I think the biggest thing that troubles me about our tax system is how much time is wasted trying to figure out how much we owe. Individuals and corporations alike have incentives to devote resources solely to minimizing their tax burden. I'd argue that a simplified tax scheme would cause a non-trivial increase in productivity that would be a boon to both the government and the people.
There are many 100s of 1000s of accountants, lawyers, and lobbyiests who all depend upon the bizarre tax codes for their jobs. In addition, many companies depend upon their various loopholes... They represent both wasted labor and vested interest.
Normally I would love to discuss this kind of thing for hours. But we should probably keep yc free of religion and politics, lest we end up like all the other social news sites.
I think economics is fascinating too. The problem is that there would certainly be big disagreements, combined with less actual expertise in the subject. That creates something of a toxic mix. So why not stick to discussing what we know best? That would be in keeping with the principle of comparative advantage:-)
I've wanted a news.yc style site for economics for a while now, but don't really have the time right now to make it and foster it to critical mass. anyone else interested?
This community has done pretty well with disagreements and the editors are good at filtering the truly toxic trolls. I have faith that we can tackle economics without self destructing.
Disagreements about things we know about are easier to deal with than disagreements about things that we are less knowledgeable about, and that often come down to fundamental disagreements about our philosophies of how the world ought to work.
As a concrete example, I for one do not want to be spammed with a bunch of links from mises.org, and I know that there is a significant minority here who loves that stuff. I'd really prefer just to keep things about tech, startups, and the occasional science article (which generally do not elicit strong reactions).
I think your argument here is close to the generally held wisdom that you shouldn't talk about religion and politics. Precisely because these are considered toxic conversations is why I think it is important to discuss them. If we can figure out what our fundamental disagreements are instead of namecalling, maybe we can start resolving or at least understanding the other person.
Generally, I think more information is better. Economics is important and broadly relates to startups. It's not inherently off-topic and I'd much rather get some additional wisdom from people on this board than never learn their economic opinions.
As much as Ron Paul Republicans love mises.org, it seems extremely likely that they would launch a coordinated spam campaign here. Economics comes up here rarely enough that when it does, I think it's great. I doubt that random articles from mises.org would get upvoted here anyways. If so -- great, I can easily beat mises.org economists in argument. I've never seen a forum with mises.org economists where you could have a full on disagreement without descending into trolling, but if such a forum exists on the internet, it's this one.
I remain confident in the concept of news.ycombinator -- if Paul Graham thinks there is a problem, he will fix it. This community can handle economics.
> I can easily beat mises.org economists in argument.
I strongly doubt this.
The reason the issue is toxic is that the foundation of an austrian tends to be based on liberty, whereas the foundation of someone else's ideas might be collectivist in nature (e.g. supplying equality of opportunity to all). Of course the people are going to be unable to have a reasonable argument - they're working towards completely incompatible outcomes.
> I've never seen a forum with mises.org economists
> where you could have a full on disagreement without
> descending into trolling
When you are somebody with a scepticism of big government and high regard for personal liberty, it can be frustrating because these ideas are outside the norm and you won't be able to explore them in the course of day to day contact with people who don't think past the front page of the local tabloid. Then one day you pick up a book by Hayek or Mises, and find that they have found very strong and compelling ways to tie together the vague ideas you had previously. This experience can be very compelling.
You find that it gives you powerful tools that allow you to analyse public policy positions very quickly.
Once you're through that, you can then move on to Popper and start to realise that even though his conclusions are similar, he's attacking some of what's said at a very low-level in philosophy. And this gives you powerful tools to analyse arguments very quickly.
I anticipate you are someone with an interest in both coding and essays, and therefore expect that you may appreciate what that would feel like even if you disagree with the actual position. I'd expect that some of the postings that you describe as trolls are motivated by that feeling.
The best way to do economics is to have an area where there's room for people to make themselves more stupid (digs and reddits), and then have highly moderated separate sites for people who are interested in learning more about a tradition and where they can talk about it without constantly being pulled off line by people with incompatible value systems.
If you have any further comments to discuss about this in response to my post, I'd appreciate if you'd instead email me directly at craig@cowoh.org because I don't want to discus further in this forum. Thanks.
Submit a thread and start a discussion! You or anyone reading this can be an admin.
And you're right, economics is much too complicated for me to easily win such an argument. In a nutshell, my argument is that libertarianism is great, but if we're talking about idealized utoponian economies, I'd like one that was completely free except for government provided health care, schools, fire protection, police, recreational facilities, water, 2000 calories a day, basic shelter, clothing, vocational training, and puppies. A 20% sales tax should be enough to cover it. Also, in such an idealized economic society, the government provides seed stage capital/services for companies and ends up owning minority shares in otherwise public or private companies.
In other words, I love freedom, but I'm very willing to pay a fair, flat tax to provide a basic standard of living such that no one is sleeping on the streets, unless they really want to be.
I don't know if Buffet is a hypocrite; however his insurance business does stand to gain a huge amount of business should inheritance taxes increase in one form or another. Reason is that insurance companies sell lucrative insurance contracts on old founders who are near death, so that when they die the insurance payoff covers the tax penalties. The insurance contracts are written off by the company while the person is alive and then the payoff pays the death taxes.
I had no idea that Berkshire was so involved in the life insurance industry, rather than reinsurance! He's very modest about it in their annual reports, apparently.
A quick look at Wikipedia's entry on Berkshire Hathaway would have revealed that BH owns Geico, General Re (reinsurance) and yes, some life insurance companies as well.
That's true. Perhaps the part of my comment referring to Berkshire's presence in the reinsurance industry was a subtle clue that I was aware that they had a presence in the reinsurance industry. It would be helpful to explain why Berkshire's CEO would sacrifice his excellent reputation as a fair guy -- a reputation absolutely necessary to Berkshire's strategy of deploying capital cheaply by being the buyer of first resort -- in order to enhance the performance of "some [nameless? nonexistent?] life insurance companies" rather than his flagship holdings like Geico, General Re, MidAmerica, Marmon, etc.? It's a crazy theory. I think the death tax is a poor idea, but this Buffett fellow seems legit.
Why give more money to the largest and most inefficient institution in the world - the US Government?
And yes this is politics, not hacker news. I may not be able to restrain myself from market anarchist rants every time this comes up, which would tend to reduce the quality of the site.
This is the same Buffet who argues against abolishing the inheritance tax even though he's arranged things so that almost all of his money will go untaxed. Also, the inheritance tax helps him buy companies cheap. (It forces the children to sell.)
Key (and famous) quote: "[the perfect amount to leave children is] enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing."
I don't have sources offhand, but Buffett's been saying this for years. He criticized Bush's tax cuts back in the day, too. I don't see anything wrong with argument, "The government shouldn't be letting me and other billionaires slip through this loophole."
