China Confronts Mounting Piles of Unsold Goods.

China's economy is overheating, any day now they will get desperate enough and start dumping goods despite WTO regulations. This would be one of the few cases that sanctions and tariffs should be used.

Yeah, I cant say I care for "free trade" and I certainly do not care for WTO or global organizations.

My opposition to "free trade" is probably the biggest thing that sets me apart from many Liberty folk, who tend to be big into free trade.

I support free trade in principle, given that wealth derived from it proportionally distributed within society.

Not a free trade fan. Sinij, you should look into the ramifications of NAFTA on Mexican economy. Absolutely deplorable what that has done to their agricultural job market, and that is exactly what free trade does. It incites companies to relocate to the lower income areas and exploit the citizenry. I figured you'd be against that.

free trade incentivizes companies to exploit people, environmental regulations (lack of), evade taxes , empower despots, operate banana republics, and reduce first world economies to ruin by drawing all the cash out of them and into the symbiotes.

i guess im a protectionist, because i dont think a country can be great if it doesnt produce anything, but just lets the banks and speculators push piles of money around, and create mcjobs for the masses.

what method would you recommend for this redistribution? seizure of the means of production by the proletariat?

Progressive taxation would work just fine.

How would you feel about a flat tax for income, and value added tax for anything made outside the US?

Initial opinion - that would be a tariff and probably against WTO agreements. I'd have to think more about it as a concept, but considering how little is made in the US, and how easy to game such system by say, doing packaging in the US and claiming "made in the USA!" I would highly doubt such measure would be effective.

Here is interesting story for you. For a while US had a import tax on some cargo vans mad outside of US. Don't remember why or when, but Ford would import them with passenger seats then remove these seats and sell the van. Then send these seats back to where they were manufactured to get reused. The only jobs US got out of it is a production line that would remove pointless passenger seats from otherwise perfectly good cargo vans.

Second part - flat tax income is fundamentally bad idea. Even if you manage to create true flat tax, so everything you spend, down to licensing fees and municipal taxes always adds up to some X%, regardless of your income (a monumental undertaking, but lets say its possible), you still would have an issue with concentration of wealth and resulting corruption of power structures.

The only way to keep democratic society functioning as a true democracy is to prevent extreme concentration of wealth in too few hands. Yes, that means that society should strive to eliminate any and all ultra-rich.

Alright, I can see that. To me a true flat tax will not happen. Any varation paid by anyone, rich or poor would make progressive to me. Since we do allready have a progressive tax in place, we just need to tweak what we have.

I relized after I posted that it would still be a tarriff.

Pres. Teddy Rosevelot, setup the anti-monoply laws to protect the US from any one bussiness being in the position to hold the Nation hostage. Banks and corps that have been deemed to big to fail should also have these laws applied to them. How do you feel about that?

I think sales and VAT taxes are bad ideas, what you seemed to describe sinij was a sales tax since you said spend.

Though I still obviously disagree with you on the causes and ramifications of wealth.

One of my biggest problems with your scenario regarding eliminating any and all ultra rich is what means do you use to do so. If you start raising income taxes extremely high, what about corporate taxes? Its pretty easy to use corporate tax structure to just keep your money in the company, and have company cars, planes, houses, etc. This is common in parts of the world with high personal tax rates but more reasonable corporate tax rates.

Though in some respects you could argue that as a good thing. In countries and cultures and periods of US history where personal wealth was tied up in the company - it kept the principle owners very engaged, and the management very motivated. Unlike todays world of looting the shareholders and escaping via golden parachute. In the past if you lost your company you could lose everything. You still can if you are small business, but the people at the heart of this discussion find ways to make millions no matter what happens.

But nonetheless, it still does not address the "problem" ( I will assume it is a problem for the sake of this discussion ) of concentration of wealth. All extreme personal progressive taxation does in that regard is alter the way the well off use legal structures.

If you start making corp tax rates extremely high and start messing around with corporate legal structures... then you really start to directly impact competitiveness. Even the more "socialist" countries have far lower corporate tax rates than the US. And before you start talking about the loopholes, using foreign countries is a big part of many of those. Other stem from various sorts of political corruption. Plus the legal/accountant manpower required to pull it off is not cheap either. Even Google , which is a partisan leftist company uses foreign tax havens and says they are necessary in the current environment.

Perhaps an argument could be made that personal tax rates on wealthier individuals should go up while corporate rates should go down? Of course certain loopholes being closed would have to coincide with a lessening of the tax burden.


I think there are issues with that argument as well,I think the only answer is lessening federal expenditure. The reality is, that even if the left was correct regarding vastly increased social spending is that social spending will never see efficient increases... it will either be industry-sponsored big govt pork like Obamacare , but even more likely is future revenues will just continue to feed the police state.

Loopholes need tobe the first thing closed. Working fromt he top down closing them. And let those being effected know a year in advance, there will still be those that bitch and whine, but fore warned is fore knowledge.

Take me for example. I payed 2.15 in federal income taxs last year. Claiming the stanard deducations of 3 childeren, spouse, and myself. But thanks to variuos pork slipped into the tax law over the years I also get earned income credit, and 5 other credits, cant rember them off the top of my head. But I got a check back from the feds for over 4,000 dollars. These loopholes, and credits, and pork need to be closed, canceled, and cutoff. And this is something that effects me directly. As long as it can be used, I will use it; take it way and I wont bitch or complain about. But close them for the top earners first, and work your way down the income brackets.

My trusty magic wand? Yes, you are absolutely right I have no means to "eliminate" ultra rich that would also not destroy democracy. I could hope to put regulations and legislation in place, that given time would decrease number and magnitude of ultra rich.

most rich people earned their own money. im sure that some, despite claiming libertarian sympathies, will dismiss this link, but here it is:
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/real-1-percent

80% of millionaires are the first in their families to do so. by eliminating the rich you are destroying the people who work. your precious goverment needs someone to tax to make it run. simple math lesson:

i am a govt employee. my compensation is about $100,000 per year all told. i pay about $20k in taxes- property, state, federal. that leaves a hole of $80k. people who generate wealth must make up the difference. we cant all be govt employees

Damn dude, I am a mailman and make 36k a year. Thank you for making up for me not putting in a dime.

We need rich people, they give us hope to strive to that level. An icon we can point at for kids to aspire to, so they do better then their parents.

We need poor people, to learn compasion for those that have less then us. To be thankful for what we do have, and to strive to share what we have with them.

Another article worth reading, since we are linking CATO today -

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/obama-is-no-clinton

Obama is no Clinton.

"but considering how little is made in the US"

Actually, the US is still near or at the top of the manufacturing list to be honest. ( $1.7T in 2009 )

What we DON'T manufacture is the cheap and easy goods. Countries with low labor costs handle that now. We do specialized and crazy complex goods. Aircraft, health care stuff, industrial products, etc.

So while the general idea is that the US doesn't manufacture anything of their own anymore, it's not entirely the whole truth. :D

i guess what im counting is jobs. from about 25% of the workforce to about 10%. also, is that 1.7 T the value of the goods manufactured? does it include military contracts?

the reason i ask is because it takes a lot of shirts to equal the value of an F-22

Your political views took a whole new, morbidly weird light.

thats 75k in pay and 25k in benefits, supposedly

Yeah, when it comes to benefits, funny math always comes into play. I've always said if they want to forgo my benefits and just pay me 1/2 of what they "claim" my benefits are worth on a yearly basis, I'll be happy to call it even :D