The Fair Tax

soulsinging · April 2007

farfromglorified wrote:

Every governmental service has a value. It has a value to the person who provides that service and a person who receives that service. Right now in this country, someone can receive maximum benefit from public services for minimum cost. It's like running a bank wherein virtually no links between deposits and withdrawls exist.

You say that a system involving the concept of value would be ripe for "subjective judgment calls and tinkering". On that count you'd be 100% correct. There is another system of value exchange that is ripe for "subjective judgment calls and tinkering" known as a market. The market is responsible for the exchange of the majority of value in this country, and those values are determined by the individuals involved in exchange.

Again, government services are products with values. They are provided by one person to another and are perfect candidates for traditional systems of exchange. That's why I've always supported "taxation" systems wherein citizens simply buy and exchange services. Except it's no longer taxation at that point since a) you're allowed to asses the value of government services on your own and b) you're allowed to completely opt out of the system if you see no value there or a bad value proposition there. Obviously the current government could not be supported on such a system because, surprise surprise, the government doesn't actually produce $1,000,000,000,000 in value to the citizenry. They'd simply not pay for the vast majority of the services because the value proposition is incredibly weak. That's why you have to force them to pay.

i see two problems with this.

ONE is that government can't be a business. if, for instance, the poor could afford to hire police and whatnot, they wouldn't be poor. some services that truly ARE needed would be impossible for people to buy. you can't have a government that acts like a merchant. the purpose of government is to level the playing field SOMEWHAT so that everyone has a chance to lift themselves up. if you have to buy services from the government, there would be no difference between hiring bodyguards or private security and paying a police force. and NEITHER would be options for the poor. which returns us to systems like feudalism and the monarchy... a very restrictive society wherein the wealthy have protection and the poor have no recourse.

government levels the playing field by doing things like providing police protection and due process and equal rights to everyone, so that a poor person's alarm clock is just as well protected as a rich person's lexus... which makes sense becos subjectively, the poor person cannot afford to replace his alarm clock but has and thus places a much higher subjective value on it than the rich person on their lexus. however, it places the poor in a catch-22: they can have the clock, but they have to forgo protecting it via the police. or they can purchase police protection, but have no money to purchase goods to have protected. thus, buying government services cannot be like going to walmart and collecting your shopping list, becos that nullifies the idea of any government... it's not a government, it's just a business. i would also argue that people DO get to express their subjective value for services through voting. clearly, there are problems with that, but i think you'd be hard pressed to convince anyone that representative democracy is worse than feudalism was.

TWO is the concept of diffusion of responsibility. i know you are all about personal accountability, but you simply cannot ignore group dynamics in decision making when talking about government. when paying taxes, people will underpay based on the assumption that other people will pick up the slack. any waiter will tell you this... large groups tip far, far worse than a party of 2. on a governmental scale, you have everyone assuming that the police are valued enough to meet their budgetary needs and thus they decide not to contribute taxes to the police and the police cannot function. as i recall, psychological studies have shown that this behavior will persist even as institutions or services decay... even as the police are crumbling and it becomes clear people are not funding in accordance with the subjective value of a police force, individual members will ride it out, hoping others will take up the slack. it is essentially the same argument used against welfare. but the bottom line is the assumption that people will contribute in accordance with their subjective value of things is questionable. i think you would have too many freeloaders, possibly even more than you have now.

unless i misunderstand your conception of how this system would work? if you're proposing a kind of earmarked tax system, i think i could get on board with that. maybe... a flat tax, everyone pays 10-15% and each taxpayer can apportion their tax load to particular agencies/departments... you think medicare is crucial... put all your taxes into it. i actually kinda like that idea. let the people determine an agency's budget from year to year. make the department of education work for its funding. and if a department's value is so low, it is axed. no more pet projects for congress or presidents, no more pork barrel. the people as a whole get to determine what they want funded.

soulsinging · April 2007

farfromglorified wrote:

First, it can't really be "epic" since I have some visitors coming into town tonight and won't be back on the board until next week

Secondly, you do understand that "practical and workable systems" require a stringent ideological view, right? There's nothing practical or workable about "sometimes 1+1=2 and sometimes 1+1=3".

What you're saying here actually plays into what I say above. Consumption taxes are motivated by a single key assumption about the value of government services:

Rich people have more to lose in the absence of government than poor people and therefore achieve a higher value from its services

This assumption is not a terrible one, particularly in the context of a government wherein the equal protection of rights is held paramount. But that's no longer the hallmark of a society that spends the majority of its tax dollars on means-tested services to the poor.

i think my assumption is the opposite: rich people have less to lose becos they can afford to purchase their own protections. but leaving the poor out to dry creates social instability and eventually topples the whole system, as in every society there are more poor than rich. so you create a system that, yes, offers equal protection and forces the wealthy to join in. becos even if they benefit less from it, they do benefit somewhat and it does not hurt them to participate.

and by strict ideology i mean focusing on one or two factors to the exclusion of others... as in you focus on 1+1=2 and i see an equation with a lot more factors and variables... ax2+bx+c=y... where one is trying to find as equitable solution as possible that maximizes the overall value for everyone.

farfromglorified · April 2007

Soulsinging -- I'll respond to your posts on Tuesday, I promise. You make some great points here and I have some things to add.

soulsinging · April 2007

farfromglorified wrote:

Soulsinging -- I'll respond to your posts on Tuesday, I promise. You make some great points here and I have some things to add.

no hurry. it's good to know we both have real lives to attend to occasionally

ThumbingMyWay32 · April 2007

soulsinging wrote:

it's really made me question the intelligence of our taxation and expenditures systems. im rather disillusioned with liberal fiscal policy (though the republicans are hardly better when it comes to spending).

If only differing ideologies actually had a determining effect on governmental operations... Sadly, talking points garner most votes in any given election, while day to day operations remain the same no matter who's in power.

soulsinging wrote:

ax the department of education and let the states run their own education systems.

Amen.

farfromglorified · April 2007

Soulsinging,

Your first post seems to make two key contentions. The first being that government cannot act like a business because businesses cannot be equally representative (ie the poor get the shaft). The second is that government should encourage a "diffusion of responsibility" in order to ensure that everyone contributes.

First and foremost, it seems a little silly to bring up the second point in the context of the discussion (our current taxation system along with this proposed "Fair" Tax system). Both the current system and this proposed system would be primarily defined by freeloaders. To say that my proposals would be untenable because we'd have too many freeloaders would seem to imply that alternative systems don't have lots of freeloaders. Yet under our current federal system of taxation, most Americans pay little or no tax. The top 1% of American wage earners pay 40% of those taxes. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of American wage earners pay only 3% of those taxes. How can this system wherein nearly one out of every two people is an effective "freeloader" be tenable?

To say that "government can't be a business" is to make an absolute statement that should somehow have underlying principles to support it. This would beg two important questions:

1) What is a government and what is its purpose?
2) What is a bunsiness and what is its purpose?

In order for it to be impossible for a government to be a business, the answers to the first two questions should fundamentally contradict each other. Yet they do not.

A government is a social body that serves to protect the rights of men. A business is a social body that serves to achieve the desires of men. Since moral men will desire a protection of their rights, I see little reason why the answers to the two questions above need contradict each other.

A big problem, as you seem to say, is ensuring that people receive equal protections for equal rights. Unfortunately, our current system simply chooses to approach this problem by erasing rights in order to achieve something they might call "equal protection", but rarely works out to be such. They erase the right to property by forcibly taking property from some without their consent, and they erase the right to liberty by forcibly enslaving some without their consent. The end product of this is a system wherein no one has any rights until the government determines they do, which in turn would beg the question: where does the right to govern come from? I think my own position on that question would be pretty clear, but in case you're confused the answer is something shiny, something black, something that typically makes a very loud noise.

Now, if one simply recognizes the rights that all men have (we'll use Life, Liberty, and Property unless you object) -- one finds that all these rights are derived from existence, not money or skin color or sex or age or whatever. Therefore, all men and woman in exsitence share these rights equally. What is not equal, however, is their means to protect these rights. While rights exist by default, the protection of those rights must be delivered as a service, meaning they come at the cost of others. A policeman must labor to protect you. A judge must think to exonerate you. In other words, government must work to protect in you and others those rights innate to your existence, just as a business would do to provide whatever other desires you might have. And since those services come at the cost of another, you must compensate them for that cost. And you cannot do so in a manner that would destroy the underlying rights in the first place.

So, individuals should have every opportunity to purchase the protection of their rights from the government, and they should do so above all other things. No individual should have the right to purchase protections in a manner that would violate the rights of others. So the poor may not "purchase" their protections by robbing the rich. And the rich may not purchase "protections" that would in effect attack the poor. Both actions would be affronts to the very rights we're talking about protecting in the first place.

I am therefore talking about a taxation system wherein people pay a basic flat tax for the core protections of government. From there, however, we would have additional costs for services. And the use of those services should certainly be directly linked to payment for them, for all the reasons mentioned above.

farfromglorified · April 2007

soulsinging wrote:

i think my assumption is the opposite: rich people have less to lose becos they can afford to purchase their own protections. but leaving the poor out to dry creates social instability and eventually topples the whole system, as in every society there are more poor than rich. so you create a system that, yes, offers equal protection and forces the wealthy to join in. becos even if they benefit less from it, they do benefit somewhat and it does not hurt them to participate.

This doesn't make a lot of sense. Leaving either "out to dry" would "creates social instability and eventually topples the whole system". You go on to talk about benefits as if the mere existence of a benefit would justify any cost. That mindset opens the door to all sorts of insane proposals that simply hold "social stability" and "continuity" as their highest aim.

and by strict ideology i mean focusing on one or two factors to the exclusion of others... as in you focus on 1+1=2 and i see an equation with a lot more factors and variables... ax2+bx+c=y... where one is trying to find as equitable solution as possible that maximizes the overall value for everyone.

Ok, but "ax2+bx+c=y" is also a stringent view. I see your point on "exclusion of others", but that's a claim easily tossed around.

Maximizing any value for anyone requires a cost. One could easily make the argument that genocide could maximize value for some majority or minority group. Such an action isn't justified by its ends, and would likely be motivated by ignoring important factors in the human equation such as morality and justice.

You approach most political problems from a "practical" and "workable" perspective, and I respect that. Anything that isn't practical and isn't workable is pretty much pointless. My only observation, however, would be that your definition of "practical" and "workable" seems to stem from either a love of simply playing a devil's advocate against change or from a real fear you have of people who would make large-scale modifications to your world. You seem to seek compromises that tilt heavily in the favor of the established order and, again, that can be ok. However, one must remember that practical and workable things come from hard, correct principles. If you compromise a valid equation with an invalid one, you are always left with an invalid equation.

soulsinging · April 2007

farfromglorified wrote:

I am therefore talking about a taxation system wherein people pay a basic flat tax for the core protections of government. From there, however, we would have additional costs for services. And the use of those services should certainly be directly linked to payment for them, for all the reasons mentioned above.

it seems to me this is essentially what i am saying. we just happen to disagree on what constitutes the core protections of government.

and i do see the role of government and business as somewhat opposed. government is about protecting the strong from being taken advantage of by the weak. business is about the owner trying to gain as much benefit for himself as he can. business is based on an imbalance of power... otherwise it is communism. government is at its core a check against abuse of that imbalance. and yes, there are freeloaders in both systems, i just think the alternative of having government dependent entirely on the voluntary contributions of the public would lead to far more freeloaders and social collapse. but the system you propose isn't like that anyway. so it seems we agree in a minimalist government that provides basic necessities. what those entail is a different debate though.

farfromglorified · April 2007

soulsinging wrote:

it seems to me this is essentially what i am saying. we just happen to disagree on what constitutes the core protections of government.

and i do see the role of government and business as somewhat opposed. government is about protecting the strong from being taken advantage of by the weak. business is about the owner trying to gain as much benefit for himself as he can. business is based on an imbalance of power... otherwise it is communism. government is at its core a check against abuse of that imbalance. and yes, there are freeloaders in both systems, i just think the alternative of having government dependent entirely on the voluntary contributions of the public would lead to far more freeloaders and social collapse. but the system you propose isn't like that anyway. so it seems we agree in a minimalist government that provides basic necessities. what those entail is a different debate though.

Government is not about "protecting the strong from being taken advantage of by the weak", nor is it about "protecting the weak from being taken advantage of by the strong" (as I assume you meant). Government is about protecting the rights of citizens, regardless of whether or not they are weak or strong.

You say that a business is "about the owner trying to gain as much benefit for himself as he can". That's exactly right, but you just forget how he does that. He does that by providing a service that equally benefits someone else. Absent the benefit I provide to my customer, my business will achieve absolutely zero benefit for me.

soulsinging · April 2007

farfromglorified wrote:

This doesn't make a lot of sense. Leaving either "out to dry" would "creates social instability and eventually topples the whole system". You go on to talk about benefits as if the mere existence of a benefit would justify any cost. That mindset opens the door to all sorts of insane proposals that simply hold "social stability" and "continuity" as their highest aim.

Ok, but "ax2+bx+c=y" is also a stringent view. I see your point on "exclusion of others", but that's a claim easily tossed around.

Maximizing any value for anyone requires a cost. One could easily make the argument that genocide could maximize value for some majority or minority group. Such an action isn't justified by its ends, and would likely be motivated by ignoring important factors in the human equation such as morality and justice.

You approach most political problems from a "practical" and "workable" perspective, and I respect that. Anything that isn't practical and isn't workable is pretty much pointless. My only observation, however, would be that your definition of "practical" and "workable" seems to stem from either a love of simply playing a devil's advocate against change or from a real fear you have of people who would make large-scale modifications to your world. You seem to seek compromises that tilt heavily in the favor of the established order and, again, that can be ok. However, one must remember that practical and workable things come from hard, correct principles. If you compromise a valid equation with an invalid one, you are always left with an invalid equation.

i did not intend to imply it is ok to enact policies regardless of cost. like i said, it is a matter of balance of interests. genocide would never be acceptable, becos no matter what benefit you incur, the cost in terms of loss of life is per se unacceptable. but again, when you compare the potential for an anarchic collapse of all regulatory institutions, the benefit of no taxes at all is minimal and affects only a few, but the cost to many is high. im not talking about maximizing one at the expense of another. im talking about striking a balance between cost and benefit. again... to a certain point, advertising costs increase revenue. after that, you're wasting money. but there is an optimal point where, on the whole, you are striking the perfect balance between cost of advertising and increased revnue. that is the point i am talking about with respect to government. there will always be costs and burdens involved, but the goal is to try to help as many as possible for the least cost. it's a delicate process.

anyway, to an extent, yes i favor the established order. our current system has been rather successful thus far and i favor working within it to improve it. i also understand that slow and steady progress is more tenable than a dramatic upheaval. if the system becomes truly unfair, it will naturally right itself... as we did when we began a revolution against the british monarchy. however, the fact that you are here debating about changes rather than out in the streets calling for revolution shows that you too do not find the status quo so oppressive as to demand immediate and dramatic change. you do benefit from it and your benefits are sufficient to bear the costs and continue to advocate for change. if the costs were truly unconscionably oppressive, people would revolt. on the whole, i am on your side in favor of dramatically reducing government. but i try to see it in terms of small steps in that direction. it is similar to the old missouri compromise... 13 change proposals that if placed together would have been untenable to the masses and would never have been enacted. but you split them up and tackle them one at a time, and they all end up being carried out. becos people resist change in large doses unless hard pressed. we've not gotten to that point yet.

farfromglorified · April 2007

soulsinging wrote:

i did not intend to imply it is ok to enact policies regardless of cost. like i said, it is a matter of balance of interests. genocide would never be acceptable, becos no matter what benefit you incur, the cost in terms of loss of life is per se unacceptable. but again, when you compare the potential for an anarchic collapse of all regulatory institutions, the benefit of no taxes at all is minimal and affects only a few, but the cost to many is high. im not talking about maximizing one at the expense of another. im talking about striking a balance between cost and benefit. again... to a certain point, advertising costs increase revenue. after that, you're wasting money. but there is an optimal point where, on the whole, you are striking the perfect balance between cost of advertising and increased revnue. that is the point i am talking about with respect to government. there will always be costs and burdens involved, but the goal is to try to help as many as possible for the least cost. it's a delicate process.

Ok. I'm totally cool with this.

anyway, to an extent, yes i favor the established order. our current system has been rather successful thus far and i favor working within it to improve it. i also understand that slow and steady progress is more tenable than a dramatic upheaval. if the system becomes truly unfair, it will naturally right itself... as we did when we began a revolution against the british monarchy. however, the fact that you are here debating about changes rather than out in the streets calling for revolution shows that you too do not find the status quo so oppressive as to demand immediate and dramatic change. you do benefit from it and your benefits are sufficient to bear the costs and continue to advocate for change. if the costs were truly unconscionably oppressive, people would revolt. on the whole, i am on your side in favor of dramatically reducing government. but i try to see it in terms of small steps in that direction. it is similar to the old missouri compromise... 13 change proposals that if placed together would have been untenable to the masses and would never have been enacted. but you split them up and tackle them one at a time, and they all end up being carried out. becos people resist change in large doses unless hard pressed. we've not gotten to that point yet.

I'm not out on the streets calling for revolution because I don't believe in violent upheavals, soulsinging. Civil war is the last thing this country needs. Rather, what this country needs is to simply understand where its happiness comes from. And the answer to that is neither government nor business.

soulsinging · April 2007

farfromglorified wrote:

Ok. I'm totally cool with this.

I'm not out on the streets calling for revolution because I don't believe in violent upheavals, soulsinging. Civil war is the last thing this country needs. Rather, what this country needs is to simply understand where its happiness comes from. And the answer to that is neither government nor business.

well, id agree with that. but a values change is even more difficult to produce than a policy change. i also dont think the system is so bad as to need to be scrapped. i think small shifts in policy can produce social change though. look at civil rights... it had to occur piecemeal. now it's kind of ridiculous to argue that it's ok to deny women jobs or segregate blacks. but those gains had to be made on small steps in policy... people who were ahead of the curve making small changes that people could stomach. eventually the people began to realize these were good things and the resistance weakened and the trickle became a flood. but it's a slow process to get moving. when you try to grab too much, you engender a backlash. but it's a nuanced process of capitalizing on popular sentiment for a beginning at change, and letting your work speak for itself.

and bummer about violent upheaval... im dying for a chance to have a revolution like my irish ancestors

farfromglorified · April 2007

soulsinging wrote:

well, id agree with that. but a values change is even more difficult to produce than a policy change. i also dont think the system is so bad as to need to be scrapped. i think small shifts in policy can produce social change though. look at civil rights... it had to occur piecemeal. now it's kind of ridiculous to argue that it's ok to deny women jobs or segregate blacks. but those gains had to be made on small steps in policy... people who were ahead of the curve making small changes that people could stomach. eventually the people began to realize these were good things and the resistance weakened and the trickle became a flood. but it's a slow process to get moving. when you try to grab too much, you engender a backlash. but it's a nuanced process of capitalizing on popular sentiment for a beginning at change, and letting your work speak for itself.

Of course. But at the same time, the civil rights movement was, at its best, defined by clear principles that their dectractors constantly wanted to "compromise" with.

I'm not expecting or even asking for rapid change. It would be a disaster. I'm simply not going to water down something that would lose all meaning in the process.

and bummer about violent upheaval... im dying for a chance to have a revolution like my irish ancestors

"Dying" would definitely be an appropriate word there. Leave that death-for-a-better-life shit to the Catholics.

soulsinging · April 2007

farfromglorified wrote:

Of course. But at the same time, the civil rights movement was, at its best, defined by clear principles that their dectractors constantly wanted to "compromise" with.

I'm not expecting or even asking for rapid change. It would be a disaster. I'm simply not going to water down something that would lose all meaning in the process.

"Dying" would definitely be an appropriate word there. Leave that death-for-a-better-life shit to the Catholics.

i've got 20 years of training in that sense

but yes, it is important to be guided by clear principles. i guess i just see a clear line between principle and policy and figure it's pretty hard to enact principle in a governmental sense. even civil rights... they refused to compromise the principles, but the enacted policies WERE compromises most of the time. but by being aware of both, they managed to get almost all the policies they needed to achieve the principles desired. they kept a clear eye on the prize, but were willing to make concessions along the way that kept it moving forward, rather than hitting a wall and stalling. both players are needed though... the malcolm x's pushing for no compromise and action now are needed to keep the fire lit, and the movers and shakers to guide the movement and temper it into one that was as effective as it was just. when you push for too much based on principles, you get a backlash... for instance, abortion. the principle of sexual liberation was way ahead of common values. when one day it was magically a constitutional right, people dug in and the movement stalled. abortion has only gotten harder since that day, not easier. if that had been handled in legislative acts open to public discourse, i think we would have much more fair and sensible policies on abortion now, rather than the cultural war we have today.

Rats of Multa · April 2007

farfromglorified wrote:

I'm not expecting or even asking for rapid change. It would be a disaster. I'm simply not going to water down something that would lose all meaning in the process.

well said.

farfromglorified · April 2007

soulsinging wrote:

i've got 20 years of training in that sense

Hehe...me too! I still take two showers a day to try to wash off the guilt

but yes, it is important to be guided by clear principles. i guess i just see a clear line between principle and policy and figure it's pretty hard to enact principle in a governmental sense. even civil rights... they refused to compromise the principles, but the enacted policies WERE compromises most of the time. but by being aware of both, they managed to get almost all the policies they needed to achieve the principles desired. they kept a clear eye on the prize, but were willing to make concessions along the way that kept it moving forward, rather than hitting a wall and stalling. both players are needed though... the malcolm x's pushing for no compromise and action now are needed to keep the fire lit, and the movers and shakers to guide the movement and temper it into one that was as effective as it was just. when you push for too much based on principles, you get a backlash... for instance, abortion. the principle of sexual liberation was way ahead of common values. when one day it was magically a constitutional right, people dug in and the movement stalled. abortion has only gotten harder since that day, not easier. if that had been handled in legislative acts open to public discourse, i think we would have much more fair and sensible policies on abortion now, rather than the cultural war we have today.

Well, these are all interesting points. Certainly compromise is something required by the public arena where multiple viewpoints contradict each other. But compromise and simple imposition are not the same thing. I think a lot of the things you mention (abortion, sexual liberation, etc) are struggles that happen because of imposition, not necessarily compromise. Natural compromises on those issues would settle around the individual, but we've turned them into divisive "social issues" that often times create more problems than they solve. In other words, we've made a lot of things that should be personal decisions into governmental ones, and that largely bodes poorly for a diverse society such as our own.

soulsinging · April 2007

farfromglorified wrote:

Hehe...me too! I still take two showers a day to try to wash off the guilt

Well, these are all interesting points. Certainly compromise is something required by the public arena where multiple viewpoints contradict each other. But compromise and simple imposition are not the same thing. I think a lot of the things you mention (abortion, sexual liberation, etc) are struggles that happen because of imposition, not necessarily compromise. Natural compromises on those issues would settle around the individual, but we've turned them into divisive "social issues" that often times create more problems than they solve. In other words, we've made a lot of things that should be personal decisions into governmental ones, and that largely bodes poorly for a diverse society such as our own.

well, i would agree with you 100% there. i dont like government regulating personal choice very much at all. but i have a hard time classifying taxation in that category. it's kind of a necessary evil... the only certain thing in life aside from death as they say

but even so, regarding taxes as an imposition upon you, 1) it does not seem capable of engendering the kind of populist sympathy that helped civil rights succeed, at least not at the moment, and 2) would you rather combat the imposition in the methodical manner of civil rights that proved so successful, or the polarizing manner of abortion that stalled the movement?

farfromglorified · April 2007

soulsinging wrote:

well, i would agree with you 100% there. i dont like government regulating personal choice very much at all. but i have a hard time classifying taxation in that category. it's kind of a necessary evil... the only certain thing in life aside from death as they say

Hehe...how would a classification of "necessary evil" override a classification regarding "personal choice"??? A government that forces you to do something specific with your money has everything to do with "regulating personal choice", whether or not it is a "necessary evil".

Anyway, I really hate the statement "necessary evil"...it is the leper's bell of the unimaginative and criminal.

but even so, regarding taxes as an imposition upon you, 1) it does not seem capable of engendering the kind of populist sympathy that helped civil rights succeed, at least not at the moment, and 2) would you rather combat the imposition in the methodical manner of civil rights that proved so successful, or the polarizing manner of abortion that stalled the movement?

1) you're probably right. That, however, doesn't make anything I say invalid, nor does it make me lose any interest in the principles.
2) it's not an either/or choice. And to suggest that somehow the civil rights movement wasn't "polarizing" is ridiculous. Furthermore, I'm not sure how the abortion movement is "stalled". It won. Regardless, I don't feel I'd have to mimic either.

The Fair Tax

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