Brilliant Idea

I was reading about the French elections this morning.  Looks like our pal Nicolas Sarkozy is not going to be with us much longer.  I think that's too bad.  Sure, he's pompous, audacious, and his economy hasn't exactly sprung back with vitality and prosperity.  But I kinda like the guy.  He has put a decent face on France over the past years, making it almost respectable internationally again.  He planted his foot firmly on the side of Good in the jihad-wars, and been a pal of the US in its various endeavors of late (however dubious some may have been).  I guess it's just great not to have a whimpering idiot at the French helm for a change.

However, it looks like the French public is about to undo all of that.  Sarkozy's primary opponent, socialst Francois Hollande, advocates the usual - more taxes, more spending.  Even a 75% top-tier income tax rate.  It's only a fair share - right?  Having three of every four dollars you make seized by the government seems fair enough to me.  And he looks like the typical sniveling liberal know-it-all.  Of course, he's leading the polls.




But then, there's another candidate vying - a distant third or fourth with no real chance - kind of like the Green party here in the US.  His name is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and he's even further left, advocating essentially an overthrow of any remaining elements of capitalism left in France.  But we don't need to go there, so I'm not going any further with him.

But I got to thinking, "Geez, how can we get politicians to stop coming up with ludicrously high progressive tax scales?"  They really have no incentive to do otherwise.  They just command that more money be wrung from the populace (at least the part that pays any taxes at all), and it is done.  Fail to comply, and go to jail.  The French seem completely unconcerned about the possible impact a 75% tax will have on their business community.   I would expect to see high-earners fleeing the country soon after such a tax was enacted, taking all that lovely tax money with them, no?

Then I had an idea.  Probably not an original one, yes - just about everything has been thought of already.  But I don't recall hearing this one.



Suppose we give each person voting power in proportion to their top-tier tax rate?  Not their tax paid, just to their top-tier rate.  Let's say that a 25% tax payer gets the equivalent of one vote in an election.   So, if your top rate was 50%, you'd get essentially two votes toward your choice, when a 25%-taxed individual would get just one.  A 75%-taxed person would have three.  And someone paying only 5% tax would get 1/5 of a single vote.  Of course, pay no tax, get no vote whatsoever.

It's a perfect negative-feedback to the taxation loop!  As politicians up the top tax rate, they'll lose their voting base in proportion.  They have a definite incentive not to raise the top tax to obscene levels, lest they be voted out more easily by the people they've taxed the hardest.

In our current system, the poorest vote almost universally for the democrats who promise the highest rates of taxation and punitive assessment.  Why not?  They have no reason not to - and the democrats woo them with seductive language about "fairness" and massive rewards ("entitlements") for those that support their plans.

But scale that voting power in proportion to taxation - and people who pay virtually no tax at all will not be able to flood the polls with votes for candidates who would soak-the-rich ever more viciously.

The more I think about this, the more I like it.

Tax Collections Fall

 Oh dear, oh dear.  It seems that tax hikes aren't working like they're supposed to.  States like California and Washington are seeing their tax revenue drop "unexpectedly" after both states raised their tax rates under Democrat leadership.

As expected, analysts are surprised and bewildered by the drop in revenue.  Once again, Keynesian economics has failed to deliver the goods it promises.  Washington looks like they're heading for a $2 billion shortfall, after having passed an $890 million tax increase earlier in the year.  California is already more than $650 million behind their projected take.  New York, too  is $392 million behind its projections for the year.

Go figure.  Must be those evil 1-percenters again.  Where is Paul Krugman when you need him?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/us/states-warn-that-tax-revenues-arent-rebounding.html

Big Goverment, Big Taxes, Big Problems

When government creates taxes for the purpose of changing your behavior, your freedom of self-determination has been violated.  Do you understand this?  Do you care?

Shouldn't you be making the choices which shape the way your life story unfolds?  Should government be choosing the correct path for you instead?  Which would you prefer?  Does either of these two options sound scary to you?

One political party in this country is particulary in love with taxation.  They want to tax practically everything.  And they'd like to coerce your behavior whilst imposing said taxation upon you.  It utterly amazes me that there is any popular support whatsoever for a political party bearing such a platform.  Basically, their message is "We'll take what's yours, and tell you what to do."  Oh, how inviting.  Yet there are advocates for this.  They are known as the liberal leftists.

I often see articles with reader comments afterward wherein "tea-partiers" are immediately referred to with the most vile derogatory terms.  Descriptions along the lines of "moronic", "racist", "stupid", "uneducated", "backward", etc.  Sometimes it's not just in the readers' comments, but the author's prose as well.   It's quite frustrating, because I just feel like I've missed the logic altogether (it seems so natural and automatic in their writing, how could I not draw the same conclusions?).

For the record, the Tea Party Movement stands for the following principles:

• Fiscal Responsibility
• Constitutionally Limited Government
• Free Markets

What's wrong with any of that?  Is there something there which isn't really a good idea?  So why all the insults and name-calling?  Aren't those three points all good things? 

According to Paul Krugman  "... among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it’s their money, and they have the right to keep it."  Well, uh, yes.  I'd say our government displays a "belligerent sense of entitlement" -- to its citizens' money.  Once laundered through the purifying act of conversion into "tax revenue", your money becomes government property.  Never mind how they got it, right?

Let us not forget that the Soviet Union provided for us a brilliant example of what happens when you erase economic incentives from your society.  When an engineer earns the same wages as a bus driver, innovative technological inventions are far less common.  When a doctor earns the wages of a trash collector, the quality of your health care (and enthusiasm on the part of its provider) tends to decline.  Your local grocery's shelves are poorly stocked with a bland selection of minimal choices, as deemed necessary by the central-planning administrators (who are also poorly motivated and completely uninterested in your level satisfaction with said choices).

Maybe the folks doing that name-calling have something to hide.  Perhaps this strikes a raw nerve.  Maybe they're insecure in their own beliefs.  Why anyone would want to have less freedom and property rights is beyond me.

Benjamin Franklin wrote:   "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  Thus, the benefit of constitutionally limited government should be readily apparent.  And yet we have an army of Krugmans out there, professing that exactly the opposite is true.

As we near the expiration of the oft-maligned "Bush Tax Cuts", I am reminded of one of my axioms for civilization:

Taxation should not be used as a tool for coercion.

Never have I found a case in contradiction of this rule.  Test any tax, proposed or enacted, against that.  Will it serve a purpose with rational basis, or is it a punitive tool by which the government seeks to alter your personal decisions?  Examples:

• Soft drinks taxed, because "they make kids fat."  You're making the wrong choices for yourself.  Watch out for that trans-fat, too.
• Carbon taxed, because of "purported environmental damage" based on dubious scientific claims from Al Gore.
• Tobacco taxed at ludicrous levels of 400% or more, because of "increased costs of the resulting healthcare needs."  Oh, and by the way, government just assumed responsibility for administering your health care.  Conflict of interest, anyone?
• Ammunition taxed because, well, "it's for guns, and of course, they're just bad."  Only the government has a need for weapons, pal.
• Gasoline taxed, "to pay for infrastructure development" that never actually happens.  Oh yeah, they spent that money on a boatload of other budgetary pork.  Sorry.

Now, since all the taxes in place still aren't enough to feed the gigantic bureaucratic monster's hunger, California is mulling handing out IOUs again.  Isn't that just wonderful.