Nobody is so naive to think that people are responding to OP in the manner exhibited in this thread principally due to not wanting to watch a fifteen minute video.

Person: hmm, seems bad poor people and minorities are constantly getting ****ed in MURICA #1

Friedman: hmm, that shouldn’t happen in a free market

Person: OK? But it’s happening

Friedman: does not compute, but what we definitely don’t need are laws protecting minorities and poor people

Right, they're doing it because they despise Mason and want to take shots at him

I don’t think he’s saying they “should” get money. Just that giving them money would be more efficient than what we’re currently doing. I don’t see how a negative income tax would do that, at least in regard to helping the poor. In today’s dollars to get a family of 3 above the poverty line is about $25K. So we’ll need a threshold of $50K (@50%) to get to $25K for a non-working family. But then someone making $30K would get $10K back, $40K would get $5K back, etc. Like I said, that doesn’t seem like a very efficient way of helping the poor since every dollar we spend on the actually poor we spend another on the non-actually poor.

idk about all that, but it's proven fact that giving cash to poor people is a huge net positive for the economy at large.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/...gh-the-economy

A report by the USDA in 2010 also said that boosting SNAP benefits during economic downturns starts a "multiplier process" in transactions and consumption. It found that boosting SNAP expenditures by $1 billion was estimated to increase economic activity by $1.79 billion.

Sure it could during a downturn. But under normal conditions any increase in economic activity on one end of the spectrum is offset by a decrease at the end that’s paying the taxes to fund the other end's spending.

i don't believe you. prove it.

Negative income taxes are unfortunately pretty easily gamed.

This is mostly a subset of conservatives who also flap their arms about being classically liberal who dismiss the concept of a progressive tax scheme by way of some biblical argument about it being theft despite obviously being non-religious. On some level they may also think it hurts poor people but it's an interpretation of the evidence that basically requires social Darwinism underpinnings / some type of an elitest complex.

I mean, i'm sure there are some poor semi ******ed souls like john stossel who've heard the arguments and promote it because they really believe what they're saying, but that's kind of the exception to the rule and they're groomed as useful idiots because no one with any sense wants to have their face attached to such an obviously disingenuous argument.

It’s inevitable. When we take money from the rich we destroy the higher paying, higher skilled jobs that money goes to and create lower paying, lower skilled jobs that cater to lower incomes. In other words, we can’t redistribute income without redistributing jobs as well.

Do you honestly believe that? (It is hot garbage.)

There's not a single sentence in this entire post that is remotely true. Redistributing money has zero effect on higher paying jobs. None. It has zero effect on the rich. Not even a single bit. It does, however, increase the buying power of the poor. It increases GDP. It improves the economy. It improves life expectancy of the poor and vulnerable. Setting a maximum wage, raising the minimum wage to the point of diminishing returns, and redistributing income by an ultra progressive tax system, increasing the social safety net, providing healthcare for all - those things only help the economy and people in need. They do absolutely no harm to the rich and to jobs.

so when i made my claim i posted a fox business article citing a usda report based on actual scientific studies. for you to convince me otherwise, you'd have to post a scientific study put out by a reputable organization backing up your claim. i suspect you're not doing that because such a study has never reached the conclusions you're arguing.

Sure it does. Suppose we divied up all the income, with each of us making $60K. Now imagine all the jobs that would be lost and businesses destroyed. And it’s not just consumer spending. The rich invest more than the poor and that investment mostly winds up creating productivity related jobs.

I googled for the "report based on actual scientific studies" but couldn't find it. My guess is that since the 2:1 multiplier is referred to quite often, they're leaving out the other side of the story and just running with the broken window fallacy.

alright so to sum up, the claim that giving money to poor people is hugely economically beneficial is supported by evidence, and the claim that taking money from the rich to give to the very poor would hurt the economy is a claim which is not supported by any evidence that either of us could find. because i looked for it, and now you've also looked for it with higher motivation because you want to prove the point you're making, and neither of us has found any evidence to back up your claims.

i'm glad the forum is more open now and conservatives feel they can post freely because i learn something through conversations like this. like this time, i went from being pretty sure i was right to very sure i'm right, because we've both researched the topic together.

thanks

It need not be a flat neg tax

If you increase spending by x and you get that x from your neighbor, his spending will decrease by x. If you borrow x, that much less will be available to be borrowed. If you borrow based on fractional reserve lending(even when the reserve requirement is zero) the value of the money that gets paid back with interest may be less than the value of the borrowed money due to continued monetary inflation.

There is no free lunch.

Re USDA 2010 report, last line quoted, "It found that boosting SNAP expenditures by $1 billion was estimated to increase economic activity by $1.79 billion."

Is this your proof for, "economically beneficial", because it isn't necessarily.

If you borrow the money now you just have to pay it back later with interest. In fact, I'm more certain that this is bad for the economy because that borrowed money could have been lent to business owners to expand and create products and jobs from which the principle and interest could be paid(which is largely what's happening when rich people invest their money) but instead it is going to consumption where wealth is used up/destroyed.

What's clear is that progressivism and socialism are immoral and bad economically but might be necessary for social cohesion which has traditionally been important to keep a country strong but maybe less so now. A conservative can want to avoid a fracturing populace for this reason. It relates to national security.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this story:

https://www.cbssports.com/golf/news/...-a-great-week/

Matt Kuchar, who hired a local caddie during a tournament in Mexico, after winning the tournament for $1.3 million pays the caddie 5k when the standard rate is 10%.

What would you guess he is doing with all of the money he saved from only paying his caddie 0.38% of his tournament winnings? Stimulating the economy? creating jobs? trickling it down to the little man? Or would you guess that is he a penny-pinching miserly cheap **** who hoards his wealth like the majority of rich people do?

There’s probably no evidence because everybody just thought it obvious that a dollar spent by the poor won’t generate more economic activity than a dollar spent by the rich.

Then you kill or delimit the incentive to work above the threshold. Anyway, I figure a negative income tax or UBI is either a really good idea or a really bad one.

Nobody hoards their wealth anymore. What people don’t spend, they invest, which benefits the entire production chain.

lol

Person A has a fish
Person B has a coconut

They trade(economic activity). Now if only they could do that a few more times we'd all be rich.

Indeed, that USDA report doesn't consider the other side of the trade, that 1 billion spent on X is 1 billion not spent on Y.

Pretty much every communication should be judged like an advertisement, buyer beware.

https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/s...226258940.html

So what was Kuchar's expected finish for the tournament?

Was this a good deal for the caddie, given what was expected to happen over 80% of the time?

Could that caddie have chosen to work for a different golfer who had a better EV for the tournament?

As to what Kuchar does with his $$$?

So, better than nothing I guess.

You're over simplifying it. There is a metric in economics called 'marginal propensity to save'. It refers to what % of the next marginal dollar an earner will save. The wealthy generally have very high MPS. My own MPS is in the .7-.85 range today.

'But boredsocial the wealthy invest that money and that's good for everyone!' This would be true if there was any shortage of investment capital. As we are sitting here today there is a MASSIVE glut of investment capital... because the wealthy have managed to finagle their way to getting significantly more than actual investment needs directed to themselves. The last project to be funded in the current environment is MIGHTY sketchy lol.

We don't need to eliminate wealthy people, take all of their money, or do any other insane stuff. We need to tax them at a higher rate that I am taxed to start with. It REALLY annoys me (I'm in the top 1% of earners for my age group quite comfortably) that I, a former poor person clawing my way up the ladder, am paying a significantly higher tax rate than people who are vastly wealthier than I am and consume way more services than I do. At a minimum we need to make the concept of capital gains go away (why do we tax earnings from capital differently than earnings from income???) and start taxing all wealth the way we tax real estate. If mid tier earners like me pay x% high tier earners should be paying X+Y%. That's what progressive taxation is. As it stands today a dollar of my earnings is taxed well in excess of 30%. Top earners tend to be under 20%. That's wildly screwed up.

Why do we tax the only kind of wealth that normal people generally have and no other kind? Might that be because normal people can't afford to corrupt the government to act in their direct interests?

You've got income redistribution all wrong. As it stands today the vast majority of it is shifting wealth from normal people to the wealthy not the other way around. Much of it is hidden in unfunded pension and infrastructure liabilities but that doesn't make it less real.

Relative to what they have the very wealthy pay way less taxes than normal people and this is without in any way accounting for whatever tax evasion shenanigans they have going... which is pretty clearly a 100B+ dollar tax avoidance industry... that we allow to exist for some reason.