If you want a great way to get a nervous laughter about how retarded people who claim to be left-wing "thinkers" are, read this ridiculous missive into how taxation is "properly" 100%:
The way we think about taxation is wrong. Right now, we talk about taxation as if it confiscates some portion of a transaction while leaving the rest of the transaction untaxed. So, for instance, when someone is paid $100, but only receives $80 after tax, we say that they have been subjected to a $20 (or 20% tax). But this is a myth.Let's say, for argument's sake, that Matt Bruening isn't a worthless piece of human flesh and could actually provide me with some value. So I decide to help him out by paying him $100 to landscape my yard.In reality, all transactions are taxed at 100%. The “after tax” amount is actually a transfer payment made by the government to the recipient. So, going back to the prior example, when someone is paid $100, but only receives $80 after tax, what has really happened is that the government imposed a tax of $100 (or 100% tax) and then, separately, provided the person a transfer payment of $80.
My yard, of course, is in Edmonton, so if the City of Edmonton were to put his 20% tax in place, I would give him $100 and at some point a jackboot thug Edmonton cop would come along and tase him into submission for not sending them $20. By exactly what mechanism, theoretical or otherwise, could the City of Edmonton have been said to "transfer" him anything? That $100 bill I got in my pocket.
Indeed, if I made that $100 by, say, successfully treating a sodomite in South Cooking Lake, then the City of Edmonton wasn't involved in any way shape or form with me collecting the $100. So how did they get it to "transfer" it, and why did they so inefficiently have $100 move to Bruenig only to re-route $20 back to them? Why not have me send them the $20?
However, what if Bruenig setup a shell corporation in Fort Saskatchewan to start his landscaping business, and I called him in to landscape my Edmonton yard? Now the $20 (we're assuming an even taxation rate) is "transferred" to Fort Saskatchewan even though nothing else about the interaction has changed. It sure doesn't sound like what really happened had anything to do with Edmonton, or Fort Saskatchewan, or anything except for me, Matt Bruenig, and a now-healthy heterosexual in South Cooking Lake.
Presumably the general notion here is that the "City of Edmonton" was the entity which created the circumstances for me to even have a yard. This is not only on the face of it preposterous (indeed the City seems keen on doing everything it can to stop me from having a yard), but equally preposterous once you dig into it a little. Let's say that my yard was at the northwest corner of Township Road 510 and Range Road 240. I'm churning along, getting landscaping done every dozen years or so, and paying the useful Matt Bruenigs of the world (first time for every English sentence) $100 a pop for the effort. Meanwhile every time I do so, the County of Leduc sends the landscaper a tax bill of $20 (seems strange for a "transfer" of their own design, no?).
However, in the spring of 2019 a curious thing happens. The County of Leduc no longer is interested in collecting $20 from my yard being landscaped. The reason is that instead the City of Edmonton has annexed the land and turned me into a resident of Edmonton against my will. How does "Modern Taxation Theory" explain this?
Modern Taxation Theory helps us understand the reality of taxes and transfer payments and also helps us clearly confront certain questions that right now are clouded by confused thinking about these categories. So when it comes to the question of “should we tax the rich more,” the real question is “should the government keep paying the rich so much money?”
When exactly did the "government" decide it was going to transfer Bruenig $80 and why did it do so only at the exact same moment I paid him for the landscaping work he agreed to do in return for $100 (pre-tax)? How does that square with the "reality of transfer payments" and how does it account for a transfer payment being done by a different organization on January 2 2019 than December 30 2018 even when the same person landscaped the same lawn on both days?
Of course, it's silly when you start thinking of it this way: the government is a reactionary force. They only take after our free exchanges have taken place, and it's the work of retards and leftists (but I repeat myself) who believe otherwise.
