Re: Flat tax proposal

From: Les Cargill (lcargill_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 07/15/04 

Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 00:17:59 GMT

royls@telus.net wrote:
<snip>
> On Sat, 10 Jul 2004 13:46:51 -0400, Les Cargill
> <lcargill@bellsouth.net> wrote:
<snip>
>>One could imagine a lotto winner, who just banks the money. They'd
>>use no more services than before.
>
>
> Wrong. He'd use deposit insurance, at a minimum. You are striving
> mightily not to know the truth. And probably succeeding.
>

Does deposit insurance actually *cost* anything, over
and above administrative charges? Don't trot out
the S&L's - different thing. Fraud.

>
>>That's not a far drop from a
>>pensioner - the majority of the merely "millionaire next
>>door" wealthy are in effect pensioners.
>
>
> Nope. The pensioner does not own and cannot liquidate the assets that
> yield his income.
>
>

Lotto winners are pretty liquid to begin with. *Ahem*.

>>Since most of these services are used by corporate entities, which
>>serve customers of all stripe, it's not clear to me that wealth
>>has any bearing.
>
>
> It is not clear to you because you do not _want_ to know the truth of
> the matter. Simple.
>

It has little or nothing to do with wanting anything - it has
to do with threading together observation, then arriving
at a hypothesis. It's simple skepticism.

If you are talking about me, then let's note that I
observed at the age of eight that 4 out of 5 businesses
we passed on a stretch of road were dedicated to something
related directly to real estate.

I think the emphasis on real estate is ridiculous,
myself. But it's quite real.

>
>>In terms of where the money is spent in government, especially
>>police services, it seems that the poor consume more than
>>their "share".
>
>
> Police services are a microscopic fraction of government spending,

There are more cops than any other form of public servant. There
must therefore be more money spent on 'em.

  and
> it's hard to see how prevention of theft helps the poor more than the
> rich.
>

I am not talking about theft - I am talking about
the long pole in the gummint tent - the
cost of crime. Most crime is drug and alcohol related.

How do I know this? The overwhelming majority of
felons are in for these infractions, not theft.

It's quite simple - in all cases, all I have to do is
actually look at the cash flows of the various entities
you discuss, and the "rent is everything" hypothesis
simply doesn't hold up. I did it with WalMart's
balance ***, with relative populaitons of
civil servants, and other relatively detailed
analyses.

You hold that WalMart underestimates the property
value. How would we know that? I vaguely remember
that this is not answerable in layman's terms.

Given that massive
amounts of federal funds subsidize local police
departments, I think the headcount way is the only
way to determine the ratios.

I do not think George is wrong per se, but that he is
"wrong" over certain domains. He was arguably quite
right when he was published, but the various scales
of the economy cover up some of the effect.

He is wrong as Malthus was wrong - the ability of
people to produce cheaply and efficiently has
multiplied rapidly.

If you have a reference to a carefully
prepared empirical piece that refutes this, I'd
appreciate a reference.

<snip>
>
> -- Roy L 

-- 
--
Les Cargill
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