Psychology of money and taxation

[Missileman]

There's a de facto cap on prices with basic necessities, too. Above that level, people will turn to bartering and/or the black market. Happens frequently in much of the world.

Look at the price of cigarettes for example...the prices have gone up 400-500% over the last 20 years. Where else do you suppose all the money to pay the law suits has come from? Based on your posts, it sounds like you believe in the same magic money trees that the Dems in DC think they're gonna pay all the bills with.

[DragonStryk72]

Why do you think I suggested eliminating income tax for anyone making less than $200K per year?




Not if the people insist on clamping down on the debt ceiling.

So if a person makes 200k, they should be personally punished? Even if a raise puts them just over the line, thus actually having them make less than what they made before the raise?

The people do keep saying we need to get out of debt. The government just spends more money, and finds a way to do a "mission accomplished" on whatever program it was, regardless of actual results

[Palin Rider]

So if a person makes 200k, they should be personally punished? Even if a raise puts them just over the line, thus actually having them make less than what they made before the raise?

That's not how progressive taxation works.

The first tax bracket would apply to all the income ABOVE 200k (and for the sake of argument, let's say below 400k). The next bracket applies to the income in the next range (between 400k and 600k, for example), and so on.

And no, it's not punishment, any more than any other tax is a punishment. Even more obviously, it's not personal.

The people do keep saying we need to get out of debt. The government just spends more money, and finds a way to do a "mission accomplished" on whatever program it was, regardless of actual results

That's because not enough people are saying it.

[Palin Rider]

Look at the price of cigarettes for example...the prices have gone up 400-500% over the last 20 years. Where else do you suppose all the money to pay the law suits has come from? Based on your posts, it sounds like you believe in the same magic money trees that the Dems in DC think they're gonna pay all the bills with.

Nope: you're clearly the one who believes in magic money trees, since you think that manufacturers can arbitrarily raise prices as high as they please.

[Palin Rider]

Of course, the entire doctrine of an inverse relationship between government and capitalism promoted in this thread is completely wrong. From the welfare state's utility in maintaining the physical efficiency of the working class to the role of Keynesian demand management to the development of internationally competitive industries under protective tariffs and quotas, capitalism and the state are mutually supportive.

Or to put it less grandiloquently, capitalist markets thrive the most in countries with a healthy level of socialism.

Ironic, but true.

[Missileman]

Nope: you're clearly the one who believes in magic money trees, since you think that manufacturers can arbitrarily raise prices as high as they please.

And you're obviously clouded reasoning concludes that companies can stay in business without making a profit. You crossed the line when you started taking a second hit AND drinking the bong water.

[Agnapostate]

Or to put it less grandiloquently, capitalist markets thrive the most in countries with a healthy level of socialism.

Ironic, but true.

It has nothing to do with socialism. Socialism is the collective/workers' ownership and management of the means of production. The positive relationship between the state and capitalism is the antithesis of socialism.

And you're obviously clouded reasoning concludes that companies can stay in business without making a profit. You crossed the line when you started taking a second hit AND drinking the bong water.

Um, they can, in the short run. Capitalist firms are frequently characterized by short-run attributes that they lack in the long run. Hence the market structure of monopolistic competition, for example.

[Agnapostate]

Look at the price of cigarettes for example...the prices have gone up 400-500% over the last 20 years. Where else do you suppose all the money to pay the law suits has come from? Based on your posts, it sounds like you believe in the same magic money trees that the Dems in DC think they're gonna pay all the bills with.

Actually, cigarettes are technically considered a "necessity" because of the inelasticity of demand that characterizes their purchase.

[Agnapostate]

Let's review the concept of diminishing marginal utility for those unfamiliar with it. First, this is a quote from Ragan and Thomas's Principles of Economics textbook:

Declining marginal utility...is so common that economists have developed a name for it: the law of diminishing marginal utility. Formally, the law of diminishing marginal utility can be stated as follows: Beyond some point, the more units of a good consumed the less utility an additional unit provides. This law or hypothesis is the centerpiece of marginal utility theory.

This is a quote from Krugman and Wells's Economics textbook:

[I]t is a generally accepted proposition that marginal utility curves do slope downward; that is, that consumption of most goods and services is subject to diminishing marginal utility.

The basic idea behind the principle of diminishing marginal utility is that the additional satisfaction a consumer gets from one more unit of a good or service declines as the amount of that good or service rises. Or to put it slightly differently, the more of a good or service you consume, the closer you are to being satiated - that is, reaching a point at which an additional unit of the good adds nothing to your satisfaction.

PR, it might seem frustrating that the rightist members of this board that have commented on this thread cannot seem to grasp such an elementary economic principle. My belief is that this is because their actual interest is in preservation of a facet of their moral worldview about wealth and taxation, rather than advocacy of the most economically efficient policy. This attitude is summarized in the cognitive linguist George Lakoff's book, Moral Politics:

Dan Quayle, in his acceptance speech at the 1992 Republican convention, attacked the idea of progressive taxation, in which the rich are taxed at a higher rate than the poor. His argument went like this: "Why," he asked, "should the best people be punished?" The line brought thunderous applause.

It should now be clear why, from the conservative worldview, the rich should be seen as "the best people." They are the model citizens, those who, through self-discipline and hard work, have achieved the American Dream. They have earned what they have and deserve to keep it. Because they are the best people - people whose investments create jobs and wealth for others - they should be rewarded. Taking money away is conceptualized as harm, financial harm; that is the metaphorical basis of seeing taxation as punishment. When the rich are taxed more than others for making a lot more money, they are, according to conservatives, being punished for being model citizens, for doing what, according to the American Dream, they are supposed to do.

Taxation of the rich is, to conservatives, punishment for doing what is right and succeeding at it. It is a violation of the Morality of Reward and Punishment. In the conservative worldview, the rich have earned their money and, according to the Morality of Reward and Punishment, deserve to keep it. Taxation - the forcible taking of their money from them against their will - is seen as unfair and immoral, a kind of theft. That makes the federal government a thief. Hence, a common conservative attitude toward the government: You can't trust it, since, like a thief, it's always trying to find ways to take your money.

This tendency is a facet of rightists' greater inclinations to analyze issues with emotional intuitions, as evidenced in Inbar et al.'s Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals: "The uniquely human emotion of disgust is intimately connected to morality in many, perhaps all, cultures (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999b). We report two studies suggesting that a predisposition to feel disgust (“disgust sensitivity”) is associated with more conservative political attitudes, especially for issues related to the moral dimension of purity. In the first study, we document a positive correlation between disgust sensitivity and self-reported conservatism in a broad sample of US adults. In Study 2 we show that while disgust sensitivity is associated with more conservative attitudes on a range of political issues, this relationship is strongest for purity-related issues—specifically, abortion and gay marriage."

Moreover, when political outlooks are understood as interconnected networks of policy views based on the same foundational moral axioms (which is why certain views tend to cluster together), it's understandable why their reactions to perceived "unfairness" would also be primarily guided by emotion.

[SassyLady]

Making an empty point and using it to declare victory isn't just slacking off, it's GWB-level bullshit. (Not to mention that you never demonstrate any specific use of circular logic on my part.)

There's plenty of room left for debate on this topic, but if you're bored with it, just be honest, say so, and leave it at that.

Not bored with the topic, just your debating tactics.

[red states rule]

Look at the price of cigarettes for example...the prices have gone up 400-500% over the last 20 years. Where else do you suppose all the money to pay the law suits has come from? Based on your posts, it sounds like you believe in the same magic money trees that the Dems in DC think they're gonna pay all the bills with.

and look at the increase in activity of online duty free smoke shops. The cost, even with shipping, is about 1/3 the retail cost. People are avoiding the insane taxes, thus less tax revenue for the federal, state, and local governments

As far as Clinton's shakedown of the tobacco companies, very ;little of the money has gone to smokers and to offset the health care costs

Libs look at the "rich" as a renewable money source

[fj1200]

So when we talk about cutting taxes for households making $100,000 or $200,000, I’m fine with that. It’s when people start talking about cutting taxes for those making $1,000,000 a year that I start objecting. There’s no need for it: as I’ve just shown you, this money is rarely put back into the economy.

I'll jump in all the way back to the beginning. While your treatise was a nice little college essay it's completely meaningless in the real world. Money is always put back into the economy, maybe it's not spent but it is invested and it's that investment which drives economic activity for all of the rest of us... and that is completely ignoring the economic benefits garnered when "the rich" do spend on luxury items; see Luxury Tax of 1989 for example of unintended consequences.

And while you are deciding for the rest of us who is entitled to keep the money that they earned you're also condemning the little people who you are likely so concerned about to a third world totalitarian fate. Thanks.

[Palin Rider]

I'll jump in all the way back to the beginning. While your treatise was a nice little college essay it's completely meaningless in the real world. Money is always put back into the economy, maybe it's not spent but it is invested and it's that investment which drives economic activity for all of the rest of us... and that is completely ignoring the economic benefits garnered when "the rich" do spend on luxury items; see Luxury Tax of 1989 for example of unintended consequences.

And taxation itself always puts money back into the economy as governments handle their own expenses, so your point goes nowhere.

And while you are deciding for the rest of us who is entitled to keep the money that they earned you're also condemning the little people who you are likely so concerned about to a third world totalitarian fate.

Talk about meaningless. You don't demonstrate anything with this besides your ability to make platitudes.

[Palin Rider]

Not bored with the topic, just your debating tactics.

Because you found out the hard way that you can't BS your way around them.

"You can't handle the truth!"

[Palin Rider]

Libs look at the "rich" as a renewable money source

So does everyone else who understands economics. The rich look at money as a renewable resource.

Out of the mouths of babes...