Minecraft creator and fellow Exile Notch banned from 10 year anniversary celebration for wrongthink

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rojimboo wrote:

Which side of the optimal tax rate do you think we were before Trumps tax cuts?

Suboptimal. Overall tax burden was causing people to flee from some states (like California and NY). People were leaving good homes and good jobs because the government was slowly but surely eating away at everything they worked for.

People don't like working for free. When they work harder and longer hours and get less because of taxes, they begin to feel like they are working for nothing.

So you make another $300 a month this year. If you pay $180 of that in additional property taxes, and $60 of that in state tax, and $90 in federal taxes, how much more are you actually making?

So, you move to another state, take a new job making $800 a month less, but pay $1200 less a month in property and income taxes.

Even if the state isn't intending to jack up taxes, when property values skyrocket, so do the property taxes. Levee after levee gets passed by the voters because it feels good, and another .03% per year can't hurt....

Past a certain point, the income taxes start to take a big bite out of what people plan on doing with their hard earned money. People get discouraged and stop working harder. They spend more time trying to figure out how to avoid unnecessary taxes and less time working.

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DalaiLama wrote:

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rojimboo wrote:

Which side of the optimal tax rate do you think we were before Trumps tax cuts?

Suboptimal. Overall tax burden was causing people to flee from some states (like California and NY). People were leaving good homes and good jobs because the government was slowly but surely eating away at everything they worked for.

People don't like working for free. When they work harder and longer hours and get less because of taxes, they begin to feel like they are working for nothing.

So you make another $300 a month this year. If you pay $180 of that in additional property taxes, and $60 of that in state tax, and $90 in federal taxes, how much more are you actually making?

So, you move to another state, take a new job making $800 a month less, but pay $1200 less a month in property and income taxes.

Even if the state isn't intending to jack up taxes, when property values skyrocket, so do the property taxes. Levee after levee gets passed by the voters because it feels good, and another .03% per year can't hurt....

Past a certain point, the income taxes start to take a big bite out of what people plan on doing with their hard earned money. People get discouraged and stop working harder. They spend more time trying to figure out how to avoid unnecessary taxes and less time working.

You think taxes were too high??

Then surely if we are to believe the Laffer curve infallible theory, the tax cuts should have paid for themselves?

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/430604-putting-the-trump-tax-cuts-will-pay-for-themselves-myth-to-bed

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Recent estimates from the Treasury Department show that revenue dropped by 0.4 percent in calendar year 2018, a rare occurrence in American history — particularly when the economy is this strong. That’s bad news for our budget deficits, which are likely to reach $900 billion this year.

A 0.4-percent reduction might not seem like much, but it’s huge when put into context. Inflation grew by about 2 percent, and the economy grew (nominally) by more than 5 percent.

Revenue should have grown by 7 percent this year. Instead, revenues fell. They fell despite strong economic growth, moderate inflation and unemployment at its lowest level in nearly 50 years.

The reason? At the end of 2017, when deficits were already rising and the baby boomers were continuing to retire, Congress and the president enacted a massive new tax cut.

According to official projections, that tax cut increased future deficits by almost $2 trillion over a decade. And with one full year of the new tax code behind us, we now have good evidence to back up these projections. We can put to bed the myth that the tax cuts are paying for themselves.

The theory, at least, was that the tax cuts would massively accelerate economic growth. In reality, the tax bill's deficits were an irresponsible economic experiment that poured stimulus into an already strong economy.

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rojimboo wrote:

EVen I can see that too much taxes would eventually hinder economic output, and thus you would get less revenue per % increase in income tax rate.

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rojimboo wrote:

Bush called Laffer curve voodoo economics.

The core principle is solid — so I disagree with Bush here — but it can be misapplied. There are people who have advocated trickle-down economics who even I consider to be voodoo economists, because they actually believe that any tax cuts is always a good tax cut, and that's NOT what the Laffer curve is saying. It's saying that there is a tax rate that maximizes tax revenues, and that going above OR BELOW that rate reduces tax revenues.

The way I see it, there is a spectrum of reasonable opinions on tax rate, and an unreasonable area both left and right of that spectrum. The "max tax" border is at the perceived Laffer maximum — that is, the tax rate that seems like it would maximize tax revenue, based on empirical data (this is a type of economic prediction and thus somewhat subjective, but not overly so). The "minimum tax" border might be harder to define if we had a country that wasn't massively in debt, but because we are, unless you're advocating we go even further into debt to subsidize economic growth — yet again — the "min tax" border is… also the Laffer maximum, and not less than that.

The way I see it, we should be maximizing tax revenues, period — but you don't accomplish that by just arbitrarily increasing tax rates past a certain point. There is a point where increasing tax rates REDUCES the RAW (not "per" anything) amount of money the government receives from taxes.

I'm honestly quite frustrated that I am in favor of literally taxing the US taxpayer as much in raw dollars as we can manage, and I'm having trouble getting a self-proclaimed advocate of increased taxation to agree with me on sound economic theory that doesn't contradict that position. I'm literally as far left as is reasonable on this issue. Are you really so far left that reasonable left is too far right for you?

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rojimboo wrote:

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Recent estimates from the Treasury Department show that revenue dropped by 0.4 percent in calendar year 2018, a rare occurrence in American history — particularly when the economy is this strong. That’s bad news for our budget deficits, which are likely to reach $900 billion this year.

A 0.4-percent reduction might not seem like much, but it’s huge when put into context. Inflation grew by about 2 percent, and the economy grew (nominally) by more than 5 percent.

Revenue should have grown by 7 percent this year.

First, let's adjust these stats for inflation: tax revenues are down 2.4% in real dollars (.996/1.02=.976), and the economy grew 2.9% in real dollars (1.05/1.02).

This is pretty close to Laffer maximum, but on a one-year delay. Because the economy grew 2.9%, projected 2019 tax revenue, adjusted for inflation and assuming (somewhat optimistically) the same rates of economic growth and inflation, will be UP 0.5%. 2020 would be up 3.5%.

The statement that tax revenues would be up 7% is highly misleading. First, it doesn't factor in inflation. Second, and more importantly, it assumes we'd have seen 5% nominal growth even without a tax cut. It probably wouldn't have been that high.

Let's just say, in arguendo, nominal economic growth would have been 4% without the tax cut, with 3% inflation. If so, real 2018 tax revenue would have been up 1.0% in 2018, would be up 2.0% in 2019, and up 2.9% in 2020. Under that scenario, the tax cut would pay for itself.

That said, I don't believe that scenario is realistic. I that without the tax cuts, tax revenues would have been slightly higher than the projection above, and it would take decades for the Trump tax cuts to pay for themselves — decades of paying interest on debt, negating the gains. But I think we're very close to the Laffer maximum either way — probably slightly on the "not taxing enough" side now, probably slightly on the "taxing too much" side then. To invoke Bizarro Jay Wilson, if I was dictator I would have taken the Trump tax cuts and halved them.

But I still would have passed some tax cuts, for the purposes of increasing tax revenue.

And now, as an attempt to rerail the discussion to thread title, a nonpartisan explanation of why globalism is cancer.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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rojimboo wrote:

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Boem wrote:

And please, define majority for me.

Straight vs gay people.

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What majority we talking about here that is so homogeneous that they experience no obstacles in their life to overcome?

Strawman, never said that.

Just that people in the majority, don't encounter many of the obstacles minorities.

It's just the way of the world, always has been. The majority bullies the minority to no end. Which is why the strong need to defend the less strong minority.

Jimbo, you're forgetting a very important truth, which is: human beings do not live regionally, or nationally, or globally. They live locally.

I grew up white in the Detroit area. I was the minority. Most of my high school class happened to be Muslims, ethnically from Central Asia.

I could get in my car right now and drive less than ten miles to a room full of people where gay people are the majority. The Tool Box, I think it's called. In that space, I'd be the minority.

Females are the majority of just about every nation. Yet — to take a shot in the dark — you probably believe males have the upper hand. I'd ask you to take that idea to a male nurse or a male teacher.

Minority and majority are situational. The same group can be oppressed here and oppressor there. And you can get some very unpleasant results when a group that believes they are an oppressed minority happens to be the majority, and the group they view as their oppressor is the minority. For instance, 1930's Germany.

There was only one correct set of answers to Boem's questions:

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." — Ayn Rand

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鬼殺し wrote:

unlike the actual dark ages, people live globally. They might stress locally but it's very difficult to be ignorant of the larger picture. Even those who seem close-minded are aware of what and whom they're closing their minds against, which is enough to ensure that whatever 'dark age' is coming and whatever form its inquisitors take, it will not endure generationally.

So weather this bullshit. Be amused at its quirks and its cranks and its wonks. Laugh at their sincere attempts at arguing their ideology for the shallow, specious crap that it is.

I like democracy, but I don't believe truth can be determined by popular opinion. I've often cited Malcolm Gladwell's speech on diversity of choice as it highlights the limits of democracy, especially in regards to larger groups.

I like experts, but I don't believe that solutions come from simply observing our problems from the comfort of ivory towers. A university study of our current crop of so-called experts found that their ability to accurately predict the future wasn't significantly better than divining our fate by throwing darts at a dartboard. Exhibit A: Any forecast of global climate change that made major headlines more than 20 years ago.

I believe in the scientific method. Not in the religion of Scientism, but in testing what one hopes will be a solution by direct experiment, more likely than not disproving it, and then repeating and repeating, iterating and iterating, until our guesses at solutions are proven by empirical evidence. That is the standard for truth and the standard of expertise.

Globalism is the arrogant rejection of the scientific method in regards to social and political affairs. It does not allow one nation of people to split off from the pack and try something different, something that may or may not work but which has the blessing of its people. Globalism does not wonder what the solutions to our social and political problems could be, with the intellectual honesty of admitting one's own ignorance. It has no desire to experiment, because to risk only a fraction in an experiment requires separation, and separatism is the Great Evil.

Instead, globalism knows it has all the answers, when it doesn't. In its hubris it points to its "experts" and prescribes to all an identical solution, forged not by experiment but by commitment to ideology, and tells us not to worry, because this is what their High Priests of Scientism decided. It is a political system for recklessly risking an entire world on untested hypotheses.

Yet here we have Charan, insisting we live globally and falsely accusing the heretics against his faith of being the inquisitors who pursue them. But he is right about one thing — we have been heading, for quite some time now, into a new Dark Age. But this is not the fault of the dissidents, but of those who oppose diversity of opinion in the name of unity, thus stifle iteration, thus cripple our ability to find solutions to our social problems.

I would like to be amused at the quirks and cranks and wonks of this overwhelming push for ideological sameness. I would like to laugh at their sincere attempts at arguing their ideology for the shallow, specious crap that it is. But I'm not fully confident we can weather this bullshit.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The statement that tax revenues would be up 7% is highly misleading. First, it doesn't factor in inflation.

So in real terms including 2% inflation it's about 5% (1.07/1.02). This compared to 2.4% reduction in revenue in real terms, gives you yet again a shortfall of about 7% revenue expected.

That's huge.

Almost as huge as your national debt.