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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (303894)	9/21/2006 7:26:00 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573848

re: A lot of taxes have more directly perverse incentives. People invest money to shelter it from taxes rather than to produce the best risk adjusted rate of return. People also spend a lot of money to comply with or figure out ways around taxes. First, you should drop the "perverse" adjective... it makes you sound less than realistic. "Unhealthy" might be better. Is the benefit from tax deductions for charitable contributions "perverse"? The free market is important... but is it everything in our society? Obviously not or you wouldn't be in such a minority. It's pretty funny that this argument started out with me saying that every tax has a winner and a loser. You disagreed, and you still haven't pointed out one that doesn't. Now you are talking "perverse" incentives. I guess I like the "perverse" incentives and you are against a deduction for charitable contributions? Although you seemed to accept the incentives to the energy companies and I rallied against them. I'm confused, as usual. Tell where we disagree and I'll continue to argue.

To: TimF who wrote (303894)	9/23/2006 1:47:14 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573848

Taxing the money does hurt the economy, as does borrowing it, at least when you are just talking about the direct effects. Indirectly infrastructure like roads is needed, and while a lot of the spending is pork, some of it is important. Defense can be considered mostly a dead weight on the economy, but obviously some level of defense spending is necessary. How fast do you think intra and international trade would dry up in gov't did not spend for airports, shipping ports, highways etc. and continue spending for their ongoing maintenance? Your corporations would be dead in their tracks within months.