We previously discussed the exodus from France of top earners after the imposition of a confiscatory 75% tax rate. Now England is facing the same shift, according to a new report. More than 16,000 people declared an annual income of more than £1 million during 2009-10. That number fell to just 6,000 this year. This appears to be a combination of people leaving Britain and concerted efforts to avoid income.
We continue to disagree on this blog on tax policy. I opposed the moves in France and England as economically unwise. I also oppose aspects of the Obama plan, though I agree with the need to increase revenue. I believe both Obama and Congress have been incredibly reckless with their budgets and continue to spend wildly without any sense of priority in spending.
Cities like New York also report declines in top earner following heavy tax bills.
George Osborne, the Chancellor, announced this year that the 50p top rate will be reduced to 45p from next April.
Source: Telegraph
Zombie,
>men are NOT angels
ie, govt must force sacrifice
>and government (and politics) is the dam that holds back the jerks [note the scientific precision of this concept], the psychopaths, the sociopaths, the cheaters, the exploiters, the frauds and
>the irretrievably selfish.
If men wont voluntarily jump into a sacrificial fire, the Zombies of the world will push them in. The Zombies hate independent people because they remind the Zombies of their chosen, cowardly, humiliating dependence on the minds of others.
The problem with individual criminals who initiate force or fraud is tiny compared to millenia of govt murder, assault, imprisonment, theft and slavery, all justified by sacrifice to society, the nation ,the state, God, etc. Hitler, Stalin and Mao were loud, explicit, repetitive advocates of sacrifice.
You say they were insane? People whose minds are impotent are attracted to politics that promises a substitute, the fist and the gun.
Zombie,
>We try rules, and based on the outcome of those rules, we devise new rules we believe will produce better outcomes, and repeat that process until we are happy enough with the outcomes that we are no longer driven to change the rules.
Note very clearly that he has no purpose, not even an irrational purpose, just mindless, short-range action, rationalized by Pragmatism. This too, the fanatic belief in action, action for the sake of action, was an important idea in Weimar Germany
we collectively want to control those people that would act in ways the rest of us consider unjust, unfair, exploitive or harmful.
Note his politics of power, not individual rights, that he doesnt even attempt to justify w/an objective value. “We collectively” is the modern substitute for man’s objective mind. This is Kant, with his claim that all men have the same subjective mental machinery preventing them from knowing reality. Later philosophers substituted race, economic class, ethnicity, nationality, gender, etc, etc. Individuals and cultures are disintegrating, ie, Weimar Germany.
>if you trace the origin of business restrictions on the books, they almost always trace back to some jerk ripping somebody off
They trace back to statist intellectuals who want the individual forcibly sacrificed to society and who, evading the indirect govt controls, blame freedom for any problem. Zombie cannot point to any economic problem thats caused, however indirectly, by freedom from govt. He evades indirect causes for merely direct causes. Zombie’s contempt for man’s independent mind is his view of psychology, a perverse consistency.
Zombie,
>freedom from regulation… I do not think that … should ever happen.
Zombie wants to regulate people, ie, he wants power over people, as he shows with his anti-mind “psycholology.”
Zombie
@Polly: No such thing. No cracker for you.
“I have denied knowledge therefore, in order to make room for faith,”
said Kant, uber-liberal, leading intellectual influence in 1920s and 1930s Germany and today in the West.
The guards at the Nazi concentration camps didnt try to convince prisoners that Nazism was true. They had been told by their teachers that man’s mind was worthless. As Hitler said, “At a mass meeting [conventional definitions], thought is eliminated.” Notice the materialist explanations, guns and psychology, for the recent school shooting. Only Objectivists point to ideas, to the nihilism, the hatred of values and reason, of our culture that spews forth from irrationalist intellectuals like Zombie.
@Bron: Rules that change in the middle of the game are a reflection of GOOD science. That is the point of science, to learn something new. What do we do with new knowledge? Apply it.
We try rules, and based on the outcome of those rules, we devise new rules we believe will produce better outcomes, and repeat that process until we are happy enough with the outcomes that we are no longer driven to change the rules.
As for politics. Ultimately we have politics and governance as the last resort to correct what we regard as injustices. Making rules is the whole point of politics, we collectively want to control those people that would act in ways the rest of us consider unjust, unfair, exploitive or harmful.
As Madison said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” This is what he was saying, men are NOT angels, and government (and politics) is the dam that holds back the jerks, the psychopaths, the sociopaths, the cheaters, the exploiters, the frauds and the irretrievably selfish. And every time we find another leak in that dam, we have to clamor to get it plugged.
I grant we have some problem with corruption, but as I have said many times before, if you trace the origin of business restrictions on the books, they almost always trace back to some jerk ripping somebody off, screwing somebody over, or creating a disaster and getting away with it (and often getting rich off it) because it was legal. So we plugged the hole and made it illegal. That is politics, and it is also (I think) a rough form of science.
free market advocates would like rules to play by, just objective rules which dont change in the middle of the game. And arent based on politics or bad science.
@Bron: ??? I never claimed he was for anarchy.
I am not so sure he was for a “powerful” state, he basically argued for majority rule and obedience to it. Which is a pretty generic endorsement of Democracy in general. I will grant that is different than what modern Free Market advocates endorse, since they would (if they could) prohibit even a 95% super-majority from regulating the markets.
Essentially (as I see it) Free Market advocates want to promote freedom from regulation to the status of a human Right, but I do not think that will ever happen, or should ever happen.
TONY C:
yes I remember, although JJR is not for anarchy but a powerful state.
@Polly: No cracker for you. Go to sleep.
@Bron: I am no fan of Rousseau; in fact you agreed with me on that point: Total animalistic anarchy is very easy to defeat philosophically; remember?
Zombie,
@Bron: I am no fan of Rousseau; in fact you agreed with me on that point: Total animalistic anarchy is very easy to defeat philosophically; remember?
As distinct from animalistic totalitarianism…
Bron
1, December 19, 2012 at 10:44 am
>Stephen Grossman: Tony C is a bit of tyrant, is that what you are talking about? He much prefers Rousseau to Locke.
A nihilist tyrant without ideals, power for the sake of power, destruction for the sake of destruction, like the killer in the recent school shooting.
Stephen Grossman:
Tony C is a bit of tyrant, is that what you are talking about?
He much prefers Rousseau to Locke.
@Polly: No cracker for you, your repetition is too boring. But feel free to scavenge crumbs from my other conversations, you poor bird in your pathetic Aynish cage.
@Bron: See what I mean? Trigger words and he spits out a cliche or pre-recorded BS.
Zombie,
1, December 19, 2012 at 10:07 am
@Bron: See what I mean? Trigger words and he spits out a cliche or pre-recorded BS.
Note the nihilist hatred for man’s mind and logic.
Zombie
>@Bron: I think Stephen just parrots Rand,
Personal attack.
>Stephen accuses me of the crime he commits
Tu quoque (youre another) fallacy.
Crime? Thought crime! The Thought Police are coming! Hide your ideas. Stop thinking.
Zombie evades man’s mind in his theories of psychology and in debate, a perverse consistency.
Skeptic Griggsy
1, December 18, 2012 at 7:42 pm
>economic patriots like Buffett
Fascism is sacrifice to the nation, contra the original US politics of individual rights. The full name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany. Its rational to be patriotic to an individual rights nation and traitorous to any other kind of nation. Patriotism is not an unlimited value.
@Bron: I think Stephen just parrots Rand, if somebody doesn’t swallow the Rand philosophy whole and unexamined, they are “evading their mind.” Of course it isn’t MY mind I am evading, it is Rand’s, but Stephen is emotionally captured by Rand and thinks her writing is infallible, and by THAT definition anybody that deviates from Rand language, definitions, or conclusions is necessarily wrong, and the Rand-approved phrases to describe such people are “evading their mind,” “dropping the context,” “nihilist,” etc. I do not think he really cares what those phrases mean (if anything), he is just a parrot reciting verses from his holy book, ad nauseum.
Stephen accuses me of the crime he commits; it is he that evades his own mind, by surrendering all critical thinking to Rand. His surrender to Rand is so complete, he is apparently incapable of debate without mindlessly using her twisted and purposely deceptive language.
Stephen Grossman:
Tony C is a PhD and business owner, he had to focus to attain those values. he used his mind to achieve. he was responsible for himself and provides for his own life and others [in the form of taxes he pays].
He has created value for others [at least that is what he says]. It seems that he has been productive, he is an altruist by choice but he doesnt seem to be a nihilist.
Why do you say he has chosen to evade his mind? It seems he has used it to create a good life for himself and his family.
@Polly: No such thing. No cracker for you.
That comment concerns conceptualization as instantiation of something.
I’m with the economic patriots like Buffett and that Swede.- the super rich will still get even richer anyway!