The Politics Thread 4

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Regginator3
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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Regginator3 » Sat Feb 10, 2018 6:12 pm

Moggy wrote:It’s not a strawman to ask how we would pay for things.

You are ok with taxation, but it’s too high and you morally don’t think you should be forced to give up money you’ve earned? It all sounds a bit contradictory, either forcibly taking any money is wrong or it isn’t.


I believe it's a "necessary evil" (I don't actually think of it as 'evil' but that's the best phrase that comes to mind), so it's necessary to keep some, but it's also good to minimise it to mitigate the badness of forcefully taking money from people just because they decided to work. I really don't see what's contradictory about that. It IS a straw man to suggest that my argument implies that we should have 0% taxation, when it wasn't.

If there was a way of funding government and having 0% tax then I'd probably take that option, but it's impossible.

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Moggy » Sat Feb 10, 2018 6:18 pm

Regginator3 wrote:
Moggy wrote:It’s not a strawman to ask how we would pay for things.

You are ok with taxation, but it’s too high and you morally don’t think you should be forced to give up money you’ve earned? It all sounds a bit contradictory, either forcibly taking any money is wrong or it isn’t.


I believe it's a "necessary evil" (I don't actually think of it as 'evil' but that's the best phrase that comes to mind), so it's necessary to keep some, but it's also good to minimise it to mitigate the badness of forcefully taking money from people just because they decided to work. I really don't see what's contradictory about that.


It’s contradictory because you’ve claimed that it’s morally wrong to forcibly take money that people have earned.

You then say that we should have tax, but that it should be lower.

That contradicts itself, either tax is wrong or not. If forcibly taking money is morally wrong, then taking 0.01% is as morally wrong as taking 50%.

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Moggy » Sat Feb 10, 2018 6:20 pm

Regginator3 wrote:It IS a straw man to suggest that my argument implies that we should have 0% taxation, when it wasn't.

If there was a way of funding government and having 0% tax then I'd probably take that option, but it's impossible.


You edited your post.

It’s not a strawman to ask somebody how we pay for things when they have said that forcibly taking earnings is wrong. It’s a logical question to ask.

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Tineash » Sat Feb 10, 2018 6:24 pm

Maybe you could just provide a comprehensive list of which forms of taxation you do and don't consider legitimate.
I mean we got income tax: naughty bad I earned that go away, and CGT:yep cool ya got me.
Now just fill in the rest.

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Regginator3
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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Regginator3 » Sat Feb 10, 2018 6:28 pm

Moggy wrote:It’s contradictory because you’ve claimed that it’s morally wrong to forcibly take money that people have earned.

You then say that we should have tax, but that it should be lower.

That contradicts itself, either tax is wrong or not. If forcibly taking money is morally wrong, then taking 0.01% is as morally wrong as taking 50%.

You edited your post.

It’s not a strawman to ask somebody how we pay for things when they have said that forcibly taking earnings is wrong. It’s a logical question to ask.


No, it isn't contradictory. I'm still not sure what the hang-up is, here. I agree forcefully taking money is wrong. I disagree with you entirely that "taking 0.01% is as morally wrong as taking 50%". Taking less money is still wrong, but less wrong than taking more money. Taking 10% is half as wrong as taking 20%, to me. Because by taking 10%, you're taking away one tenth of someone's income, by taking 20% you're taking a whole fifth. There is a demonstrable impact on someone's life between the two rates, especially on someone who is on a poorer income. I didn't say there was a system which would work that would be "completely" morally okay. I reject the assumption that that is possible.

I take it you generally don't believe there is such thing as a "necessary evil", then.

And yes I edited my post because I had additional thought to weigh in and didn't care to double post. I did it with this one too!

Tineash wrote:Maybe you could just provide a comprehensive list of which forms of taxation you do and don't consider legitimate.
I mean we got income tax: naughty bad I earned that go away, and CGT:yep cool ya got me.
Now just fill in the rest.


Why are you talking about 'legitimacy'? They're all legitimate. I don't think any tax is particularly good but I think it's a necessary evil (again, not 'evil', but best phrase that comes to mind).

I'm seriously unsure why this forum has a problem with grasping the concept of "necessary evil".

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Moggy » Sat Feb 10, 2018 6:32 pm

Regginator3 wrote:
Moggy wrote:It’s contradictory because you’ve claimed that it’s morally wrong to forcibly take money that people have earned.

You then say that we should have tax, but that it should be lower.

That contradicts itself, either tax is wrong or not. If forcibly taking money is morally wrong, then taking 0.01% is as morally wrong as taking 50%.

You edited your post.

It’s not a strawman to ask somebody how we pay for things when they have said that forcibly taking earnings is wrong. It’s a logical question to ask.


No, it isn't contradictory. I'm still not sure what the hang-up is, here. I agree forcefully taking money is wrong. I disagree with you entirely that "taking 0.01% is as morally wrong as taking 50%". Taking less money is still wrong, but less wrong than taking more money. Taking 10% is half as wrong as taking 20%, to me. Because by taking 10%, you're taking away one tenth of someone's income, by taking 20% you're taking a whole fifth. There is a demonstrable impact on someone's life between the two rates, especially on someone who is on a poorer income. I didn't say there was a system which would work that would be "completely" morally okay. I reject the assumption that that is possible.

I take it you generally don't believe there is such thing as a "necessary evil", then.

And yes I edited my post because I had additional thought to weigh in and didn't care to double post. I did it with this one too!


All I did was query your statement that it was morally wrong to forcibly take people’s earnings. We agree that taxation is necessary, I don’t think it is a “necessary evil” because I don’t think it’s mora wrong to tax people. You think it is. That’s cool, we don’t have to agree.

I wasn’t criticising your post edit, I mentioned it so I didn’t look to others that I was splitting my reply into two separate posts.

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Moggy » Sat Feb 10, 2018 6:34 pm

Regginator3 wrote:I'm seriously unsure why this forum has a problem with grasping the concept of "necessary evil".


We all understand it. We are just having a disagreement about it’s use in this context.

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Regginator3 » Sat Feb 10, 2018 6:40 pm

Moggy wrote:
Regginator3 wrote:I'm seriously unsure why this forum has a problem with grasping the concept of "necessary evil".


We all understand it. We are just having a disagreement about it’s use in this context.

That's cool. I think the issue comes around the phrase "morally wrong". Perhaps a bad choice of words.

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by That » Sat Feb 10, 2018 7:21 pm

Thanks for your long reply. I'm just going to cherry-pick this bit:

Regginator3 wrote:Now, there's a very misleading graph. That's corporation tax revenues as a percentage of GDP, which is, frankly, irrelevant when GDP shifts (for example tax receipts can go up, but GDP can go up further, therefore this would mark as a 'fall'). Did the overall tax receipts go up?

This graph would suggest that, on average, there is a negative correlation between tax rates and tax revenues.

My day-to-day work is in data science, so I'm certainly very interested in your thoughts on why the analysis is misleading. I would advise that any multi-year or multi-country presentation of data across these variables absolutely needs some normalisation factor to account for the overall growth of the economy. I don't think it's very meaningful to say "the receipts went up by x" without a contextualising factor that accounts for what the economy is doing at that time. I don't research in economics but I can't imagine multiple sources of data on this subject have used the current GDP as a normalising factor without some thought and consensus.

I don't think the graph you just linked to - which, incidentally, is normalised in the same way that you said you have a problem with(?) - is very clear-cut. I agree there's some trend, but if you look at pairs of points, sometimes an increase in corporation tax rate is correlated with an increase in take and sometimes the opposite is true -- it's about 50/50. The dramatic drop in rate doesn't have a similarly dramatic increase in take, or vice-versa.

My primary take-away from that graph is "I wonder if the article explains what happened in '95-'00," not "wow, those two variables are strongly correlated."

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Regginator3 » Sat Feb 10, 2018 7:32 pm

I mean in terms of considering whether there is a direct cause, only the raw values should be needed, right?

The usage of the graph that is using the same metric - % of GDP - was to show that even if taking this into account, the stats (on average) do represent that.

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by That » Sat Feb 10, 2018 7:44 pm

Regginator3 wrote:I mean in terms of considering whether there is a direct cause, only the raw values should be needed, right?

This isn't really correct in my opinion. I think if you're compiling a big data-set over a time period and many countries, you need a way to account for the possible impacts on corporation tax receipts which aren't due to corporation tax rate policy. One such effect is that in any growing economy, even if you hold rates constant, you would expect raw receipts to rise steadily over time; at the very least, normalising by total GDP accounts for this one confounding phenomenon.

I can't say whether it's the perfect normalisation factor, but I would personally take it over the raw numbers if I were running this analysis.

EDIT: A nice way to approach this might be "% change in tax receipts / % change in GDP". If you want to use your Bitcoin riches to fund a study let me know...

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Regginator3 » Sat Feb 10, 2018 8:34 pm

I would recommend reading this paper though. It's quite fascinating reading and I don't see an issue with what it's found.

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by That » Sat Feb 10, 2018 9:09 pm

Regginator3 wrote:I would recommend reading this paper though. It's quite fascinating reading and I don't see an issue with what it's found.

Sure thing, I'll read it! I actually have a 'paper to-do list' -- this is at the bottom (underneath all the biology stuff I need to read for my PhD!), but I will get around to it eventually.

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Lex-Man » Sat Feb 10, 2018 9:50 pm

I think the thing people forget when talking about taxation is that the only reason they can earn money is because we have a government. The work the government does massively improves all our lives and with out it we'd be back to a barter system. Money only exists because of the government.

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Cribs » Sat Feb 10, 2018 10:23 pm

Regginator3 wrote:Taking 10% is half as wrong as taking 20%, to me. Because by taking 10%, you're taking away one tenth of someone's income, by taking 20% you're taking a whole fifth. There is a demonstrable impact on someone's life between the two rates, especially on someone who is on a poorer income.


Are we just ignoring personal allowance?

Or, if we're talking corporation tax, why is anyone who could be considered struggling still running a company?

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Lex-Man » Sat Feb 10, 2018 10:50 pm

Cribs wrote:
Regginator3 wrote:Taking 10% is half as wrong as taking 20%, to me. Because by taking 10%, you're taking away one tenth of someone's income, by taking 20% you're taking a whole fifth. There is a demonstrable impact on someone's life between the two rates, especially on someone who is on a poorer income.


Are we just ignoring personal allowance?

Or, if we're talking corporation tax, why is anyone who could be considered struggling still running a company?


If some bodies struggling shouldn't the government help them. Also I don't think the the difference between 10 and 20 would be that great when the wages get large enough. Your life style wouldnt change much by having 90k or 80k a year to play with.

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by KK » Sat Feb 10, 2018 11:51 pm

Mail On Sunday:

'He grabbed her hips, pulled her hair and forced his thumb into her mouth in a sexual way': Murdered MP Jo Cox's husband was reported to police over sex assault claim in Harvard bar - nine months before his wife's death

- Woman reported Brendan Cox to U.S. police, claiming he assaulted her late at night at Harvard University in 2015; Mr Cox strongly denies the allegation

-In report filed by police, she claims Mr Cox ‘grabbed [the woman] by the hips several times... forced his thumb into her mouth in a sexual way’; ‘touched her inappropriately’ in a restaurant

- Complaint came soon after Mr Cox quit as senior exec with Save The Children in 2015 following separate claims of inappropriate behaviour towards staff

A new charity sex scandal erupted last night after it emerged that the husband of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox was once accused of groping a senior US government official.

The woman reported Brendan Cox to American police, claiming he assaulted her late at night at Harvard University – although Mr Cox strongly denies the allegation.

Her complaint came soon after Mr Cox quit as a senior executive with the Save The Children in 2015 following separate claims of inappropriate behaviour towards staff.

According to a report filed by police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the woman claims Mr Cox:

‘Grabbed [the woman] by the hips several times, pulled her hair and forced his thumb into her mouth in a sexual way’;

‘Touched her inappropriately’ in a restaurant and tried to ‘push’ her into drinking more alcohol;

‘Pulled her towards him and touched her stomach’ despite her telling him to stop;

Texted her later, asking: ‘Are you touching yourself?’

The woman was so upset she ‘couldn’t even look at Mr Cox’. She also said she ‘feared repercussions’ from him. In the police report, seen by The Mail on Sunday, the ‘incident type/offence’ is described as ‘indecent assault and battery on person 14 or over.’

Mr Cox’s lawyers last night said he denies the ‘spurious allegations’ and says no sexual assault took place.

This newspaper knows the identity of the woman, who is in her thirties, and has decided to protect her anonymity.

http://www.dailyfail.co.uk/news/article ... claim.html

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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Grumpy David » Sun Feb 11, 2018 12:17 am

Third opinion poll showing an increase in the Tory lead over Labour.

Have I missed out on recent political events? What explains this?

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Benzin
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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Benzin » Sun Feb 11, 2018 8:51 am

Corbyn is a bit useless?

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Moggy
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PostRe: The Politics Thread 4
by Moggy » Sun Feb 11, 2018 8:56 am

Benzin wrote:Corbyn is a bit useless?


That’s unfair, it’s not just Corbyn. There’s also McDonnell and Abbott.


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