College Students Favoring Wealth Distribution Are Asked.....

Post Reply New Topic

I think something Democrats and many "economists" are deliberately not taking into account the fact that taxes are not the only factor when it comes to how economies perform. If someone doesn't feel it is safe to invest in a business in a certain country due to tons of new regulations every day that are extremely anti-business, then the tax rate on returns could be 0%, and they still wouldn't invest because they would be wasting money.

I figure, if we repeal almost everything put in place by the Democrats and the Obama administration, we would see an explosion of economic growth.


You want to argue about taxes being too low is the problem, sorry but face the facts, the issue damaging the economy currently is the debt, and insane amounts of red tape coming out of Washington DC from the Executive Branch.

Oh, wait, I've just proved a fallacy in your FIRST SENTENCE!! ! THIS Democrat has ALWAYS taken the factor of the regulatory environment into account. You forget that many Democrats ARE business people. I have no idea what you do for a living, but the business of business can be said to be ... my business. So, please, next time you make a generalization ... remember who is in your audience.

But, heck, when that change goes in the direction you favor, it is good, right? Sometimes. But rarely. I was very much for the repeal of the new 1099 law that was going to come in with healthcare reform; it HAD to go, and not a CPA on earth disagreed. But so many other changes are totally partisan, and that is worse than having a regulation to start with.

What purpose does labeling arguments do? Whether you call them "Just world fallacy" or "harmful ignorance" a "partisan talking point"

The point of the exersize was not to say that GPA was a currency, it was an exercise in imagination. Suppose GPA were a currency, and a person could transfer their GPA to someone else, would they do it if it conformed with their ideology. From this exercise clearly the person does not do it voluntarily.

Warren Buffett thinks taxes for the rich should be higher, but he doesn't voluntarily give the government his money, why not?

Whether or not you choose to call this a talking point, a just world fallacy or harmful ignorance, that doesn't do anything to detract from the intrinsic validity of the point being made.

You do realize that Buffett DOES give away a lot of his money and intends to do more of that, right?

He would only be a hyppocrite if he had reasoning which conflicted with the ideology. If his reasoning was because "he doesn't want to diminish his competetive advantage", or "not much good would come of it". He would not be hyppocritical at all. It would justify his unwillingness to voluntarily commit his own money without conflicting with his ideology.

The supposition that a particular institution rewards a moral quality can't be taken as basic. It has to fit into a pre-existing moral schema. You assuming it as basic is a ridiculous assumption and one that nobody should tolerate. marshall was clearly making his appeal to basic moral intuition.


And if the preference isn't strong in the community, which... why would it be? Then what's the point? If there is no real ability to determine desegregation, then again, what's the point? The real driver for desegregation through market forces was market-efficiency, but that's not going to change a lot in the short-run, and for smaller markets and/or more staunchly racist markets, the impact will be minimal.


Markets don't have a moral valuation function, so... assuming they do is a ridiculous assumption. This isn't to say that markets are incompatible with morality or that markets do not promote certain moral values, etc, just that... profit != virtue.

Success in the free market is how merits are defined.

A person can only fail to understand this through two ways.

1)Having an incorrect understanding of what the free market is.

2) By imposing your own standards on the market, the fact that you think the free market doesn't reward virtue is due to the difference between what you percieve to be virtue and what everyone else gets benefit from.

The question I would ask you is how do you think merits are arrived upon? Why is it that we percieve things like hard work, ingeniuity, and integrity being synonomous with virtue?

What we percieve to be virtues were defined by a system of voluntary action, This idea that people defined what virtues were through an analysis of what worked and did not work in this system. That's how virtues came to be what they are.

From Business Week:
New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli says state and local governments will have to come up with more money for their workers’ pensions in the next fiscal year to offset losses in the stock market.
The average contribution rate to the state pension fund for public workers will rise from 16.3 percent of salaries to 18.9 percent. The average for the police and fire retirement system will rise from 21.6 percent to 25.8 percent.
Note to younger readers who don’t pay attention to boring subjects like pension contributions: over the years, politicians got votes from public worker unions by promising generous guaranteed pension plans and early retirement. But because they didn’t want trouble with voters who weren’t public workers, they didn’t put enough money aside from year to year to pay the pension bill when it came due.
When pressed, state officials said that the money they did set aside for the pensions was invested so cleverly in the stock market that it would earn very high rates of return and, therefore, the pensions would all magically be paid.
They lied. The money did not earn the big returns they claimed to expect, and now, as Baby Boom era workers (your grandparents) start to retire, the bills are coming in — and there isn’t any money to pay.
So what happens? Cities and towns now have to start taking more of their general tax money and using it to pay the pension bills. That means less money for schools now so that retired teachers can collect their full pensions. It means fewer cops on the beat now, and fewer firemen and firetrucks now, because the old ones still need to be paid.
At the state level it means higher tuition in public colleges, because the state has to cut other costs to pay state pension bills. For the rest of your lives you will likely be paying higher taxes and getting less back for them because you are going to be paying for the lies that these weasel politicians told in order to keep the unions and the voters happy. Many of these irresponsible liars are still in office and still asking for your votes.
You, unluckily, are not going to be able to stick it to your children and grandchildren the way the older generations stuck it to you. Investors and the bond markets have finally figured out just how sleazy government finance has been these last thirty years, and they aren’t going to keep lending unless governments start keeping honest books and show the true cost of all the debts they have outstanding.