Re: Laffer Curve

From: none of the above (repear_at_houston.rr.com)
Date: 07/03/04 

Date: Sat, 03 Jul 2004 08:49:47 GMT

<retrogrouch@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:922ce0paidup5t5r144veneeo6ga6gcah0@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 03 Jul 2004 00:38:02 GMT, "none of the above"
> <repear@houston.rr.com> wrote:
>
> >
> ><retrogrouch@comcast.net> wrote in message
> >news:307be010dko98dtfiugns9harl5ktoa9ur@4ax.com...
> >> On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 07:50:30 GMT, "none of the above"
> >> <repear@houston.rr.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >No. It is a theoretical curve. It has no real relation to life. If
> >people
> >> >were taxed 100% of course people would work and have incomes.
> >>
> >> Nope. They'd barter perhaps, or work of the books - but there's no
> >> incentive to work if its all taken.
> >>
> >You miss the point. Money has no value if you don't spend or invest it.
If
> >"the government" ( I think it important to state here that the people are
> >still the source government. ) "takes"all the money, it has to do
something
> >with it. So it flows back in to the economy in some form of goods and
> >services. Again the issue, neatly disguised in the name of Tax Reform,
is
> >who controls the spending decisions. All talk of taxes is concerned with
> >power.
>
> Except of course you ignore that if the government took 100% no one
> would have incentive to work and there'd be no money collected for the
> government to spend.
>

There is nothing there to ignore. You are setting your own rules that have
nothing to do with reality. In the real world the incentive to work is not
money, it is food and shelter. Everything else is creature comfort. We
have for so long been the gluttonous consumers of the worlds resources, we
can't even figure out what is real.

When money becomes an incentive to work you are talking power, positioning
in the pecking order of the political economy. Man will always attempt to
place himself in this pecking order. That placement requires work.

The system of economic distribution, both substantive and political, will
continue regardless of the method of exchange. Money, the green stuff, if
you have not noticed is of insignificant value with out the Great Seal of
the Government on it. The value is in its exchange for good and services.
If it were possible for 100% taxation, all that has changed is the means of
exchange. The incentives provided by basic needs and political positioning
still remain and new means of reward and disincentives would be created.

Our economic "realities" are a construct. Change the environment and new
realities emerge.

The concept that if there is not a lot of money to be made that people stop
working is an absurdity feed to the moneyless by the moneyed so the moneyed
can keep the money. It is not money that they value so much as the power
that it confers. Power - the ability to make decisions - is what it is all
about. Always has been.

> >If that discussion was engaged, then we could have a meaningful debate.
>
>
> ________
> Conservatives whine about the Liberals controlling the world
> like the Nazis whined about the Jews controlling the world.

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