The whole point of progressive taxes is to take from the rich and give to the poor. Yet taking from the poor and giving to the rich is what you support just prior! It boggles the mind.
Here’s a hint: If a rich guy can turn a poor guy’s $1 into $20, he can also turn HIS OWN $1 into $20 (and since he’s rich, he has plenty of $1s). Why does he need the poor guy’s $1?
Rich guy: Uh, because I’ll give that guy back his dollar plus interest after making $20 with it, duh!
Brian: Uh, so why doesn’t the poor guy like this “plan” of yours if its so good for him? Maybe because that $1 is part of his food bill. Or his liquor bill, or whatever he deems more important than investing it.
Or do you think dollar bills have names on them? Besides past presidents and God and a couple of treasurers. Poor people have extra spicy dollars!
Poor guys are actually creditors and rich guys debtors in Ben’s world.
Poor guy: I’m a fucking BANK.
{Ben nods sagely}
Rich guy: No, you’re an ATM machine. Gimme my money!
Whatever. I didn’t say it was perfect. It certainly isn’t fair. That’s business. That was my point, actually. And you can be damned sure modern capitalism is dependent on it.
I’m lying?
Page 2, link 2 is a link to http://planet.wwu.edu/fall01/thetruecostperspective.htm. It’s a .edu domain, and an article about true cost economics from the Huxley College of the Environment at Western Washington University. It is about the actual theory. It may not be a course outline that’s gonna turn you into a fully informed post-reform 21st century econmist in 3 easy steps, but WTF do you want?
You’re right about the Berkley link. It is not relevant. You get a cookie.
The Cornell link is a dense article about errors of assumption in the consumer price index used to calculate the cost of food, accounting for aspects such as class, demographics and quality of life. Again, I am personally not an economist, so the specifics of the article are lost on me. However, it is a criticism of prevaling economic models for factors they do not “account” for, so I will claim it as relevant.
Anyway, the point is, you said I’m lying when I said there were relevant .edu links. That is not the case. So, I’m not lying about anything. You are lying.
It’s foolish of me to get into this argument, 'cause I’ve already said this is not being taught in education (yet). But I don’t like being called a liar when I am not. You should be more careful about throwing personal accusations around.
Both of those sites either link or cite compelling, hard data from people a helluva lot more familiar with the subject than either of us. I’m not going to hold your fucking hand to find this stuff, nobody held my hand, and I didn’t find the best stuff on the Net anyway. If you’re genuinely interested in learning about this, then put some effort into it. Otherwise, STFU, because you don’t know what you’re talking about.
It’s obvious some people are much more interested in dogmatically defending their prevailing world view than even considering thinking about things in a new way. Criticising people for whining about problems without proposing solutions is easy. Apparently simply admitting there are problems in the first place is incredibly hard. And that’s the first step towards solutions anyway, so…
So yeah, the world is flat, cause maps are most easily printed on paper.
Look, you can dismiss all this stuff if you want, that’s your choice. Hell, stick your head in the sand if you like.
Brian- The rich guy can’t turn his $1 into $20. Free trade reduces wages while increasing productivity. Please, the adults are talking.
Bren- Uh, I’m clicking that link, going to page 2, and link number 2 is a .gov .pdf about something or other.
Regardless, even your .edu link is from the college of the environment. I looked around adbusters.org for a bit, and all I found was “neoclassical economics doesn’t account for environmental damage.” And they really hate GDP.
You don’t mean capitalism, you mean Neoliberal/UChicago/whatever economics. Capitalism is a government policy.
And you’re wrong anyway, those are known as externalities. They are recongized, and there is significant debate among actual economists(as opposed to “ecological economists”) about how to account for them.
You don’t know the difference between a model and a metric. CPI isn’t a theory. It’s a measure, they take a basket of goods to try to determine inflation. Completely irrelevant. Well, completely irrelevant to true cost economics as adbusters.org explains it, where the closest thing to a thesis was:
“We are building a new system in which the market flourishes, but so does true democracy, in which the Earth and the animals with which we share it are honored as much as the pursuit of wealth.”
There was nothing in any of that about how cars should triple in cost.
I wonder why these people can’t get any mindshare in the Economics department?
It couldn’t be because current models/metrics are serving capitalism, Wall Street and rich folks well enough, could it?[/quote]
A fair amount of academia would LOVE to take down capitalism and Wall Street and occasionally even rich folks. Academia’s the biggest spot around for that stuff.
Also, do you remember the justification for why cars cost a third of what they “should”?
Economists don’t disagree with “GDP only mentions output, not depletion of private or common natural resources.” Cars are a perfect example: building and selling a new car shows up in GDP, but neither the cost of cleaning up the pollution produced by that car over its running lifetime or the cost of disposing of it in a way that keeps cadmium out of the groundwater or whatever does. Whether society actually does pay to clean up the envronmental damage or not, the cost is still there. Just negative externalities for the economy as a whole. Then there’s the “cut down every tree in the country for a one-year bump in GDP” hypothetical.
Yes, your blinding logic has left me incapable of response.
Pretty much said my piece in this thread, I guess, no reason to go in circles anymore.
Thanks for adjusting the $60K figure back down to what I actually said, $42K. And the reasons are exactly what Jason said: “externalities” that are not reflected in the car’s true COGS. Jason, you see, either already knows what “true cost economics” is, or actually read up on it before joining this debate.
I tore through my dead wood collection last night trying to find exactly where I read that, but couldn’t. I guess it was either in something from the library, or something I threw/gave away.
Thanks for adjusting the $60K figure back down to what I actually said, $42K. And the reasons are exactly what Jason said: “externalities” that are not reflected in the car’s true COGS. Jason, you see, either already knows what “true cost economics” is, or actually read up on it before joining this debate.
I tore through my dead wood collection last night trying to find exactly where I read that, but couldn’t. I guess it was either in something from the library, or something I threw/gave away.
Bren- An Accord costs like $22K. I was merely making the statement seem more ridiculous by moving your hypothetical into reality.
Hey, I did exactly what you wanted. You posted a google search, I read the two revelant links. There wasn’t any actual economic theory, just whining about the environment, but I read it.
Nowhere in it did it say that the consumer should pay triple current market value for cars. Nor the mechanism for doing that(taxes? brainwashing car salesmen?), or anything besides the above mentioned whining.
Considering that he’s already conceded that he can’t find the original source, egging him on probably isn’t nice. ;)
As a liberal free market economist type myself, I have no problem with the principle that externalities should be taken into account in prices. Where I part company with greenies is that they seem to think that the “correct” price for some externalities is an absolute value that ultimately only they have the power to decide, while I believe that the “correct” price for externalities varies from place to place and time to time, i.e. is a free market value based on how much individuals actually value them.
Considering that he’s already conceded that he can’t find the original source, egging him on probably isn’t nice. ;)[/quote]
QT3 posters know well the best time to beat a horse is when it’s dead.
Excellent! Let’s give a 1000 hectare area of untouched South American rainforest about the same value as 1 square foot of a Rodeo Drive clothing store. Then, as that area of rainforest is polluted and de-valued by run off from textile mills, it effectively and realistically transfers value to that retail space! Problem solved!
Applying a monetary value to every animal, vegetable and mineral on the face of the planet, in perpetuity, doesn’t seem the least bit arrogant on the part of humanity, does it?
Hey, look what I found! Tacticus.org has blogads, and one of them is for a site to stick it to hollywood liberals by supporting Gibson’s The Passion of Christ:
We are not surprised. Hollywood has long mocked and discounted mainstream American values. But to add further injury to insult, the odds-on-favorite for Best Picture is Michael Moore’s dishonest political tirade Fahrenheit 911. All the information one needs to understand where Hollywood’s sentiments lie is contained in the contrasting reviews and commentaries of The Passion and Fahrenheit 911. Indeed, many have speculated that The Passion will cost Gibson his career.
In our opinion, it is time for regular Americans to start imposing our values on Hollywood for a change, instead of the other way around. The Passion of The Christ touched the hearts of millions of Americas. It changed lives. It was, without question the best picture of the year. Mel Gibson clearly outperformed his own directorial standards set during the filming of Braveheart.
Therefore, we are circulating a petition to make ourselves loud and clear to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson, and the various actors and actresses of this important film had better receive a fair hearing when nominations are handed out on January 25th, 2005. We are asking – no demanding – Hollywood put aside their own cultural bias against Christians, conservative and other mainstream Americans. We hope you will join our cause, as we seek to impose our values on Hollywood for a change, instead of the other way around.
It’s basically Moore vs. Gibson 24/7. Paging Frank…
