Taxes Avoided by the Rich Could Pay Off the Deficit

[Roy L]

There are no answers, because it is impossible to prove what purple smells like.

YOU have no answers, because it is very possible to know what bull$#!+ smells like.

 

[Roy L]

Straw man nothing;

It was a strawman fallacy, you know it, and you are lying.

I just summed up the tax the rich fallacy in an easy to understand analogy.

No, you just fabricated a stupid lie about what we have plainly written, because you have no facts, logic, or arguments to offer. Simple.

 

[Origanalist]

Roy L's theme song;

 

[Roy L]

Yes, but that happened so long ago that they're now in the public domain.

Why would the time make any difference? If they were property when they were coined, they are still the property of the heirs of those who coined them.

I do however, own them in a manner when I arrange them in a certain order.

Only if government says so.

THey are.

They aren't. Words were never considered property in the whole history of the world until a few hundred years ago, and wouldn't be today except that government says they are.

I'm not performing or even quoting Shakespeare. And even if I were, while I'm not familiar with British copyright law, I assume that it's because his words have existed so long they've entered the public domain.

How could rightful property suddenly cease to be property through having existed too long?

(And I'm not even sure that Shakespeare created words, but perhaps he did.)

He definitely did. More than any other known person.

The only legitimate function is to protect our property.

Garbage. Any valid right to property is itself wholly derivative of the rights to life and liberty.

How many more millions of human sacrifices must laid on the altar of your Great God Property?

I'd be pissed of I wrote something that was 5% the genius of a Shakespeare work, only to have a Hollywood liberal turn it into a script, make a box office smash, and not pay me a dime for the story.

Yes, well, no doubt slave owners were also pissed when their "property" was taken away from them. Why should you be paid a dime? You didn't create the movie or even the script. You had no contract with the producer who did. What insufferable greed.

 

[Roy L]

Why are you here?

"NEAR the window by which I write, a great bull is tethered by a ring in his nose. Grazing round and round he has wound his rope about the stake until now he stands a close prisoner, tantalized by rich grass he cannot reach, unable even to toss his head to rid him of the flies that cluster on his shoulders. Now and again he struggles vainly, and then, after pitiful bellowings, relapses into silent misery.

This bull, a very type of massive strength, who, because he has not wit enough to see how he might be free, suffers want in sight of plenty, and is helplessly preyed upon by weaker creatures, seems to me no unfit emblem of the working masses.

In all lands, men whose toil creates abounding wealth are pinched with poverty, and, while advancing civilization opens wider vistas and awakens new desires, are held down to brutish levels by animal needs. Bitterly conscious of injustice, feeling in their inmost souls that they were made for more than so narrow a life, they, too, spasmodically struggle and cry out. But until they trace effect to cause, until they see how they are fettered and how they may be freed, their struggles and outcries are as vain as those of the bull. Nay, they are vainer. I shall go out and drive the bull in the way that will untwist his rope. But who shall drive men into freedom?"
-- Henry George, in "Protection or Free Trade?"

 

[Roy L]

There's the liberal tripe again. "You're too stupid to take care of yourself!"

Reflect on the global financial crisis, and the trillions of taxpayers' dollars that have been given to those most responsible for causing it, and tell me how clever the American people are.

 

[Roy L]

According to the government, yes, but they're not really very good at protecting rights.

True: they are much better at violating rights to enforce privileges -- which brings us back to the rightful tax burden for the rich.

Nope, the family lands got sold off so that the estate could be divided.

But it's still someone's property.

The answer is having the government protect more property, not less.

I see. So, the letters of the alphabet should be made into private property so that their lucky owners can charge everyone else rent for using them? How about numbers?

If I had my druthers, I'd enjoy government protection of my property rights in perpetuity, and my heirs would assume it from me upon my death.

I.e., you want to be privileged, and to live in a feudal system of hereditary landed aristocracy, just as long as you can be the lord. Thought so.

In the real world, I have no idea how long it lasts. I know Disney got it changed, to keep Mickey out of the public domain.

Which was an outrageous extension of what should never have been property in the first place.

 

[Roy L]

No special tax needed.

Yes, actually, it is. It is needed to make sure people profit from their innovations, which you said they should. Most innovators and patent holders don't make any money under the current system. Under my tax proposal, they would. So the tax is needed to make sure innovators profit from their innovations.

That's what dividends are for.

Garbage. Dividends are paid to shareholders, not innovators. Try again.

 

[Roy L]

I know, right? The government should get all that cash!

Better than getting it by taxing people according to how much they produce.

 

[idiom]

That does not account for the massive increase in concentration of wealth at the very top, astronomical CEO pay, massive bonuses in the catastrophically ill-managed financial sector, etc.

Oh I know, lets use LVT to fix that!

Land rent makes the Kuomintang (KMT), the corrupt ruling party that has been in power since Chiang Kai-shek took refuge on Formosa over fifty years ago, the richest political party in the world. Not only does the KMT own about a quarter of the island's economy legally, they also collect an enormous amount of graft.

It should be noted that Taiwan has a public debt of 40% of its GDP.

 

[Roy L]

Freeloaders are eliminated? Hark at the man!

50 years of one-party rule is not exactly democracy. Without democratic accountability, of course LVT revenue can be diverted to freeloaders. Is this some sort of surprise?

 

[Roy L]

Oh I know, lets use LVT to fix that!

LVT is not a panacea -- I don't think anyone claims it is -- but it would fix a lot of it, because people would no longer have to go into debt to buy a home. That would further reduce the amount of economic rent available for the banksters and other parasites to take.

 

[Roy L]

Just because the government had taken it away does not mean it was never theirs to begin with.

It was never theirs to begin with because the government had to give it to them.

 

[idiom]

LVT is not a panacea -- I don't think anyone claims it is -- but it would fix a lot of it, because people would no longer have to go into debt to buy a home. That would further reduce the amount of economic rent available for the banksters and other parasites to take.

People don't have to go into into debt to buy a home. They didn't historically. Its a pretty modern phenomenon.

 

[idiom]

A tax on land rent cannot, repeat, CANNOT be passed on to consumers, employees, suppliers, or anyone else. It is paid exclusively by the landowner.

Where does the landowner get the money to pay rent?

What is fungibility?

 

[Roy L]

This seems appropriate.

What it doesn't explain is why abstract information and ideas need to be someone's property.

 

[Roy L]

Where does the landowner get the money to pay rent?

Wherever he likes. If he wants to get it by using the land productively, he can do that. If he just wants to rent it to someone else who will use it productively, he can do that. If he wants to leave the land idle and pay the rent out of his other resources, he can do that. Up to him. He just can't deprive everyone else of the land and not compensate them.

What is fungibility?

Ability to be exchanged. And your point would be...?

 

[Roy L]

Commonwealth - LOL! Everything that I want shall be deemed commonwealth!

Another strawman lie.

 

[Roy L]

Thought so.

Then you only asked to waste my time? How like you.

Now define "needs" and "deserves" -- in your statist-intended context.

There is no "statist-intended context," so stop lying. I'm using the words in their normal senses, which you can look up in a good dictionary if you are confused, as you could have looked up "greed" if you had been interested in honest discussion. I am not going to engage in an infinite regress of definition.

The reason that's important: "needs" isn't qualified.

That's right. It just means what it says.

What kind of needs?

Human needs.

A prison can satisfy basic human needs.

In fact, they are required by law to do so.

I can erect a tent city, with just enough "good land" for everyone to sleep on, and provide water and a nutritious gruel for sustenance.

That's what refugee camps do. So what? Is this going somewhere?

What, specifically, are the "needs" of people, a desire beyond which you would consider evil, dirty, pernicious filthy greed?

You know very well what they are: air first, then water and food; clothing and shelter in most climates. The things they need to stay alive and healthy.

And while we're at it, what does "deserves" mean, exactly -- to you?

The same thing it means to you. I just don't lie about it.

How do you define "deserves", and more specifically, who are you that you should define it for everyone?

<yawn> I don't define it for everyone, STOP LYING. Consult a good dictionary for the definitions of ordinary words, and stop wasting my time.

Oh, is that what it "usually" means?

Yes. Especially when it's you feeling the greed.

Absolutely meaningless, as you haven't defined "need" or "deserve" yet.

No, that's just you telling another stupid lie. Need and deserve are defined perfectly well in dictionaries, as is greed. One can use language without defining all terms anew with each sentence. Obviously.

Need means "require", and "require" is qualified "to a given objective, or purpose".

The context is an individual person's needs -- i.e., what a person requires to survive and remain healthy -- because greed is an emotion experienced by an individual person. You know this.

I may not NEED a metric ton of rice for dinner, but I may feel that I need ten tons of rice if I am storing up rice with the intent of preparing for a famine, or to feed a lot of people going into the future.

You know that is not need in the relevant context of an individual person's needs. You know it, but you have consciously and deliberately decided to lie about it.

I may not NEED a hundred thousand dollars THIS MONTH, not that it's any of your collectivist statist poop-pants concern, but I may NEED a hundred thousand dollars as part of my retirement savings.

Your "feeling" that you "need" something is not the same as actually needing it. You know this. You are just consciously and deliberately lying. You always have to lie. You know that, too.

Who is going to establish the criteria used to judge "needs" and "deserves", you 'n yer brand-o-gubmint?

There is no need to establish them, as they are already well known. You already know what the words mean, and you already know what a person needs, and what they deserve.

Your thoughts about legal privilege and what it means to you: coming soon, to a woodshed near you.

I have identified the relevant facts, and you have to refuse to know them. Simple.

 

[Roy L]

The second half of the post was stupid, but since you're determined to own it... if the person who invented the English language can step forward and prove ownership, then we can start having conversations about what his fair share is.

We're talking about individual words, not the language. We know who coined some of them. Start paying royalties to Shakespeare's heirs. Or are you a thieving parasite who doesn't respect other people's property rights?

Property isn't granted by the state.

In some cases, it is.

It's protected by the state, and sometimes reallocated by the state.

What "property" is a patent or copyright protecting? They never existed until they were created by law.