A thread to take the anti-pro libertarian discussion into a more practical realm.
What laws and taxes could we get rid off?
If we take it form this end (and not go all the way at first step) there would probably some agreement on the first few. Lets see how far we can get, and when the first disagreement comes.
I could do without the increasing amount of laws that cover our security: (some: ok. Not this many) Example we have had a fire in a discothèque at new years eve a few years ago. A lot of people were badly injured because of the Christmas decorations (real green branches on the ceiling). Now real Christmas trees are forbidden in public buildings.
Schools can’t have Christmas trees anymore. Curtains in classrooms are forbidden etc. (you can have them if you impregnate them which costs a lot) Al these laws are there to make sure there will never be an accident anymore. Life isn’t that make-able.
Our kids can’t even have a campfire at the boy-scout camps anymore. (or pay a lot for a license that sometimes for no good reason is not given at all)
Should seatbelts be obligatory? (They are here (Netherlands) are they in the US?) Isn't that a regulation for insurance companies instead of the governement? (not sure about this)
Netherlands isn't a very libertarian country: (we almost had a libertarian-gay prime minister. Pim Fortuyn. He was shot by an animal rights activist who was afraid the law against fir coats could be abolished)
health-insurance is obligatory (though now in the hands of private companies, yes, with a lot of restrictions for these companies No-one can be denied for exapmple.
As I said earlier: to fire someone you need a license. (with the employment-agency acting as a judge)
Companies over 30 employees have to have an employee-participation council. That is alowed to advise on important business decisions.
so much for here. What tax or what law could the US do without?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I think seatbelts should be mandatory to have in cars and to wear.
It's harder for me to think of specific taxes and laws that I'd do away with, though there is a lot of spending that I could do away with that I think would naturally result in lower taxes.
Capital gains taxes never made much sense to me. You make money, invest that money, and then get taxed on the money you make off of the money you've already been taxed on? Same thing with the tax on interest. I guess you could make the same argument with sales tax, but I don't see any way around a sales tax, since that's the primary source of funding for a lot of state governments. More and more lately I find myself being pushed towards more independence for state governments, based mostly on the inability of the Federal government to do much of anything that's meaningful. States seem to be getting more done by themselves or by working with each other.
One big thing that probably kills my Liberal cred, is I think social security should be dramatically cut. I think current payments should slowly be tapered off, the tax should be dramatically reduced, and should instead work as a sort of matching funds program, where a pool of tax dollars would be available for matching funds if you invest your money in a 401K or something similar. If you take that money out before retirement, you forfeit the matching funds. The government social security fund has been horribly mismanaged, and my regular bank account gets a higher yield than they do. I think matching funds is a great way to incentivize savings so people still save for retirement, but without expecting the government to be there for them to live off of in their golden years. People need to take charge of their own lives if they wish to retire. Far too many people aren't saving for retirement, with the expectation that social security will be their sole source of income one day. That's not tenable in the long term anyway. Cut the tax, give people their money to invest as they will, and incentivize savings, and I think you'll get a system where people get better long term returns, and give more serious thought to long term planning than they do now.
Posted by Shigosei (Member # 3831) on :
What about people who end up on social security due to disability and didn't have the chance to pay in enough to live on?
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
boot: it would be easier to list the laws we want to keep than to list the laws we want to get rid of.
Lyr: You'd keep seatbelt laws because you're not a libertarian. You don't believe in the individual's right to govern their own life. You think society knows better.
A big reason people don't save for retirement is the government takes the money they WOULD save. Then, once people are old, they have to ask the government to give it back. And, if you're my age, you probably won't get it back.
But other than that, you're right. People stupidly think that the government will take care of them and so they simply don't save. Thing is, though, if you count on someone else, especially the government, you WILL be let down.
Posted by pH (Member # 1350) on :
I...totally agree with Pixiest on this one. And I'd really appreciate it if social security and the state would stop taking my money so that I could open an IRA. I don't understand why more people don't think ahead about retirement, but it's not the government's responsibility to hold their hands because they made poor investment choices.
-pH
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
What ph and the Pixiest are neglecting to consider here is that people's actions and mistakes don't only impact those people.
When someone doesn't wear a seatbelt and gets into what would have been a minor accident, they can be horribly injured. They're then taking up limited medical resources that become unavailable to others who could be using them, had the person worn a seatbelt.
They also can't drive their car away from the fender bender (as they're in an ambulance) so traffic backs up while a tow truck has to be called.
They aren't at work for a week while they recover from surgery, so their boss' business suffers...
Libertarian thinking doesn't work in the real world, because actions and consequences aren't reserved for only the person who makes the choices.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:What tax or what law could the US do without?
There's about a zillion of them. Most of it is nancy overregulation that doesn't actually do much other than waste money and bureaucratize systems that are perfectly well managed by individuals and private institutions. Of course, there's plenty of laws and institutions that it would be stupid to get rid of (public roads! public schools! FAA! SEC! public police! fire departments!), and the most adamant deregulators are not discriminatory in their zeal to axe down government. So they fail and drag the average LP dude or dudette with them into a netherworld of irrelevance.
But that's just really too bad because they otherwise would be a big help in curtailing gobbarment stupidity! The stuff you're talking about is that stuff that really I just find profoundly stupid. Have christmas trees. Let the boy scouts build bonfires, honestly.
And honestly I want all homeowners associations (HOA's) to be abolished. They are the absolute worst new trend in terms of how people's lives are getting micromanaged. And, ironically, they are a consequence of leeway provided to private organizations.
Posted by pH (Member # 1350) on :
The fact that consequences aren't always reserved for the person who makes the choices doesn't excuse the individual of personal responsibility.
If there's one area in which our country is seriously lacking, it's a sense of personal responsibility. Of course, two years working on the economic development of New Orleans gives me a somewhat unique perspective on that subject.
-pH
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
I'm fine with "for your own good" safety laws for kids, because it's not their fault when they have stupid parents who don't teach them about safety and responsibility. So I'm fine with laws requiring a minimum level of safety - car seats when they're small, helmets when you're on a bike, no smoking or alcohol until they reach a certain level of majority, etc. However, I do think the drinking age in the US is absolutely insane - half of the binge drinking problems in this nation are due to the fact that kids don't learn how to responsibly handle alcohol.
How about the American War on Drugs? Can we all agree that the gov't protecting you from weed is pretty stupid? And generally, I dislike prescriptions for most medications. I mean, sure, let your insurance company require a doctor's prescription if you want to charge them for part of the cost. I'm on Coumadin (a blood thinner) for life, and I have to get a prescription every freaking time I run out of pills or need to adjust my dosage. They sell this stuff freely in large dosages as rat poison, but I can't get little 1mg tablets without a doctor's permission.
Posted by Amanecer (Member # 4068) on :
quote:A big reason people don't save for retirement is the government takes the money they WOULD save.
I think this is false and there's absolutely nothing to back it up. People, in general, are a lot more concerned about the here and now then they are about the future. This is supported by the fact that the average household carries $8,000 in credit card debt and has a negative savings. If people are not forced to save for retirement, there are a great many people who will save nothing or extremely little.
I don't think that people have an innate right to retire. If they are physically and mentally able to work, I don't see why the government should be sending them money. However, a great many retirees are NOT physically and mentally able to work and they don't have any money to support themselves. Given the reality that a great many people will not take care of their own retirement and a desire to not have our elderly starve, what is a better solution than some sort of government aid? Lyrhawn's idea of government matching strikes me as a good idea, although I think that people should be required to put *something* in to savings for retirement.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Can we all agree that the gov't protecting you from weed is pretty stupid?
The answer to that is obviously no -- not everybody agrees with that.
quote:You'd keep seatbelt laws because you're not a libertarian. You don't believe in the individual's right to govern their own life. You think society knows better.
And, in this specific instance, he's right.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:If there's one area in which our country is seriously lacking, it's a sense of personal responsibility.
Yeah. Somebody should do something about that! Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Amancer: Personally, I would have additional savings topping 6 digits if the government hadn't stolen so much from me.
But you (and Lyr) are right in that there is an awful lot of fiscal stupidity out there (and they vote... for fiscally stupid people.)
If They Do Not Plan For Retirement, Let Them Never Retire. In the days before Social Security, people saved and had kids to take care of them in their old age. Kids were an investment. Now they think they NEED a cellphone and a big screen tv and a new SUV and all sorts of inane luxuries. They don't save, They don't have kids. They spend themselves into debt and stay here.
If they rue those decisions in their old age, I have NO pity. It's not like they weren't warned. To bail them out is to encourage another generation to live in the now (as you say) and not plan ahead.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Gee. Should have had kids. My own fault though. I could have gotten knocked up, I suppose. Too bad, though, for people who couldn't have kids.
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
ph: I'm not talking about personal responsibility, I'm talking about the real world trade off.
The choice isn't: 1)Be forced to wear a seatbelt OR 2)Take personal responsibility for your own safety.
That's the choice on paper, and in that regard it sounds like a simple choice.
In the real world, the choice is more like: 1)Be forced to wear a seatbelt OR 2)someone who has a stroke has to wait an extra 20 minutes for an ambulance because the nearest one is helping a bloody guy on the highway who wasn't wearing a seatbelt, so the person who had a stroke is permanently paralyzed on one side of his body.
Seems like a much better case for making everyone wear a seatbelt.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:In the days before Social Security, people saved and had kids to take care of them in their old age. Kids were an investment. Now they think they NEED a cellphone and a big screen tv and a new SUV and all sorts of inane luxuries. They don't save, They don't have kids. They spend themselves into debt and stay here.
If they rue those decisions in their old age, I have NO pity.
Neither do i, because 100% of people who are poor when they get old are poor because they didn't save and bought inane luxuries, and 100% of people who have kids ('kids' aka'd as 'pre-packaged retirement care drones') can expect to be taken care of by them when they grow old. Since this is always the case always no matter what, only people undeserving of pity are too poor to retire!
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
kmboots, I think it's pretty clear that Pixiest wasn't saying that you have to have kids to have a secure future, and I think it's rather disingenuous to imply otherwise. You can use the freed up income you didn't have to spend on children growing up to invest for your future retirement.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Sigh. My point is the rather obvious one; that not everyone has the same opportunities or abilities to save or plan for whatever might happen to them in the future. Is there pity available for someone who has planned and saved and has his or her savings wiped out by illness. Or should they have taken better care of themselves? What about people who think that they have pensions until somebody higher up runs off with the pension fund? How about people who aren't really able to make the best decision?
Libertarian ideals are all well and good, but they assume that we are all equally capable (or that people who aren't are less deserving of a decent life) and that bad things only happen to people who somehow deserve bad things.
And this just isn't true. We don't have that much control over our lives. Often, bad things happen, devastating things even that are not the fault of the victim. That, sometimes, aren't anybody's fault.
And where do children fall into this ideal? Do we have pity for the children of people who have made bad choices? After all they are impacted, too.
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
I'm not well-enough versed in Libertarian thought to make a sweeping generalization, but from what I've seen lately, it seems to have a large element of being entirely self-centered and everyone else can suck a duck.
I don't know if that's intentional, but that's how it often sounds.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Boots: That's what charities are for. For people who are in a bad spot through no fault of their own.
Those people are in the minority. I see people around me every day with no savings who fritter their money away on JUNK and live in debt. When they get old, assuming SocSec isn't bankrupt (which is a big assumption) the government will just cut them a check.
I live within my means. I save prolifically and I have contengency plans for when things go awry.
I *have* had my savings wiped out by illness. I HAVE spent longer than I care to admit unemployeed. But I have savings now. And not bad savings given my age and the fact I'm chronically underpaid for what I do.
If I can do it, anyone can. But they have to stop throwing their money away.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
MC: Uh.. what's more self centered.. relying on yourself or demanding everyone play your stupid little money shuffling games?
Or are you trolling?
(Here I go.. posting angry... sorry guys...)
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:If I can do it, anyone can.
Sure, and you can have it all wiped out tomorrow. Boom, get hit by a drunk driver. Trip and fall down a flight of stairs. Have your health insurance divest itself of as much of the cost as possible and force you to fight it. Then you lose, just like others I've watched lose, even when they're in situations better than yours, who've never had their savings interrupted by illness or unemployment. If they can do it, anyone can.
Anecdote won't carry you through this. A social policy based on "I expect ANYONE to be able to manage as well as I have" is bound to fail, because it's not true, never has been.
Posted by Elmer's Glue (Member # 9313) on :
We shouldn't be forced to wear a seat belt. We should be allowed to have a campfire. We can't even have a fire ON THE BEACH. There shouldn't be an estate tax.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Don't be angry.
There are good arguments to be made as to whether or not the government is a good mechanism for helping people. But the statement that "if [you] can do it, anyone can" is just not true. You are a very capable, intelligent person - not everyone is. Whether through accident or illness, bad breaks or just the bad luck of being less capable and intelligent, not just anybody can. That doesn't make them so much less deserving that they should have to sleep in doorways and beg for food.
Again, please don't be angry. I don't think that you are any kind of "bad" for holding your views. I remember when mine were much the same.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
[quote]Neither do i, because 100% of people who are poor when they get old are poor because they didn't save and bought inane luxuries, and 100% of people who have kids ('kids' aka'd as 'pre-packaged retirement care drones') can expect to be taken care of by them when they grow old.[quote]
I hope this was a joke of some kind.
As for taxes you could get rid of, I think it makes more sense to ask what government expenditures you could get rid of. And then, start with the government expenditures that you yourself benefit from, or expect to benefit from. I don't believe I have a right to tell other people what they need, because I'm not in their shoes. But I can lead by example and argue against expenses that I don't need.
An example: My next door neighbor (an elderly woman) asked the town to replace several broken sidewalk tiles which had been heaved by tree roots. This was necessary because, although she could walk a little, she needed to be able to use the sidewalk to get her wheelchair around to the driveway when she went out.
The town replaced her sidewalk, and continued to replace the sidewalk (that was in perfect condition) all the way around the block, including in front of my house. I went to the town and told them not to replace the sidewalk in front of my house. But I never would have argued that they shouldn't replace my neighbor's sidewalk.
As for retirement, Social security was enacted at a time when the average life expectancy was much lower. Someone who retired at 65 was expected to live a couple of years in decline and then die. Nowadays people can retire at 65 and play golf for another 20 years. I personally have no intention of retiring simply because I'm a certain age. I've seen too many people forced into retirement who were productive, enjoyed their careers, and didn't want to retire (one of them was 84, and another was 73).
I'd say that in order to draw social security, you should have to demonstrate need. Just being 65 isn't enough. Then again, I'd reinstitute some of the benefits that used to exist, such as child support for someone that died while their children were minors, up to college age.
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: MC: Uh.. what's more self centered.. relying on yourself or demanding everyone play your stupid little money shuffling games?
I'd reword that as: What's more self centered: Thinking that everyone's choices and actions only have consequences in their personal life, or realizing that as members of a community, we all depend upon one another to a great extent - regardless of whether or not we want to - and as a result we should consider the larger picture?
You can claim to "rely on yourself" all you want to - but you don't. You rely on a lot of other people, and pretending that you don't have any responsibility to those people, or that you can do just fine without them doesn't make it so.
Stupid little money shuffling games make your concept of total self reliance possible. What you don't see is that as soon as the stupid little money shuffling games stopped, the framework which allows you to think you could get by on your own falls completely apart, and you're much worse off than if you have to pay some sad-panda taxes.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
Only some libertarians (or, as I prefer, classic liberals) believe that they don't have any responsibility for others. Many believe they do have responsibilities to others, but don't believe that those responsibilities require legislation or government intervention. Like charities, which were pointed out up thread. I know several libertarians (both little-l and big-L) who aren't rich, but donate 10% or more of their earning to charities. Abhi and I started donating a year after we graduated college (once we were stable financially ourselves). We donate to NGOs in India, not the local community, though, 'cause frankly I think they need it more in India. I'd donate more if we didn't get such a major slice of our income taken out every year by US taxes.
And MightyCow, I'd appreciate it if you found one professional economist who has shown that, should Social Security stop (which was the topic under discussion), "the framework which allows you to think you could get by on your own falls completely apart." I don't think that's true, especially considering that a significant number of economists don't expect social security to last more than a generation or two longer, anyways.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
To add on to two earlier things said: I'd support a repealing of the estate tax, but only if it was met with an equal cut in spending. Estate taxes strike me as wrong. The things you aquire in life and bequeath to your children are already taxed in many different ways. Granted, this is a tax on the wealthy, but it seems like a backdoor tax. Tax them up front if you're going to do it at all, and take more out of their payroll taxes, then let them invest the rest as they will without punishing them for it on the stock market in the form of capital gains taxes or when they die in the form of estate taxes so their children have to suffer even though in life they managed to accumulate and keep wealth.
It's talk like that that keeps me on probation at the secret liberal cabal that does not exist meetings. But I think taxes should be as up front as possible. I don't have a problem with big government expenditures, so long as they things they are spending money on are good for the country and are necessary, and I even like a number of major social programs that seemingly give hand outs to people, so long as they have a net gain benefit for the people as a whole. But I abhor giveaways to special interests of any kind, be they through farm subsidies or oil tax credits or what not.
I think the sentencing laws for the so called "war on drugs" need to be radically altered. I think small amounts of marijuana should be decriminalized/legalized, and those who are caught with heavier narcotics should get access to drug treatment facilities. If we spent what we spend on enforcement on treatment, we'd have fewer people in prison and few people addicted to drugs, and a lot less money flowing into the hands of cartels and warlords.
As for Social Security, okay, I think we could look at an exception for people with disabilities. The original reason the system was developed, to help starving and dying elderly people, is a laudable goal and for that matter shouldn't be dropped, but forcing everyone into this program is a bad way of doing it. I think it's fair to have a percentage of the collected money be set aside for those with disabilities to supplement whatever state, local or family help they already have to ease the burden.
All in all, I generally judge our national course of action to be one of prudence, frugality, reason, compassion, and fairness. Balancing those five things isn't always easy, but the effort to even try I think often results in far better results than otherwise would be gotten.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote: I think small amounts of marijuana should be decriminalized/legalized
If it became legal to have small amounts of marijuana, why should it still be illegal to have larger amounts?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
To be honest, I hadn't really thought a lot of that through, but in my head I was thinking about taxes really. If marijuana was decriminalized and legalized, I'd have to imagine that it would be regulated as heavily as the tobacco industry, and would also be taxed federally and statewide in much the same way, and therefore there'd be a lot of black market selling of marijuana from people growing it all in their back yards, and thus escaping taxes and thus breaking the law. I guess maybe larger amounts wouldn't be illegal, you'd just have to be licensed, but I'm not fixed on that one yet.
Posted by Elmer's Glue (Member # 9313) on :
We really just need to cut big spending.
So can we all agree that we should get rid of the estate/death tax?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Boots: That's what charities are for. For people who are in a bad spot through no fault of their own.
I'm deeply uncomfortable with this approach to dealing with poverty. The way I see things, absolute reliance on charities doesn't do much of anything to effectively deal with poverty.
That sort of thing has been tried before, the idea that there shouldn't be any sort of government institutions helping the desperately poor. Scope out some Dickens for a nearly worst-case scenario.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
quote:Originally posted by Elmer's Glue: We really just need to cut big spending.
So can we all agree that we should get rid of the estate/death tax?
Um, no.
Frankly, the enormous fortunes that shift hands are the closest thing America has to royalty (and the presumption that merit is carried along bloodlines.) Why on Earth should enormous amounts of capital be preserved in perpetuity in the hands of a fortunate few who don't necessarily have motive or ability to use it for anything other than living lives of decadence?
As presented here, libertarian thought seems to make two massive assumptions, neither one of which should ever have been taken as a given:
1. That people who end up in dire situations without the ability to care for themselves do so largely through their own mismanagement, and deserve to suffer their fate, and
2. That private charities can assist the tiny minority who suffer without the resources to care for themselves despite managing themselves decently.
It would also seem that based on 1 and 2 there's a third erroneous assumption at work:
3. Those who manage their own resources to the point of having an abudnace are possessing of other virtues that would certainly cause them to create whatever charitable enterprises were necessary to provide for the unfortunate.
And that's putting aside numerous assumptions of a sort of "closed system" where one's actions and reactions affect only oneself.
No one "makes it" on their own. Ask your parents.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
Stirling, I think the assumptions you listed are not neceassrily true of libertarian thought, but something some libertarians believe, but that most find as caricatures of their positions. I certainly don't believe any of the things you've stated, and I'd consider myself more closely aligned with libertarianism than any other political philosophy.
I'd say libertarian thought is mostly grounded in a strong negative rights, and pretty much everything else flows from that. Negative rights are the rights that say, in some way or another, what others can't do to you: you have a right to life, which means that others can't unjustly take it away from you, you have a right to personal property, which means that others can't steal from you, etc. It's all about how much interference is acceptable. Positive rights, on the other hand, are things you have the right to have from others - access to education and health care are two things that often come up as things people should have the right to. However, with positive rights, the question in most libertarians 'minds is "who has to supply that right?" If you have the right to employment (I think that's somewhere in the U.N.'s declaration of human rights), does that mean I have to supply you with a job even if I don't want to?
The way I see it, libertarians want some sort of justification every time a person's negative rights are infringed upon. And, personally, I don't see anything wrong with that - we should question anytime a group, be it the government or someone else, wants to infringe on our rights.
To take my blood-thinning medicine example from above: why should the government have the right to restrict me from freely purchasing medicine that I need to live? I'm perfectly willing to pay the full market price of the pills for ease of access - no extra costs to my insurance or the government. How does it help society in any way to restrict my use of the medicine & require me to get a doctor's permission every time I need to restock? I'm a perfectly rational adult who knows how to better manage my care than most doctors I end up going to to get scripts from. In the end, the only possible reason I can find is that it is to protect me from myself - which is both extremely insulting AND illogical since much larger dosages of the exact same medicine is available at Walmart in the form of rat poison.
Posted by Elmer's Glue (Member # 9313) on :
quote: FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all of the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.
BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and put them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you need.
FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them and sells you the milk.
PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.
CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and shoots you.
DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.
REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
PURE ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.
LIBERTARIAN/ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Sterling -
So what you want isn't so much an Estate Tax as it is a Wealth Tax?
Posted by bootjes (Member # 11624) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: boot: it would be easier to list the laws we want to keep than to list the laws we want to get rid of.
I agree, but I chose this end, so more people could agree upon something. I thought that would be nice.
Posted by bootjes (Member # 11624) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jhai: However, with positive rights, the question in most libertarians 'minds is "who has to supply that right?" If you have the right to employment (I think that's somewhere in the U.N.'s declaration of human rights), does that mean I have to supply you with a job even if I don't want to?
The way I see it, libertarians want some sort of justification every time a person's negative rights are infringed upon. And, personally, I don't see anything wrong with that - we should question anytime a group, be it the government or someone else, wants to infringe on our rights.
Thanks! I like how you explain libertarianism. (is that a word?) That is what I think is important: constantly being aware! Review laws taxes expenditure: is this doing what it is supposed to do? Is it worth it? Libertarians do good to keep asking those questions. It stops us from taking things granted. That's why a hyperbole is okay. (defending a hyperbole to the extreme is not my thing (or attacking it for that matter, reason why I started this thread. For me it worked already)
For the same reasons I liked Lyrhawns post. And in fact most posts of this thread.
[ June 21, 2008, 03:15 AM: Message edited by: bootjes ]
Posted by bootjes (Member # 11624) on :
quote:Originally posted by Elmer's Glue:
quote: FEUDALISM: . . . . . . .
If I was a history teacher I would have had this on the wall in my classroom.
Posted by bootjes (Member # 11624) on :
In the Netherlands use of soft drugs is not prosecuted. This works very well. We don't have a bigger drugs problem than the US. (maybe even less)
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:If marijuana was decriminalized and legalized, I'd have to imagine that it would be regulated as heavily as the tobacco industry, and would also be taxed federally and statewide in much the same way, and therefore there'd be a lot of black market selling of marijuana from people growing it all in their back yards, and thus escaping taxes and thus breaking the law. I guess maybe larger amounts wouldn't be illegal, you'd just have to be licensed, but I'm not fixed on that one yet.
Why do you think people would to that with marijuana but don't do it with tobacco?
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
Jhai: Your mention of the rat poison is exactly the reason the government forces you to have a doctor tell you how to take your medicine.
People who are less informed may think 1 pill helps my symptoms a little, 100 pills will help them a lot.
Medicine is complicated, to protect yourself, and everyone else, we have medical experts who tell you what they do and how to take them.
If you want to design your own health plan, you're welcome to - just become a doctor so you can write prescriptions. Until then, you don't have the necessary knowledge to design your own prescription medical plan. YOU personally might, to a limited extent, but most people don't, and shouldn't.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jhai: Stirling, I think the assumptions you listed are not neceassrily true of libertarian thought, but something some libertarians believe, but that most find as caricatures of their positions. I certainly don't believe any of the things you've stated, and I'd consider myself more closely aligned with libertarianism than any other political philosophy.
I'm aware of this, which is somewhat why I used the proviso "as stated here"- or more specifically, stated by Pixiest.
There are things I admire about libertarianism as I understand it; while I don't agree with all the positions many who embrace "big L" Libertarianism as a party position (no gun control at all?), I sort of admire the consistency of the thing (no drug control, no abortion control, no censorship...)
As far as your blood-thinning medication goes, I agree that it's ridiculous that the same thing can be purchased in massive quantities in a rat poison. But I also don't know if there's any "illicit" uses to which the drug can be used, and I suspect to a degree you're grateful that there's some regulation of the drug, in as much as you can get a precisely measured prescribed dose that can treat your problem rather than poisoning you. I don't doubt that, while you feel renewing the prescription and the difficulty of having to visit a pharmacy to get it is unfortunate, you much prefer it to trying to measure out a dose yourself by shaving it from a rat poison pellet... Or having to buy it from one of a dozen different vendors who offer a confusing variety of doses, some of which are blended with other drugs that you may not need.
I think the problem with any large regulatory bureaucracy is that it becomes increasingly difficult to deal with things at the level on which it might be most effective; so we end up with a massive restriction on a large number of medications, including some for which such restriction might be unnecessary, on the presumption that such a thing is better than people being able to grow addicted to over-the-counter narcotics or poison themselves with drugs whose dosages and side-effects they don't completely understand. And hopefully eventually things filter down enough that some drugs that people do use regularly and that aren't dangerous to make available to become "over-the-counter" medications.
Or to put it more succinctly, it's a blunt, imperfect solution to a real problem.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Sterling -
So what you want isn't so much an Estate Tax as it is a Wealth Tax?
Speaking of blunt, imperfect solutions to real problems...
First of all, I'd like to make the usual point that, on a Federal level, the estate tax doesn't even kick in until an estate reaches two million dollars. For an individual. More for a married couple.
That seems like it ought to be enough personal wealth for the inheritor to either strike out in business on their own, or live out a life of relative comfort, and certainly ought not to be the subject of great gnashings-of-teeth- at least outside of the not entirely meritless idea that the government shouldn't get the money.
I don't hate wealth or the wealthy in a reflexive way; I don't think wealth is something that should be punished. But wealth that remains stagnant- or gets used for private yachts or manmade islands in Dubai- don't do the vast majority of people a lick of good.
If wealth is used- if it remains part of a corporation, a foundation, a grant- it need never be subject to an estate tax. If it remains part of a horde, the tragedy is that something that represents real assets is just... Withheld. Something solid gets made into something that's just a number. Does that make sense?
I don't have a brilliant multi-tiered tax plan to prevent wealth stagnation in my back pocket, however, so I have to approve of estate taxes for now as a blunt instrument.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
quote:If marijuana was decriminalized and legalized, I'd have to imagine that it would be regulated as heavily as the tobacco industry, and would also be taxed federally and statewide in much the same way, and therefore there'd be a lot of black market selling of marijuana from people growing it all in their back yards, and thus escaping taxes and thus breaking the law. I guess maybe larger amounts wouldn't be illegal, you'd just have to be licensed, but I'm not fixed on that one yet.
Why do you think people would to that with marijuana but don't do it with tobacco?
I'd guess it's because there's already a drug trafficking infrastructure in this country. People already grow it in their backyards or more recently I've heard, on the floors of foreclosed homes they've broken into in some neighborhoods that've taken a turn for the worse. And they have a vast amount of foreign supply. They know how to do it, they've been doing it for decades, and there's no supply shortage, so why not? It's all already illegal too, so if there's a new supply of legal but taxed marijuana, but they have their cheaper, untaxed illegal supply, there probably isn't a whole lot of incentive to cut their profit margin when they were already accepting of the illegality of what they were doing.
I don't think legalization would be a magic solution overnight. I think regulation and tax would follow, and I think the underground supply, already established, would be a big problem for years or decades to come. I guess the only other way I can see to combat it would be to leave it regulated but untaxed so growers in the US could pump the stuff out and eradicate the black market, then gradually add a tax onto it over the course of like 20 years so the next generation of smokers wouldn't have access to the same black market that the generation before did.
I think the existance of a fully functional highly lucrative black market for marijuana by nature makes it difference from tobacco. Given tha massive state and federal revenues from cigarette taxes, and the massive revenues for the tobacco companies, I think one could reasonably surmise that if there is a black market/underground for tobacco, it's probably vastly outweighed by the legal and regulated market.
Also, tobacco farming and marijuana farming from a purely agricultural standpoint, the actual practice of growing them, are very different from what I understand.
I'm just brainstorming out loud. What are your thoughts on the matter?
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Also, tobacco farming and marijuana farming from a purely agricultural standpoint, the actual practice of growing them, are very different from what I understand.
I think that's more a result of the underground status of marijuana cultivation than anything else. Over the last several decades, we (human beings) have specifically bred strains of marijuana that thrive in closet greenhouses. Before it was forced to go underground, the raising of marijuana and hemp were much more similar to the raising of tobacco or any other normal agricultural crop.
If you're interested in this sort of thing, let me recommend The Botany of Desire by Michal Pollan. It's a fascinating book. You can listen to an NPR segment on the book here.
Caveat: Pollan is a journalist, not a botanist.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:If you want to design your own health plan, you're welcome to - just become a doctor so you can write prescriptions.
I thought it wasn't kosher for doctors to write prescriptions for themselves.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I'd guess it's because there's already a drug trafficking infrastructure in this country. People already grow it in their backyards or more recently I've heard, on the floors of foreclosed homes they've broken into in some neighborhoods that've taken a turn for the worse. And they have a vast amount of foreign supply. They know how to do it, they've been doing it for decades, and there's no supply shortage, so why not? It's all already illegal too, so if there's a new supply of legal but taxed marijuana, but they have their cheaper, untaxed illegal supply, there probably isn't a whole lot of incentive to cut their profit margin when they were already accepting of the illegality of what they were doing.
I'd guess there's a fairly large demographic of marijuana smokers who would rather obtain the drug legally, even at a higher cost. Besides the fear of legal punishment, most people would trust a legal weed vendor not to lace his product with who knows what. At least, trust them more than the illegal grower/distributor/dealer only one of whom they'd met, and any of whom might decide they can increase their margin with a little detergent.
Basically, I think legalizing weed would drive down the illegal supply from the demand end of things. The suppliers would be forced to switch modes to keep up.
Posted by Flaming Toad on a Stick (Member # 9302) on :
It would be rather difficult if not impossible to differentiate between illegal and legal marijuana.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
Not in the majority of cases, provided regulation and enforcement are robust.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Um, I think it's important to note that legal marijuana isn't going to end up more costly. Even with the taxes, the price of an eighth would rocket downward.
Legalize marijuana and the black market disintegrates in a week. The homebrew industry fades fast when you can hit up a gas station for your pot.
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
Sterling: Here's one possible unfortunate scenario of the estate tax:
A grandfather with 4 children passes away. Over the course of his life, he bought two houses in nice areas, and worked hard to save a fair amount of money to invest. So he has two houses worth 1.5 million each, and 300,000 in stocks and bonds.
He wanted to split his estate equally between his children. Unfortunately, due to the high value of his homes, he's over the estate tax limit by 1.3 million. Just about half of that goes to estate tax - so the family has to liquidate over 600,000 before they can settle the estate.
So they have to sell all the stocks and bonds and one of the houses. And they'd better hope that between the valuation and the sale the housing and stock market don't go down.
One of the family houses is gone now, as well as a large portion of their investment, not because the family were wealthy hoarders, collecting private jets and buying islands, but because they invested wisely and were fortunate that their homes appreciated in value. Sorry grandchildren, we can't go to grandma's cabin any more because we had to sell it.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I suspect that's true Samp. Even with the taxes and regulatory costs, using modern farming techniques and taking the premium away from what might be a lack of supply and the premium of buying anything that's illegal like that, I think the cost would very likely bottom out as well.
Then again, I haven't the foggiest clue as to what the price of marijuana even is right now. I've never tried it, and don't really ever plan to, though I admit to being curious about it.
Were I president, I'd appoint a commission to look into some of the aspects of the issue. I'd want a health effects report written out clearly to detail the damage it does and in comparison to alcohol and tobacco, the potential dangers involved and the economics of it. And we'd have to look into how many people would get out of prison as a result, or if they would at all. I'd probably seriously consider a blanket amnesty for most of those in prison for marijuana, if there are any, I don't know the situation in prisons for marijuana users.
Then with my report in hand, I'd take it to the people.
Toad -
Actually I suspect large amounts wouldn't be that hard, which is why I was wishwashy a bit before on the legality of large amounts. A single cigarette would be impossible to tell. But a few pounds of it would be traceable, because there'd have to be a paper trail. If there's no paper trail, it's probably illegal. If you assume that all marijuana is grown at legal, licenses farms and then processed and shipped, there's a record along the way that accounts for all of it, and if you find a large amount of it somewhere with no paper trail, you can probably rightly assume that it isn't licenses and is therefore illegal. At least in theory.
MC -
Why wouldn't they just sell a house and keep the rest of the cash? They could sell one of those super expensive homes (a million and a half dollar cabin?) and still get 900,000 back from it, and combined with the other 1.5 million dollar home have a very large chunk of cash and the other super expensive home. Would they get hit with capital gains taxes on top of the Estate Tax if they sold the stocks and bonds?
Cause that'd really suck.
Given all the things that are counted in the tax, like property, bonds, stocks, cash, businesses you own, cars, etc. I think people who think they really don't have any money at all could easily find themselves actually worth quite a bit, similar to the situation you described above. At the very least, I'd support jacking up the exemption rate to I don't know, $10 million, and lowering the tax rate to 25%.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
My grandfather recently died and his estate was somewhere around 10m. my mother and my uncle are managing that estate now and .. well, you can save the real estate easy. And the stocks and bonds can be dealt with too. And a lot of it can be kept safe in trusts. But the haad rub is that it's such a massive, hideously contorted hassle, and I'm pretty sure that making this a process that kicks in when your parent dies assures that this is among the more abrasive ways for the government to take a huge cut of anything.
I'd be happy without an estate tax but my personal interest in that idea due to present circumstances probably has a lot to do with it. I ain't much in a position to talk about it right now.
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
I think people who grew their own marijuana for personal use would continue doing so, but the people I knew who did that only grew for himself, not a dealer. I am annoyed that marijuana research only gets funded if you research why it is bad (well, federal funds). Supposedly, the NIH will not fund anything that may make marijuana look good- so people doing research on its painkiller effects have a hard time getting money. If they had robust research, then the medical marijuana argument might diminish as a good substitute would be available.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: That sort of thing has been tried before, the idea that there shouldn't be any sort of government institutions helping the desperately poor. Scope out some Dickens for a nearly worst-case scenario.
Actually, most of what you'll find in Dickens is governmental handling of poverty. (His stories are set in Britain, of course. In the US things may have been private.) However, the fundamental reason things were bad in the nineteenth century was not the organisational form of charity, nor any lack of fellow feeling, but the plain fact that people then were poor. Dirt poor. Not just the factory workers, everyone. The middle class lived in conditions that our welfare recipients would sue the state for imposing. And they'd win, too. There's just a limit to what can be done with that sort of resource base.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Government handling, yes, but the government handling was so anemic due to funding that it applies, at least in my head anyway:)
Posted by pH (Member # 1350) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jhai: Only some libertarians (or, as I prefer, classic liberals) believe that they don't have any responsibility for others. Many believe they do have responsibilities to others, but don't believe that those responsibilities require legislation or government intervention. Like charities, which were pointed out up thread. I know several libertarians (both little-l and big-L) who aren't rich, but donate 10% or more of their earning to charities.
To be clear, this is where I stand.
-pH
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
It seems to me that drug laws ought to be based on the effect of the drug on society, not merely the presence of the drug.
Like with alcohol, there are laws against drunk and disorderly conduct, driving while intoxicated, etc.
I have a friend whose mother was killed by a driver that crossed into her lane and ran into her head on. It was found that she (the other driver) was smoking pot at the time, but for some reason, the police didn't penalize her until the families of the victims pushed for prosecution. She ultimately was found not guilty, not because she wasn't found to be smoking pot, but because they didn't have a number, like .08 blood alcohol concentration, that they could use to determine if marijuana had been a causative factor in the accident. In this case "zero tolerance" simply didn't mean anything to the jury.
It seems to me that if the laws against drugs are based on the damage they do (and that those laws have real teeth), then the laws against the drugs themselves become superfluous. Then you could legalize the drug and regulate it.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:It seems to me that drug laws ought to be based on the effect of the drug on society, not merely the presence of the drug.
It also has to give a nod to concerns involving how effective the authorities can be at curtailing the drug.
Marijuana is effectively uninhabitable as an illegal substance in this country. If someone wants it, they can get it, no problem.
Using it as a contemporary example, a realistic approach shows that the ban on marijuana, regardless of intent, only has the effect of empowering and encouraging a black market.
Oddly enough, according to the Atlantic, the end result of this sort of supply and demand issue is that if marijuana were to become legal, the bottom would fall out for illegal distribution networks. The biggest losers would be groups like MS-17, who also use the marijuana demand to support a trade network that gets blow from columbia to businessmen and suburbanites in New York. The price of that blow would go way, way up because there's no longer a thriving commercial enterprise in smuggling to america; the bulk of it was in pot.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
Samp: Did you mean uninhibitable?
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Marijuana is effectively uninhabitable as an illegal substance in this country. If someone wants it, they can get it, no problem.
Using it as a contemporary example, a realistic approach shows that the ban on marijuana, regardless of intent, only has the effect of empowering and encouraging a black market.
Do you have anything to back that up? Common sense seems to say that there are people who, because pot is both illegal and expensive (because it's illegal) either don't use it all or don't use it as much as they would otherwise.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
This is purely anecdotal, but it's been my experience that, given the incredible access most people have to it, and the unlikely chance of them being caught, anyone who wants to do it does, and anyone who doesn't, doesn't, and illegality doesn't really factor in all that much.
But the people at my work are generally young and party goers.
Analytically though, I'd say there has to be a decent sized population that doesn't do it for the reasons MPH stated, and those people might choose to try it if it were legal. But on the other hand, there's still a significantly large population of people that use it regardless, and I think we're sort of settled into a system where millions of people use on a regular basis without much thought to it, making the illegality of it sort of silly. I think it's at the point where you have to weigh the pros and cons, and I think the people who use regardless and the problems that come from that outweigh the potential feared risk of those who might start using if it were legal.
Posted by Amanecer (Member # 4068) on :
quote: One of the family houses is gone now, as well as a large portion of their investment, not because the family were wealthy hoarders, collecting private jets and buying islands, but because they invested wisely and were fortunate that their homes appreciated in value. Sorry grandchildren, we can't go to grandma's cabin any more because we had to sell it.
MightyCow, the scenario that you described does not sound unfortunate to me. Each of his children gets over half a million dollars in assets that they did absolutely nothing to earn. That sounds a lot more like a windfall than any sort of hardship.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
For example, we might compare statistics for Europe, in particular the Netherlands where marijuana is legal and easily accessible; and the US, where it isn't. Comparing "use within the last 30 days" for 16-year-olds, we find 14% for the Netherlands and 14.2% for the US. Then you have to allow for US teenagers being perhaps a little less willing to admit to such use even on an anonymous survey.
Edit: In response to mph.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Do you have anything to back that up? Common sense seems to say that there are people who, because pot is both illegal and expensive (because it's illegal) either don't use it all or don't use it as much as they would otherwise.
Well I got beaten to the punch on it but
quote:The war on drugs may be actually increasing, not decreasing, teen drug use. Or it could be having no impact at all. Such are the responses provoked by a study released this month. The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) survey, comparing drug use between American teenagers and European teenagers, found that a much higher percentage of American teenagers consume illicit drugs than do their European counterparts.
The study, which was released last month at a meeting of the World Health Organization in Stockholm, was conducted by questioning tenth graders from nationally representative samples. 110,000 teens from Europe and the US participated in the questionnaire.
One of the ironies of the drug war is that where it was been waged most loudly and enthusiastically is precisely the place where teen drug use is now most entrenched. Conversely where drug war rhetoric is comparatively mute, teen usage of illicit drugs is much lower. In the Netherlands, for example, which has the most liberal drug policy in Europe and where marijuana is effectively legal, marijuana use among teens is actually lower than in the United States. The survey found 28% of Dutch teens smoked marijuana as compared with 41% of American teens, and 23% of American teens had experimented with other illicit drugs as compared with only 6% of European teens.
But when it comes to legal drugs, such as cigarettes and alcohol, teen usage is much higher in Europe. Thirty-seven percent of European teens had smoked cigarettes in the past month as compared with only 26% of Americans. Sixty-one percent of European teens had consumed alcohol as compared with only 40% of Americans.
When asked about the disparity, Kevin Zeese of Common Sense for Drug Policy pointed to the lure of the forbidden as a major factor. "It is worth pointing out that the Dutch, when they made marijuana available for purchase, said one reason they were doing so was to 'make marijuana boring,'" Zeese told DRCNet.
"Our approach, making marijuana a forbidden fruit where the primary educators on the topic are DARE police officers, has the opposite effect. We make marijuana a magnet for the natural rebellious period of the teen years," Zeese explained. "The laws are easy to break, highlighted in ads and schools, the schools lie about the dangers of marijuana and police are the messengers -- that all adds up to a recipe for encouraging, rather than discouraging teen use. Then, our failure to separate the marijuana market from other illegal drug markets makes it natural to purchase other drugs from the high school dealer."
But one drug policy analyst, Peter Cohen, a professor at the University of Amsterdam, disagrees. He told DRCNet that the study simply shows the drug policy has no effect on drug use. "All modern studies, if done in a way that allows some comparison at least, do not show a very convincing effect of drug policies at all. Determinants of drug use are complex and multiple, like fashions, cultural basics, economic and social situations, etc," Cohen argued.
"Drug policy -- a set of formal rules and laws -- does not seem to play an important role here. Drug policy is much more a tool for value communication and symbolic suppression of perceived deviance, than for real impact on drug use levels," said Cohen.
Now I actually am not one of those zealous Legalize! guys and I don't actually even do any drugs (I am one of maybe three people in my peer group who do not smoke pot at all, since the consumption here for us young guys is practically ubiquitous) — my reaction towards rulings to legalize or keep pot criminal is always a 'meh' — but there's certain things (like this) that I find really intriguing about the drug wars. Keeping pot illegal at this point is probably either having no effect or actually increasing use. Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
quote:Originally posted by Amanecer: MightyCow, the scenario that you described does not sound unfortunate to me. Each of his children gets over half a million dollars in assets that they did absolutely nothing to earn. That sounds a lot more like a windfall than any sort of hardship.
Isn't it a parent's job to provide for their children? At what point does good parenting, good business, and thoughtful savings become greed?
People always say that a home is the best investment you can make, but lots of people have to sell their family home to pay for estate tax, because the home is a good investment. I don't see any cause for that.
Why is it the family home before the death of the parents, but it's an asset that needs to be sold the second after the death of the parents?
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