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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (145230)	11/3/2008 5:28:06 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

You are still stating your opinion and passing it off as fact. Every post to me by you on this thread has been unsupported opinion. The answer to that appears to be yes even if you won't admit it. Nonsense I suspect that a piece of the government's involvement or interference with agriculture is to prevent huge swings in booms and busts that are inevitable in the industry. There has been huge swings. Also note that much of agriculture gets by just fine without government price supports. We don't have crisis in the supply of vegetables even though vegetables don't get price supports. We could ignore short selling and not have breaks on big down swings in the market. If by "ignore" you mean not prohibit (either in general, or on specific types of securities) that would be a good idea. I don't think that letting 'the market' completely dictate our lives is a particularly good thing because we value stability. The market is people coordinating through voluntary action, not domination. Government control is domination. Also government control can make things less stable either directly or through creating perverse incentives for those operating in the market. Its not "market equal unstable" and "government equal stable" far from it. As for highly "progressive" taxation (well really high taxes in general, if you tax everyone at a the same high rate its not "progressive" but it discourages wealth creation in the same way) discouraging wealth creation, its a simple matter that people respond to incentives. Punish someone for doing something or reduce the reward they get from it, and you get less of that thing. Investment is risky. Tax it heavily and you reduce the after tax return on investment. If an investment has a lower anticipated after tax risk adjusted return, its less likely to be made. Get less of it or push the investment elsewhere where it is not taxed as heavily. But the problem goes beyond this. Our tax code is very complex, with rewards for jumping through all sort of hoops. That drives investment towards jumping through those hoops instead of towards the most productive areas. Higher taxes increase the distortion caused by complex taxes. And its not just taxes on investment that cause this problem. If you tax labor (payroll taxes, income taxes on labor income) than you reduce the return of the employee from working more and the return of the employer from hiring people.