So my idea here is to give some perspective into the ideas of monetary reform by relating it to a reset in earth. I introduce a dilemma and make 3 suggestions on how to resolve it. There are obviously more than 3, and likely a near infinite amount, but I feel that these three cover a large amount of ground. Please participate and make suggestions, and most of all, choices!


First off, you are born into life not at the beginning but at a random time in the middle. We will begin our new country (our life) in the middle of a reset. Some countries are obviously massive in comparison to yourself and they generate an incredible amount more income. In reality, you could have a degree and be earning $50,000 annually while this other country is earning $1,000,000,000.

There are 1000 countries in this reset. Everyone has about 2,000 acres while the top 1%, 10 countries, (chalk it up to incredible skill or more likely inheritance and economic advantage from the start such as an alliance tag) have 20,000 acres. The top .1%, 1 country, has 200,000 acres. Combined, the top 1% produce 60% of the revenue/production in the reset and the largest country produces over 30% alone.


Vast farming is taking place. The smaller countries, 99%, are at a large disadvantage. The options are:

1. Kill the larger countries, this in reality would constitute world war and likely lead to a new elite rather than equality.

2. Continue being farmed with out retaliation or change and acceptance of their position within the reset.

3. A linear tax rate that decreased the revenue/production advantage of the top 1% but, unlike communism, did not ruin the motivation of individual countries to produce more.




Here is a description of a linear taxrate:

Income		Take Home	Taxes		Effective Taxrate
0		0.00		0		0.0%
30000		30000.00	0		0.0%
50000		50000.00	0		0.0%
80000		80000.00	0		0.0%
100000		100000.00	0		0.0%
130000		120700.00	9300.00		7.2%
200000		166666.67	33333.33	16.7%
300000		226666.67	73333.33	24.4%
500000		326666.67	173333.33	34.7%
800000		426666.67	373333.33	46.7%
1000000		460000.00	540000.00	54.0%
2000000		560000.00	1440000.00	72.0%
10000000	1360000.00	8640000.00	86.4%
42000000	4560000.00	37440000.00	89.1%
100000000	10360000.00	89640000.00	89.6%
1000000000	100360000.00	899640000.00	90.0%

What this changes is the amount of land people will grab to. This change means that a larger country will not scale up in stocking capability linearly, and therefore discourages growing a country's land size beyond a certain point when stocking would become a better option.

This has the side-benefit of discouraging land-trading, and improves the odds of all-explorers being more effective in the relative sense.

However, the con is that the effective tax rate has to be calculated and reevaluated every time there is a new ruleset change because the effective tax rate may no longer make sense if there is a new formula for say PCI, or food production.

It also makes deciding when to stop grabbing a much harder calculation.

In a way, there is already a current mechanic that is in effect that is similar to the proposed non-linear taxes, and that is the military upkeep. Military upkeep is non-linear, increasing further with higher NW.

i think there wouldn't be any bottom feeding if the majority of players actually took the time to learn how to net.

I like Žižek's conception of a surplus wage, here:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/...-the-salaried-bourgeoisie

Your linear tax system preserves that concept, so the elements of social life that currently prop up capitalism would still make it work. You just have to deal with the super rich, but many of them can still participate in oligarchy through corporate entities / industry lobbies.

I sense lemmings . . . lots of lemmings - marching towards glory with their little lemming helmets glistening in the sun

i would go all jet and start top feeding the 1%

I am not sure what participation you want other than that I choose #1

I apologize for the poor grammar I used in the original post. Also, for my laziness in making the necessary corrections.

Certainly no one would suffer taking home $100 million when they could be taking home a billion instead. But you know better than to think that they would WANT to settle for 10% of their possible income. And if they're as big as that, they aren't going to let everyone else dictate how much they're taking home, either.

All the crying that goes on when someone gets topfeed kinda proves no one wants to give up what they have. I have never seen anyone come on here and say hey dude great topfeed on my country I hope it helps your cause and mean it when they say it.

So if you make 1b a year you should only get to keep 100 million? That seems messed up if you ask me. What is the motivation to even make that much money then?

This might be communism 2.0, but I might suggest that that might not be a bad thing. If someone doesn't have the motivation to get that big, rich, or powerful, then they won't... and (theoretically) the smaller countries/people will have a better chance at moving on with their lives without outside interference. Maybe.

(Please don't flame me, just tell me where my theory is mistaken and I'll revise it. Thank you.)

"People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off"

On a different point, why should anyone need a motivation to make that much money? Why do we as a society value people who have insatiable greed?

.....People invest to make money....
.....why should anyone need a motivation to make that much money?

Well duh!!! They need it to invest!

Rinse.
Repeat.

Well, most of the richest people in the world regularly donate to charity anyhow. Consider it a form of "taxes".

But they don't donate 90% of their income typically...

Detmer: Yes, I was hoping people would pick a scenario number. My choice in-game is 1 but in reality my choice is 3 as I do not wish for real class war.

BTW, If we raised taxes like suggested we would have the money to be a goal oriented society; we could colonize mars and the moon and begin startrek like aims for humanity. Why did we go to the moon in the 60s but have not had another manned mission since? Cost.

PEELLOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

come play with me!

http://xkcd.com/893/

because it was all a hoax, because it was a sham... ever thing about the many missions to the international space station?. they all know the planet is in its final days.. they are setting upthe final plantation of live, the next world.... the world is ending.

all unite, grab your family, and unite to overtake the last ship, on its last mission....save yourselves

the only way i would ever agree to pay a 90% tax rate on 1b salary is if when i logged on to turbotax and entered my w-2 my tax return comes in around 500m.

So you think it is right for someone to pay 90% taxes? Socialism has never worked in society either.

If someone produces enough goods or services to actually make 1 billion dollars then they are likely putting lots of people to work, etc... Making money is not a bad thing. Expecting someone to pay 90% of what they make because they are "greedy" is a bad thing in my mind. I'm telling you if you take the motivation away from society, i.e. giving everyone a safety net because you take money from others and share it with everyone else then you'll end up with a large number of people who have no motivation then to just get by and accept the social programs/ hand outs and live their life.

I'd rather see someone donate money than being forced to pay it in taxes because the government cannot manage money very well and they waste most of the money they get. Private charities do a much much much better job at actually putting the money they receive to people who need it. I've saw it first hand with a charaity that I've worked with.

Socialism works just fine. A progressive tax rate is a form of socialism and US history has shown that a more progressive tax rate has been very good for the economy even.



The rich don't make a lot in goods/services... they inherit a lot of money or siphon it off from the banks and then invest it. The exceptions are few and far between so it is improbable they are creating many jobs. As any CEO will admit, his priority is the bottom line and if he can improve that by eliminating every employee other than himself, he will. Speaking of no motivation - read the mincome thread that qz posted... a four year study that empirically showed that by giving everyone a minimum livable wage, everyone kept working.



Well, Clinton manged money very well... I find it tends to be the people with R's next to their names who don't manage money well in the government. Some charities are terrible and some are absolutely excellent. There is a reason you can get tax deductions by giving to charity... I'd rather people give to taxes though because that is a predictable, plannable thing.

So you rather people donate; so maybe we should just make a mandatory progressive donation amount? either to the government or to selected programs?

Detmer:

1. Where has socialism worked fine? Socialism has been a failure through the history of man kind.
2. That's not entirely accurate. Some people do inherit lot of money but most do not. Even at that why is inheriting money bad? Someone else in your family had to earn it... It doesn't come from nowhere. So if your father made a fortune he cannot pass it to his kids, you? You see that as a bad thing and should be punished because the government knows how to spend your money better than you do?

Also the rich do make a lot in goods and services. Have you ever been hired by a poor man? Ever dollar someone spends either keeps someone in business or gives someone else a job to compete for that dollar.

A CEO will eliminate workers that are not needed. Business is competitive and in order to remain competitive you have to, sometimes, re-structure. Sometimes that involves laying off workers but other times it involves adding more workers. If we make it easier to do business in America rather than harder I think it would have more of an impact on our economy rather than making it more difficult/expensive. Likewise if the CEO doesn't run his company effectively he will be fired by the board. Even the CEO is not immune.

Motivation is in human nature. Human nature, at least from my observations, is that if something is given to you why do more than the basic requirement. In other words if I can make a comfortable income being a garbage man vs. a Doctor (which is a very demanding job on time, skill, and stress) where is the motivation to take on so much more responsibility for no real difference in income?
3. All government poorly manages money, especially Obama. Have you even saw how he has spent money? Want to know the difference between a good charity and a bad one? When people find they are bad they will quit giving them money and give to one that is better... Thus competition will lead to better allocation and use for the needy. Government requires non-profits to hold a certain % of their donations in overhead however the government has crippling overhead costs and do little to manage them.

I'd rather see a candidate with good conservative values. The Republican or Democrat debate is a moot point because I don't care what party the are in if they do a bad job they do a bad job regardless.

If you're trying to say the government spends money better you're just flat out wrong.

I'd like to see a more conservative president like Regan.

I want to harp back on this point. How many of those commenting about increasing taxes have ever worked in the government bureaucracy before? And I don't mean those actually providing a service such as defense, first responders, etc.

I begrudingly admit to having done so for four years and was amazed at how inefficient they were. These are the people who complained when I attempted to make digital records of MOUs and contracts because it would "make some of our jobs useless." Bureaucracies don't value efficiency or bottom lines, they're like feifdoms where the goal is to spend as much as possible at the end of the fiscal year to gain more money in the next fiscal year.

Additionally, providing a disincentive to invest or live in a region will ultimately lead those with the capital to leave. Why would you do reside/open a business/etc in a state or country that punishes your success? It's antithetical.

I already gave you an example...



I never said inheriting money is a bad thing. I am saying that people with a lot of money are not creating a lot of jobs.




Yes I have been hired by a poor man... have you ever worked for a small business?



Employees get laid off to be replaced by machines, computers and outsourcing. The rate at which American jobs are removed to increase the bottom line and get the CEO a raise has far outstripped the rate at which new jobs are created.




Well the data from the mincome experiment shows differently than your anecdotal experiences, but regardless of that no one is proposing all incomes be equal and disallowing people to get ahead... do you know the difference between socialism and communism or are they just inextricably linked in your mind even if you rationally know the difference?



Yes I have - the economy has been stimulated - great use of money.



Did you know that college football bowls count as charities? Feed the Children is a terrible charity and still gets tons of money. Many people don't pay any attention to the quality of a charity that give to.



Reagan was terrible for this country. Thankfully Clinton was able to save the economy. Reagan was also a diplomatic disaster, unlike Clinton.

oh btw, studies show that conservatives are more likely to have premarital sex, affairs and get divorced than liberals. Good conservative values there.

I would like to see a candidate who cares about the American people. I want our domestic short comings handled and I want our freedoms preserved. I am tired of right-wing crap like the Patriot Act. I am tired of special interests dominating politics, leaving the majority of Americans out to dry.

1. The US is not an example of socialism, we are an example of how much good capitalism can do.

2. You're saying that it is bad because you want to take from people who earn it and give it to someone else who didn't earn it. People with a lot of money also spend a lot of money. When someone spends money that creates jobs. Even if that rich person is not a business person per se they still impact a lot. So even if that evil rich person doesn't own a business they do indeed help create a lot of jobs.

3. Machines and computers taking over jobs that people used to do is a fact. Outsourcing is a problem, want to know one way to fix that? Make doing business in America easier not harder. With technology we've shifted to more of a service providing country rather than a manufacturing country. I'd like to see American manufacturing come back want to see that happen? Read above.

4. Let's see some of the ways he has spent money:
- 36 million dollars
- U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers
http://www.informationweek.com/...soa_webservices/226500202

- 849 million dollars
- Of the $1.05 billion in clean energy grants awarded by D.C., $849 million -- 84 percent -- went to foreign wind companies
http://www.ourfuture.org/...timulus-windmills-already

Obama also promised that if we spend all this money unemployment would not go above 8%. Currently our unemployment rate is at 8.3% but the BLS does not include people who quit looking for jobs and people who are underemployed. That number is far higher.

5. Reagan lowered taxes, which increased revenue for the government. He also created 15 million jobs and unemployment went from 7.1% to 5.5%.

1) Socialism and capitalism are not mutually exclusive ideas and our tax code amongst other things we do in this country as socialistic.

2) People with a lot of money do not spend a lot of money. Sure, they spend a lot compared to you or me, but for every dollar I get I spend at least 90 cents just because of bare minimum living costs. For every dollar they get they spend a few cents. Money they get is effectively removed from the system.

3) How do you make doing business in America easier? How does that stop outsourcing. Outsourcing is done because a livable wage in some third world country is much cheaper than a livable wage in America. Until we drop the American standard of living to third world standards it will always be cheaper to outsource.
American manufacturing is necessary. Problem is that if people are going to work in factories you have to pay them and that is the same problem as outsourcing.

4) "A strong, broad Buy American clause in the stimulus bill could have prevented the off-shoring of U.S. tax dollars intended to create jobs for unemployed Americans. My union, the United Steelworkers, and the AFL-CIO pushed hard for that language, and polls showed 86 percent of Americans supported it. Republicans and lobbyists for multi-national corporations that wanted to spend U.S. tax money overseas opposed Buy American provisions."

Damn unions!... Too bad conservatives got in the way of sensible investment in America.

All of the stimulus money has not quite been spent yet and lo and behold we are almost back below the 8% threshold. The rate of new job increases has been increasing, so it looks like the economy is actually get back to where he has intended...

5) http://www.bloomberg.com/...we-should-too-echoes.html

We had more resources and fewer siphons of American money overseas back then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/...g_U.S._presidential_terms

Reagan's job creation rate is nothing special when compared to his predecessors...

the marginal tax rate are fine, the problem is that rich people never end up paying the actual rate.

I've read figures of ~51% of Americans pay no federal income tax while the top 10% pays ~71% of the Federal income tax.

How about making doing business outside America/(nations with actually good human rights) harder? tariffs perhaps? Free trade has been bad for america.

That, in my mind, plays along with making business easier in America. Give business an incentive to do business here rather than outsourcing. I want nothing more than for Americans to buy American goods!

We deff need to focus on more exports and less imports I agree with that.

Also of note, the Nationals finished 80-81 last year therefore the stimulus dollars must have worked!

Seriously, do you believe the stimulus dollars are why the unemployment rate is where it is?

I ask because I recall dealing with the ARRA funds attached to state budgeting and watching as it basically helped state legislators build a bigger cliff to fall off of two years down the road. In some cases the strings attached required consistent higher budgets into the foreseeable future. It really wasn't much help except in prolonging the time until a deeper pain hit. And the question was (and remains) are what cost to the taxpayer?

Why do you think free trade has been bad for America?

Do you mean other than the jobs that have been outsourced?

Out sourcing and free trade arent the entire problem, they should have been implemented with requirements for direct foreign investment in USA as well. FOr example, for every 1 billion of imports you must invest 20% or 40% of production in the domestic USA. Maintain a fair balance of trade.
A secondary clause could have been that the trade pact is void, if the workers are not giving a fair standard of wage that is comparable to the USA. (IE not allowing poor countrys and their effective slave labour policies)

http://www.forbes.com/...ssary-pain-of-free-trade/

If you don't think the applecart has to be upset some for times to change then I probably can't help you.

Heh yes, I'm not saying that free trade isn't good for the WORLD economy, or for other countries; free trade is, however, bad for countries that are ahead of the average in standard of living and wage. Free trade is a great way to drive the world towards a middle ground.

Which is awesome if you live in SEA or africa; but very bad if you live in america/western europe

Requium: You clearly need to read a book on socialism and realize that it is not communism and also that it is not mutually exclusive of capitalism. See Sweden, Iceland, most of Europe and 1930-1960s United States. Looking back over the last 80 years, the US tax rate has been much higher. We are not introducing new ideas here but merely reintroducing old ones. This is the definition of conservatism; maintaining things the way in which they were. You are the liberal here.

Trumper: The notion that a government institution is inefficient and clogged with bureaucracy is a reflection of the state of the system. The fact that it is government does not make it inefficient. From my perspective we have huge lobbying groups, the number in the tens of thousands, contributing millions of dollars daily to sway politicians who create the mandates under which these government organizations work. If we were to separate and make these lobbying groups illegal then we would make a great bit of headway in the way of efficiency.

Let me illustrate what I am saying once more. The Government is one boy on the playground. The lobbyists are several other boys on the playground. They beat the government up and steal his lunch making him late to classes and detriment his performance. You as the observers call the government lazy.

qzjul: In terms of the environment in continents such as Africa, the force of globalism is devastating. It brings jobs with a complete disregard for those working them. See the term 'monetary slavery' or look up suicide rates and suicide preventative measures in China.

Yes, but it's stimulating their economies =/ which is what trumper was talking about.

I remember some math lab which proved that according to matlab, infinity is infact closer to about 14.

Let me work backwards here. For starters, have you heard the famous quote attributed to Sen. Russell Long? "Don't tax me, don't tax you, tax that fellow behind the tree!" That's where your lobbyists come in. During one legislative session (state, not federal), I watched as a group of legislative leadership continually changed who would be applicable for a new service sales tax. Each time they picked a given industry (landscapers for instance), they met stiff resistance. That is, until they found the industry without a lobbying advocate and then guess who was taxed? The point of this story is that my experience is that lobbyists spent the vast majority of their time defending their interests rather than beating someone up (and to that point, everyone hates lobbyists but loves their own personal interest's advocates).

The notion that the government is inefficient is a reflection of bureaucracy. Frankly, large corporate institutions also tend to be layered with bureaucracy and lose their efficiency as well. The difference is that when a large corporation loses too much efficiency then their prices go up and a competitor knocks them off the ledge. Hence they tend to be slightly better than the government. The government bureaucracy has no contenders except other parts of the bureaucratic cog ergo it is a race to the top of spending, scope of control/regulation, and size.

Imagine your guranteed income scenarios except you have a guranteed job, guranteed minimum spending level and guranteed minimum amount of turf you control. So you can rest on your laurels or you can try to get more. This leads you down the path of the two most prevalent bureaucratic types--those who do nothing and those who say spend more, more regulation, etc etc. There are rare exceptions (what I call true belivers), but these people tend to become so tired of the bureaucracy that they don't rise through the ranks.

The idea behind guaranteed minimum income wasn't to set it at a level where everybody can sit around and buy a mercedes... the idea is to make the ultra-poor have enough money to buy medication they need, and sleep in a heated apartment rather than on the streets, and perhaps be able to afford something as cheap as kraft dinner; so that they can live a minimal existence while attempting to get their lives back together.

The point of it though, is that it *saves* a TON of money because letting health conditions go untreated costs MUCH more in the long run -- it's very inefficient; people living on the streets causes health problems -- again inefficient; homeless shelters are all very well and good, but when people end up in those situations they become desperate, and many either get into or get back into, or can't get out of things like drug habits -- again inefficient; sending people to prison ALSO costs a fortune, just providing them with an income to prevent crime would be much more efficient, as you don't have to fund such a huge prison system or police state.




Government can be inefficient, but the point of government is to do things that private individuals or corporations *won't* do on their own -- for example, infrastructure; I don't think any infrastructure SHOULDN'T be either directly controlled by or HEAVILY REGULATED by government; as it's inefficient to have two companies building out cell towers all over the Canadian north for example - and in the current private world it just doesn't happen.



I'm not arguing that government *IS* efficient -- more that it's purpose is to do things that private corporations wouldn't.


If you're so into no-government scenarios, why don't you privatize the military?

Because you know what is even more fun than saving money? Watching people suffer!

http://www.aljazeera.com/...02/20122211512821931.html






Because something that some of the conservatives in power know is that with that last step of privatization to complete their lunatic utopia is that everything breaks down and people start killing each other and all of a sudden all these laws they have had created to preserve their power fall apart. All of a sudden assassinating your buddy is the best way to get more wealth and to preserve your life in turn.

Go back to basics. -->Education

Its the only cure

Education is only one of many issues that need to be solved, and probably not the most important one in the domestic sphere (the international competition on intelligence is a different story). Still, it would be nice to see a quality education system in the US. That said, people have tried, and the bureaucracy and standardization involved have made matters worse rather than better in many instances.

*By dismissing standardization, I am not implying that we should let some schools fall behind others overall. I am saying that standardization does not take individual circumstances into account--by definition it literally can't do that. For instance, I am a history major in college, yet I have to take a GRE to get into grad school that is more than 33% math based. I haven't used any math above multiplication and division since graduating high school, and I certainly haven't used that math for my major. Tell me why my chances of getting into grad school are based in large part on a skill I have rarely needed and certainly haven't used?

You have to break out of your box and realize everything the other guy says isn't always wrong. For instance, you're quick to blame Bush for economic woes and you turn praising Clinton. Who do you think were running all those hedge funds trading the subprimses? Or where those derivative market regulations began? Hint, it wasn't under Bush. There are positives and negatives on both sides of the aisle.