Philosophy of Finance today: Want an alternative to the Federal Income Tax system that’s in place now? You have come to the right place because we’re rolling one out.
Why, coupled with our plans to tax human replacing robots (defining everything with more than 8K of RAM equivalent as an income tax generating human-replacer) – it means we should have plenty of jobs around when the Second Depression arrives and the our new tax scheme will ensure no one is a profiteer during the hard times to come.
First, however a few headlines and the charts to get the day rolling…
More for Subscribers ||| SUBSCRIBE NOW! ||| Subscriber Help Center
“everything with more than 8K of RAM equivalent as an income tax generating human-replacer.
A pocket calculator?!?
Regarding the FEMA test of ‘presidential alert’ to go out Wednesday to 225 million electronic devices, a friend of mine finds it strange that it is scheduled at 2:18 pm. 2+1+8 = 11.
Then I was thinking that 1+8 = 9, 1+8+2 =11. Hmm…. 911?
Happened right on time at 1:18 p.m. CST.
Sorry George, got to separate from you on this one. #1 taxing net worth discourages risk taking and #2 it accepts the paradigm that we constantly need more taxes. The only solution is to reduce government so that the taxes required to support it decrease each year. OK, OK, not going to happen you say, but every other outcome of the existing paradigm is destruction. That system would also required total disclosure of everything about that person to preclude them hiding net worth and I’m not willing to go there either.
If the oligarchs would allow it, you could reduce government expenditure 30% by getting rid of a ridiculous over bloated military that has every toy it doesn’t need, means testing social security, and putting the clamps on hospitals and doctors that are gouging medicare every day (there is a monstrously broken paradigm if there ever was one).
I’m not sure JD.. What options are there to pay off a deficit that has an interest on the past debt of what a couple billion a day..
An economic environment that is increasing at a 4% plus ratio while personal income for the average blue collar laborer is increasing at an average rate of 2%
A medical system that’s seriously broken and inflated costs..
Any fix will have to involve taxation of those making the incomes that are substantially higher than the average.
To try and get it from the sector that’s already struggling and relying on federal assistance programs to exist is only going to inflame the laboring class.
I tried to talk the grandkids into attending Oxford or imperial for their college educations.
Definately cheaper and great schools.
To get an equivalent education in the U.S. would be almost cost prohibitive in comparison.
Not to mention they have a better health care system than the U.S.
While it would put the Deloitte’s and Ernst and Young’s and many shady non profits out of business…I still think a flat tax is the best solution. Make it simple. You could still have some deductions for some very worthwhile social causes…but everyone pays their dues…thus reducing our deficit and in the end, we hopefully all finally get the services from government that we deserve like free health care and reduced cost college education etc.
Mark..I agree totally..
Flat tax ten percent on everything over the national poverty level. No deductions.
Herman’s 10,10,10 should be 10,9,8 tax plan, tariffs, business/corp, income. And when they need mo’money, start with tariffs
It’s funny how you bring up tax reform given the latest tax evasion scam the Trumps have been involved in for the past several decades. I have always heard rumors of this from my real estate friends up in New York, but the Times kind of spells it out in a detailed and sordid way. I have always refuted Trumps claim that he was self made and I still doubt he is even close to billionaire status. Seems I was right. The swamp is Trump himself.
The Times’ investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.
Much of this money came to Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.
I would say tax all incoming goods and services give a deduction to those using American labor. Put the regulations back on the goods and services that are essentials.
Why should we give another country a grant for economic development and not our own country.
This is interesting!!!
I wondered why now..especially when there’s money involved..
http://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/news/u-s-national-news/3230-the-perjury-word-is-being-uttered
George, you’ve opened a real can of worms! Anything tax related will have unexpected consequences. And how on earth do you determine net worth – via confession(tax return) or third party from within the financial industry? The first is invasive and the second is incomplete. How do I value my data that I spent a year accumulating? What’s a broken tractor worth? Only a bureaucrat could answer that, and nobody could understand it.
On taxing robots? Taxing production robots makes sense on the face of it, but what about the $500.00 3D printer that’s hooked to your computer and makes parts for your own use? What about a proper sex robot replacing a wife(biggest single cost in a man’s life)? She no doubt would have more than 8k of RAM. What about a machine like my tractor with zero computing elements? What about your car with a CAN bus and several processors? The premises of fairness are truly valid, yet the solutions are IMHO have no feasible implementation in a wholistic way without micromanaging everyone’s life. I forego significant income in order to simplify my life already. There will always be a sweet spot where the income(or net worth delta) is optimal. We all naturally seek for that spot.
The poor will always be with us. They’re different poor though. Those who are or become poor change their life circumstances regularly. In some cases it’s tragic, since those individuals are doing the best they can. In other cases, it’s about seeking a sweet spot where they have enough to eat and can spend their time watching TV or playing video games. I know poor people of both varieties. Another interesting thing is how people’s net worth changes by magnitudes several times in both directions over the course of a lifetime.
How should one tax the situation of someone who is a high earner every few years, and lives off the income in the intervening years? We used to have income averaging, but with a net worth approach, we’d have to consider net worth averaging? Will there be such a thing as net worth loss carryforward?
IK don’t know if you have gone as far as we have in our tax concerns about sex robots…but here’s an interesting question: If a wife is an additional deduction, would a sex robot qualify?
I would love to see the Supremes bump and stumble around this issue…or the new American Computational Love Union as a friend of the court…. lol
From a personal point of view, I have a bone to pick with your tax plan proposal. I am close to your age and still actively far, but not on a huge scale (only 200 acres of crop). The total farm acreage is 473, of which some is considered “goat land”. Meaning only goats could use it. It holds the world together, but that is about it.
I just got through paying my “annual rent” in the form of land taxes to the local county government, which went up again. Under your proposed tax plan, my net worth would also include the land I own. It has been in my family since 1854, and property taxes (government rent) paid every year since. Given your proposal and my actual annual earnings from all sources, the government would seize my farm for taxes based on net worth after only one year. I simply could not pay taxes based upon the net worth value of my land.
Personally, I think a national retail sales tax (exempt food) would be the most fair. Cap the rate and it could only be raised by a 2/3 vote of all state legislatures. Everyone pays based upon their purchases.
This is a great point. But a couple of things come to mind. First, land is presently taxed on a crazy basis. so what really needs to happen is a rethink on THAT.
I personally think that there is some general rent of land to government (see Henry George’s writings) but I’d also point out that valuation should be based on some standards in other areas.
For example, a business today may be based on anything from 1X to 30X sales. If Ag land were based on 30X sales, then let’s say 200 acres is worth (to throw a dart) $6,000 per acre. So it’s worth a $1.2 mil (in theory).
Except that you didn’t MAKE $1.2 mil. Instead, you made $60,000. You income would be $300 per acre in your base year. Even at 30X income, that land is worth $60,000…not the made-up $1.2 million – remember counties and states have incentives to inflate valuations because they get more dough.
In the second year, your income down to $50,000. $250 of income per acre. More to the point, the value of the land is now $50,000 and since that is $10,000 less than last year, not only do you book no tax, but because your net worth dropped, you earned a $10,000 loss carryforward for the next year.
W?hen that comes along, you have a dandy year: You made 75,000. Huge bump. In fact it pencils to $375 per acre. Which (using the 30X) means for this year you would have a net worth on the land of $75,000.
Since your BASE YEAR valuation was $60,000 which would be a two-year gain of $15,000, you would use that $10,000 TLFC and owe taxes on the gain ($5,000) at whatever the rate is (30%?)
So a $1,500 tax bill. Because while you made $60 the first year, which would be a a three-year level $180k of total income, in fact, you barely got ahead (Totaling $185K) so you should be taxed only on that gain. If you don’t make as much the next year, then you don’t pay tax and you can rack up another tl/cf
Making sense yet?
Take some of the Silly Con Valley types: They have a net worth doubling every year – and because they are managing option and such (did I mention offshore option accounts), they effectively and set things up to only pay tax on money eventually repatriated to the US if they are clever with offshore nominees…
A 8K of RAM tax? Ok.
Move to the old software stack on the Newton. It was for the RAM deprived. Alternative: Send the process out of country and get back the answer. Another alternative: Crank up the swap. Yet another: grid processing. Each CPU has 7.9K. And the final hack: 1024K data bus. Sure you have 8K of RAM but its 1M wide.