Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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FlashDangerpants
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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Hobbes' Choice wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:10 pm Venuzuela made the mistake of incurring the wrath of the USA. There is nothing else to say on that subject.
Greece would have done well to leave the EU, and return to the Drachma, for the reasons I have alluded to above. It is only vested interests in the Greek rich who hold EU currency that they did not do so.
You can't just blame rich people and America for everything. Nobody has any use for an economic policy based on fucking stuff up and then looking for scapegoats when wishful thinking proves insufficient to alter reality.

Greece would have traded one set of problems for another by exiting the Euro, whether those are worse is debatable. But you have to recognise that when a decision is made that radically changes stuff, it affects more things than you really wanted it to right?

America isn't responsible for Venezuela fucking itself up entirely, they mismanaged their entire economy and turned a middle income state with decent prospects into a basket case of their own making. They took easy looking decisions and ignored the prospect of the unintended consequences leading to much worse problems than the ones they were addressing.

Your plan is standard stuff that has been seen before. It always leads to a big speech where somebody blames "hoarders and speculators" for the starvation they are inflicting on their own people.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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FlashDangerpants wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:35 pm
Hobbes' Choice wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:10 pm Venuzuela made the mistake of incurring the wrath of the USA. There is nothing else to say on that subject.
Greece would have done well to leave the EU, and return to the Drachma, for the reasons I have alluded to above. It is only vested interests in the Greek rich who hold EU currency that they did not do so.
You can't just blame rich people and America for everything.
you can't win an argument with hyperbole.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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FlashDangerpants wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:35 pm America isn't responsible for Venezuela fucking itself up entirely, they mismanaged their entire economy and turned a middle income state with decent prospects into a basket case of their own making.
They used their oil money to reduce poverty and increase literacy.
Venezuela now enjoys less poverty and greater education that at any time in its history.
No one predicted the drop in oil price.
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FlashDangerpants
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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Hobbes' Choice wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 4:52 pm
FlashDangerpants wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:35 pm
Hobbes' Choice wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:10 pm Venuzuela made the mistake of incurring the wrath of the USA. There is nothing else to say on that subject.
Greece would have done well to leave the EU, and return to the Drachma, for the reasons I have alluded to above. It is only vested interests in the Greek rich who hold EU currency that they did not do so.
You can't just blame rich people and America for everything.
you can't win an argument with hyperbole.
Look, you were the one who raised the thread about technocratic matters of economics.
I can't be held responsible for you not being able to look at that sort of technocratic subject matter because you are too busy being angry about unrelated things.
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FlashDangerpants
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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marjoram_blues wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 9:20 am * anyway, I was wondering about what the *philosophy of economics has to say on the matter...
One of the things I rather like about economists is that they pretty much do the philosophy of their own subject. If you ask a philosopher what money is, you will get a much less nuanced answer than from an economist (short answer, nobody really knows). Their field of enquiry was started by philosophers, but unlike other such fields, they seem never to have grown out of it.

I bought a book of philosophy of economics, it's rather dull. I think philosophers are picking off some related areas that even economists think are too boring. Stuff such as logical quandaries surrounding the Nash Equilibrium in game theory and other uninspiring thingies.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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FlashDangerpants wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 7:54 pm
Hobbes' Choice wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 4:52 pm
FlashDangerpants wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:35 pm
You can't just blame rich people and America for everything.
you can't win an argument with hyperbole.
Look, you were the one who raised the thread about technocratic matters of economics.
I can't be held responsible for you not being able to look at that sort of technocratic subject matter because you are too busy being angry about unrelated things.
The point here is that I do not blame the rich and the USA 'for everything'. Problems are systemic, and people tend to do things they think will immediately do them good. SOme people are even stupid enough to think that voting for lower taxes will do them good.
It might in the short term, but not the long.
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Sir-Sister-of-Suck
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 7:57 amThat doesn't relate to anything I wrote.
I went off on a bit of an overly verbose tangent at the end. But I was offering another viewpoint that these people who compose this 'right wing government' are 'such stupid, selfish, vile pieces of shit' because they don't want to allocate so much money to improving the lives of others.
Hobbes' Choice wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 11:47 amThanks for the opinion but I not sure you are on the argument yet.
I'm wasn't, I was replying to a specific sentiment from VG's post.
The free market is not better, because it is privately owned and tends to act like a syphon which takes wealth out of the system and depresses the economy.
Sounds like a pretty politically-loaded opinion. Obviously, I don't agree. The point I was just getting at also attempts to show that a free market business knows how to distribute money a lot better than a government one. The government siphons money out of the existing system as well; There's a reason why it's shamelessly called 'wealth redistribution'. Granted the government makes their own money as well, but that's a bit beside the point for what we're discussing as it's entirely separate.

Do you think the 'free markets' is better at anything, or is that just a blanket statement? TV shows, Movies, hardware manufacturers, those should all be government funded as well?
it does so by a continual downwards pressure on wages, and a tendency to gain monopoly control. As low paying successful businesses grow they absorb the more generous businesses and by doing that gain economies of scale by which they are more able to compete.
Uhhm, There are government monopolies as well? In fact, I was under the impression that it's well known the government is far more likely to create a monopoly than the free market. Depending on where you live - the very computer you're typing on is juiced by an electricity company given true monopoly rights by the government.

Drugs, Internet Service Providers, Cellular companies - all these things that probably come to mind when you think of the word 'monopoly', were created due to government regulation surrounding them.
This has led to the growth of massive corporations whose earnings are greater than the GDPs of some smaller countries.
Without regulation they are empowered to seize assets and make land grabs with massive buying power and the ability to pay-off corrupt politicians. Once they secure the rights they can then exploit local workers in sweat-shops and then sack workers in their home countries.
I think without 'regulation', sweat-shops are more likely to pay their employees more. It doesn't mean that that a 15% corporate tax reduction will translate exactly to the employee payroll, but it does mean they will reallocate some amount of the money somewhere within their business. It would be much superior if we could raise the 'competitive wage' rather than force an increase in the 'minimum wage', and I would hope we can at least agree on that in spite of our political differences. I think lowering regulations, like corporate tax does exactly this but like I said, it won't be a perfect translation of an exact amount, as many want to expect.
The point of all this is that the less you pay working people the less they have to spend in the local economy. Low demand means low supply, fewer goods move around in the market. It also means a lower tax revenue.
Thanks for trying to reexplain your position here, and I think I have a better understanding of what's being discussed, I'm just not sure I agree with all of your nuance, or line up with your political philosophy at all.
Last edited by Sir-Sister-of-Suck on Sun Oct 01, 2017 12:19 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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Sir-Sister-of-Suck wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 9:28 pm
Americans are so unbearably egocentric. What makes you think I was talking about your Govt. in particular? It can do what it likes to Americans.
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 9:34 pm
Sir-Sister-of-Suck wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 9:28 pm
Americans are so unbearably egocentric. What makes you think I was talking about your Govt. in particular? It can do what it likes to Americans.
You didn't really need to, as I was explaining a 'small-government' philosophy in general.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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FlashDangerpants wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 8:01 pm
marjoram_blues wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 9:20 am * anyway, I was wondering about what the *philosophy of economics has to say on the matter...
One of the things I rather like about economists is that they pretty much do the philosophy of their own subject. If you ask a philosopher what money is, you will get a much less nuanced answer than from an economist (short answer, nobody really knows). Their field of enquiry was started by philosophers, but unlike other such fields, they seem never to have grown out of it.

I bought a book of philosophy of economics, it's rather dull. I think philosophers are picking off some related areas that even economists think are too boring. Stuff such as logical quandaries surrounding the Nash Equilibrium in game theory and other uninspiring thingies.
What I am trying to do is get the the link between wealth and money, and what sorts of value truly make the economy strong.
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FlashDangerpants
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

Post by FlashDangerpants »

Hobbes' Choice wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 9:46 pm
FlashDangerpants wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 8:01 pm
marjoram_blues wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 9:20 am * anyway, I was wondering about what the *philosophy of economics has to say on the matter...
One of the things I rather like about economists is that they pretty much do the philosophy of their own subject. If you ask a philosopher what money is, you will get a much less nuanced answer than from an economist (short answer, nobody really knows). Their field of enquiry was started by philosophers, but unlike other such fields, they seem never to have grown out of it.

I bought a book of philosophy of economics, it's rather dull. I think philosophers are picking off some related areas that even economists think are too boring. Stuff such as logical quandaries surrounding the Nash Equilibrium in game theory and other uninspiring thingies.
What I am trying to do is get the the link between wealth and money, and what sorts of value truly make the economy strong.
Well perhaps, but I think you have to look at some of the work done by economists on that subject. Wealth, value, money, and strong and weak economies... that's a vague starting point and some of those terms are surprisingly difficult to actually define (what really is an economy, what actually is a company, and wtf is money really?).

You're going to need to balance competition law with value adding network effects, unless you want to not have network effects at all. Then there's the trade-offs between differing types of regulation versus simple pricing in of externalities. Countless other things matter, such as trust and contract enforcement, or well judged bankruptcy laws... and at the end of every investigation, if you wish to propose solutions, they must take into account incentives both pure and perverse which is where all the best ideas typically fail.

These are all subjects that economists have been dealing with for a very long time without seeking much input from philosophers, because it is a realm of philosophy that they have taken in house. Starting again from scratch when they have all the case studies and centuries of empirical data is possibly a bad choice.
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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Hobbes' Choice wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:08 pm This all sounds reasonable. And if the government were a business, such prudence would be essential. However the government has proven time and again that it has no need to borrow money to spend money.
Clearly this is not simply a perfect magic money tree, but as the government is supposed to be in control of the money supply it has the right to make as much as it thinks the economy needs.
The government needs to get the money it is spending from somewhere. It can do this, but any method is going to have a downside. Isn't the problem that things are now so delicate that they do not know where to extract the money in such a way that won't do more harm than good? (I'm not sure what you mean when you write that it has no need to borrow money to spend money'.)

Certainly the government can have some affect on the money supply, but it is a lot easier to reduce it than expand it. Interest rates are already negative. If borrowers and the lenders are pessimistic about what is around the corner, then they won't want to lend or borrow. Even if you give me a free handout I will not spend it, I will pay off existing debt or save it for the expected rainy day. The example of this is Japan, where twenty years of attempts by the government to stimulate the economy were unsuccessful.
Eventually the pain is worse if you fail to maintain roads, schools and housing. If you keep cutting police and fire services the shit is going to hit the fan. But there is a solution, And that is to make corporations which benefit from the country's infrastructure pay more. Google, Amazon, and other massive corps cheat by having an office address in Switzerland, or the Cayman Islands where they can get away without paying tax. There is more than enough untapped tax from new corp money to double the fund for the NHS and schools. It just takes the political will to do it.
I certainly agree about what happens if you fail to maintain the infrastructure, and that vicious circle happens to countries. It is why poor countries tend to stay poor, whereas rich countries tend to get richer.

Regarding Google, Amazon and the rest, the contrary argument is that the existing system is better - for the UK - than a reformed one. That we get a net advantage from providing services to such multinationals. The ones you mention are thought of as American, but the same criticisms apply to all those multinationals we think of as British. It isn't just the Cayman Islands that makes money from being host to companies that don't actually do much business there, it is also the City of London.

If I argue like a conservative it is not because I think the present system is the only one possible, it is because I think that any change would have to be far more radical. The problem is that when things take a turn for the worse, people become more conservative. They want to go back to the good old days, even though it was those good old days that lead to their current problems!
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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There is no relationship between spending and taxation, absolutely none.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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bobevenson wrote: Sun Oct 01, 2017 11:22 pm There is no relationship between spending and taxation, absolutely none.
I thought you said that nothing I had posted was true?

What's your point?

Second thought - just crawl back under your rock.
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Re: Economics anyone? The relationship between spending and taxation.

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FlashDangerpants wrote: If you ask a philosopher what money is, you will get a much less nuanced answer than from an economist (short answer, nobody really knows). ...
I thought they're settling on 'It's what you can pay your taxes with' or is that currency and is there a difference?
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