The Bern Identity

Discussion in 'Politics' started by nitro, Jan 18, 2016.

  1. nitro

    nitro

    #471     Mar 7, 2016
    piezoe and CaptainObvious like this.
  2. jem

    jem

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanl...enue-would-rise-immediately-after-tax-reform/

    ...
    That’s why the Magic Formula is only four words: Low Taxes, Stable Money. If you have the Magic Formula, the other stuff tends to get solved over time. If you don’t have the Magic Formula, you can try to fix everything else on your hundred-item wish list of reforms, and you will probably fail – or, even if you didn’t fail, it still wouldn’t matter.

    Nevertheless, governments are afraid. Mostly, they are afraid of a major decline in tax revenue. Oddly, this often follows a long period in which taxes are continually raised (“austerity”), and continually produce a decline in tax revenue. The Greek government’s tax revenue was 67.5 billion euros in 2013, down from 81.4 billion in 2008. It looks like it fell another 3% or so in 2014. You would think that someone worried about a decline in tax revenue would not keep doing that, over and over.


    Observant people have seen the same thing happen again and again throughout history. Here’s John Maynard Keynes, in 1933:

    Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance, than an increase, of balancing the Budget. For to take the opposite view to-day is to resemble a manufacturer who, running at a loss, decides to raise his price, and when his declining sales increase the loss, wrapping himself in the rectitude of plain arithmetic, decides that prudence requires him to raise the price still more;—and who, when at last his account is balanced with nought on both sides, is still found righteously declaring that it would have been the act of a gambler to reduce the price when you were already making a loss.


    Here’s the great Arab genius Ibn Khaldun, who was a high minster in several North African states, writing on the topic in the 14th century:

    The rulers may, mistakenly, try to remedy this decrease in the yield of taxation by raising the rate of taxes … This process of higher tax rates and lower yields (caused by the government’s belief that higher rates result in higher returns) may go on until production begins to decline owing to the despair of business men, and to affect population.

    Greece’s population peaked at 11.19 million in 2009, and was 10.99 million in 2014.

    So, don’t do that. Rather, do what U.S. president John F. Kennedy, inspired by the example of Germany’s Ludwig Erhard, suggested in 1963:

    It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest way to raise the revenue in the long run is to cut the rates now. The experience of a number of European countries and Japan has borne this out.

    Ah, but there’s that hedge – “given sufficient time to gather the fruits.” “The long run.” Certainly one should expect a reduction in tax revenue for at least a short period of time? Isn’t there some pain to go along with this gain? It seems reasonable.

    But, we find that is not the case at all. Tax revenue tends to rise immediately. This was the case after the Kennedy tax cut of 1964 and Coolidge tax cut of 1925; it was the case in Japan and Germany during the 1960s; it was the case after the Reagan and Thatcher tax reforms in the 1980s; and it has been the case among the European flat-taxers in more recent years. (I document all these examples in my book Gold: the Once and Future Money.)

    At the beginning of 2008, Bulgaria introduced its 10% flat tax system – a 10% rate on corporate profits and individual income. This replaced a 15% corporate tax rate in 2007 (down from 40% in 1997) and a top personal income tax rate of 25% (down from 50% in 1996).
     
    #472     Mar 7, 2016
  3. nitro

    nitro

    As if the Billions and Billions and Billions that the taxpayers pay aren't enough for Raytheon:

    Raytheon must face $1 bln whistleblower lawsuit -US appeals court

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/raytheon-must-face-1-bln-192018017.html
     
    #473     Mar 7, 2016
  4. Max E.

    Max E.

    Came across this today thought it was pretty funny. :D

     
    #474     Mar 7, 2016
  5. nitro

    nitro

    Clinton goes into these ponderous soliloquies and the CNN moderator(s) don't say a word. The Bern if he gets twenty seconds its a miracle. The Bern has had enough:

     
    #475     Mar 7, 2016
  6. nitro

    nitro

    #476     Mar 7, 2016
  7. achilles28

    achilles28

    Clinton is a piece of shit. A cancer on America.

    The differencse between establishment Democrats and Neocons like Rubio are almost negligible. It's the same party. The whole system is realigning between establishment Corporate fuckboys and anti-establishment Patriot outsiders.
     
    #477     Mar 7, 2016
    AAAintheBeltway likes this.
  8. jem

    jem

    this realignment can not happen fast enough. but hopefully it will happen before it is too late.

     
    #478     Mar 7, 2016
    AAAintheBeltway and achilles28 like this.
  9. #479     Mar 8, 2016
  10. nitro

    nitro

    #480     Mar 8, 2016