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Re: Bush and his politics

Posted By: Phil (static-64-65-138-250.mspcovdsl.eschelon.com)
Date: 6/13/2003 at 6:50 p.m.

In Response To: Re: Bush and his politics (Superfoborg)

: This means that the poorest people make and lose
: absolutely nothing, and the richest unit in this tier
: still walks away with not a lot more - which makes sense,
: since this is a poor tier of society.

Well, let's hope for the sake of the poorest people that their TVs don't break and that their kids don't want anything for Christmas. All kidding aside however, though I didn’t' mention it in my last post, I didn't come up with the negative net completely arbitrarily. I concluded that, on average, a tier of the level we're talking about would receive about 2,000 more in tax revenue than it would owe back. However, because I do the books for a small company that owns it's own building, I incorporated what I considered to be rather conservative estimates for what the tier government's basic expenses would be for the year. These expenses included things like paper, toner, janitorial services, power, water, waste service, telephone and Internet service, and other similar office expenses. I did not count any salaries or mortgage, assuming that those would come at no cost under your system. Still I concluded these expenses to be much less than the similar expenses of a very small company and rounded the total to about 7,000.

However, all of this becomes rather moot as I still feel that even with a 5,000 surplus instead of a shortfall, and an extra 1,000 per unit, little would change. I feel that even a profit of 2,000 instead of 1,000 wouldn't cause a wealthy citizen or company’s coal-black heart to turn two sizes too big and inspire them to devote their time and 98% of their potential profit to the public good.

: As to your objection with the altruism of people, as I
: said, I designed this system specifically with
: nonaltruistic people in mind, to operate off their own
: desires and needs. The wealthier units don't want to
: pay to maintain the public services? Fine then, live
: without running water, sewage, electricity, etc. Ah,
: but you ask, why would they give that away to everyone
: else? Well on the one hand, they could say "Hey,
: I'm gonna get a tax cut from doing this and save
: money!" as many rich people do now.

I still don't see this as working under the current model. Granted, if an individual or company donates more, they save more in taxes. But what they save in taxes is only a small fraction of what they originally donated and does not really act as much of an incentive. Under a simulation similar to those I described before, even assuming the tier's net is positive instead of negative, if the wealthy individual hordes all of his money (excluding his OE) he makes an after tax profit of 114,000. If the wealthy individual donates 100,000 his after tax profit is 57,000. If the wealthy individual donates all of his remaining money, 200,000 total, he makes an after tax profit of 2,000. I know that I would much rather pay high taxes and have a hundred and fourteen large at the end of the day than pay low taxes and walk away with only two thousand dollars. A wealthy individual or company could easily decide that it would be far cheaper to provide their own services strictly for themselves than it would be donate money for communal services, and they would be right. This would leave the poorer elements of the tier without the public services or the means to provide them, but with more disposable income than if the wealthy unit had donated the money.

But, ultimately there are other issues with handing over all public services to the private sector. First of all, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't feel very comfortable with the streets being patrolled by a private police force whose loyalty was to the interests of the corporation or the wealthy, and not to the public at large. I can already see the myriad ways in which this authority could be abused. I can also see similar control of water, power, emergency, waste, and public works services being abused. It would open the door for a new type of corporate organized crime, and with control of the police and media, there would be little way to impede it. This is why corporate monopolies in one or more fields in a given area are currently illegal. It drives out competition and grants too much power to those who have little or no public accountability.

Secondly, this system would destroy national uniformity. Though America's many regions each offer their own unique experiences, they are far more alike than they are different. A gallon of milk costs roughly as much in Pensacola as it does in Boise. Most parts of the country have similar traffic laws, police organizations, systems of measures, phone numbers, postal delivery services, media outlets, sewer systems. Even interstate commerce is federally regulated to ensure that brands of popular goods that are available in Maine are also available in Mississippi and Montana. Under a system where different companies instead of federal regulations handled all of these services in different areas, traveling to a near-by state could be as cumbersome and foreign as traveling to a far off country.

In the end, my objections are not really to your structure. Not to your system of tier's and units. I simply have questions about how the economy and the bureaucracy are handled. If you're writing a constitution, my advice would be to take a cue from the U.S. constitution and focus on the governmental structure primarily. Though the national bureaucracy is often referred to as the fourth-branch, there's a reason it doesn't show up in the constitution. The same is true of the U.S. tax code. Even the sixteenth amendment only provides for an income tax. It doesn't define how that tax will be implemented. These elements were left out intentionally to allow them a much greater degree of flexibility. No one wanted these systems carved in stone; they wanted them to grow and change with America, not anchor it irrevocably.

-Phil.

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