By saying the above, clearly you are not doing what you're claiming to be doing. Either that, or you're not understanding it. At least as far as the economically effective statement goes. If you, as you state below, want to live in a "free" ****hole as opposed to a functioning society (that's a bit of hyperbole, but not much), then you're free to. Just don't call it economically effective.

LOL. Now at least you're calling it an incentive, but you ignore it (no need to mention it). But above, you said you didn't ignore incentives. That's exactly what I was talking about. There's a question of which effect would be larger. I'd probably guess the positive effects would outweigh the negative effects, and so charitable contributions would be higher.

But just ignoring the negative effects is just LOL, especially when you're trying to put forth economic arguments.

If you assert so. But realize, you're just asserting that it would, that it's "airtight", and so on. I'd agree that charitable contributions would increase in all likelihood, but your analysis is not much more than "it must, because I want it to"

LOL. Slavery. They're making fun of someone else making that argument in the bad posters thread.

WTF is this ****?

Yes, you are ignoring many things, rather asserting things.

So to Libertarian's turn their noses up at the concept of welfare and social programs, and how so many people today abuse it. And then in the same breath, explain how allocation of goods would be voluntary, and totally disregard how that would obviously be abused? You wanna talk about freeloading, lol. That would be 10 times worse.

coffee,

the vast majority of people who donate to charity do so out of goodness, not due to tax deductions. your refusal to drop this initially-ridiculous "point" is DISGUSTING. you're a sad, sad man. you should be ashamed of yourself.

murderbynumbers,

you've done good work in this thread, but posting back and forth with these scumbags is obviously pretty futile. hopefully your efforts will enlighten some lurkers.

Some additional readings on Libertarianism (that could have saved everyone a ton of time typing):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

LOL. Caps for Disgusting.

Yeah, silly me for pointing out that he's doing exactly what I said he was doing (that he claimed not to be doing). My bad.

By the way, I never said tax deductions were the main reason people donated, but rather that it was an incentive. I hope you understand the difference. But given the vitriol you have displayed, I think you're a bit too biased to see.

Keep going on with the incorrect analysis--if that's the only thing that supports "your" viewpoint of an economically efficient AC world...

People focusing on $ only are ignoring the environmental and social boundaries to high economic growth.
Ageing is gonna bankrupt all western governments alone within a few decades.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...ctions/282743/

MmMmmmmmmmm...data.

Money (no pun intended) stat: 10% of all annual giving occurs in the last *3* days of the year.

Clearly people aren't considering tax implications of their giving or letting tax implications change their behavior.

I'm trying to wrap my head around what would happen to the environment under this nutty formula. There's no regulation, so people could do anything? It's bad enough WITH the regs, imagine without.

I'm also waiting to hear why there's no example of people doing it anywhere, if it's so darn great and ideal.

coffee,

given contemporary tax law, why wouldn't those who are going to donate to charity do so in time to get back money in april? this has zero connection to your implication that the law is responsible for an increase in charitable donations. sick pun, though. scum on.

Exactly--they're responding to incentives! That's the point!


First, that's not exactly the implication I was going for. Second, the implication I was going for was demonstrated in your own words above.

Question: Do you think there can be several reasons people may donate, or choose to time their donations? Your arguing as if your answer is no.

You like your petty insults, don't you? Thank you for your contribution. The door is over there.

the result of the law is that many donators choose to donate on december 31 instead of january 1. what matters is whether the law leads to an increase in donations to more than a negligible degree. suggesting that it does would be laughable.

you never should've unleashed this absurd nitpick, then.

if so, what you were going for was even pettier than anyone could've imagined. what a waste of time.

time their donations? of course. donate? of course not.

only when i'm conversing with individuals i consider to be morally bankrupt.

i'll gladly walk through it.

That does not seem to square with the 10% of donations in the last 3 days of the year...it's an incredible stretch to believe that those people would have just donated a day or a week later, as opposed to doing so because of tax implications.

Additionally, I remember a lot of charities up in arms because the tax deduction status of charitable donations was going to be revoked. I find it strange to think that libertarians (or at least you and MbN) would think it strange that the charities would assume that losing their tax-deductable status would affect the amount of donations they would get.

So we could go with that--an extension of what I am saying is that if the tax deduction for charitable donations were to disappear, then charitable donations would decrease (keeping all else, including taxes, the same). It appears you and MbN would argue otherwise, at least from what you and he have said in relation to what I have said. Of course, I can't actually believe you'd take that stance when asked in that way.

But, it is the same thing...

Insult, insult, insult. Great contributions...

Even better evidence is how heavily correlated large donors gifts are with the stock market.

Still getting a good amount of response, some hate, some genuine good questions. But I've definitely succeeding in derailing a pretty good thread and for that I apologize.

I'll make a thread re: libertarian economic philosophy, and elements of anarchy and how this all relates to the current economic climate in the next few days. All of this stuff can go there.

I've believed in this for most of my adult life so I feel pretty good about answering q's and that I can represent it well even if we disagree. I'll make my best effort to avoid feeding trolls/getting upset at ignorance. The goal will be to inform people about a very potent economic philosophy.

Enjoying the debate. Solid input MBN.

MbN:

FYI: Just because someone disagrees with you and starts debating/arguing doesn't mean they're trolls.

Degrading to name-calling (calling others trolls, ignorant as you did, and worse, as your "supporter" has) isn't conducive to discussion. It essentially shows that you "know" you're right, and if someone else disagrees with you, they must be stupid, ignorant, etc. It's almost as if you're playing the Ham role in the Ham v. Nye debate of evolution vs. creationism: Ham said that nothing would convince him he was wrong--you seem to have that exact same attitude. That's some immense hubris. It shows you simply want to lecture rather than debate. And if someone wants to lecture me about economic theories, they ought to have a level of economic knowledge that at least is in the neighborhood of mine. (I'm fine conversing with people whose economic knowledge doesn't come close, but not being lectured to)

I can see that this would be a problem under a gold standard or for debts denominated in foreign currencies. I don't see how it is a problem with a fiat system.

Yes, it is practically impossible to measure inflation accurately. This allows for significant fudging, hiding, and scare-mongering.

BUT - The US government's CPI numbers match up reasonably well with the Billion Prices Index (algorithmic and probably unbiased). Inflation, as we measure it, has probably been about 2% for the last several years.

AND - We know that the median standard of living is improving qualitatively. People have more stuff and live longer than they did 50 years ago. So, the long term trend is at least in the correct direction.

The article is absurdly cherry-picked. Yes, you may be able to find products and industries where prices have gone up or quality has gone down. But you can also find other industries where prices have gone down or quality has gone up (you can leave those out of your article of course!).

From this and other things I've read/heard from Peter Schiff IMO he either doesn't understand economics or has an agenda. I recommend ignoring him.

I don't think that is correct.

What are we 'borrowing' from China? Certainly not $USD. They don't make those. We do.

Here's what I think happens:

1) China sells us stuff for $USD.

2) China now has a bunch of $USD - a lot more than they want to spend on things that you can buy with $USD.

3) Instead of holding $USD they buy Treasuries and other stuff that gives nominal interest.

4) China waits.

To some people this looks like China 'lending' money to the US Government. To me this looks like us giving China an IOU that they don't currently want to use. When China lets us hold onto that IOU they aren't loaning us anything. They are just delaying their spending and collecting some interest.

We have a fiat currency. We don't need China's $USD to spend $USD. If China 'demands repayment' they will get back $USD. Our government's spending would not be affected in any way that I'm aware of. I am possibly confused. 8)

Rant
"The article is absurdly cherry-picked. Yes, you may be able to find products and industries where prices have gone up or quality has gone down. But you can also find other industries where prices have gone down or quality has gone up (you can leave those out of your article of course!)."

What I'm getting at is what industries do you think reflect the rate of inflation most accurately. The price of bread or the price of an IPhone?

"To some people this looks like China 'lending' money to the US Government. To me this looks like us giving China an IOU that they don't currently want to use. When China lets us hold onto that IOU they aren't loaning us anything. They are just delaying their spending and collecting some interest."

In regards to trade deficits, this isn't a sign of a health economy. The U.S. is giving china ious for goods.

You will get better response in the politics and economics sub-forums than here. Mostly because they are politics and economics forums, not business, finance and investing forums.

Yep, at some point some people may become concerned w/ the USD and at some point people might stop liking pizza, but don't let that scare you from opening a pizza parlor. We can speculate (with no evidence) that people may stop liking the USD or we can continue to look at facts.

Look at how cheap the US government is loaning out money. If people were scared of the USD they would demand higher rates for treasuries or they would stop buying them. As I'm sure you know, this simply isn't taking place.

People have been predicting the fall of the USD and the US economy (and I mean a real fall- like the one that was a possibility in 2008) for as long as I can remember and it still hasn't happened. <Insert joke about how the Indian Rain Dance always works because the Indians will dance until it rains.>

Decent fear mongering, but I have heard better. So many holes to poke I don't know where to start.

We need a recession to cleanse the economy? I hope I'm not the only one who got to read that.

Keep putting 100% blame on the banks for 2008 and ignoring the fault of consumers and the US government (who in my opinion both deserve more blame than the banks).

If you think when rates rise it will be worse than 2008 you either don't know what you are talking about or don't realize how bad 2008 was. QE is not the reason the market (and to a lesser extent- the economy) has been fighting its way up for the past 5 years.

Bahbabmickey, why do you think consumers were more to blame in 08 than the banks?

I'm not sure what kind of a response to your post you're looking for, could you clarify so I can try?

I'm not really looking for a particular response from you or anyone else. I just wanted to make the counter argument to your story/ fantasy that the USD or US economy is in a lot of trouble.

The banks were pressured by consumer and the US government to make questionable loans so they did. The banks get blamed in all of this, but it was the US government that said they had to make loans to people who couldn't afford them.

I don't see in your post a decent counter argument. To many holes to poke you still don't know where to start?

About the banks getting to much blame from being forced to give loans, 94 percent of high-cost loans were totally unconnected from government homeownership laws before the crash.
Good article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveden...11/11/22/5086/