Topic: Economic Devastation - page 36. (Read 504813 times)

Flat transaction taxes makes so much more sense. This is exactly why it will never be implemented. governments are content to hunt down money and destroy what's left of the markets.

Well you already have my philosophical thoughts on taxation being a violent extortion scheme.

But if you absolutely require taxation, then I`d go with a 1% permanent transaction tax.

That would be the most efficient, most paying, and most fair of them all. It would look less like an extortion scheme where "inspectors" come into your shop and search your stuff, and it would be automated.

A governmental cryptocurrency with a genesis address held by the government and a built in 1% of the mining income and fee income automatically going into the treasury.

It would hit everybody the same %, and it would be less invasive than an income tax, and doesnt require a tax department, so you save huge amounts in bureocracy costs.


Think about it, if the money velocity is fast, and value of money is high, then this can actually create huge revenues to the governments.


If those 4 quadrillion derivatives, and hot potato banking high frequency traders get taxed 1% then you dont need to tax the poor anymore with huge taxes

Good points, I'm not American so I don't know all of the politics that happen there, but I wasn't aware that people in the States think their government is so corrupt. I understand there is always corruption, but I guess I didn't think that everyone thinks it is abysmal in the States.

I understand that it isn't the place of the government to dictate what is done with your money, but at the same time they do provide a lot of services such as infrastructure and military services, but I'm not sure what value you place on those, so I can't decide if you think that is enough.

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Yakamoto

The Income Tax allows governments to snoop into our bank accounts and is already forcing Americans OUT of keeping money in foreign banks ("FATCA" laws) -- these burden foreign banks that would otherwise let Americans open up bank accounts in those countries.  It is NOT government's business to DICTATE what we do with our own money.

The Income Tax is immoral and invites corruption too.  No Income Tax!  Not even a flat one.  The Income Tax is even unconstitutional (USA).

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As Sales Tax is regressive on the poor, that is true.  But, it is VOLUNTARY, that is what is special about it...  You want to pay less tax?  Don't buy...  Governments want less consumption (hence cutting CO₂)?  Sales Tax.  Do we encourage SAVING (important)?  Sales Tax.

My thoughts on taxation. 

I like the idea of the "Voluntary Taxes", that would be mostly a National Sales Tax.  Say slap 15% sales tax on EVERYTHING that is bought (at retail).  And enforce it.  No exceptions for food, housing, etc.  A National Sales Tax would be less complex that than a European-style VAT.

I do not like property taxes, but I could live with them as long as the taxes are fixed at a reasonable rate.  Real Estate can't be moved, so perhaps there IS a case for taxing it.

An argument could be made for a small percentage tax on financial transactions.  A payroll tax (Social Security) maybe, but the experience to date is bad, .gov has already spent the money received in S.S. taxes, that's why it and MediCare are in such trouble, they already spent the money!

BUT,

Above three taxes ASSUME eliminating the Income Tax and all other kinds of taxes where the government noses around in bank accounts, etc.  Government has no business peaking into my personal affairs.  Invites corruption too...

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Inflation is basically a tax on the poor.  And it's sneaky, probably morally very wrong.  But, easy to impose.  Ugh.

So you guys are saying we should not have taxation because it is costly, hard to manage, and inneficient (and also an extortion based theft scheme).

However we should have inflation only to fund public programs.



But then if we have only printed money to fund public programs, people will avoid using inflated currency, because they will realize that they are robbed, but just in a different way.

People will just keep their money then in precious metals and bitcoin to avoid inflation.



SO then you guys quickly realize that both inflation and taxes are a robbery, and we should have neither.

Im sure they were peaceful but others around them were not.. Once you have power others want it from you and will do anything in their ability to get it because that is what drives people the most.. Its stronger than the will to acquire wealth because it is was precursor to power then and mostly now too.

Tiberius was elected to the office of tribune of the plebeians in 133 BC. He immediately began pushing for a programme of land reform, partly by invoking the 240-year-old Sextian-Licinian law that limited the amount of land that could be owned by a single individual.

Central to the Gracchi reforms was an attempt to address economic distress and its military consequences. Much public land had been divided among large landholders and speculators who further expanded their estates by driving peasants off their farms. While their old lands were being worked by slaves, the peasants were often forced into idleness in Rome where they had to subsist on handouts due to a scarcity of paid work.

The senators obstructed his re-election. They also gathered an ad hoc force, with several of them personally marching to the Forum, and had Tiberius and some 300 of his supporters clubbed to death. This was the first open bloodshed in Roman politics for nearly four centuries.

Politics as the bastion of morality makes me chuckle, I hope thats not our last chance.   Not sure if its mentioned, here is misses institute lecture on the decline of the Roman standard primarly silver based originally and then just a mirror of a chaotic empire.

Audio link on there, I wish all history was this well transcribed https://mises.org/library/inflation-and-fall-roman-empire

To look at the mentality of the Roman emperors, we can look just at the advice that the Emperor Septimius Severus gave to his two sons, Caracalla and Geta. This is supposed to be his final words to his heirs. He said, "live in harmony; enrich the troops; ignore everyone else."

His (Caracallas) sense of priorities was made more explicit when he remarked, "nobody should have any money but I, so that I may bestow it upon the soldiers." And he was as good as his word. He raised the pay of the soldiers by 50 percent, and to achieve this he doubled the inheritance taxes paid by Roman citizens. When this was not sufficient to meet his needs, he admitted almost every inhabitant of the empire to Roman citizenship.

The Roman state was not destroyed by inflation — what was destroyed by inflation was the freedom of the Roman people. Particularly, the first victim was their economic freedom. Merchants ... came under government pressure because the government could not obtain enough material for the war machine through regular channels — people didn't want all that token coinage. So merchants and artisans were now compelled to make deliveries of goods.

So that if you had a factory for making garments, you now had to deliver so many garments to the government requisitions. If you had ships, you had to carry government goods in your ships. When people tried to get out of this they were then, by law, compelled to remain in the occupation that they were in. In other words, you couldn't change your job or your business.

This was not sufficient because, after all, death is a relief from taxes. So the occupations were now made hereditary. When you died, your son had to take up your profession. If your father was a shoemaker, you had to be a shoemaker. These laws started by being restricted to the defense-oriented industries but, of course, gradually it was realized that everything is defense-oriented.

The peasantry, known as the coloni, were leaseholders on both imperial and private estates. They too were formerly a free class. Now under the same kinds of pressures that all smallholders were in in this situation, they began to drift away, trying to find better opportunities, better leases, or better occupations. So under Diocletian the coloni were now bound to the soil. Anyone who had a lease on a particular piece of land could not give that lease up. More than that, they had to stay on the land and work it.

The economy of the West was perhaps more fatally weakened than that of the East. The early 5th century Christian priest Salvian of Marseille wrote an account of why the Roman state was collapsing in the West — he was writing from France (Gaul). Salvian says that the Roman state is collapsing because it deserves collapse; because it had denied the first premise of good government, which is justice to the people.
 
By justice he meant a just system of taxation. Salvian tells us, and I don't think he's exaggerating, that one of the reasons why the Roman state collapsed in the 5th century was that the Roman people, the mass of the population, had but one wish after being captured by the barbarians: to never again fall under the rule of the Roman bureaucracy.

In other words, the Roman state was the enemy; the barbarians were the liberators

Well they taxed the moneymakers as always, the merchants who traded goods between Rome and the other provinces, they taxed the merchants who  sold items in cities, they had property tax for all citizens and other minor tariffs , trade fees and smaller taxes.

Income tax didnt exist, and they were able to prosper very well even under hard taxes. The income tax is the worst of them all because it de-incentivizes people to earn.


Back then only flat tariffs existed, and property tax mostly, and it was enough to fund a militarized empire, imagine if they would be peaceful how big they would get?

Well they must have been harder to fund because the funding wasnt as effective as the german one who probably developed better technology.. when the materials used are throwaway or less effective than competitors then you must fix that or risk losing power

Their wars were profitable until they conquered Europe, because they could not conquer the german tribes.

They almost went bankrupt after Carthage so they quickly conquered Spain , then Caesar conquered France and Egypt, the amount of grain and the minerals from France were enough for a few hundred years.

They started collapsing after the German tribes started attacking them, and their armies deteriorated and were harder and harder to fund. The amount of riots and revolts happening daily in every part of the empire was too hard to control and they collapsed.

Military overextension + Bankruptcy is not a good combo for an empire

If the material they raised funds for was throwaway it would have a net negative effect on the financial side of the society, but thats not always the case.

It was a militarized warmongering society,endless wars cannot be funded by taxes, so they need to debase their currency to fund them.

It was obvious that any militarized society will fall sooner or later. The same happened with some of the early chinese kingdoms.

1) Sound money does not generalize on the macroscale.

This is a claim unsupported by the historical record. Societies including our own have lived under a gold standard in the past. Rome's currency was sound for more or less the entire history of the Roman republic. It was not until the Roman republic failed and Rome became empire that the currency was debased in earnest