Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (9411)	1/21/2006 8:02:26 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541248

I think fairness is a crutial element in laws. There's no such thing as fairness. Not objective fairness. That's why our laws and personnel practices are based on due process, which is the best proxy for fairness as we can get. If you read the commentary following Galt's proposal, way down the line someone says that the commentary illustrates how everyone has different ideas about what is fair. That's one of the reasons for the proposal, to get away from having to deal with fairness issues in taxation. Getting a consensus on fairness is an illusion. More like delusion, actually. The only way to get anything accomplished is disabuse the designers of the notion that fairness can be achieved.

To: TigerPaw who wrote (9411)	1/23/2006 5:21:00 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541248

We apparently have very different ideas about fairness. I don't imagine some market mechanism would produce a result that we both find fair. Look at it this way. Imagine Sally is much wealthier than Bob. Imagine Bob thinks Sally should share some of her excess wealth so that he can have a better life. He thinks this is only fair. If you create some sort of artificial market mechanism for Sally and Bob to bid on Sally's wealth, or some percentage of her wealth defined as excess (and how do you determine what is excess?), Its likely Sally won't think any result is fair except one that allows her to keep all of her wealth or at least the vast majority of it. However elegant the mechanism you are unlikely to achieve consensus between Sally and Bob. Getting back to the issue that started this, inheritance, I think it is fair that people are allowed to pass on their wealth to their heirs. More over I think that the government has no inherent right to that wealth even though it may have the power to grab it. Even I would agree that the heir does not have a right to the wealth that they have inherited (and I would not agree to this idea), that still wouldn't mean that taxing it away would be entirely justified. Tim