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Re: Drill Now for oil

> James Arthur wrote:

>>> John Lark> >>>>> "Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James >>>>> Goodfellow, when his careless son happened to break a pane of glass? >>>>> ...." >>>> But think of how many jobs Green Energy will create. >>>> >>> I thought of it already...Hillary mentioned it as an economic + climate >>> plan, which we could then sell to the rest of the world and...cash in! >>> >>> Obama too. He proposes $150e9 to help green Detroit.[1] >>> >>> The premise is that money or corporations are holding back progress. >>> And that other countries are too dumb to do smart stuff. >>> >>> Conclusion: Let's give money to corporations! >>> >>> Reminds me of the World's Fair in New Orleans, where everyone was going >>> to get rich providing services to each another. >>> >>> Or their casino mania: "We'll all get rich gambling in one another's >>> casinos--we can't lose!" > >> Ah, reminds me of the classic techniques to increasing the GDP and >> reducing unemployment: >> >> 1. Have ten million people dig holes, and another 10 million fill them. >> >> 2. Everybody washes their neighbor's dishes for $40 an hour. > > That's wrong-headed. The problem is the *gap* between rich and poor. > > And there are a lot fewer rich than poor, so, as a practical matter, I > propose a *maximum* wage. About, say, $40/hr. > > Penalties for hard work and overtime. > > That ought to make everyone happy.

Oh, feh. For almost 100 years they've been trying to tax the income of the rich, who have consistently found loopholes.

We need to lose the income tax, and instead, tax _outgo_:

Buy a $300,000 house, pay $30,000 purchase tax. Buy a $300,000,000 mansion, pay $30,000,000 purchase tax. Buy $300,000,000,000 worth of stocks & bonds & commodities & crap, pay $30,000,000,000 purchase tax. ;-)

It could be just that simple.

And the mechanisms (for collecting sales tax) are already in place!

But don't call it a "sales" tax - call it a "purchase" tax.

It's the closest to "fair" that a tax could possibly be, considering that all taxation is theft.

Cheers! Rich

Reply to
Richard The Dreaded Libertaria
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Loopholes schmoopholes. Compare % of total taxes paid to the % of population for each income group:

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I'm down with it. The simplified accounting alone would save Americans not less than 2 weeks' overhead a year. That's a 4% GDP boost.

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
James Arthur

Anthing like that kind of a tax on financial markets would cause an instant *depression*.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it\'s the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com
Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Ooops, good catch! No, no taxes on investments--we want those. Tax consumption.

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
James Arthur

Are you really gutsy? Try placing a 1/10 of a % transaction tax on stock and bond transactions. If you could get it enacted it would reshape everything, take a look at the numbers, it is staggering.

Reply to
JosephKK

Even a 1/100 of 1 % transaction tax would take a lot of noise out of the financial markets.

Reply to
JosephKK

Not sure about that.. there are roughly 0.1% - 1% costs associated with buying and selling securities just from the buy-sell spreads and market-maker mechanism, with commissions on top. AFAUI, the UK has a

0.5% "Stamp Duty" levied on share transactions, and London is certainly a competitive financial center.

As to the effect.. not sure it's positive. A high cost of buying/selling might make people hold off to try and make back losses, which could result in a mass capitulation and bigger drop than would otherwise happen.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it\'s the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com
Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Not so sure about that. Current computerized brokers are now below us$10 per order including million $ transactions.

Reply to
JosephKK

Have you checked the NY tax on NYSE shares traded?

--
Keith
Reply to
krw

Active traders can get *free* (sic) stock trades (zero commission) but that should set off some alarm bells. If you buy and immediately sell a security you will still lose money, because of the market-maker spread between bid and ask prices. In the case of a million dollar stock transaction, you will lose thousands of dollars even if the stock price doesn't change. Oh, plus your $10 (I guess it buys the trader a latte, but the spread makes his Mercedes payment).

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it\'s the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com
Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Just tax consumption. Investment, capital gains, interest, profit, income, and savings aren't consumption. Only buying physical stuff is consumption.

If people have money but don't spend it on stuff, why be jealous of them?

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Is buying an oscilloscope consumption?

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it\'s the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com
Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

I suppose so. One could complicate things by allowing depreciation on productive assets, which would produce tax credits; a productive machine, after all, *creates* things, which is the opposite of consumption.

Part of tax policy is of course to generate government revenue; another part *should* be to steer economic activity towards good social causes, creating jobs being one.

In the US, currently, a capital equipment purchase is not an immediate expense. If I have a "profit" of a million dollars, and spend it all on a new machine, the feds still tax me on that "profit" as if it were money in the bank. Only later depreciation accrues tax deductions, over 20 years maybe. Small businesses do get about a $100K per year instant-expense loophole for equipment purchases.

Maybe we should apply the sales tax only to things that people enjoy.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

NOTE: I posted the above after reading "tax _outgo_" without checking Rich's list. Buying stocks and bonds is NOT outgo, it's investment, and must not be taxed.

Is it used to produce income? Then it's an investment. No? Then it's consumption.

That's the current treatment anyhow.

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
James Arthur

So my buying a new car to drive to work is an investment?

Reply to
Joel Koltner

Not according to the IRS. (Unless you're a taxi-driver.)

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
James Arthur

Yeah, I didn't think so. So presumably that would change as well or else the "simply tax consumption" idea is going to start growing warts and become full of exclusions and deviations from the rule.

Reply to
Joel Koltner

For those interested in the details of this "instant-expense," it is called a "section 179 deduction." The maximum available for qualified property, placed in service in 2007, increased to $125,000. Section

179 is an important thing for smaller businesses to know about and use. For larger ones, which I've never been privy to in connection with section 179, it may be barely noticeable.

Jon

Reply to
Jonathan Kirwan

"Consumption" has to be defined, of course, but those few rules would be far simpler than what we have today.

Presumably you make your money with oscilloscopes and computers, not driving. The first are investments, the last is not.

Unless you want to argue your underwear are an (in)vestment...

If the principal purpose is to generate extra income, then it's probably an investment, AFAICT.

But the definition I offered isn't difficult--we use it already.

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
James Arthur

OK, and that's (I believe) roughly how it is now... but also now, if a company provides a car to, e.g., its CEO (a common occurrence), *that* car is tax deductible in the current system (at least for all the "business-related" driving done in it). A lot of companies are going to scream if they have to actually start treating their CEO's indulgences as consumption, you know. :-)

It makes a lot more sense to suggest my own car is also tax deductible for those miles I put on it to get to work (...but not to Disneyland).

---Joel

Reply to
Joel Koltner

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