Trumple down economics vs. entitlement state

[chenda]

@jacob - except it's not one person one vote.

[7Wannabe5]

Since it is not the case that all voters in the market have access to the same information, or any voter has access to all information, each individual's vote is only rational within boundaries of knowledge. Therefore, the more the rules are rigged or the structures are thoughtlessly constructed to prevent or impede the free flow of information, the more imbalanced the overall system will become, and the greater the likelihood of huge potentially endgame oscillations as the system seeks new equilibrium.

For simple instance, in 1970s Iran, there were no free public libraries and most citizens could not afford to purchase college-level textbooks.

I would also note that on some level energy-towards-order is the same thing as information. It's easier to find your socks if you have a sock drawer.

[BRUTE]

"Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."

"Taxation is theft".

so is theft the price to pay for civilized society?

if civilized society means having 2.5 million humans in jail, 1/5th of children living off food stamps, chicago and detroit crime rates, fighting 3, 4.. what is it, 5 wars? at the same time, brute is not so sure civilized society is worth the price.

[Dragline]

That would seem to indicate that taxation rates are not high enough in the United States. Other countries with higher rates don't seem to have so many of these issues.

Yes, I'm just jerking your chain.

But the real danger of such societies is suicides, which kill more people than all the crime, war and natural disasters put together. Men are especially at risk from themselves. We need to deport all the men to Africa where they are less likely to kill themselves.

As the famous Pogo comic strip put it in a broader context: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(com ... poster.jpg

[ducknalddon]

Fixed link: Pogo (comic strip)

[RealPerson]

I'm curious about this - is it really true? Would large numbers of wealthy people really pick up their lives and leave a place just to maintain a higher income? There have been many years in the past where the highest marginal tax rate has been 70+% ... is there any data on people leaving because of it?

I ask because I assume that many of the wealthy have assets or family or businesses tied to specific locations - just moving away isn't so easy for them.

No, what they do is create corporate structures or trusts in various places to shield assets to the extent possible. But they do not actually move for the most part. This explains real estate prices in the most popular wealthy cities.

+1. Rich people don't move because they don't have to. Money is much easier to move than people. The people who have to move are the ones who rely on work for their income. An example is the current migration from California to Texas and Colorado. But those are not the movie stars or the Google moguls. They are the regular people with a desire to keep a bigger chunk of their own earned income - the productive workers. The stars and moguls use other means to keep their fortunes out of the hands of the taxman.

If you really want to know the effect of taxes on migration, you would have to remove all the loopholes and legal constructions used by the rich. I suspect that would have a profound effect but you will never see it happen.

International migration is much harder due to cultural differences and government restrictions. Still, rich people are welcome all over the world. Every country, including the US, has provisions for this. Money is welcome any time, any place.

[7Wannabe5]

Dragline said: But the real danger of such societies is suicides, which kill more people than all the crime, war and natural disasters put together. Men are especially at risk from themselves. We need to deport all the men to Africa where they are less likely to kill themselves.

...or Greece.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/wo ... erate.html

http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/poo ... countries/

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2014/05 ... ve-nation/

Freedom and love. Love and freedom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPWU8hy0McY

[SilverElephant]

The fact that Germany has had a year (+ 2-3 months before the birth) of paid maternity leave (during which the employer can't fire you) for some time now and is still doing well suggests that this is a very simplified metric for gauging how well an economy will do.

Seen from a different angle, you could also call it a red herring.

[ThisDinosaur]

Do German businesses receive some kind of government subsidy for employing women who take maternity leave? From the POV of a business owner, it should dissuade the hiring of reproductive age women. Yet I never hear about this from socialist European countries.

http://national.deseretnews.com/article ... leave.html

[BRUTE]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_ ... ntral_Asia

this page says "source of payment" is "Mixed (social security & employer liability)". so looks like they share it. doesn't say to what degree. it also says maternity leave is 14 weeks, not 1 year?

[SilverElephant]

Do German businesses receive some kind of government subsidy for employing women who take maternity leave? From the POV of a business owner, it should dissuade the hiring of reproductive age women. Yet I never hear about this from socialist European countries.

http://national.deseretnews.com/article ... leave.html

Sorry, I should have been more specific in that it is "up to" one year, so there's a voluntary component.

It's split between "maternity leave" and "parental leave". Maternity leave is, in fact, 14 weeks and paid for by the employer, after which it is called "parental leave" and paid for by the state. Personally, I call all of it "maternity leave" because the net effect to the employer is an employee that they can't fire, even though they only have to pay them for part of that time.

Obviously, it does dissuade the hiring of reproductive age women. That's why it was made illegal to ask women if they're pregnant or looking to get pregnant soon in job interviews under some discrimination act. Which led to women being hired less in "higher" positions, which led to more cries of discrimination... anyway.

My point was that the sole existence of a maternity/parental leave, coupled with some form of payment and protection from being fired, is not a valid metric to determine the competitiveness of an economy.

[BRUTE]

ok, so the employer pays 14 weeks and the state pays up to 38 weeks after that. that's quite generous.

brute's intent wasn't to hold up maternity leave as the gold standard of what makes a great economy. it was merely chosen because Hillary mentioned it in the debate as something she'd do for "the economy" or "the workers" or something.

maybe brute's original question looks like this: if all sides agree that many humans in the economy need more wealth, how is that wealth generated?

it seems there are 2 schools of thought:

republicans think that there isn't enough wealth, and more wealth needs to be created by growing the economy, which for them means reducing taxes, regulations, etc.

democrats think that there is enough wealth, but it's not distributed well, so it needs to be redistributed from those who have it to those who don't via minimum wage, maternity leave, and what not.

obviously these are more like ends of a spectrum, and there are other positions on it. for example, as far as brute understands it, keynesianism basically proposes that the redistributary mechanisms actually help create wealth by some "multiplier", i.e. every dollar the government taxes and spends create $x (where x > 1) in wealth. brute isn't sure how they come to this conclusion, but then brute doesn't like taxes.

[7Wannabe5]

Both models are so archaic they are more like mythology than theory. My translation of 80% of what both candidates were saying during the debate was along the lines of "I will gather all the elves in the realm of Paul Bunyan to spin upon the wheel of Rumpelstiltskin while Babe the Mighty Ox breathes phlogiston upon the eternal fire of the Phoenix."

[Dragline]

How are you measuring "wealth" -- you won't even be able to have a rational conversation about this unless you get very specific about exactly what you are talking about.

But even after you get there, it does not answer the question as whether this defined "wealth" is what makes the particular society attractive to live in. This is why people have begun trying to measure well-being, "happiness", etc. and rated countries on those bases. Usually income defined in a specific way is one component that is considered.

BTW, you guys are having a Dunning-Kruger festival as far as your knowledge of parental leave, its history and its impacts are concerned, so I'd just put that one aside -- you could have a whole 'nother thread about that one.

[BRUTE]

sure, not knowing what the goal even is seems like a major problem. it's "jobs", private sector jobs, manufacturing jobs, "workforce participation rate", it's the stock market, it's what some guy told brute in the restroom and he's an expert, it's (lack of) poverty, the deficit..

[ThisDinosaur]

Dunning Kruger only applies if you don't acknowledge your ignorance. I freely admit my ignorance. I asked because I rarely hear complaints about Eurosocialism (with the exception of Brittain's NHS, maybe). The Bernie Left has been portraying the "Scandinavian Model" as a near-utopia. If nationalized social safety nets are universally good, is it ONLY special interest propaganda stopping US implementation? Or are there real reasons this sort of thing simply wouldn't work in the US? Alternatively, it could be that the costs are underreported (to me) because I don't know enough Europeans.

My current favored narrative is that a variety of government systems can work when resources are abundant. When there is perceived ongoing scarcity, the old guard is thrown out and replaced.

[BRUTE]

The Bernie Left has been portraying the "Scandinavian Model" as a near-utopia. [..] My current favored narrative is that a variety of government systems can work when resources are abundant. When there is perceived ongoing scarcity, the old guard is thrown out and replaced.

brute pretty much agrees. EVERYTHING works in a small, rich country with 5-10 million mostly homogenous humans in it. almost nothing will work for everybody in a huge country of 300 million humans of very different cultures and backgrounds.

[jacob]

@ThisDinosaur - Depends on what you mean by a "real" reason. US health care is substantially more "luxurious" or "bloated". E.g. each patient gets their own room which in turn requires more real estate, more monitoring equipment, etc. It would be quite expensive to write off such an [mis?-]"investment" and transition to a system where you have 4-8 patients in the same room and only need one nurse and less automated monitoring equipment. Another difference is that the US system has a much more litigious attitude towards, well, everything. So US doctors tend to overtest just in case. That kind of ROI benefits mainly labs and lawyers. Thirdly, the US is more technology oriented. E.g. if you bump your head and go to the ER in the US, you get a $10,000 trip through the MRI machine. In Denmark, the ER would just check your blood pressure by looking through your eyes or however that works. All that extra baggage means that the US spends about twice as much as the next leading country for results that aren't remarkable for a developed country in any way.

So, sure, the Scandinavian model would work in the US, but it would require a material change in public/legal/techmology attitude + writing off lost investments + re-investing. IOW, there's quite a gap to cross. Of course Obamacare didn't fix any of those problems as much as it forced everyone to experience them ... Also, I suppose one could argue whether bloated luxury costs are a bug or a feature.

Now, I wouldn't exactly call the health care system of any other developed country near Utopia, but I'd take any one of them any day over the US system. I say this based on personal experience with systems in three different developed countries. In the US I've had different plans going from gold-plated government to private bare bones. The non-US systems are much easier and less stressful to deal with. Put it another way, should some US state with a population of 5-10 million decide to implement a non-US style health care system in return for bumping state income taxes by 10%, I would strongly consider moving there.

[ThisDinosaur]

@Jacob
I see all that and I raise you the inefficient, bureaucracy-laden path money takes on its way from you to your providers.

Patient -> insurance company -> billing company -> healthcare management company -> hospitals/doctors/nurses.

The billing company exists solely to argue with insurance companies who make their money by refusing payment. The healthcare management companies exist solely to consolidate bargaining power for providers against insurance companies.

I see three competing ways to fix the system. 1)replace everything between patient and doctor with a Single Payer (Socialized medicine), 2)eliminate all of it and make it fee-for service (Free market), or 3)making it a fraudulent breach of contract for insurance companies to refuse payment.

My concern with (1) is that replacing a competition-rich insurance industry with a monolithic government system will destroy any hope for efficiency. The free market way could lead to only rich folks being able to afford quality healthcare. And if politicians theoretically work for the people, they shouldn't allow that to happen.

The third way is probably unworkable in the US UNTIL we eliminate insurance lobbyists from Washington. I think that's why Obamacare has turned out to be such a disappointment.

[7Wannabe5]

What working parents need are opportunities to engage in challenging, creative work that do not require a commitment of 40-plus hours/week. Childcare tax credits and similar initiatives are just throwing money at a problem that won't be solved with money.

https://www.newdream.org/programs/redef ... /plenitude

http://tech.co/study-work-three-days-week-2016-04

http://www.healthline.com/health-news/h ... workweek#1