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
teaparty:
how do you have non-observational understanding? that sounds like the virgin birth.
Zombie,
>Polly: If you do not believe there is anything BUT “observational” understanding, then why qualify “understanding” with the adjective “observational?” Why be redundant and waste that time?
To differentiate it from your mystical, non-observational “understanding.”
Making an idea explicit brings it under the control of the mind.
> People understand things when they discover a pattern or recurring state that we all recognize.
I could deny such an understanding but, instead, I’ll recognize the existence of pattern/recurring state understanding but as different from conceptual-concrete-causal understanding. I won’t even say that CCC is superior to PRS because that would beg the question of a standard of value. I will say, however, that PRS is the intellectual habit of non-Western cultures. If youre OK with fatalism, fear of nature, grinding poverty, near-starvation, occasional famines, no serious medicine or sanitation, no professional scientists (unless you count witch doctors) and mortality between the upper teens and 30, then go for it. I will say, also, that the rise of modern science was made possible by the rejection of PRS for CCC when, especially, Francis Bacon and Newton used Aristotle’s discovery of systematic CCC as their context for systematic experiment/induction/math. Descartes’ subjectivist science lost influence until resurrected in the Kantian 19th century w/Positivism. Positivism held back the
broad acceptance of atomic theory for several decades after sufficient evidence was discovered.
See John McCaskey (Philosophy, Stanford) for essays on the renaissance of
Aristotle’s concept-based scientific method during the Renaissance.
@Polly: No, in order to communicate an idea to another reader, one must use words as the other reader will understand them.
It is not necessary to qualify “definition” with “rational,” and there is no reason that definitions are “understood,” certainly not because of any observations. This is typical Aynish, trying too hard to sound technical and scientific to hide a complete lack of understanding. It reminds me of the frauds selling “quantum crystals” and “magnetic water.”
You are so pathetic, Polly, so anxious to sound important and learned without actually knowing anything. Pathetic Polly the Pompous Pretender.
Zombie,
> there is no reason that definitions are “understood,” certainly not because of any observations.
How is non-observational “understanding” different from faith in the supernatural?
Zombie,
>[me]Agreed, and that is why rational definitions are observation-based.
Correction! Rational definitions can be understood because they are observation-based. Communicating them to others is derivative from understanding them oneself. Cognition precedes communication. Mind is individual, not social.
@Polly: You restate widespread acceptance as common definition but Im certain you will now find some non-essential difference.
This just exposes the shallowness of your thinking, Polly. In order to communicate an idea to another reader, one must use words as the other reader will understand them.
To do otherwise is to engage in deception. In order to communicate an idea to many readers, one must use words that are going to be understood the same by all the readers, to use uncommon meanings of words, or redefined words, is to purposely evade communication of the true idea, usually in an attempt to deceive or to evade scrutiny of the idea. That means, if one truly intends for writing to convey an idea, the writing must use the common definitions of words.
The difference you seek is not non-essential at all. Widespread acceptance of a conclusion does not mean the conclusion is valid; widespread rejection does not mean it is invalid.
However, the meaning of a word is not a conclusion. It is already fixed and accepted by others to represent a given idea, relationship, or condition.
Redefining existing words is similar to counterfeiting money, it is trying to get the reader to accept a word for what it looks like instead of what the writer really means. When the counterfeit works, it facilitates communicative fraud. Because the readers are mentally using the familiar meaning of the redefined words they are not alerted to the writer’s sleight of hand in logic and reasoning with those words, and thus are led to false conclusions.
That is what happened to you, Polly. You rely so heavily on Rand’s verbatim words because you need HER redefinitions to support HER false conclusions which you bought. But if something cannot be explained in plain language using common definitions, it is not being explained at all, it is just your religious mumbo-jumbo incantations, the words you think have some magic power, masquerading as communication.
Zombie,
>In order to communicate an idea to another reader, one must use words as the other reader will understand them.
Agreed, and that is why rational definitions are observation-based. Your common definitions are merely, by your own claim, based on social approval and nothing else. So all the believers in common definitions know is that an unknown X is socially approved. This is German social mysticism, society replacing God as the unobservable, transcendental source of meaning. Your rationalization fails because the quacks in philosophy depts havent produced rationalizations that can refute Rand. Your university studies were a worthless intellectual fraud.
Zombie,
>[Locke] knew far less than you do about nature, physics and chemistry, and even human psychology?
Political philosophy is based on the more basic branches of philosophy, not on the special sciences. He didn’t need to know about string theory and neurons to know that individual rights is a universal need of man in society.
>Widespread acceptance does not impress me
You restate widespread acceptance as common definition but Im certain you will now find some non-essential difference.
>Locke’s limitation on what purpose government may serve is just his own assertion and dismissal of the other functions of government without any valid justification.
There are no other rational functions of govt, which is why conservatives appeal to faith and liberals to popular emotion.
@Bron: Why do you care what Locke thinks?
What makes Locke utterly infallible, in your mind?
Why would you raise any man to the height of a God? Especially a man that we can be certain knew far less than you do about nature, physics and chemistry, and even human psychology?
I do not see other men as any less fallible than I am; fame does not impress me. Widespread acceptance does not impress me. They are not convincing arguments to me in the least, and Locke’s limitation on what purpose government may serve is just his own assertion and dismissal of the other functions of government without any valid justification.
tony c:
you were brainwashed by public education at an early age and never woke up to that fact.
you seem to refuse to accept that Locke says government is for the protection of life, liberty and property. those 3 things, nothing else, you dont enter into society to be a milch cow for your neighbor.
Locke is very plain language.
@Bron: It will give you some insight in why you believe as you do.
No, it won’t. I do not accept anything anybody says unless they can prove it from principles that I agree are self-evident to ME. My philosophy is not received knowledge at all, I do not trust anybody else to know the truth and tell it to me. Unlike you, I accept no philosophy that is not firmly grounded in reasoning from self-evident axioms with plain language.
I am not the one brainwashed, Bron, you are.
@Bron: I dont understand how an individual, with inherent, inalienable rights, owes anything to society except respect for those rights in others.
What do your rights mean if they are not protected? What do your rights mean if you cannot take somebody to court, if nobody is punished for violating them, if there is no mechanism to enforce rights?
Does an orphaned infant have the right to life? What good is that if somebody can kill the infant for fun and never be punished?
What good is your “inherent, inalienable” right to property if any gang can take it from you by force? What good is a woman’s right to her own body if any man can knock her out, rape her, blind her and move on?
Are you just looking for justification in fighting back? Why bother, if there is no enforcement, who cares if you are justified in fighting back? If there is no court to enforce the rights of other people, you do not need justification, you live in anarchy and it is every person for themselves.
Rights are meaningless rhetoric if they are not protected (or at least violations are punished) by the force of the collective. My rights, and my freedom, mean that the collective will act to protect me if my rights or freedom are violated, or if protection is impossible due to a fait accompli, they will at least punish those that violated my rights or freedom, to discourage such action in the future.
Further, my “payment” for such protection is my agreement to contribute toward the protection or punishment on behalf of others. It is not a right or freedom if you have to pay to get violators punished, that is just a mercenary state.
Rights mean nothing without a society enforcing them. As always, you completely ignore the key issue, that some gangs of people will ruthlessly ignore your rights and take everything you have, including your life, and nobody, including you, is strong enough to withstand being outnumbered ten to one. They need to face the threat of all of the manpower and resources of a collective coming after them, THAT is what gives them pause and restrains them, not your puny automatic rifle. Because the gang knows, you will sleep, you can be burned out, you can be snipered, you have to eat and drink and you cannot hole up forever.
The story isn’t about you respecting other people’s rights, the question is what is your recourse when an overwhelming force wants whatever you have? What happens when the slavers arrive and your family is faced with the choice of chains or death? Your rights mean nothing if they are not protected by force.
tony c:
sure it does, you just dont understand because of your intellectual outlook. And I dont understand how an individual, with inherent, inalienable rights, owes anything to society except respect for those rights in others.
When you go to war, in a properly constituted state, it is for the protection of your liberty, it is not to change governments, or to stop the red menance in Viet Nam or to protect Kuwait from Sadam Hussein or to stop the Kaiser from invading France or to arrest Manual Noriega.
You go to war when a country threatens your liberty or attacks you. If you have the possibility of losing your freedom, you arent fighting for the state but for what you value, your freedom. In this case the “state” owes you nothing, in a progressive state which fights unlimited wars for any reason except the survival of individual freedoms and rights, then you would be correct.
But you argue from the standpoint of a diseased state as the basis of your observations and knowledge. You take systems which are corrupt and accept that as the norm.
C. Bradley Thompson has an excellent article on public education, you should read it. It will give you some insight in why you believe as you do. Public education has created a distorted view of the world and a malignant epistemology.
Zombie,
>self-evident axioms
Your allegedly self-evident axioms are based in social approval, not reality. Further, society is a complex concept derived from the self-evidence of reality.
@Polly. Still no cracker.
>@Polly. Still no cracker.
Viewing man as brute was familiar to the guards in the Nazi death camps.
Zombie,
@Polly: No crackers, Polly, you still haven’t learned to talk like a person.
Zombie’s person evades reason for social approval.
Bron
>If he is a bird brain it should be easy to refute his claims.
Zombie is a nihilist, committed to the destruction of values and reason. He does not value proof and refutation. You cannot reason with him. He has made his choice and you must respect that, not the particular choice, but that he has the obliga All you can do is expose his destructiveness to those who retain some respect for their mind.
@Polly: No crackers, Polly, you still haven’t learned to talk like a person.
@Bron: That doesn’t make sense; if you enter into society for mutual protection, then you obviously owe protection to others, which may cost you your life. There is no free lunch, Bron, if you want others to risk their life to protect your rights, you must risk your own to protect the rights of others.
Further, if one loses their life, he has to believe the others will care for his wife and children, otherwise he will be reluctant to risk his own life. The only way he knows that is by the example of how the tribe treats the loved ones of the other fallen, and how they are remembered. And that is the only way to get twenty men to hunt an animal that it would be folly for a single man to try and bring down alone, just one example of how a cooperative collective is more powerful than the individual.
That is mutual obligation, that is collectivist society, it began in tribes as soon as our ancestors learned to throw rocks with accuracy, and it NEVER fails us, what fails us is greed, free riders, and the personal quest for power and control.
tony c:
you can call it what you want, but the bottom line is that France will, if they already havent, make laws preventing people from leaving France. This will be done to prevent rich people from leaving.
This always the way of collectivism, it doesnt work and the evidence is for all to see. it has been a spectacular failure.
Socialism is always a spectacular failure and the intelligentsia double down on it. They take a period of time, at the beginning of industrial capitalism and decry the “robber” barons for lavish wealth and have persecuted successful people ever since. making it harder to produce and then they blow smoke up the working man’s a$$ saying if it wasnt for the elite, the working man would be in terrible shape.
Well the wages in North Dakota are astronomical because of competition for labor.
John Locke doesnt say we owe anything to society, we enter into society not for welfare but for mutual protection from predators who are mostly liberal politicians.
@Polly: In the beginning was the tribe, and the understanding that several could survive and thrive if some of their time was devoted to cooperative sharing and mutual sacrifice, where all would die in misery without it.
In the beginning was the understanding that others risking their lives to protect the individual automatically obligated that individual to risk their life to protect others; and in the beginning was the understanding that by the time adulthood was reached, one already owed a debt to society for the protections one had enjoyed without realizing it during one’s selfish, immature mental life as a child.
In the beginning was the understanding that some people, because complex biological development is an unreliable crapshoot dependent on a hundred factors, would be disabled by defective mentalities that never matured enough to process this social calculus, and would forever remain selfishly greedy juveniles, and would thus need, like such children, to be restrained and controlled by force or the threat of force.
That is reality, for humans.
Zombie,
> In the beginning was the tribe
In your intellectual beginning was the evasion inside your mind and social metaphysics as its rationalization.
Bron
>If he is a bird brain it should be easy to refute his claims.
Zombie has rejected his mind, his power of proof and refutation. You cannot reason with him. He has made his choice and you should respect the obligation to choose even when you despise a particular choice. You cannot reason with him any more than with a dog. All you can do is expose his destructiveness to those who retain some respect for their mind.
@Bron: I have already refuted his claims, in the same way that all claims of alchemists have been refuted, they begin with wrong assumptions and from that poisoned tree all fruit is poisoned as well. I have, many times, pointed out what is wrong with those wrong assumptions, and since no Aynish can answer those refutations with anything other than vehement assertions that they are correct, I recognize a religious stance when I see one: They Aynish operate in a logic-free zone with one rule and one rule only: Nothing can be permitted if it might lead to selfishness being a bad thing. Just like a religion, they reason from the consequence they WANT (selfish is good) backwards to the conditions they think will lead there; even if those conditions are self-contradictory, puerile, or non-sensical.
I am not the one making a radical claim, the Aynish are the ones making the radical claim that is completely contrary to what almost everybody knows; and they cannot prove it. In particular they cannot prove it using the language and definitions of plain English, all they can do is parrot Rand, and use Rand’s misleading definitions and made-up words and hope the dumb masses buy that pseudo-logic pseudo-science of thoroughly disproven concepts by REAL science.
I do not care what factual statements he makes, he interprets them incorrectly and illogically time after time.
Polly is a parrot, not smart enough to make an argument without reflexively reaching for Rand, quoting Rand, paraphrasing Rand, or relying upon Rand’s truly juvenile ideas, language, and definitions. I won’t argue with a parrot because they are incapable of argumentation, all they are capable of is repetition with childish insult.
Zombie ,
>they cannot prove it [Rand’s new theory of egoism] using the language and definitions of plain English
Bible: In the beginning was the Word.
Zombie: In the beginning was Plain English
Both Bible and Zombie reject observation of the concrete ,material universe as the base of knowledge.
tony c:
no cracker and no reasoned refutation.
If he is a bird brain it should be easy to refute his claims.
Have you read the Republic? Do you know the history of collectivism? He is making factual statements.
Have you read An Enemy of the People by Heinrich Ibsen? Do you understand the concept of morality?
@Polly: Still no cracker, bird brain.
Zombie,
> every entity within the free market system can fail
This is a bizarre rationalization of the evasion of the historically unique prosperity of capitalism and the blood-soaked poverty of fascism/socialism. And, of course, the omniscient, omnipotent and omnigood state can never fail. Eg, Soviet Union (whoops!), North Korea, Nazi Germany, etc. etc. Capitalism relies upon the independent judgment of many millions of creative minds who respond to each others’ productivity w/more productivity. This is true historically and theoretically. What has fascism/socialism achieved but the desire to escape accross a border without a bullet in one’s back?!