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 : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (17132)	4/20/2010 1:17:22 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

It's the same as saying that unemployment insurance conditions people to not work, as if suddenly an additional 6% of the folks decided to get lazy this past year or so. If you decrease the negative effect of unemployment, at the margin you will get more of it. Recognizing that reality bares no resemblance to the claim that every additional unemployed person was because of unemployment insurance. Does unemployment insurance increase unemployment by 2% or .1% I don't claim to know, but people are more likely to delay taking a job that pays much less than their previous job, if they can get unemployment insurance. The argument you call garbage - "When faced with increasing tax rates, taxpayers will reduce their income, which is why it is impossible to raise a lot of revenue by increasing taxes above a certain point. As taxes on income rise, taxpayers spend less time on work and more on leisure. They avoid sales of investments and assets which could trigger income until they can pair them with offsetting losses from other transactions. They spend billions of dollars on tax advice and structuring to reduce their tax burden, which makes economic sense for them but which is a waste of resources for our society. In the aggregate, a tax system that is hostile to investment and growth has a distortive effect which harms U.S. productivity and reduces the standard of living of our whole nation." Is not garbage its true. People respond to the marginal incentives they face. The more you increase marginal tax rates the less incentive there is to work (except to the extent that the higher taxes force you to work more to keep up your lifestyle, the income effect is at war with the substitution effect here). In addition to less work and investment you get distortion of investment as investors search for ways to minimize their tax impact more and more at the expense of the highest risk adjusted pre-tax rate of return. And many billions of dollars are spent on the effort to reduce tax impact and the costs of complying with taxes. All of that represents a fairly unproductive use of resources for the economy at large, even as it makes lots of sense for the individual in question.

To: Alighieri who wrote (17132)	4/20/2010 2:33:11 PM
From: Lane3	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

It's the same as saying that unemployment insurance conditions people to not work Do you deny that that is a factor? I get where you're coming from, I think. It's a binary reaction, a lack of differentiation, which is a fallacy. Or a fear that if you give an inch they'll take a mile. Well, here's news for you. One can recognize that unemployment insurance may condition some people to not work while favoring an unemployment insurance program. At least I can. And do. But then my brain isn't limited to the binary. If you really want to see how that conditioning occurs I can describe it to you, without analogies, even. But if you simply don't want to see it, I'd be wasting my time.