> He supports heavy taxes on private property. Tax laws are based on violence
I didn't get the same impression watching the video. Do you have any references? As far as Law and Violence is concerned, I agree voilence to some degree may be involved. So what is your alternative? No Law every man/group for himself?
There is no such thing as No Law. Void will ne replaced with Natural Law in which powerful eliminates weak. If well reasoned Law is not present in society, Law of jungle will take over.
> People in a market generate income by trading something of value for currency that others freely give them
Something of value is the operative word here. From where "something of value" comes? There is no tax on exchanging valuable thoughts. We are only taking about financial trades which does impacts society.
>As far as Law and Violence is concerned, I agree voilence to some degree may be involved. So what is your alternative? No Law every man/group for himself?
The violence of Law should be applied exclusively against those who violate the human rights of others. It should not be used to take property from one group to give to another.
>Something of value is the operative word here. From where "something of value" comes?
I grab some clay, and create a nice figurine. You give me some sea shells in exchange for it. No one has a right to a share of my sea shells. If some group of people preaching "social democracy" violently assault me for refusing to hand over a share, they are the aggressors.
The social democracy advocates have done what Bastiat predicted:
>When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
> He recommends a global wealth tax and, for the United States, top income tax rates of 80 percent on income above $500,000 or $1 million to combat inequality and 50 or 60 percent on income above about $200,000 to combat inequality and grow the government.
First of all I haven't read the book yet so can't comment on the numbers.This limit can very well be a million or a few millions. He is arguing is that effective tax rate on multinational companies is lower than small and medium scale businesses. This isn't good for capitalism. In fact this will just hasten the process towards concentration of resources in the hands of few organization or groups. Will it look like a capitalist society anymore when a few big groups own everything and others compete for minimum wages?
> The violence of Law should be applied exclusively against those who violate the human rights of others. It should not be used to take property from one group to give to another.
You are circumventing the basic question. From where property came from? Did individual said "Let there be property" and property came into existence?
No, property is a result of individual's or an organized group's utilization of natural or human resources. Piketty is not arguing to take it away with force in communist fashion. All he is arguing is that tax should increase with income which is contrary to what is happening on the ground nowadays[1][2].
> I grab some clay, and create a nice figurine. You give me some sea shells in exchange for it. No one has a right to a share of my sea shells.
We are discussing taxation of higher income not some petty transaction between individual player. However, if we take your argument to its logical conclusion and imagine a billion dollar Multi-National making the same argument that I am just bartering few thousand tonnes of clay with few hundred tonnes of seashell so we aren't responsible for soil erosion and extinction of species.
Only reason not to tax large groups was that they generate employment and moves the society forward by investing money into research. This is not true research [3] as well as jobs[4].
>This limit can very well be a million or a few millions.
An income tax rate of 80 percent on any income bracket is extremely heavy according to my definition of a 'heavy tax', as is a tax amounting to 2-10% of the value of privately owned assets. His proposal is of the typical disastrous socialist variety that show an utter misunderstanding of how capital is formed.
>You are circumventing the basic question. From where property came from? Did individual said "Let there be property" and property came into existence?
>No, property is a result of individual's or an organized group's utilization of natural or human resources.
Acquiring property is a result of an individual utilizing their own property, or the human resources that others freely give them, in a manner that generates value.
Piketty's proposal is to violate people's human rights. The fact that it's done through taxation rather than communist-style expropriation of the means of production doesn't change that.
>We are discussing taxation of higher income not some petty transaction between individual player. However,
The principle doesn't change because the values involved increase. A sound principle is universal, and not arbitrarily stop being morally applicable due to considerations relating to the sum involved. There is no sound principle for a tax on income or private property.
>if we take your argument to its logical conclusion and imagine a billion dollar Multi-National making the same argument that I am just bartering few thousand tonnes of clay with few hundred tonnes of seashell so we aren't responsible for soil erosion and extinction of species.
But I used clay as my example because it is abundant.
If we are going to change the fundamental premise of the example, and assume a scarce natural resource is being appropriated, then society could certainly charge a fee for the act of appropriating the natural resource.
Let's say that each tonne of iron ore extracted from the crust costs society $10.00 in diminishment of natural resources, and in environmental damage. Let's say society charges an iron ore miner $50 to extract a tonne of iron ore, to compensate for these costs.
Now if the iron ore miner pays the fee, mines the ore, smelts the iron, and fashions the iron into an incredible machine, you have absolutely no right to what the machine produces. An income tax is not a tax on using scarce natural resources, or a charge for damaging the environment. It is robbery against someone successfully generating economic value. It is a human rights violation.
> If we are going to change the fundamental premise of the example, and assume a scarce natural resource is being appropriated, then society could certainly charge a fee for the act of appropriating the natural resource.
and from your comment elsewhere.
> The homestead principle is based on the notion that if something is unclaimed, and someone adds value to it, they should be able to enjoy the full benefit of that value-added thing.
What resources are not scarce in your view? If a forest is unclaimed and then I should be allowed to claim and cut it to produce valuable furniture and keep all the profit to me. Noting available on this earth is unlimited or free.
> A sound principle is universal, and not arbitrarily stop being morally applicable due to considerations relating to the sum involved. There is no sound principle for a tax on income or private property.
Universal Principal is progressive taxation, and tax rate is determined by scale of operation. An individual making furniture out of unclaimed wood cannot be compared to an industrial scale operation resulting in deforestation and they cannot be taxed on the same rate.
> Now if the iron ore miner pays the fee, mines the ore, smelts the iron, and fashions the iron into an incredible machine, you have absolutely no right to what the machine produces. An income tax is not a tax on using scarce natural resources, or a charge for damaging the environment. It is robbery against someone successfully generating economic value. It is a human rights violation.
Ok what this hypothetical machine is going to produce?
You have also chosen not to reply back to other data points so I will leave the argument here. What is your on Warren Buffet's observation or tax rates vs. employment data.
Charging a fee for appropriating natural resources can be fully justified, but whether a fee is charged comes down to practicality.
Example: it's not practical to charge every individual camper a fee for every piece of obsidian they find. While scarce, the amount of obsidian they stand to find and take is so small, that the cost of enforcing the tax would far exceed the cost to society of them depriving us of the natural resource. Moreover, the amount they're taking is so small that the actual fee they would have to pay society to compensate it for the appropriation of this natural resource would be close to zero.
>What resources are not scarce in your view? If a forest is unclaimed and then I should be allowed to claim and cut it to produce valuable furniture and keep all the profit to me. Noting available on this earth is unlimited or free.
You should have to pay society for the value of the trees you're cutting down, and the cost you're incurring upon society through the harm the tree-cutting does to the rest of the forest. Society is also fully within its rights to reserve some areas of the forest to maintain the ecosystem.
>Universal Principal is progressive taxation, and tax rate is determined by scale of operation.
There is no universal principle behind an income tax. You yourself said it doesn't apply to petty transactions involving me trading a clay figurine for sea shells. It's not universal. It's arbitrary gouging of those with the most to tax.
>An individual making furniture out of unclaimed wood cannot be compared to an industrial scale operation resulting in deforestation and they cannot be taxed on the same rate.
Morally there's no qualitative difference. 1 billion individual furniture makers cutting down 1 tree each does exactly the same amount of damage as one company cutting down 1 billion trees. It's the natural resources that should be taxed, not the people.
>Ok what this hypothetical machine is going to produce?
This hypothetical machine produces information. It's a computer. It sells computations. It is powered by solar panels that are on land that I'm renting from the government.
I've paid for the cost of the natural resources I'm using (iron ore and sunlight I'm using up). The iron ore and energy is legitimately mine. You have no right to the value I generate using these inputs.
> This hypothetical machine produces information. It's a computer. It sells computations. It is powered by solar panels that are on land that I'm renting from the government.
I am glad you elaborated. So how this information is produced. In order to produce the information, you will rely on the works of centuries of collaborating between individual and groups. You will use that for free to produce value and then sell it on price of your choosing?
I am not against Capitalism. On the contrary, I hate collectivism with passion. Argument in favor of progressive taxation does not mean we are heading towards communism.You constantly use tangible and intangible resources from society without paying for them and right taxation is necessary to keep providing you those resources.
>I am glad you elaborated. So how this information is produced. In order to produce the information, you will rely on the works of centuries of collaborating between individual and groups.
That information is freely available. And making use of it and generating value for myself does not make me indebted to you and does not give you a right to use violent force to compel me to forfeit this share of my income that you think I owe you.
I didn't get the same impression watching the video. Do you have any references? As far as Law and Violence is concerned, I agree voilence to some degree may be involved. So what is your alternative? No Law every man/group for himself?
There is no such thing as No Law. Void will ne replaced with Natural Law in which powerful eliminates weak. If well reasoned Law is not present in society, Law of jungle will take over.
> People in a market generate income by trading something of value for currency that others freely give them
Something of value is the operative word here. From where "something of value" comes? There is no tax on exchanging valuable thoughts. We are only taking about financial trades which does impacts society.