Oh. So you don't favour income taxation?
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- Thread starter Nom Chompsky
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Oh. So you don't favour income taxation?
No, of course not.
Glad to hear you got out of the house for a change. That's progress! (Who did you go watch the movie with?)
Oh, I do. And corporate taxation. Anyone making money in a certain area needs to pay for the environment that allows them to make money. See?
Strange. But you said you don't claim ownership over the labour of others? What is income taxation but, by government proxy, claiming such ownership?
So it's like using a gym, you have a membership fee to use their facilities. But then why don't gyms charge your fee based on a percentage of your income? Or a percentage of the value of your assets? Or a percentage of the exchange price of your goods and services? Why isn't taxation like a membership fee then? Something fixed according to a contract, which can be concluded at the discretion of either party?
We can keep pointing holes in his argument and he will keep making up vague excuses for it. When it comes down to it, the reason there are holes is that the argument is inherently flawed.
Why would you describe the Austrian School as "pseudoeconomics"?
I suppose you could call it that. You can conclude the contract by living somewhere else, so you would no longer be using the facilities available in the country and therefore wouldn't have to pay tax.
I believe (I don't go to gyms) that they charge a flat rate and you're allowed to use whatever you like. And then I think you pay an extra fee if you want to be able to use equipment at a different gym to the one you usually go to. Same with big earners- they use more of the country's resources to make their money than smaller earners, so they pay more to compensate.
Magic.
A long list of things which, I have no doubt, you would attempt to prove are not resources administered by a governing body.
Nope. We got to property rights via their (Gray's) argument and now we are completely ignoring property rights.
The irony is if an entire portion of the country (E.G. everyone except the state) decides to suceed and to govern themselves via smaller entities, such as the Swiss system, the question is would Gray and Ghoti allow it?
If so, it nullifies their own argument, as if others have claim to demand payment for it (You must contribute), then you cannot suceed. If not, then they believe we are slaves to the state and do not get to decide our own future, or rather slaves to everyone else since they are the ones in effect claiming entitlement to the fruits of my labour.
If I move overseas, it takes atleast 180 days I believe for the state to say, ok, you don't have to pay us taxes as you are not "ordinarily resident", but it taxes athletes and performers a witholding tax when they come here to perform...I don't think spending a few days here in concert constitutes someone having to pay taxes like 15% of the entire fee.
But hey, when others are your slaves I guess it is justifiable.
The irony is if an entire portion of the country (E.G. everyone except the state) decides to suceed and to govern themselves via smaller entities, such as the Swiss system, the question is would Gray and Ghoti allow it?
If so, it nullifies their own argument, as if others have claim to demand payment for it (You must contribute), then you cannot suceed. If not, then they believe we are slaves to the state and do not get to decide our own future, or rather slaves to everyone else since they are the ones in effect claiming entitlement to the fruits of my labour.
If I move overseas, it takes atleast 180 days I believe for the state to say, ok, you don't have to pay us taxes as you are not "ordinarily resident", but it taxes athletes and performers a witholding tax when they come here to perform...I don't think spending a few days here in concert constitutes someone having to pay taxes like 15% of the entire fee.
But hey, when others are your slaves I guess it is justifiable.
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it does not rely on empirical data, just word play. I even asked on science forums if it should be taken seriously.. They said no. Its akin to religion.
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I see your problem. You're quite an individualistic kinda guy. As such, you honestly believe that you make all the money you make in some kind of hermetically sealed bubble, and then the big bad government barges its way in and says, I'll have some of that...
So I completely understand why you're cross.
What you haven't explained is how you manage to make your money without any - any - help from anybody else.
Individuals come first. There is no state without individuals. There are individuals without the state.
So the state and others are the parasites.
The market process is non-coercive mutual co-operation. It's the antithesis of your idea of some man alone against all. Commerce is civilization. The state is inimical to this.
Deductive reasoning is wordplay? Interesting then that classical, neo-classical and Keynesian schools all rely heavily on it too.
In any case, we've been having a lengthy discussion here. However, so far, no one in contra has actually leveled a rational retort as to why the Austrian school rejects empirical and mathematical model approaches: "Austrian economists reject empirical statistical methods as tools applicable to economics, saying that while it is appropriate in the natural sciences where causal factors can be isolated in laboratory conditions, the actions of human beings are far too complex for this "numerical" treatment as passive non-adaptive subjects."
In any case, where were these "scientific" economists who called the housing bubble and the depression? Oh, that's right, they were all on CNBC saying the business cycle had been conquered and we've reached a "permanent plateau". Take a look at what a proponent of the Austrian school had to endure whilst making the case for collapse years in advance.
Love watching Schiff videos, even if he shouldn't technically be trying to predict things, thats not the job of an economist but as Block puts it, a thymologist.
Contributions of the Austrian School.
* The Regression Thereom of Money, wherein Mises hypothesized that the creation of money is a time-dependent process where market participants, by spontaneously engaging in barter and trading goods, quickly reach a market-based consensus regarding what should be commonly accepted as a medium of exchange in that market. An item becomes "money" based primarily on participants' subjective values - their past experience of other traders accepting this "good" as money - and their expectation that it will be accepted by others in future. If people stop trusting that others will accept this item in future, this item can lose its tradeability - or "moneyness" - suddenly and immediately.
* A fundamental rejection of mathematical methods in economics, seeing the function of economics as investigating the essences rather than the specific quantities of economic phenomena. This was seen as an evolutionary, or "genetic-causal", approach against the alleged "unreality" and internal stresses inherent in the "static" approach of equilibrium and perfect competition, which are the foundations of mainstream Neoclassical economics (see also praxeology). This methodology is also driven by the belief that econometrics is inherently misleading in that it creates a fallacious "precision" in economics where there is none.
* Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk's critique of Marx, which centered on the untenability of the labor theory of value in the light of the transformation problem. There was also the connected argument that capitalists do not exploit workers; they accommodate workers by providing them with income well in advance of the revenue from the output they helped to produce.
* Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk's demonstration that the law of marginal utility, as formulated by Menger necessarily implies the classical law of costs and hence the vast majority of the conclusions of the British classical economists. This discovery was later fully developed and its implications traced by a student of von Mises, George Reisman, in his book, Capitalism.
* An emphasis on opportunity cost and reservation demand in defining value, and a refusal to consider supply as an otherwise independent cause of value.[39] (The British economist Philip Wicksteed adopted this perspective.)
* The Mises-Hayek business cycle theory, which is asserted as explaining depression as a reaction to an intertemporal production structure fostered by monetary policy setting interest rates inconsistent with individual time preferences.
* Mises and Hayek's view of prices as permitting agents to make use of dispersed tacit knowledge.
* The time preference theory of interest, which explains interest rates through intertemporal choice - the different time preferences of the borrower or lender - rather than as a price paid for a factor of production.
* The economic calculation debate between Austrian and Marxist economists, with the Austrians claiming that Marxism is flawed because prices could not be set to recognize opportunity costs of factors of production, and so socialism could not make rational decisions.
* Friedrich Hayek was one of the few economists who gave warning of a major economic crisis before the great crash of 1929.[40][41] In February 1929, Hayek warned that a coming financial crisis was an unavoidable consequence of reckless monetary expansion.[42]
* Stressing uncertainty in the making of economic decisions, rather than relying on "Homo economicus" or the rational man who was fully informed of all circumstances impinging on his decisions. The fact that perfect knowledge never exists, means that all economic activity implies risk.
* Seeing the entrepreneurs' role as collecting and evaluating information and acting on risks.
* An emphasis on the forward-looking nature of choice, seeing time as the root of uncertainty within economics (see also time preference).
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It wasn't so much a prediction as making present observations and realizing what they meant in terms of the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle... But it doesn't use a lot of fancy mathematics so why take it seriously, right?