Author: Curt Doolittle

WORTH READING: DEFINE ‘RICH’.

What is rich? Is ‘Rich’ something we can define or calculate? And how much can we tax them?

It is certainly possible to calculate who is ‘rich’. The goal of every individual is to exit the market. Whether that individual studies hard to get a good (protected) job in big company, or works for the government which by definition is extra-market (and protected), or seeks a (protected) union job, or whether that person does none of that rent-seeking, and instead, exits the market through saving or investment.

“Rich” means ‘exiting the market’. To exit the market one needs roughly on hundred times the median income, or about 4.5-5M today. It used to be that a million dollars meant something meaningful, but it doesn’t. You can easily burn through it if you’re the kind of person that can make it in the first place.

Rich is a balance sheet calculation, not an income calculation. If a person’s balance sheet exceeds about one hundred times the median income (which is by definition, the 1%) then realistically, it doesn’t matter how much of their income you tax.

I suspect that the various means of calculating maximum utility taxation is closer to 60 or 65% based upon what I can find.

But if you tax the income of a small business person who is trying to exit the market, then we certainly have the right to wipe out social security, wipe out pension programs, fire federal workers and wipe out their savings. Because unless those assets are counted, the definition of ‘rich’ is asymmetrically used to punish people who participate in the market.

http://news.yahoo.com/iran-army-declines-mps-hormuz-exercise-remarks-132115297.htmlIranian bravado never ceases to amaze me.

It’d take about three days to return iran to the stone age.

http://www.capitalismv3.com/index.php/2011/12/the-reasons-for-the-decline-in-fine-art/Fourteen Reasons For The Decline In Fine Art

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/12/12/reid_millionaire_job_creators_are_like_unicorns_because_they_dont_exist.html#.TuakAVgFvgw.facebookI’ve created more jobs than Reid ever has. And probably paid more taxes.

If you want to do something that is meaningful to you for a very long time, you can become very angry at those things that prevent you from doing it. The feeling starts out as distraction, and matures into simple dissatisfaction, then dissatisfaction turns to frustration, frustration to exhaustion and exhaustion to anger. That anger then tends to spill out onto people around you, and you can treat even those you care most about in ways that they dont deserve, for reasons that are not related to them whatsoever. Your dreams are real if and only if, you are more willing to bear the difficulty of achieving them, then you are the frustration from not trying to achieve them.

http://mises.org/daily/5830/Is-the-United-States-Too-Big-to-SucceedEurope doesn’t need tighter integration, and the USA needs to split up.

Greg Mankiw makes a case for graduate school education:

Apart from their bank accounts, Gallup finds education to be the greatest difference between the wealthiest 1% of Americans and everyone else. The Gallup analysis reveals that 72% of the wealthiest Americans have a college degree, compared with 31% of those in the lower 99 percentiles. Furthermore, nearly half of those in the wealthiest group have postgraduate education, versus 16% of all others.

But it’s not education that gets people into the 1%. It’s IQ and hard work. Education produces little more than signaling.

Greg Mankiw makes a case for graduate school education:

Apart from their bank accounts, Gallup finds education to be the greatest difference between the wealthiest 1% of Americans and everyone else. The Gallup analysis reveals that 72% of the wealthiest Americans have a college degree, compared with 31% of those in the lower 99 percentiles. Furthermore, nearly half of those in the wealthiest group have postgraduate education, versus 16% of all others.

But it’s not education that gets people into the 1%. It’s IQ and hard work. Education produces little more than signaling.

“Capitalism as it is used in common discourse, refers to a decision making-methodology in it’s narrowest form, and a general bias in it’s broader form, that is used by members of a population that describes a broad spectrum of property definitions from the most several (individual) property, to the most shareholder (collective) forms of property, the entire spectrum of which requires calculable means of planning production, and the transfer between individuals by voluntary means — and which specifically prohibits transfer by involuntary means. This institutional bias, it’s property definitions, the modes of transfer, and the means of dispute resolution, can be represented along a second axis describing a broad spectrum of enforcement mechanisms from the most informal and voluntary, which rely entirely upon the power of ostracization and opportunity deprivation, to the most formal and involuntary, which rely upon a contract called a constitution that enumerates property rights and exceptions, either written and explicit or oral and traditional, and that includes a judiciary that resolves disputes according to those enumerated rights and exceptions no matter how they are encoded.’ X-Axis: Individual ->Shareholder Y-Axis: Informal -> Formal (Diagram Attached)

An anarchist might argue that capitalism consists of individual property rights (informal+individual). A classical liberal would argue that capitalism consists of individual property rights that are constitutionally administered (Individual+Formal). A communist would argue that property is entirely shareholder driven and at least according to marx, rules would be unnecessary under communism (Shareholder + informal). A democratic socialist would argue that property is communal, and divided up for purely utilitarian purposes, and that laws and administration are needed (Shareholder + Formal). All current political philosophies incorporate the notion of property rights, since economic calculation is impossible without them. The current argument is that all individuals in an economy are shareholders (which is hard to refute), and that because they are shareholders they are due dividends. Our ancestors solved this problem by suggesting that freedom was sufficient compensation for shareholders. ‘Input freedom’ or ‘freedom of opportunity’. This means that there are no involuntary transfers allowed. Property requires institutions because institutions are required to defend property. The private law society, and it’s progenitor the monarchy, are superior forms of government. They are perhaps the best form of government ever invented.

http://www.news.britainfirst.org/political-correctness/support-political-prisoner-emma-west-this-christmas/Free Emma West.