Can you please once and for all define what you are referring to by saying the Australian economy?tigerman said:
Well this is clearly not true.tigerman said:
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Overseas Companies and Taxation
- Thread starter Michael
- Start date
So the Australian economy is taxation revenue? Really? So if Paul buys shoes from Sam, the question of whether this is good or bad for the Australian economy is how much the government can expropriate from the transaction?tigerman said:
If by good you mean that more goods are available for consumption (i.e. more abundance/prosperity), in no way shape or form does government taxation of these exchanges create more abundance/prosperity. At best all it does is re-distribute the wealth from A to B. At worst it discourages these exchanges from taking place. Assuming the at best scenario, then the argument becomes who spends money better? Government or private individuals/businesses?
So basically your argument is that government taxation does not discourage people from making mutually beneficial exchanges, and that the government can spend money better than private individuals/businesses. No?
My point is that it is only through avoiding taxes that wealth can be created. So if you want to argue that Uber should pay more tax because you think you will be better off, you are misguided.tigerman said:
If infrastructure is what consumers wanted, then it would be profitable to construct it. The government taxes and builds infrastructure because it is not a profitable venture. By doing so, they rob private individuals/businesses the opportunity to spend/invest their money the way they see fit, which would have been far more likely directed toward the production of goods that address the most urgent needs of consumers. Can't you see? The government through infrastructure projects and other boondoggles does not create wealth, it destroys it.tigerman said:
We don't need a sovereign wealth fund. We need to protect private property rights so that the best people at addressing consumer demands continue to do so to the fullest of their ability. We need to stop interfering with markets such as excessive regulations, price controls, subsidies, tariffs, and taxes. We need to make it as easy as possible for competition to find better ways to provide the goods and services we want. Most of all we need to end central banking, and put a stop to credit expansion that results in the boom and bust cycle that continually destroys wealth and distorts the entire production structure.
Giardiasis said:
as far as i can tell, in your tax free utopia, all roads (and footpaths?) are tolled otherwise they are not built or maintained. people have to pay to access what is currently public land, such as playgrounds, walking tracks, bike paths etc, otherwise they are not built or maintained. people have to pay to drink from a bubbler in the street otherwise they are not built or maintained. people will pay to access beaches.
outside of private security for businesses, i am not sure what replaces the police.
i assume people will be asked to pay before the fire brigade saves their house/business burning down. not sure what happens when public land (assuming such a thing remains) burns.
health services are for the rich cos only services that make a profit will be run.
disability and aged care will only be for those that can afford it.
quality education, early childhood interventions, childcare etc will be only for those that can afford it. for those that cant i am sure cheap shoddy versions will crop up in the unregulated markets which has not regulations.
i know we have had these discussions before, and i dont disagree with everything you say, but your total faith in the ideological market is flawed. IMO.
I think private roads are more likely to be funded by charging property owners for access to their property, but I imagine tolls would be used on highways/motorways. This way users pay for access, rather than charging people that don’t actually use the roads.Brodders17 said:
If a property owner wanted to make money by building a playground, walking track or bike path, then yes they would try to charge for access. Again, this will mean that users pay, rather than charging people that don’t use these services like the situation is now.
Privatising the police is one of the most difficult to get your head around, but it definitely needs to be explored. You can bet your bottom dollar that if your bike gets stolen, you’d have a much better chance of finding it again if you paid someone directly to find it for you.Brodders17 said:
I’d imagine that most property owners would pay for some insurance policy that provides fire brigade services in the event of a fire (perhaps with the money that they used to pay in taxes). If you take the risk of your house burning down and/or damaging neighbouring property, then you should expect to pay a high price for not taking out insurance.Brodders17 said:
Health services would be considerably cheaper in the absence of government intervention and ownership of hospitals. So it will actually be available for many more people. For those that still can’t provide for themselves, then charities would step in. Again those that don’t take insurance should expect to pay a high price for taking the risk.Brodders17 said:
Disability care will again be mostly covered by charity; insurance should cover the majority of cases where it was caused by accidents, unforeseen illness, etc. For aged care, well if people don’t save for their retirement, they have only one person to blame for that. Charity would cover those truly desperate.
We don’t have access to quality public education? Have you stopped to consider that not everyone wants the education services currently offered? Why does every teenager have to go through years of tuition, when they could have instead spent time learning a technical skill that would provide far more use to their lives than learning about existentialism, aboriginal history and social justice? If there are potential students that want to learn but can’t afford to, then no doubt scholarships would be made available, and in far greater numbers than today. Schools would actually be tailored to teach children what their parents want them to learn, and not some bunch of bureaucrats sitting in their offices hundreds of kms away think they should learn.
Childcare you say? People can actually afford that these days? News to me.
That’s because you don’t understand economics, and hold your socialist ideology to heart.Brodders17 said:
Giardiasis said:
i may have socialist leanings but i am far from a socialist. im not anything. i base my opinion on the real world, rather than the text book.
i wont go through the rest of your post except to say i am glad that access to health, justice, roads, parks etc are not based on ones wealth, nor do i think a person with a disability should rely on charity for support.
Perhaps you are not a full blown socialist but you are an interventionalist. You think that markets are largely good but ultimately government intervention is required to keep markets in check. When you say you are not anything, this is accurate in the sense that you don't base your opinions on science, but instead your own arbitrary notion of fairness. For example, you don't know how much taxation the government should raise, you just have your own gut feel for what seems ok to you. Why should the price of fuel be so high? Clearly the government should prevent petrol stations from charging too high a price. Perhaps you think petrol stations should be left alone, but the government should definitely place a price floor on wages. Yes that seems fair to you. Do you understand the economic effects of such policies? Do you understand how the production structure works, or what prices are, or the role of entrepreneurs, or what interest is, or what capital is, or what money is? The real world can only be understood through theory. If you do not understand economic theory, than all you have is whatever theory you have gleaned from your personal experience. You call this the real world, I call it your own world. If you do not employ economic theory to your opinions on economic matters, then you really have no place in forming an opinion in the first place.Brodders17 said:
Not if that's what people want to spend and invest their money in. These services do not need a government to exist.tigerman said:
;DBaloo said:
i agree theory is important when trying to come up with responses to economic issues, or any other issues. i also know understanding theory is important when looking at how societies and people operate.
G, you base your ideas on economic theories which i am sure would work great. except IMO they ignore human behaviour and human rights.
you can keep spouting your economic utopian fallacies, and i will be thankful that no government, not even the one led by the most cold hearted in the Libs would follow them.
The whole basis of economics is that it forms a part of the science of human action called praxeology (I'm talking about proper economics, not the mumbo jumbo they teach at leading universities). So it's very foundation is human action, and the axiom that human action is purposeful action (i.e. means are employed to achieve ends). Economics has nothing to say about whether ends are good or bad, just whether or not the means employed are effective to achieve the ends sort. Praxeology explains that value is subjective and ordinal, i.e. People value things by ranking them in order of preference, and this explains why someone might value say donating to charity rather than going out for dinner. So economics does not treat human action as if everyone only acts to increase how much money they have, many people value human rights above and beyond material wealth. Social cooperation and the protection of private property (including one's own body) is the cornerstone of a materially wealthy society, so to say that economics ignores human rights is untrue. It explains what happens when human rights are abused from an economic point of view.Brodders17 said:
It sounds like you are saying "good in theory, bad in practice", but if a theory is bad in practice then it is bad theory. So theory does not ignore what happens in "the real world". Abstractions might be useful tools to understand the effect of individual factors on the economy (such as the effect of increasing the money supply on the prices of assets, goods and services), but at all times it should be understood what it is they are explaining and what they are not explaining.
Economics is not utopian, it only exists because of the problem of scarcity. It recognises this, and works to determine what are the best means to achieve given ends given this limitation. It doesn't pretend to remove the problem (I.e. superabundance for all) unlike socialism. You can hardly accuse me of spouting economic fallacies, when you don't understand economics. Where is my reasoning fallacious?
One final point, you accuse economics (and me!) of being cold hearted, well I thought you wanted to look at the problem from the real world? Economics points out the reality of the real world, sorry if it isn't all it cracked up to be, but if you are serious about helping people then you can't ignore economic reality and support policies that do the opposite of their intention. Intentions might make people feel warm and fuzzy inside, but if people want to help those in need they need to focus on what actually improves people's lives, and not what makes them feel good about themselves.
