Income tax: Ever calculated how wealthy you'd be without it?

[Travlyr]

Yes- or many other things.

One of my favorites is Bill Cosby's "Why is there air?" "To blow up basketballs" of course. That is a pretty good definition of inflation too.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

I see-it makes you more sophisticated to us a definition of a word that most of the people use in a different way. You must be better than the rest of the world. Increasing the money supply is only one use of the word inflation- and it is not the most common usage but a limited use. If you read an article in a newspaper and it said "Inflation running at 2.3%" do you assume they meant the money supply? No. Neither did other readers of that article. That is because the most common usage is an increase in price levels- not the money supply. If you wish to communicate with people, it is helpful to use the more common meanings of words- unless you indicate specifically you meant a different usage. I inflated my bicycle tires before I went for a ride today. His ego really got inflated after that one. These are also valid usages- and the words in the sentence indicated which meaning the word had. To inflate simply means to make larger.

I don't think I'm better. I also don't fault the people using the other definition. I just don't know what the other definition is really good for. Yes, prices of things can go up and down. Fine. What does it matter? What are we trying to say?

I probably am just not capable of communicating well and should give up. So, sorry. I recommend you read a bunch of books. Inflation is an interesting and misunderstood topic.

 

[Steven Douglas]

I don't think I'm better. I also don't fault the people using the other definition. I just don't know what the other definition is really good for. Yes, prices of things can go up and down. Fine. What does it matter? What are we trying to say?

I accept that Keynesian-spawned monetarists, including the academia that serves them, have successfully caused "general rise in prices" to be the most commonly used, artificially enthroned default meaning of inflation. That is very useful to them because it gets everyone thinking only in terms of a generalized effect with many causes, rather than a single cause and its many effects.

“When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it cannot be cured.”
― Anton Chekhov

How much better is that for the turd in the punch bowl that is making everyone sick, if you can get everyone pointing fingers in all directions, distributing blame and suggesting lots remedies for a generalized disease that appears incurable? After all, other things can make people sick, right?

It is for that reason that I qualify the term every time I use it. The Fed and other monetarists can have their obfuscating, meaningless generic inflation as meaning "price inflation". If you say "currency inflation" or "monetary inflation", there is nothing a monetarist can do about that, as it cannot be interpreted any other way than how it was qualified. You are now referring to a specific cause only, and without regard to its effects.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Steven, thank you for the back-up and for some much better communication than mine.

The point is: giving people their money back, ceasing to spend it on stupid junk, this is not going to cause prices of everything to go up and everyone to be worse off than before. That is not what's going to happen. Zippy, do you really think that this would happen? If so, why? Again, think of the story of A Bug's Life. If the grasshoppers stop taxing half the harvest, will all the ant colony's prices go up and everyone end up worse off?

Or will they, as I am claiming, have twice as much stuff as before, because half of it is no longer being stolen? And that's just the short-term result. Long-term, the benefit will compound, and thus over the decades zoom into the stratosphere.

 

[EcoWarrier]

Explain in more detail.

Lots of money about with too few goods to buy, then the price of goods goes up as the sellers maximize their profit.

 

[bunklocoempire]

I haven't read through the whole thread.

Income tax: Ever calculated how wealthy you'd be without it?

No, I have not.

However, I have seen a simple gold wedding ring/band from late 1800's/early 1900's.

I know for a fact that the wedding band that I saw belonged to a wife/mother of a simple Wisconsin farm family. I'd even say poor. Cash poor but with a decent 40 acres and a decent house/out buildings. All paid off for many, many decades -owned free and clear by at latest 1925/1930.

I'd say the 18 k gold ring was an easy 4 to 5 times the weight of my own 14 k mens band.

It belonged to a fairly petite woman from the pics I've seen of her. The size of the ring was tiny but the heft of the thing was incredible.

The Federal Reserve definitely can explain some of the difference of the two rings, but I can't help but think the 16th amendment and all it touches has an incredible impact as well. Layers upon layers of B.S. shrinking anything of value and inflating the value of the value-less.

Comparing those rings at the time really hit it home for my wife and myself concerning how bad our country's situation really is.

 

[EcoWarrier]

Originally Posted by Zippyjuan

To inflate simply means to make larger.
Like the money supply.

Like the value of goods.

 

[EcoWarrier]

As an aside, speculation is of course a stabilizing influence in an economy. We are all pro-speculation here.

It is clear you are grappling with the basics of economics. Speculation in LAND and its RESOURCES, created two world-wide crashed in 1929 and 2008. Geonomics stops that DEAD! Speculation is generally bad - even in Capital. It is a form of gambling.

Investment and speculation are NOT the same thing. Investment is good speculation is not.

 

[EcoWarrier]

The point is: giving people their money back, ceasing to spend it on stupid junk,

Consumerism was created to keep the factories going when they produced the basics of need. Then TVs, radios. washing machines, dishwashers, etc were produced. Currently it is flat screen TVs, smart phones and associated computer gadgets.

High Land Prices Disrupt Family Life. High land values cascading into high house prices entails that both parents of homes in the vast majority of families need to work to pay mortgages to keep a very small roof over their heads. It is in single percentage figures the number of families that have the wife at home full time. This breakdown in traditional family life results in the latch-key kids, who all too often end up as delinquents and in trouble. Vandalism and graffiti emerges.

The parasite landowners love consumerism, as it makes people believe they have a high quality of life, which they do not have. The essential family life is poorer for sure. Consumerism keeps people's minds away from their real predicament - high land costs cascade into high house prices.

Geonomics can give both. Low house prices and more money to spend on trivial matters.

 

[Steven Douglas]

It is clear you grappling with the basics of economics. Speculation in LAND and its RESOURCES, created two world-wide crashed in 1929 and 2008.

You couldn't be more wrong. Speculation in and of itself isn't good, bad, right or wrong. Speculation is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for a free market to even exist. Speculation only describes human behavior, nothing more; a human tendency for people to anticipate future value and seek out economic advantages for themselves. That always entails risks and rewards. What makes speculation a truly dangerous enterprise is when it is done on the basis of artificial market distortions and manipulations that come about when VALUE ITSELF (of anything at all) is artificially manipulated. That is what is truly "bad". Not the speculation, but rather the basis for it. That is when speculation that leads to disaster is nothing more than a symptom of a more sinister underlying root cause.

Geonomics stops that DEAD!

Bullshit. Absolute crap. Geonomics does NOTHING to stop speculation -- even with regard to land. It only changes the way it is done, as it channels that tendency differently - as natural reactions and consequences to artificial statist manipulations. LVT is nothing more than a speculation shift mechanism.

For example, among some of the very biggest winners (WHOPPING BIG) under LVT would be MEGA-LAND DEVELOPERS. Not average people by any means. EVER. That is because the (SPECULATIVE) rent-seeking behavior is rewarded most of all as a direct consequence of LVT, as developers seek to stack and concentrate as much economic activity as is humanly possible into the smallest LATERAL square footage. The ground belongs to the state under LVT, but the new land - the capital improvements that make up the new "artificial tax-free land", goes vertical and takes to the air. And there's one of your new speculation bubbles, as publicly traded land developer stocks take off. And as their coffers are filled, all resources are channeled into their ventures. That would be just one of the resulting speculation shifts under LVT.

Speculation is generally bad - even in Capital. It is a form of gambling. Investment and speculation are NOT the same thing. Investment is good speculation is not.

You are grasping at straws, and obviously from a vacuum. You don't know the first thing about the nature of business or a competitive free market. ALL CAPITAL INVESTMENT IS ROOTED IN SPECULATION. Ask the maker of the Edsel. Ask Sony with its nifty BetaMax. Ask the makers of HD DVD about the time they sat at a heads-up winner-take-all poker game with the makers of Blu-Ray - and who got knocked out of the ring. Ask literally hundreds of thousands of people who went bankrupt taking real investment risks in their own ventures as they SPECULATED about what would be valued most by others in the future. It is all a form of gambling. Those who exist and operate in vacuums (state, academia, employees, etc.,), are insulated from FREE MARKET GAMBLING REALITIES don't see this at all. The only real difference between outright gambling in a casino and actual investment in a venture you control is the amount of influence and control you have in the way that your actions affect your own risks and rewards. Outright gambling turns a blind eye to part of that by embracing some element of pure chance. But it's all gambling. It's all speculation. Including investment.

 

[EcoWarrier]

Speculation is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for a free market to even exist.

Steven, this displays your total confusion. Speculation is not good for anyone except the speculator. You do not know the difference between speculation and investment.

Geonomics stops harmful speculation land DEAD!! There will be no more world-wide financial cashes, or period booms and busts. They are all attributed to land speculation and nothing else.

Steven, WHOPPING BIG, MEGA-LAND DEVELOPERS would not flourish under LVT. Steven you must stop making things up.

In Denmark money moved away from land speculation and into enterprise activities - real life happenings, not what bounces around Steven's disjointed obsessed mind.

There is little speculation in industry which has a high proportional of CAPITAL involved. Speculation invariabley has LAND and its RESOURCES as its core. Industry has INVESTMENT, which is closely analysed before money is parted. IT is clear you do not know the difference between SPECULATION & INVESTMENT. Some organization went from invnetment based to speculation based. MacDonalds come to mind. They are now primarily a LAND company not an investment based comapy in the food/restaurant industry. So the bastards kill us in their products and rip us off in land.

Steven, you should at least try and understand. It will be much easier for you. Get this freeloading mentalitry out of your mind. You want something for nothing.

 

[amy31416]

This thread sucks on so many levels.

 

[EcoWarrier]

This thread sucks on so many levels.

Thank you for your solid contribution

 

[amy31416]

Thank you for your solid contribution

I started it, doof.

 

[Steven Douglas]

I started it, doof.

Apologies for my part in the hijack, for feeding the trolls in your thread.

 

[amy31416]

Apologies for my part in the hijack, for feeding the trolls in your thread.

Eh. If it hadn't turned into an argument thread, it just would have died. I was just annoyed by EcoWarrier's constant shilling.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

The argument appears to between:

1) If I have less of my stuff stolen, I am going to have more stuff. That is, I will have more material prosperity.

2) If I have less of my stuff stolen, I am going to bid up prices by trading my stuff for other stuff, and so everything will get more expensive and I will actually end up with less stuff. That is, I will be poorer in the end.

3) Tax land!!! Tax land and you will a) eliminate GRAFFITI; b) stop flat screen TV purchasing, BECAUSE flat screen TVs, and dishwashers, etc. are all wasteful and stupid; c) end the BUSINESS cycle; and d) stop McDonald's campaign TO kill us all. Just TAX LAND and I will be happy!!!1111 And so will you!

Which position makes the most sense? Only the shadow knows.

 

[EcoWarrier]

Apologies for my part in the hijack, for feeding the trolls in your thread.

The stock reply from Steven and others, when defeated. Revert calling a troll.

 

[EcoWarrier]

[/B]bener;4627769]The argument appears to be.

.You got that hopelesslly wrong. That is sad

 

[helmuth_hubener]

You got that hopelesslly wrong. That is sad

I tried! shrug.