Plans for nearly 4,000 homes over Safeways divide Bay Area residents
I'm confused what to do with a source that shows this as its first words.
For example, it looks like the 25-story Marina Safeway can't be stopped, though they're still trying.
Berkeley has quite a few new buildings, though.
"AI sector's job layoffs lead to dampening of San Francisco house prices"
How about to discourage the development of extreme income and/or wealth inequality? Or do you want to encourage them?
At some level, certainly at 90%+, the most rational thing to do to make more money is to spend time lowering your tax bill, which is not a particularly beneficial way (to society) of making more money.
But I can't image anyone at an income tax level of say 10% is being actively discouraged from making more money? Like you need it to survive, so choosing to make _no_ money because of taxes seems like a very bad strategy.
Switching entirely to consumption tax is a billionaires dream. Dropping corporate income tax is a CFO’s dream. (Whoever wrote the line about how reinvested money shouldn’t be taxed is also an idiot. Taxes are on profits. Money reinvested in the business becomes an expense and so is not taxed. What is discouraged through business taxation is sitting on large corporate coffers.)
> Tuesday's show presented the common-sense, no-nonsense Planet Money economic plan — backed by economists of all stripes, but probably toxic to any candidate that might endorse it... There you have it, six major proposals that have broad agreement, at least among economists.
Income and payroll taxes have the feature that you always have the money when it's time to pay the tax. That also means they're disinflationary. Whereas property taxes can be inflationary because they may require you to sell assets.
For example, if the goal is a fair society, then we should have a wealth tax, to disincentivize wealth equality. (And an income tax isn't so bad either in).
Having only a consumption tax makes sense if the goal is (only) to reduce consumption.
Maybe you're willing to give up 70 basis points in pursuit of a "fairer" society, but that means your grandkids will live in a much poorer society than they'd otherwise live in. This is the trajectory Europe is in currently. Having missed the boat on the Internet, space travel, and now AI, I suspect my grandkids will see a world where people are immigrating from Europe to China the way we see people immigrating from Argentina to the U.S.
That sounds like an argument for human slavery
To some people, but not everyone. It doesn't make sense to give unqualified "bests" without these kinds of caveats.
I don't personally share this view. I don't think growth or wealth are inherently good.
https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_14392...
I wonder if people like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld being at the scene of the crime is part of why "people just don't like the answer". Then again, perhaps it is revealing in some way of the answer offered itself.
Yes its an interesting article but you can't call it expert consensus and neither does NPR or any of the economists linked in there.
m463•4h ago
I'm in favor of a politician tax, and an attractive people tax (I'm not worried, I will use my tax receipt for virtue signalling)
smitty1e•3h ago
rayiner•3h ago
Four. Eliminate all income and payroll taxes. All of them. For everyone. Taxes discourage whatever you're taxing, but we like income, so why tax it? Payroll taxes discourage creating jobs. Not such a good idea. Instead, impose a consumption tax, designed to be progressive to protect lower-income households.”).
throw101010•3h ago
I know you are just quoting this transcript/article... but you likely have an idea of how this would work since you classify this as the best solution.
Especially interested on how you would progressively tax consumption... How do you apply brackets to the day-to-day purchases? The general answer is to demand people to report their income/savings and the difference is taxed... and rich people will just game this as easily as the income taxes (if not more easily).
rayiner•2h ago
But as I understand it, the reason is that consumption taxes have the least distortion in terms of deviating from the efficient behavior in the no-tax scenario: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2019/09/using-tax-to-tackle-...
dpark•1h ago
fyredge•1h ago
Currently, income is "discouraged" through financial instruments such as Securities-Backed Line of Credit (SBLOC), which are very much only feasible in the realm of the very rich. Some part of this loophole can be offset by corporate tax, but corporate tax is based on profit, not income, incentivising all sorts of unproductive spending behaviour e.g. stock buybacks.
To me, the switch to consumption tax does a couple of things:
1. Instill discipline. Higher spending does not equate to higher productivity. By taxing spending, discipline will be instilled in both the consumer and corporation. With consumption tax, there will be no brackets, rather the amount of tax will be based on what the government policy is. Smoking bad? Higher tax. Soy milk more environmentally friendly? Lower tax.
2. Simplify tax situation with "capital gains". You pay tax upfront, now we don't need to evaluate what happens to the value of the stock, that will be the problem for the next buyer. No loophole for capital gains tax with inheritance.
dzhiurgis•1h ago
JumpCrisscross•3h ago
The solution is a progressive wealth tax. Start it at 2% (inflation target) above $100mm and raise it a point at every order of magnitude. 3% at $1bn, 4% at $100bn, 5% at $100bn, 6% at $1tn, et cetera.
There isn't a great reason why OpenAI should be hit with a tax while Andreessen Horowitz and Microsoft are not.