maybe the young companions sent by the Russian Embassy will be enough.

Since he has no need of White House counsel that position should be eliminated. Legally he can't have a conflict of interests and appearance-wise he doesn't care. He should not have the option to decline the $400K a year. Perhaps it can be donated to his foundation.
 
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What do you call a libertarian who wants to restrict the movement of goods and labor?

ETA:

Captain_Swoop said:
Three Wisconsin precincts revise vote totals after caught padding Donald Trump’s numbers
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I need to see that corroborated by mainstream outlets. Anyone can have a blog.

ETA: Which is not to say I don't value blogs. But they're not my standard for fair and balanced reporting. I was raised in a different era. Also, bloggers generally don't have deep pockets - MSM put themselves more at risk due to lawsuit-happy demagogues who want to restrict speech.

ETA2: Looks like you struck a nerve there, Captain. Apparently news has a statute of limitations. My Lai, for example. It happened March 16, 1968 and wasn't widely reported on till November, 1969. Therefore, not news. Thankfully the press did not agree. IOW, thanks for the link.
 
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DreadNiK said:
yes, stupid as a goal in and of itself but...



I suspect this must be the point where you and I will disagree, since there must be one, as you support trump ;)

I think the goal of government should be to provide social safety nets, social cohesion, and equality of opportunity (basically, as far as is feasible, be a counter to the inherent unfairness of life) and that tax policy should simply be a means to that.

I do not agree that economic productivity in and of itself is a good thing (if too much of what is produced goes to too few or undeserving people), I do agree with the second part but suspect we might define it differently.
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I actually think we're more in agreement than you think. What government should be used for is a political issue. We may disagree on certain goals, or at least on the balance struck between competing goals, but tax policy is simply a means to those goals. But it is an economic means. That is, we should decide how big and powerful and intrusive a government we want, and then design tax policy to optimize economic performance within those constraints. For example, you might want government to guarantee that every household gets a chicken in their pot and a car in their garage (as Herbert Hoover promised during the 1928 campaign). To do so, the government must direct scarce resources to manufacturing of lots of cars and lots of chickens and then devise a tax policy that allows the economy to function well. Which ordinarily would mean preventing an acceleration of inflation generally and mitigating the distortions to the economy from the interference in the market for chickens and cars.

Warren Mosler, who is an economist I follow (I consider myself an acolyte, although I came to many of his conclusions independently), actually has an interesting take on taxes (which Randall Wray summarized thusly):

"[T]he purpose of the tax is to create unemployment. That might sound a bit strange, but if we define unemployment as a situation in which job seekers want to work for money wages, then government can hire them by offering its currency. The tax frees resources from private use so that government can employ them in public use."

That is, the tax is the mechanism by which the government commandeers private sector resources for public purpose. However, for any given public purpose goal, you still want to design the tax policy to minimize the damage to the overall economy (or maximize the good, if in fact the public purpose was itself stimulating productivity growth).
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Three Wisconsin precincts revise vote totals after caught padding Donald Trump’s numbers

http://www.palmerreport.com/news/th...als-caught-padding-donald-trumps-numbers/228/
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The incorrect vote totals are from an unofficial report generated on Nov. 9th. The correct vote totals are from an the official report generated on Nov. 16th. Not only is this not news (today is Nov. 25th last I checked), it's not much of anything. Unofficial reports are called unofficial because they haven't been checked.
 
Thanks to Craig B's link, this from the NYT:
Michael Forbes, a quarry worker whose home sits on the opposite side of the Trump property, added a second flag — “Hillary for President” — perhaps because Mr. Trump publicly accused him of living “like a pig” and called him a “disgrace” for not selling his “disgusting” and “slumlike” home.
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Poor Donald. Learning new words would crowd out others he's already memorized. No wonder he avoids classified briefings.
 
Watching War Dogs last night, and looking into the main character played by Jonah Hill, Efraim Diveroli on the Internet today. We elected that guy. Wow. He and Trump are almost exactly the same piece of ****.
Although there is no evidence that Diveroli is a sexual predator.

Just so selfish
 
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