Unemployment falls below 9%

[Trakar]

Well, if we had a 50% tax on all capital gains not on a personal first or second home, we could close the books on the debt in just a few years.

Add in a 100% estate tax with a $200k/individual exemption for immediate family inheritances, a progressive, graduated corporate tax scale, and a wholesale house-cleaning elimination of most federal tax deductions, offsets and exemptions, and we could probably lower general tax rates and still collect more than enough to handle social programs and improvements and pay off much of the public debt.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Because it always has. Learn US history, Mr. Hoover.

So, Pyongyang is wealthier than Bern? Rangoon is wealthier than Singapore? Could've fooled me. The government of a locality is the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in that locality (definition, after Weber). State agents specialize in violence and threats of violence. That's their area of expertise. Not pensions, medical care, or schooling.

 

[BenBurch]

Add in a 100% estate tax with a $200k/individual exemption for immediate family inheritances, a progressive, graduated corporate tax scale, and a wholesale house-cleaning elimination of most federal tax deductions, offsets and exemptions, and we could probably lower general tax rates and still collect more than enough to handle social programs and improvements and pay off much of the public debt.

I'd exempt a million or so on estate tax; Small business is not always an LLC and might be passed as an estate, and we want to encourage small business. And I wouldn't try for anything more than 50% of the remainder, but otherwise I agree with that.

 

[Trakar]

I'd exempt a million or so on estate tax; Small business is not always an LLC and might be passed as an estate, and we want to encourage small business. And I wouldn't try for anything more than 50% of the remainder, but otherwise I agree with that.

We'll leave the first open for discussion (a person who leaves behind a spouse and 2 children would have $600k excluded so we are only talking a difference of $400k - let's raise it to $350k/immediate family individual and leave it to them whether it is dispersed in single lump or individual sums), but all you are really doing is forcing people to make such decisions and implement them early rather than later. I see little utility in a small business surviving its founder. If it is a family business that the family is truly interested in maintaining then the assets should be divided and managed by the entire family as soon as they are legally and rightfully able to (generally from the outset). We have no place for a monied aristocracy in this nation, it is antithetical to good governance or sensible social policy. And if you allow too many loopholes you might as well not pass the act.

Or as Teddy said:
"The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so far as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens..."

er, wait a minute,...wrong quote,...ah, here it is,

"We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.... The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and … a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate."

 

[Trakar]

So, Pyongyang is wealthier than Bern? Rangoon is wealthier than Singapore? Could've fooled me. The government of a locality is the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in that locality (definition, after Weber). State agents specialize in violence and threats of violence. That's their area of expertise. Not pensions, medical care, or schooling.

I see little application of knowledge gleaned from "US History" in your response.

 

[leftysergeant]

I see little application of knowledge gleaned from "US History" in your response.

Libertarian extremists don't do history.

 

[Trakar]

Libertarian extremists don't do history.

Au Contraire!
The things they have been shown to do to history are obscene and disgraceful!

 

[lomiller]

Libertarian extremists don't do history.

They don’t need to, it’s still the 1800’s in Libtopia.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Not much factual content in the last four or five comments.

I see little application of knowledge gleaned from "US History" in your response.

Lefty did not specify "US".
Sorry. He did. What US History supports the position that the State outperforms private arrangements?

Libertarian extremists don't do history.

a) As a general rule, that's false. Some read quite a bit of History.
b) I'm neither a libertarian nor a Libertarian. Just ask Perry de Haviland of Samizdata or the proprietor of the Bizzy blog. I part company with libertarians on environmental issues (including immigration), and foreign policy.
c) I read the (short) book-length excerpt from Milton Friedman's A Monetary History of the United States, Money Mischief, last summer, and last month read Capitalism and the Historians (Hayek, ed.), which deals mostly with the factory system in 19th century England. Anyway, since Lefty mentioned Hoover: Hoover was hardly a free-marketeer. That's not surprising, since he managed US aid to post-WWI Europe. Coolege addressed an economic downturn in laissez faire style, and succeeded. Hoover did not, and failed.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(Ben): "...the alternative is old people trying to survive on cat food and worse."
(Malcolm): "Another option: saving during their productive years. Yet another option: educating their children well and passing the family business to heirs. Yet another option: joining a mutual-aid society. Why suppose that the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in your area (the government) will outperform these other options? The State has no assets to distribute beyond those it first takes from productive people."

Because it always has. Learn US history, Mr. Hoover.

"Always" includes a lot more than US History. Most political History is the biographies of great mass murderers (Alexander, Cortes, Mao, etc.). Histories of Technology, Science, Medicine, and daily life (food, farming, etc.) tend to demonstrate how civilization advances without (or despite) political interference.

 

[leftysergeant]

What US History supports the position that the State outperforms private arrangements?

Social Security vs. 401(k). (Just the easiest answer.)

I read the (short) book-length excerpt from Milton Friedman's A Monetary History of the United States, Money Mischief, last summer, and last month read Capitalism and the Historians (Hayek, ed.), which deals mostly with the factory system in 19th century England.

That's worse than not reading history. Everything you know is not so.

Anyway, since Lefty mentioned Hoover: Hoover was hardly a free-marketeer. That's not surprising, since he managed US aid to post-WWI Europe. Coolege addressed an economic downturn in laissez faire style, and succeeded. Hoover did not, and failed.

Bull flops. He put a bandaid over a bullet wound and left it to fester until Hoover came along.

 

[leftysergeant]

Histories of Technology, Science, Medicine, and daily life (food, farming, etc.) tend to demonstrate how civilization advances without (or despite) political interference.

No, it doesn't.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

That's worse than not reading history. Everything you know is not so.

So, I did not read Lefty-approved History.

Bull flops. He put a bandaid over a bullet wound and left it to fester until Hoover came along.

Blame Bush! Evidence? Or ideology? We cannot rerun US history 100 times with variations in regulatory regimes, so we have to reason by analogy with other countries and with other periods. Economcs abstracts from a wide variety of political/legal regimes. Markets work. Command economies fail.

 

[BenBurch]

Lefty embarrasses MK. That was worth the price of admission.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Lefty embarrasses MK. That was worth the price of admission.

I suppose, since Lefty and I are the same species. That's embarassing.

 

[leftysergeant]

So, I did not read Lefty-approved History.

You seem to think that Friedman knew history. Yet that addle-brained old cooot claimed that the dirtiness of London had nothing to do with the poverty of the working class or lack of public services like sanitation. He said in one interview that switching from coal to other energy sources cleaned it up. The man was a schmuck. That he tried to help Pinochet stay in power should be a clue that the turd didn't give a rat's about humanity.

Blame Bush! Evidence? Or ideology?

He cut taxes for the people who could most afford to pay taxes and whose activities most needed government supervision, then borrowed money to miss-manage two wars. This is smoking-in-a-gunpowder-factory stupid and could be nothing but a disaster. He put worthless morons in charge of agencies crucial to public health and safety and now the food supply is in danger. He helped out the jackasses in the financial sector as the houysing market collapsed and did nothing to help the victims of the misdeeds of the banksters. He was worthless to anybody but the banksters for eight years and anybody with any ability to reason should see that. So yes, it is at least partly his fault that the ecconomy sucks right now.

We cannot rerun US history 100 times with variations in regulatory regimes, so we have to reason by analogy with other countries and with other periods. Economcs abstracts from a wide variety of political/legal regimes.

We have US history from 1929 to present. Laissez-faire capitalism crashed and burned. The New Deal reset it with safety devices.

Then the jelly-brain from California started wrecking all the structures that the New deal set in place and all hell broke loose.

Now, if you want to talk about results in other countries, that parasite Friedman went to Iceland and sold them his snake oil.

Utter disaster.

Markets work. Command economies fail.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...Friedman... claimed that the dirtiness of London had nothing to do with the poverty of the working class or lack of public services like sanitation¹. He said in one interview that switching from coal to other energy sources cleaned it up²...he tried to help Pinochet stay in power³...

1,3: cites? As to (2), you will find lots of people who relate London smog to coal burning. Is that so unlikely?
(Malcolm): "Blame Bush!"

...He cut taxes...He put worthless morons in charge...He helped out the jackasses in the financial sector...So yes, it is at least partly his fault that the economy sucks right now.

Lefty missed my analogy to Coolege and Hoover. When corrected about Hoover's policies, he switched to blaming Coolege. Blame the previous administration! "Blame Bush!" was an analogy.

...We have US history from 1929 to present. Laissez-faire capitalism crashed and burned. The New Deal reset it with safety devices. Then the jelly-brain from California started wrecking all the structures that the New deal set in place and all hell broke loose.

1. Until we can rerun history 100 times with various different policies in place, cause and effect must be inferred by analogy with other countries and other eras.
2. Or, the New Deal turned a standard-issue recession into a ten-year depression.
3. Actually, Carter installed Paul Volker, who wrung inflation out of the system, and Alfred Kahn, who instituted deregulation of transport. Reagan continued the deregulation and austerity policies that Carter (finally) instituted.

...Now, if you want to talk about results in other countries, that parasite Friedman went to Iceland and sold them his snake oil. Utter disaster.

In what respect did Iceland follow Friedman's prescriptions?

 

[leftysergeant]

1,3: cites? As to (2), you will find lots of people who relate London smog to coal burning. Is that so unlikely?

You missed the ab surdity of the fact that the4 dirtbag thought that the air pollution was the only thing wrong with life in London in Dickionsonian times. What a yutz! And his solution to the crime in Central Park was to privatize it. Stupid.

(Malcolm): "Blame Bush!"Lefty missed my analogy to Coolege and Hoover. When corrected about Hoover's policies, he switched to blaming Coolege. Blame the previous administration! "Blame Bush!" was an analogy.1. Until we can rerun history 100 times with various different policies in place, cause and effect must be inferred by analogy with other countries and other eras.

They both counted on the market to correct itself. Stupid move.

2. Or, the New Deal turned a standard-issue recession into a ten-year depression.

No proof of that. The only time it went wrong was when FDR listened to the whiney snot-nosed republicon deficit hawks and scaled back his programs. The war kind of slowed down the recovery, but at least we still had an industrial base and a reasonably healthy work force when it hit the fan.

I'll have to look around for the details of what Friedman did to Iceland to put them in the toilet. That he had anything to do with Pinochet should have been enough to have him taken out and shot.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(Friedman)...thought that the air pollution was the only thing wrong with life in London in Dickionsonian times.

Sounds unlikely. Again, cite? We're drifting from the assertions:...

...Friedman... claimed that the dirtiness of London had nothing to do with the poverty of the working class or lack of public services like sanitation ¹. He said in one interview that switching from coal to other energy sources cleaned it up ²...he tried to help Pinochet stay in power ³...

Cites for 1,3?

They both counted on the market to correct itself. Stupid move.

We disagree.

No proof of that. The only time it went wrong was when FDR listened to the whiney snot-nosed republicon deficit hawks and scaled back his programs. The war kind of slowed down the recovery, but at least we still had an industrial base and a reasonably healthy work force when it hit the fan.

I would not be so free with the word "proof" in historical discussions, since controlled experiments with significant sample sizes (rewind Earth's history 1000 times) are hard to arrange.

I'll have to look around for the details of what Friedman did to Iceland to put them in the toilet. That he had anything to do with Pinochet should have been enough to have him taken out and shot.

Again, cite? What did Friedman have to do with Pinochet? See here.

The first was the economic miracle of bringing a relatively free-market revolution to Chile. This was done by the Chicago boys in two waves—one from 1975-81 and the other from l984-89. People should realize that not all the top leaders of this transformation were former University of Chicago students. Notable among the others were Hernan Buchi and Jorge Cauas (both from Columbia University) and José Piñera (Harvard). The reforms made by these people under the military government were subsequently widely imitated in many other countries with democratically-elected governments. Most significant was the way in which Chile’s economic teams pursued the same general “model” of economic policy, during the democratically-elected presidencies of Aylwin, Frei, Lagos and Bachillet. Many of us who watched that evolution closely have attributed it to the “triumph of good economics”.

 

[leftysergeant]

Sounds unlikely. Again, cite? We're drifting from the assertions:...
Cites for 1,3?

For obvious reasons, I did not save that swill to my youTube favorites. It will take a while to find.

I would not be so free with the word "proof" in historical discussions, since controlled experiments with significant sample sizes (rewind Earth's history 1000 times) are hard to arrange.

For that reason, you have no shred of evidence that Friedman's crap works. We do have proof that FDR did no harm, because the ecconomy remained stable until 1980.

Again, cite? What did Friedman have to do with Pinochet? See here.

He trained the turds who went to help him.

That there were some supposedly democratic countries that copied that crap does not prove a thing. We're all circling the toilet now, aside from China.