Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Sunday October 09 2016, @03:39AM   Printer-friendly

The "quiet catastrophe" is particularly dismaying because it is so quiet, without social turmoil or even debate. It is this: After 88 consecutive months of the economic expansion that began in June 2009, a smaller percentage of American males in the prime working years (ages 25 to 54) are working than were working near the end of the Great Depression in 1940, when the unemployment rate was above 14 percent. If the labor-force participation rate were as high today as it was as recently as 2000, nearly 10 million more Americans would have jobs.

The work rate for adult men has plunged 13 percentage points in a half-century. This "work deficit" of "Great Depression-scale underutilization" of male potential workers is the subject of Nicholas Eberstadt's new monograph "Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis," which explores the economic and moral causes and consequences of this:

Is it an aberration, or a harbinger of things to come?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Francis on Sunday October 09 2016, @04:31AM

    by Francis (5544) on Sunday October 09 2016, @04:31AM (#411932)

    The solution is relatively straightforward, increase the top bracket tax rate to something north of 50% on both capital gains and income tax. Then use the money that's generated through that to fund infrastructure projects, welfare and education.

    You'd see things improve rather quickly if we actually did that. Wage stagnation is mostly a problem because robber barons are able to keep more or less unlimited sums of money. Back in the good old days, the top tax rate was north of 70% and at times north of 90% and it meant that past a certain point there wasn't any point in increasing your income as the government would just take is. So, you might as well actually pay a living wage as the alternative was paying it to the government in taxes.

    The thing that a lot of people won't accept is that to a point, the higher the tax rate on the wealthy has been, the better the economy has done. What's done more damage to the economy than just about anything else has been low taxes on the rich and inadequate regulation of what they've been doing.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +4  
       Flamebait=1, Insightful=4, Informative=1, Total=6
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @04:57AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @04:57AM (#411939)

    "The solution is relatively straightforward, increase the top bracket tax rate to something north of 50% on both capital gains and income tax. Then use the money that's generated through that to fund infrastructure projects, welfare and education."

    Right, that worked great for other countries! ... um, except when it didn't. In fact, income and capital gains are among the easier things to avoid taxes on, so right there you have a bad start.

    "You'd see things improve rather quickly if we actually did that. Wage stagnation is mostly a problem because robber barons are able to keep more or less unlimited sums of money. Back in the good old days, the top tax rate was north of 70% and at times north of 90% and it meant that past a certain point there wasn't any point in increasing your income as the government would just take is. So, you might as well actually pay a living wage as the alternative was paying it to the government in taxes."

    First off, american households are steadily increasing (in real terms) their income, and have been since the '60s at least (the limiting factor here is how far back census bureau numbers go). The bottom tier of household incomes is shrinking. And has been. So the wage stagnation theory is in trouble. As for the "good old days" a lot of people forget the fact that a large part of Reagans' evil, wicked, sinful tax package was not just dropping the top nominal tax rate, but radically reducing tax credits and other ways of reducing the tax bill. Basically nobody was paying those top rates. Tax receipts actually rose with the Reagan tax reforms. Part of our problem now is that Congress is always happy to include a tax benefit here, and a credit there, and so on to suck up to various client groups.

    In the post-war era specifically, it was a highly unusual and temporary situation: the USA was the only major industrial power that had not lost much of its base to the ravages of war. Comparing then to now is simply fantasy-level irrelevant.

    "The thing that a lot of people won't accept is that to a point, the higher the tax rate on the wealthy has been, the better the economy has done. What's done more damage to the economy than just about anything else has been low taxes on the rich and inadequate regulation of what they've been doing."

    Yes, I won't accept that pile of dogshit any more than I'll accept that Kennedy was assassinated on the orders of the Grey Aliens because he was the key representative of the Illuminati resisting their domination efforts.

    In this day and age, any attempt to tax people that is based on the fantasy that there's not a huge industry of accountants finding ways to avoid those taxes, including simply moving the money overseas to governments who will welcome it, is fatuous. You need a new tax scheme entirely, and income, capital gains and estate taxes are stupid ways of trying to run that.

    • (Score: 2) by quintessence on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:22AM

      by quintessence (6227) on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:22AM (#411946)

      You need a new tax scheme entirely

      Land Value Tax

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax [wikipedia.org]

      I swear why this doesn't get more play is beyond me.

      Progressive, "voluntary", nearly impossible to skip out on, and no dead weight loss.

      Out of most of the taxation schemes, this seems to have the least amount of negatives.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:35AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:35AM (#411950)

        It doesn't get more play because land is not the primary source of wealth or income.

        You can have a skyscraper resting on a single acre, housing thousands of workers beavering away without pause, generating massive wealth, while around it a farmer farms a thousand acres, feeding those people, and barely scraping a profit.

        Even if you decide to declare that the farmland is worth less because less income is deriving from it, all you're doing is creating an income tax by stealth.

        If your taxes are too high, people simply give up the land (remember jinglemail?) and leave for other countries.

        In effect, it's surprisingly easy to skip out on, offers a lot of dead weight losses, and in the experience of the state with the least progressive tax structure, land taxes actually turn out to be hideously regressive.

        For your information, that state is Washington, and the reasons are complex but broadly come down to: poor people stuck on land they can't sell (because of the tax bill) and without anywhere to go. It's more complex than that, but that's the basic outline.

        Sorry, cool idea, but land value taxes are a proven bad plan. Consumption taxes are, by comparison, progressive, flexible, and a lot harder to avoid.

        • (Score: 2) by quintessence on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:52AM

          by quintessence (6227) on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:52AM (#411956)

          Sorry, but that makes absolutely no sense.

          Washington state in particular doesn't have LVT, so drawing conclusions from there is absurd.

          Not to mention any people living in a skyscraper surround by farmland would only do so if there aren't better options available (it is still a market after all). Any wealth made by those people is kept since there isn't any income or consumption tax, and the only tax paid is by the landowner, which can't be passed on.

          Come again?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:03AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:03AM (#411961)

            Washington state has a close approximation of a land value tax. Land is assessed as per the highest and best use of that land, and taxed accordingly.

            I'm sorry you didn't know this. But it's easily verified online.

            The example of the skyscraper wasn't about living in it (although that's possible as well) but performing productive work in it. Such a skyscraper would have a huge assessed value because of its utility in the context of extracting rents. That means that the owner of the land on which the skyscraper rests gets taxed like a Vegas casino, while the farmland either gets lightly taxed, or confiscated to pay ludicrously punitive taxes.

            Do you get it now?

            • (Score: 3, Informative) by quintessence on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:31AM

              by quintessence (6227) on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:31AM (#411977)

              Yeah, no.

              Washington taxes the property as well as the structure, which is antithetical to the LVT, not to mention per here

              https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-highest-and-lowest-property-taxes/11585/ [wallethub.com]

              is middle of the road as far as that goes.

              The tax rate is based upon the state's budget, which again...

              And Washington state has one of the highest sales tax rates.

              http://taxfoundation.org/article/state-and-local-sales-tax-rates-2015 [taxfoundation.org]

              Having among the highest land and sales tax (by your measure) should lead to economic catastrophe, and yet is among the wealthiest states.

              Come again?

              Such a skyscraper would have a huge assessed value

              And you have no clue what you are talking about (the hint is in the name: land value tax).

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @04:46PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @04:46PM (#412107)

                OK, let me break it down for you, Barney-style.

                The Land Value Tax - so far, so good. Land. The value thereof. Tax that.

                All good so far? Good. Now sit down and put your thinking cap on, because this is where it gets complicated...

                The tax is on the value of the land - and how is that measured? Go ahead, think this one over. It's a biggie.

                The value of the land is heavily influenced by improvements on it, including construction of buildings (whether residential, commercial, industrial or whatever) as well as the proximity of facilities, both natural and constructed.

                Any attempt to tax two plots of land, functionally identical except for one being used to grow wheat while the other has a bustling office on it, would either raise nearly no revenue at all, or put every farmer and logger in the state out of business in a week. This is why it is "highest and best use", with allowances for green space.

                As for your earlier remark that the owner would have no way of passing the tax on, that's flat-out ignorant. It becomes a cut of the rent, period. That's what happens today, and if it stops happening, people go out of business until they simply cede the land to the state in lieu of tax payment.

                As for Washington's tax rates, sure the actual rates aren't that high, but it has very regressive taxes because of the way that those taxes on fixed property hit the poor disproportionately. Again, let me break this down for you, because you're having a hard time with the concepts:

                Bobby's granddad left him three acres with a house, carved out from granddad's farm, so that Bobby will have a place to live. Bobby's house is out in the boondocks, because that's where the farm was. Bobby can't get much of a job out there, and the land is too small to farm without the kind of capital that would allow for intensive agriculture - that Bobby doesn't have. Bobby sits there on his land, with his house, with no, or low paying work, and the taxes accumulate. Pretty soon, Bobby has a tax bill he can't hope to pay, but keeps the property as long as he lives there because they won't evict him; just put a lien on the property. The lien means that even if he sold his nearly-useless three acres, he'd get pretty much nothing for it and then be broke and homeless.

                So he's trapped.

                Rich people in Redmond don't give a fuck about Bobby's problems, because they have no issues paying their property taxes. They can buy his property when he goes bankrupt for a song and a dance at auction, and put sprawling country mansions on the land, with room for Junior to have his quad, and Sis to keep her pony.

                The net result, over time and space, is the progressive hollowing of rural Washington.

                Go, Progress!

                • (Score: 2) by quintessence on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:38PM

                  by quintessence (6227) on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:38PM (#412149)

                  All hat, no cattle.

                  First you claimed Washington has a land value tax (it does not. Singapore does. Argue from there.). Then some very ingenious example (how many skyscrapers do you see next to farm land?) of how the tax is unfair against the farmland (except the value of the farm land has gone up without the owner doing much of anything. Riiight.). And now some hubbub about highest and best use, which is easily remedied by taxing based only on the purchase price.

                  Did you get that?

                  But onward to Bobby.

                  So Bobby essentially living rent free until he dies doesn't have any economic value? Really?

                  And of course the only option available to Bobby is to be a slave to the land. Not once does it cross his mind to sell the property (even if at less than market value) to pursue a higher paying job. Or possibly keep the property as getaway with his higher paying job, and pay the taxes on it which should be minimal since it is out in the boonies. Is Bobby a character in an economic horror movie, because he seems to pick the worst possible course of action under your tutelage?

                  But hey, lets keep Bobby on the farm. What benefits does he get with LVT?

                  NO OTHER TAXES.

                  It seems to me he could do reasonably well not paying any taxes (liens) until he dies or the property is sold. And even a modest paying job could be workable if he isn't taxed at about 40% (back of the envelope calculation of what people actually pay in taxes, from the income tax to gas tax).

                  You mean to tell me a land tax (which is typically a few percentage points at most) is substantially more than a consumption tax? Supposing the land is valued at $100,000 (and that's being exceeding generous), the total tax bill would be around $1,000 under Washington's current property tax (can't find an assessment for just the land, but I figure adding in a nation LVT should be pretty close) . Assuming he can work full time with the minimum wage there, even a modest 2% consumption tax with the sales tax there would put the total tax bill at around $1,700.

                  Do tell.

                  But wait! There's more!

                  Let's see how Bobby does under a consumption tax.

                  THE ENTIRETY OF HIS WAGES ARE TAXED IF HE IS UNABLE TO SAVE.

                  And somehow this is not regressive.

                  There might be some credible arguments against land tax (I haven't looked into it that deeply, and apparently neither have you), but yours certainly ain't it.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @07:49PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @07:49PM (#412171)

                    First you claimed Washington has a land value tax (it does not. Singapore does. Argue from there.).

                    Washington has a tax based on the assessed value of land. If you're going to go purely by the unimproved value of the land, pretending that property near highways isn't near highways, property with moorages doesn't have moorages, and so on, then sure. It doesn't have a land value tax. The problem with this idea is that it instantly (assuming you're raising anything like the revenue currently raised) turns farming and forestry outright inviable.

                    Let's do some math. Aside from federal acreage, there are about 30 million acres in Washington. To raise equivalent revenue to current revenue sources from those will require a return of over $600, annually, per acre. ($635 and change, basically.) Even a quarter square mile farm (not very big) will have to come up with over $100,000, every year, just to pay taxes.

                    East of the Cascades where the farms are bigger, or all over the hills and mountains where it's mostly logging? Yeah, a million dollar tax bill will look small.

                    Oh wait, we haven't excluded state lands (and there are a lot of those). Privately held land will have to be taxed yet more heavily just to keep the revenue up.

                    Now you want to say:

                    And now some hubbub about highest and best use, which is easily remedied by taxing based only on the purchase price.

                    Fabulous. Now you're measuring it by purchase price, which is totally divorced from land improvements. No, wait, it's not. It's heavily influenced by land improvements. Now you're not taxing by unimproved land value any more, at which point you're back to assessed values (just closing your eyes and pretending that a sale does not constitute an assessment).

                    So pick one: either you're going by unimproved land value (in which case primary industries go bye-bye) or assessed values are OK (in which case Washington already does that).

                    I'm not saying that Bobby's roof over his head doesn't have economic value. I'm saying that he ends up either keeping it, or losing most of the value. If he (tries to) keep it, he ends up paying a lot of tax on a domicile of minimal practical value, and probably in the long term ends up losing it to the state anyway (this is one of the reasons that Washington was determined to have a heavily regressive tax policy) or he sells it at a loss and tries his luck elsewhere, in which case you have another property probably sitting around unoccupied like a bad smell. I'm not making a recommendation for Bobby, I'm trying to explain to you what people have already found to be the real case in the real world. Feel free to google this to your heart's content.

                    Your 40% figure, by the way, includes federal taxes, which is a separate issue here. I'm just talking about the (relatively modest) state tax bill.

                    As for the consumption tax issue, you're just flat wrong. There are lots of exemptions in consumption taxes for basic items such as food and clothing. You can quibble about which items should be, could be or might be taxed, but it's not hard to shape a consumption tax to be a lot less regressive than a property tax - more so, because renters inevitably get handed the property tax bill, rolled into their rent.

                    Summary:

                    Land value tax either goes by unimproved value (death to primary industries) or by improved value (what Washington already does, and has been shown to be massively regressive in practice, both with passing taxes on through rents, or through de facto extractive penalties on the population).

                    Consumption taxes are more flexibly applicable by exceptions, more easily shaped to be progressive, more flexibly applied to the relative value of products and can even be applied to the service industry. (I'm not advocating consumption taxes; I think that they are misguided, but they sure do a hell of a lot better on these metrics than land value taxes do.)

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:49PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:49PM (#412136) Journal

                Washington taxes the property as well as the structure, which is antithetical to the LVT, not to mention per here

                [...]

                And you have no clue what you are talking about (the hint is in the name: land value tax).

                Wait a minute, you're not proposing to tax the skyscraper? Then that makes this heavily regressive. Rich people can afford a lot more structure per unit area than poor people. I wouldn't give this proposal the time of day.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @02:05PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @02:05PM (#412064)

          You seem to have missed the VALUE part of the the land value tax.

          It's not land size tax.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @08:04PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @08:04PM (#412609)

        these kinds of taxes and the mindless slaves that support them enrage me. the federal government has NO legitimate claim to MY land. So, i'm supposed to pay rent to state and federal lords on land i "bought"? fuck you! Also, property tax will be abolished in my state in my lifetime or shit will get stupid. stupid slaves are always talking about which tax scheme is best to replace the income tax. The scum in DC doesn't need an income tax or the revenue it represents. those thieves need to get honest work. What we need to do is hang every federal reserve employee on TV, after a fair "get the fuck out/quit your job" warning. The whores that stay after the deadline get hung on TV. You kiss ass morons who keep supporting the federal government's abuses are next.

    • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:44AM

      by darkfeline (1030) on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:44AM (#411952) Homepage

      >First off, american households are steadily increasing (in real terms) their income

      Of course, since the amount of income you need to own a house is increasing. Correlation's a bitch.

      --
      Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:49AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:49AM (#411955)

        Households, in this context, are not measured by ownership. That's not how the census bureau does that.

        Go back, try again.

        • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday October 09 2016, @02:21PM

          by Pino P (4721) on Sunday October 09 2016, @02:21PM (#412069) Journal

          Of course, since the amount of income you need to rent a house is increasing. Correlation's a bitch.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @04:53PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @04:53PM (#412114)

            Again, not what the Census Bureau means by "household". Take a deep breath, and dive into their documentation. They're freely available; it's a federal benefit! Your tax dollars at work.

            Moving on ...

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:24AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:24AM (#411971) Journal

      ""The solution is relatively straightforward, increase the top bracket tax rate to something north of 50% on both capital gains and income tax. Then use the money that's generated through that to fund infrastructure projects, welfare and education."

      Right, that worked great for other countries! ... um, except when it didn't. In fact, income and capital gains are among the easier things to avoid taxes on, so right there you have a bad start."

      It worked fine right here in the United States of America, during and after the Second World War. First couple thousand taxed at very low rates, next couple thousand at low rates, starting around 10,000 the rates increased right up to 95% for top tier earners. And, they still built the world's biggest economic machine of all ages.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:01PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:01PM (#412118)

        Wrong on a number of fronts. Taking this by stages...

        "It worked fine right here in the United States of America, during and after the Second World War."

        First, the situation in question was artificial. Capital mobility during the war was very low, and even after the war (and during the aftershocks) it was quite constrained. This is no longer true, and is unlikely to be true again in the foreseeable future.

        Second, the USA was in the artificially beneficial situation of being politically dominant as well as being the only industrialised power that got out of the war with its industrial base more or less intact. The whole of the rest of the world became a market for american exports, which is no longer the case (and hasn't been since at least the '70s). Again, this is unlikely to be true again for the foreseeable future.

        Looking at less constrained environments, such as the high top tier taxes of the nordics (as well as the social pressures against the ambitious) and you can see how you have serious underinvestment problems there. Norway's sovereign fund is the classic example; they'd love to invest more in Norway, but they can't because the counterincentives are so strong.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 10 2016, @05:05AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 10 2016, @05:05AM (#412311) Journal

        It worked fine right here in the United States of America, during and after the Second World War. First couple thousand taxed at very low rates, next couple thousand at low rates, starting around 10,000 the rates increased right up to 95% for top tier earners. And, they still built the world's biggest economic machine of all ages.

        That doesn't explain the Gilded Age in the US - low tax combined with huge growth in the country. That created the conditions for superpower status in the first place. Nor does it explain the swapping of the US and Japanese fortunes in the late 80s and early 90s. If low marginal rates are truly bad, then why did the US have a decade and a half of substantial economic growth after implementing said changes compared to Japan which had the higher income and corporate tax rates (50% for each in 1990, if I understand correctly)?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @05:53AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @05:53AM (#412323)

          Population growth, immigration, younger people, more flexible culture and work environments.
          You cant just assume everything else was the same so the tax rate is the only reason for any differences.

        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 10 2016, @07:23AM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 10 2016, @07:23AM (#412338) Journal

          You seem to have placed my comment into a context which wasn't meant. Low tax rates are not "bad". There is a time and a place for them. At this point in time, the country has been over budget and in the red for half a century. We are in debt, to damned near every nation on earth, as well as many corporations and individuals.

          Now, let's go back to WW2, the extremely high tax rates, and the REASON that the tax rates were set so high. We were in serious debt at that point in time. The government was funding a major war effort, not only on our behalf, but on behalf of half of Europe. We were supplying a huge portion of the British war effort, a sizeable portion of Russia's, and basically carrying most of Western Europe. We were so deep in debt, it scared people. And, there was a will to PAY OFF THAT DEBT.

          Today, we are seriously in debt. In point of fact, our taxes aren't paying for much of anything these days. Our taxes are barely sufficient to service the debts. For decades, we have collected enough taxes to service debts, then BORROW MORE MONEY to run the government, the military, social services, etc.

          Why are we so far in debt? We've discussed that often enought right here. People like Trump and Clinton pay a pittance in taxes, if anything at all. Major corporations like Microsoft and Apple are hiding profits in bogus accounts around the world, through offshore banking. Even without all that offshore banking, the tax rates are simply to damned low - evidence the steady accumulation of wealth in the hands of the top .001% of the country's wealthiest people.

          And, Congress, the body responsible for our economic health, has screwed the pooch. The balanced budget and line item veto idea was implemented years ago, and the line item was used once, as I recall, by Bill Clinton. Then, some fucked up assholes who should never have graduated from high school, much less been elected to Congress, bitched and bellyached that their pork was cut. The line item veto was thrown out, and the stage was set for us to spiral deeper and deeper into debt.

          Today, we need a graduated tax. We need to do more than merely service the debt. We need to start paying the debt down. We desperately need a balanced budget amendment, and the line item veto. We need the ~500 rotten bastards in Washington to understand and exercise FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY.

          The economy is in the toilet, no matter how many soothsayers tell us that we are "recovering" or whatever the hell they call it.

          I don't even want to get started on the Federal Reserve. They carry a lot of the responsibility for our shitty situation. Congress abrogated it's right and responsibilites when they created that Central Bank. WTF does the US government pay interest on every dollar in existence, when the constitution clearly states that only Congress has the authority to mint/print money?

          Taxes. Raise 'em sky high, pay the debt down to manageable levels, then lower the taxes.

          I've not said that high rates are good, or that low rates are good. I'm saying that there is a time and a place for both high and low tax rates. And, NO ONE appears to understand that the tax rates are merely a tool, to be used to keep the economy healthy. Those who understand taxes at all see them as a tool to enrich themselves, their family, and their freinds.

          Jack up the taxes on the wealthiest 5% of citizens and businessmen, enforce tax laws on the corporations, and eliminate loop holes. A modest increase on the next 5% of the wealthiest is probably in order as well. The next 10% in line probably shouldn't be taxed at any higher rate than they are already paying. Those are the entrepreneurs, the small business men and women, the people who actually HIRE PEOPLE and CREATE JOBS.

          Once again, I remind you that major corporations don't create jobs. Small businesses and entrepreneurs create jobs in good times and in bad. In good times, large corporations buy up succcessful small businesses, and in bad times, corporations consolidate and downsize.

          How many downsizing stories have you read in the past few years?

          They call it "efficiency" - I call it "fucking the little people".

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 10 2016, @01:58PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 10 2016, @01:58PM (#412438) Journal
            I don't see the point of raising taxes when spending is so far out of control. Raise taxes and they'll find a way, and it won't be hard at all, to spend that. There is never a time for high taxes when the corrupt and the fiscally innumerate are in charge.
            • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 10 2016, @07:40PM

              by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 10 2016, @07:40PM (#412601) Journal

              Despite everything I wrote above - you're right. If the current crop of miscreants in Washington ever did raise the taxes, they'd waste the money on nonsense, rather than do any good with it.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Francis on Sunday October 09 2016, @02:08PM

      by Francis (5544) on Sunday October 09 2016, @02:08PM (#412065)

      So, in other words, you don't actually know what you're talking about and would rather spew a bunch of bullshit.

      That's not even true. How do you explain the increasing income inequality between the rich and the poor, and the increased portion of households that depend upon both people having jobs? What you're saying doesn't even make sense and it's certainly not consistent. Even minimum wage jobs allowed people to have at least some sort of quarterwise decent existence back then.

      Choosing the '60s is a great way of ignoring the problem. When things continue to stagnate, will you move back to the '50s for measuring and what happens when moving to the '50s is insufficient, will you move back to the '30s? Choosing the '60s is a great way to make yourself look like a moron. The trend that people are worried about started in the '80s and we're seeing more and more wealth concentrated in a few people along with regulatory changes that make it harder for familes to earn a living based upon just one job. And it now requires a college degree for even an entry level job in many areas. Which to make matters worse, has become extremely expensive.

      The solution here is to tax the rich and use that to fund programs that will increase prosperity at all levels. If we can tax them enough that they leave, then so be it. Pain in the short term is worth it, they've proven to be so greedy that they won't stop demanding lower and lower taxes until the country effectively eats itself to death Pizza the Hutt style.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:17PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:17PM (#412143)

        OK, let's take this one bite at a time.

        How do you explain the increasing income inequality between the rich and the poor, and the increased portion of households that depend upon both people having jobs?

        I want to start with "inequality" but you're talking about it in terms of "rich" and "poor", so we'll have to start there.

        Poor. What is poverty? Is this absolute, or relative poverty? Absolute poverty is when people are facing a near term question about their access to the necessaries of life. Food. Water. Shelter. This kind of poverty is vanishingly rare in the USA, owing to a variety of systems, programmes and funds made available precisely for the purpose of staving off naked desperation. Whether you're talking about SNAP or TANF or a variety of other federal sources, or you're talking about charitable foundations working to keep people fed and warm, the measurable result is that absolute poverty in the USA is a statistical outlier.

        OK, so you have to be talking about relative poverty. You can eat (although it mightn't be great food), but that playstation isn't in the budget. So we're talking about the lowest income bracket. (This would by definition include people in absolute poverty, but those are a tiny segment.)

        Is it good to be in the lowest bracket? No. But at least we have a reasonable idea of what that is. When we look at the census bureau's statistics we can use their bottom tiers of household income to estimate where the population is in terms of income - as adjusted for inflation, so we're not comparing a $20000 annual income in 1970 (not bad!) with $20000 annually today (not great).

        The short version (and you can feel free to look this up yourself - don't take my word for it) is that households earning under $35000 (in real terms) annually have steadily shrunk since the mid-'60s from about 38% of the population to about 33%. This despite shrinking households, various tax changes, and so on. The change has not been entirely monotonic, but it has been pretty consistent.

        OK, so let's look at the wealthy end of the scale. Using the same data set, the wealthy (and what the hell, including the near-wealthy, so everyone earning in real terms over $100000) climbed from about 8% of the population to around 26% of the population. What's more, we know that the super-wealthy are growing as a group, so (assuming you remember basic statistics here) those outliers will pull the mean up while the lower end of the bracket of poverty defines an area where you really can't have much in the way of outliers.

        So there's the difference: The high income part of the country's population is growing, and has been, pretty darned dramatically for decades, while the low end has been gradually shrinking. The upper end has few hard limits on it, while the lower end has a hard base. There's your explanation.

        If you want to follow along at home, start with http://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/tables/p60/256/table3.xls [census.gov] and grab whatever else around there looks relevant.

        Choosing the '60s is a great way of ignoring the problem.

        As stated above, it just depends on which numbers are available. The general trend is identical whether you start in '67, '77, '87 or '97. Go ahead, run your own numbers. I'm not hiding anything.

        Choosing the '60s is a great way to make yourself look like a moron. The trend that people are worried about started in the '80s and we're seeing more and more wealth concentrated in a few people along with regulatory changes that make it harder for familes to earn a living based upon just one job.

        Actually, the '60s weren't great for equality, but by '77 more and more women had regular, full-time employment and by the '80s it was not even worth raising an eyebrow. However, the economics of employment aren't unambiguously in favour of a working couple, either. What with the ludicrous costs of daycare and other aspects of child rearing, many couples are actually finding it makes more sense to return to one person at home, one working full time.

        I won't disagree with you about the idiotic way that the colleges were turned into the new high school, but that's separate from the inequality discussion. It's just as valid whether people went to trade school or Yale.

        The solution here is to tax the rich and use that to fund programs that will increase prosperity at all levels. If we can tax them enough that they leave, then so be it.

        So let me make sure I understand this: killing the goose that lays the golden eggs is not only in your game plan, but a good thing in your book? Or at least, driving it off? Let me know when you get elected someplace so that I can avoid there. How on earth will your nation be better off if you simply punitively tax anyone who has the temerity to earn more than the median?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:16AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @05:16AM (#411944)

    increase the top bracket tax rate to something north of 50% on income tax

    The Billionaires' Tax was cut and cut and cut (ultimately to 25 percent) preceding the Crash of 1929.

    When the country was regaining its footing (FDR) and through Truman and Ike (AKA "Happy Days"), the rate was indeed over 90 percent. [archive.li]

    As you note, in the JFK years, it dropped "all the way down" to 70 percent.

    So, yeah. We have a model that works.

    [and on] capital gains

    Get your name on the ballot.
    I'll vote for you.

    ...and I wonder if it's too late for any of this without The Ownership Class all dying.
    ...and getting a brand new Constitution.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday October 09 2016, @02:19PM

      by Francis (5544) on Sunday October 09 2016, @02:19PM (#412067)

      The first step here is getting campaign finance reform. I'm not sure if we need to ban all private funds from campaigns or if it would be sufficient to ban people and companies from running ads on behalf of candidates.

      But, in either case, cutting out the disproportionate influence that the wealthy have on the process would go along ways towards correcting these things. People like Hillary take large amounts of money from special interests and then turn around and claim that they aren't being influenced by it. I'm not personally buying it. But, if somebody would like to give me $100m to see if that changes my opinion, I'd be more than happy to take them up on the offer.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @07:34PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @07:34PM (#412163)

        The first step here is getting campaign finance reform

        Amen.
        Responding to the "Money is not speech and corporations are not people" notion for a constitutional amendment, Ralph Nader (a VERY smart guy) says it's much simpler than that:
        All public elections should be publicly funded.
        It's so obvious when you think about it for a moment.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Sunday October 09 2016, @04:09PM

    by Dr Spin (5239) on Sunday October 09 2016, @04:09PM (#412094)

    The solution is relatively straightforward,

    Ebola!

    Bird flu, or some other hideous plague, coming to you real soon now!

    With the population densities and ease of travel we have now, its just a matter of time.

    --
    Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:03PM

    by mhajicek (51) on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:03PM (#412138)

    How about if, instead of struggling to increase tax revenue and arguing about who pays what share, we actually reduce the size and cost of government? We need to find a way to introduce pressures for government agencies to operate efficiently; currently there are none.

    --
    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @12:31AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @12:31AM (#412242)

      introduce pressures for government agencies to operate efficiently

      Start with the military.
      Make them account for every penny they get.
      No proper accounting? No more money.
      Start reducing the size of that monstrosity.
      When it's down to 10 percent of its current size, that will free up over 40 percent of the 59 percent of the federal budget that is currently squandered on that unnecessary millstone around our necks.

      .
      USA's Medicare program is one of the most efficient healthcare plans on the planet.
      To find one that has a lower overhead, you have to go to Taiwan--and they only beat USA by a couple of percentage points.

      ...and comedian Kathleen Madigan has a bit that goes something like this:
      KM: Hey, can you take this letter from here in Florida to Alaska for less than 50 cents?
      USA postal worker: Sure. No problem.
      (...and back when they were a purely gov't operation and didn't have a ridiculous Congressional mandate to pre-fund their retirement plan for people who haven't been born, they did it for less.)

      Private sector operations are models of efficiency? Feh!
      You Neoliberals are a laugh riot.

      currently there are none

      ...unless you count the General Accounting Office reports and the Inspector Generals' reports and the Congressional Budget Office's reports and ...

      Again, you Neoliberals are a hoot.
      Want to see where the problems are in gov't?
      Look at YOUR congressman and YOUR senators.
      (Now, why do I think all of them are borrow-and-spend Republicans?)

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:06PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 09 2016, @06:06PM (#412139) Journal

    Back in the good old days, the top tax rate was north of 70% and at times north of 90% and it meant that past a certain point there wasn't any point in increasing your income as the government would just take is.

    No, it wasn't [mises.org]. Yay for tax loopholes like trust funds and elaborate tax law like a couple dozen tax brackets. The effective top tax rates haven't actually changed much over the years.

    And your delusional scheme would cripple anyone trying to use income from an existing business to invest in a distinct, new business. For example, Elon Musk used his profits from PayPal to create several new businesses that were completely separate from PayPal. That's income which you want to tax at some ridiculous rate. So no new businesses and the government flushes that money away on the usual corruption. It would be a terrible waste.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @07:34PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2016, @07:34PM (#412164)

      Ah yes, the good ol' rich person makes new industry fallacy. There are plenty of ways for humans to innovate, and the detriments of allowing obscene personal wealth far outweigh the benefits of Tesla Motors and SpaceX.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 10 2016, @05:25AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 10 2016, @05:25AM (#412315) Journal

        Ah yes, the good ol' rich person makes new industry fallacy.

        Backed with real world example no less! That makes it more fact than fallacy, but YMMV.

        There are plenty of ways for humans to innovate, and the detriments of allowing obscene personal wealth far outweigh the benefits of Tesla Motors and SpaceX.

        And what exactly are the detriments of allowing obscene personal wealth again? I doubt we'll agree even on basic principles here.