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DesideriScuri -> RE: General Ideas for a Tax System (5/17/2013 12:21:33 PM)
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ORIGINAL: SpanishMatMaster
Hello again, DesideriScuri.
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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
Your example was nuclear (...) my disagreement was specific to the power companies (...) I think you'll find more of that inelasticity than you might think. At least in the US. Well, my example was an example of an extreme situation on the aspect, that it is extremely hard to cover the "damage done", it was not meant as typical example. And my principles are not limited to the US and may admit exceptions :) that's why they are general ideas.
However...
In this example, I think there are two obvious breaks of the inelastic monopoly, also in the US... nuclear energy is not the only form of energy... and consuming less energy is definitely an option. Plus, my argument on developing technologies which help a company to take better care of its waste definitely apply (however, this can be a complex subject to handle and maybe I must expose much more for anybody to understand).
I don't disagree that nuclear is but one method of power generation. However, in the US, I'm going to go out on a limb and state - without any citations or proofs, or even having ever looked it up - that the vast majority of nuclear power generators are owned by corporations that also own other forms of power generation. FirstEnergy (just my regional area, so that is the only one I have any idea about) owns several nuke plants along the S and SW shore of Lake Erie. The also own coal plants, nat. gas plants, etc. So, taxing nukes is still going to hit the customers who are still going to be heavily reliant on FE for power.
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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
Actually, I disagree. Well, I disagree with you, sorry. This being an exposition of general ideas, I think that the concept of "property" is clear enough. If that helps I can write "capital owned by the subject being taxed". If this is still not enough - sorry, I will not enter here in a discussion on the nature of property or *ALL* its different forms. No way. Another thread, maybe.
Then why mention it? "Property" encompasses so many different things that there can't be any real discussion on it without fleshing out what is property.
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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
We can agree that taxing a negative is better than taxing a positive, but that's almost so general it's not even necessary to state. Would not say so, looking at how frequently positives are taxed, from profit to building a company, from getting a job to renew a permission, from getting a guilty man imprisoned to building a house.
In the US, there wouldn't be enough "negatives" to tax. Tax cigarettes and use those taxes to support anti-smoking campaigns, and other things. When the "other things" rise in price, the campaigns rise in price, and the amount brought in declines due to the effectiveness of the tax, what happens? They increase the taxes so as to continue the funding. They don't care about ending the negative behavior. It's all about the money.
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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
1. Democratically decide? Tyranny of the majority at the expense of the minority. 50%+1 does not provide for everyone being equal. You are only equal if you are on the "correct" side. In some moment you decided that I understand consensus as 50%+1 and that I would like to disable all other guarantees of a modern democracy, including those established democratically by a wide consensus (precisely). I am standing here looking at my strawman while you punch it. But if you have problems with a real, modern democracy, I am sorry I consider them out of this topic, as they affect *much more* as the tax system, which is the matter of this thread IMHO.
Actually, you mentioned democratic consensus, which are not the same. 50%+1, as we both know, is direct democracy in action. Consensus will never be established on pretty much anything like this. You did drop the "consensus" portion, which is why I simply asked about the democratic results.
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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
2. What is the difference between "tax only what we want to discourage" and "tax everything we want to discourage?" Did you err here, or am I simply not seeing the difference?
You are not seeing that in the first case there can be things we want to discourage, but we do not tax, and in the second, there cannot be such things.
If we want to discourage something and are taxing the things that we want to discourage, why are we not taxing everything we want to discourage? Who gets to decide what negative things get taxed and what negative things don't?
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Tax only what we want to discourage = Do not tax something, if we do not want to discourage it = If (x) is not to be discouraged THEN do not tax (x) => no-p implies no-q (which I said)
Tax everything we want to discourage = If something is to be discouraged, then tax it = If (x) is to be discouraged THEN tax (x) => p implies q (which I did not say)
( (no-p implies no-q) does not imply (p implies q) ) for the same reason that ( (p implies q) does not imply (no-p implies no-q) ).
Do you know first-order logic?
I said: Vx|x€{y|tax(y)} => discourage(x)
You translated: Vx|x€{y|discourage(y)} => tax(x)
Best regards!
I understand logic, but not in the symbolic manner you have just put it. Sorry. I'm just not getting that.
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