Cappy, while you're not wrong, it's simply enough to drive home just how devastated the rest of the world in the aftermath of WWII.
WW2 set a lot of countries back by a decade or two depending on the industry. By the 60's the rebuilding was complete to the point where heavy industry started to flee American taxes, with autos and then electronics following. By the 80's Reagan was reacting to deal with America being uncompetitive.
Do you have a copy of the OECD scatter graph with country labels on?
From google I can see that similar charts seem to be heavily skewed by countries developing from a lower base (ie post-soviet economies and asia outside of S. Korea and Japan) and microstates.
The former will obviously have higher growth rates anyway given that they are starting from less and that their economies were formerly very inefficient. Growing an underdeveloped economy is much easier than growing a highly developed economy.
Microstates just plain aren't comparable to larger states, being a single urban area and generally having extreme reliance on finance and levels of tax migrants that would be impossible to replicate on the scale of the US. It would be more fair to compare them to other cities like NY or London.
It would be interesting to see what the graph would look like if you excluded these groups.
Be careful what you wish for Aaron, there might come a time where taxes of all sorts will all be abolished. No more income taxes, no more sales taxes, no more excise taxes etc.
You get rid of the IRS and you seize all the energetic resources and back the money creation with the energy distribution. An economy cannot exist without energy. Energy = production.
The Federal reserve would be the receiver of this energetic resource and instead of manipulating the interest rates, they would let the market decide the rates. The FED would release more or less energy vs the money created.
The goverment would no longer need to tax in order to spend, it would spend the created money and make up for this increase in the money supply by increasing the energy supply. In other words, the economy would buy it's energy from the government.
Nobody would ever pay taxes again. Everybody would see his wages double. But you would not longer be a taxpayer and would no longer have a say in how the government spend it's money, how much of it they spend and on what they spend it. The government would become it's own source of existence. If the government wants to litter the sky, the land and the sea with drones it will be none of your business as the money they spend is not yours, it's theirs.
You don't want to pay taxes ? That can be arranged, but you will not like the results >:-D
The truth about corporate taxes is that they are reflected either in higher prices, lower wages, lower employment, outsourcing etc.
Taxing corporations is like trying to hold a wet soap bar in your hand, the more you apply force to grip the soap bar the more slippy it gets.
Taxing people is obsolete, I propose we tax energy.
Have the government own all the energy resources and have the economy purchase their energy from the government. Not directly through government petroleum inc. No. Indirectly through monetary creation backed by energy distribution.
This means that the Koch Brothers and Koch Industries would get seized by the government. This means that BP would get seized by the government. This means that Areva would get seized by the government.
But everybody else would be left alone. No more income taxes or taxes of any kind. Everybody's salary doubles over night.
Imagine turning the USA into a booming tax haven directed by the Federal Reserve.
Only a tiny amount of private individuals and private companies would need to be fleeced to make this happen.
The vast majority of the population would go along this plan because they will no longer pay taxes but will still enjoy the benefits from government spending.
Government nationalizing the energy industry would clearly be theft. It would be wholly unacceptable to a large portion of the population. They would wonder what industries were next, and where it would stop. It would start a civil war.
Better that government replace current taxes, for which there is no logically or moral bias, as taxes are theft, with tolls for roads and fees for using a federally insured, legal currency.
I am not talking about nationalizing the energy industry, I am talking about internationalizing it.
The governments of every country would rely to seizure of energy assets.
They will not need to nationalize anything else, because without energy you don't have an economy.
I don't think that people would object to stop paying taxes and see their salary double overnight.
Yes, it is theft, just like current taxation is theft.
Theft is a byproduct of biology, which is governed by Darwinian laws. You cannot be made of flesh and blood and live without theft in a complex and populous civilization.
However, I propose we reduce the theft to the most valuable asset and to the lest amount of private entities.
There is no other way. Bitcoin and alternative currencies will destroy the taxation regimes anyways and if the governments want to survive they will have to adopt this plan or they will collapse and be replaced by neofeudalism, which I absolutely don't want to see happen.
In reply to your video, The Path Out of Poverty, when you comment about how "low" capital investment starting Asshole Consulting was. You claim that it cost you only $300 bucks to start it.
You forget to take into account that it took you years and years to buildup a critical mass of followers before Asshole Consulting could be viable and profitable. This idea of starting Asshole Consulting came as you were already surfing your established blog, podcasts and youtube followers.
Asshole Consulting would not have been as profitable if you had started with it in the beginning when nobody knew you and when you haven't wrote any books. You build low cost capital ventures on top of already paid for high cost work within an appropriate context.
You first needed a solid foundation on which to build Asshole Consulting and that foundation was not cheap nor easy to build.
Starting Asshole Consulting was like planting seeds on a field with good quality land. That's the easy and profitable part. But you had to clear that land and work it first.
Starting the successful company, Asshole Consulting, was actually extremely hard work, requiring a lot of time, a lot of efforts and a lot of capital investment.
Cappy, while you're not wrong, it's simply enough to drive home just how devastated the rest of the world in the aftermath of WWII.
ReplyDeleteWW2 set a lot of countries back by a decade or two depending on the industry. By the 60's the rebuilding was complete to the point where heavy industry started to flee American taxes, with autos and then electronics following. By the 80's Reagan was reacting to deal with America being uncompetitive.
Great video. Should be required viewing, on par with Milton Friedman's lectures
ReplyDeleteReagan did a good job making people feel good, but SS taxes increased under his administration and government grew with his help and Congress as well.
ReplyDeleteReagan also signed off on CA's income tax while governor. Yeah, real conservative there.
Ronald Reagan An Autopsy
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard60.html
http://mises.org/library/myths-reaganomics
Do you have a copy of the OECD scatter graph with country labels on?
ReplyDeleteFrom google I can see that similar charts seem to be heavily skewed by countries developing from a lower base (ie post-soviet economies and asia outside of S. Korea and Japan) and microstates.
The former will obviously have higher growth rates anyway given that they are starting from less and that their economies were formerly very inefficient. Growing an underdeveloped economy is much easier than growing a highly developed economy.
Microstates just plain aren't comparable to larger states, being a single urban area and generally having extreme reliance on finance and levels of tax migrants that would be impossible to replicate on the scale of the US. It would be more fair to compare them to other cities like NY or London.
It would be interesting to see what the graph would look like if you excluded these groups.
BTW, Lee Kwan Yew died today. Singapore would not be what it is today without him.
ReplyDeleteDo you think Obama will send his adolescences to the people of Singapore?
Be careful what you wish for Aaron, there might come a time where taxes of all sorts will all be abolished. No more income taxes, no more sales taxes, no more excise taxes etc.
ReplyDeleteYou get rid of the IRS and you seize all the energetic resources and back the money creation with the energy distribution. An economy cannot exist without energy. Energy = production.
The Federal reserve would be the receiver of this energetic resource and instead of manipulating the interest rates, they would let the market decide the rates. The FED would release more or less energy vs the money created.
The goverment would no longer need to tax in order to spend, it would spend the created money and make up for this increase in the money supply by increasing the energy supply. In other words, the economy would buy it's energy from the government.
Nobody would ever pay taxes again. Everybody would see his wages double. But you would not longer be a taxpayer and would no longer have a say in how the government spend it's money, how much of it they spend and on what they spend it. The government would become it's own source of existence.
If the government wants to litter the sky, the land and the sea with drones it will be none of your business as the money they spend is not yours, it's theirs.
You don't want to pay taxes ? That can be arranged, but you will not like the results >:-D
The truth about corporate taxes is that they are reflected either in higher prices, lower wages, lower employment, outsourcing etc.
ReplyDeleteTaxing corporations is like trying to hold a wet soap bar in your hand, the more you apply force to grip the soap bar the more slippy it gets.
Taxing people is obsolete, I propose we tax energy.
Have the government own all the energy resources and have the economy purchase their energy from the government. Not directly through government petroleum inc. No. Indirectly through monetary creation backed by energy distribution.
This means that the Koch Brothers and Koch Industries would get seized by the government. This means that BP would get seized by the government. This means that Areva would get seized by the government.
But everybody else would be left alone. No more income taxes or taxes of any kind. Everybody's salary doubles over night.
Imagine turning the USA into a booming tax haven directed by the Federal Reserve.
Only a tiny amount of private individuals and private companies would need to be fleeced to make this happen.
The vast majority of the population would go along this plan because they will no longer pay taxes but will still enjoy the benefits from government spending.
Let's tax something instead of somebody.
Government nationalizing the energy industry would clearly be theft. It would be wholly unacceptable to a large portion of the population. They would wonder what industries were next, and where it would stop. It would start a civil war.
ReplyDeleteBetter that government replace current taxes, for which there is no logically or moral bias, as taxes are theft, with tolls for roads and fees for using a federally insured, legal currency.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteI am not talking about nationalizing the energy industry, I am talking about internationalizing it.
The governments of every country would rely to seizure of energy assets.
They will not need to nationalize anything else, because without energy you don't have an economy.
I don't think that people would object to stop paying taxes and see their salary double overnight.
Yes, it is theft, just like current taxation is theft.
Theft is a byproduct of biology, which is governed by Darwinian laws. You cannot be made of flesh and blood and live without theft in a complex and populous civilization.
However, I propose we reduce the theft to the most valuable asset and to the lest amount of private entities.
There is no other way. Bitcoin and alternative currencies will destroy the taxation regimes anyways and if the governments want to survive they will have to adopt this plan or they will collapse and be replaced by neofeudalism, which I absolutely don't want to see happen.
Captain,
ReplyDeleteIn reply to your video, The Path Out of Poverty, when you comment about how "low" capital investment starting Asshole Consulting was. You claim that it cost you only $300 bucks to start it.
You forget to take into account that it took you years and years to buildup a critical mass of followers before Asshole Consulting could be viable and profitable. This idea of starting Asshole Consulting came as you were already surfing your established blog, podcasts and youtube followers.
Asshole Consulting would not have been as profitable if you had started with it in the beginning when nobody knew you and when you haven't wrote any books. You build low cost capital ventures on top of already paid for high cost work within an appropriate context.
You first needed a solid foundation on which to build Asshole Consulting and that foundation was not cheap nor easy to build.
Starting Asshole Consulting was like planting seeds on a field with good quality land. That's the easy and profitable part. But you had to clear that land and work it first.
Starting the successful company, Asshole Consulting, was actually extremely hard work, requiring a lot of time, a lot of efforts and a lot of capital investment.