Posts by BenWilson
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I expect his book will end up showing he's actually a radical. Not that we'll need the book by then.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Sacha,
I blame turnips for a lot, actually. They're all through our code, one of the programmers was a Blackadder fetishist. It's very frustrating to debug:
for(turnip=potato;turnip<swede;turnip+=carrot) rutabaga[turnip]->parsnip %= turnip;
I should hate all vegetables, but for some reason the turnips were always the loop counter, so I got especially hating on them.
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Up Front: Say When, in reply to Bart Janssen,
No worries then ... I can't keep time with anything.
You're playing into cliches about white men there.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Sacha,
Actually, you're right, and just reading back there's plenty of baiting going on about pitchfork waving, toilets, government-job-bludgers, etc. Some tit-for-tat too, so perhaps it's time to just leave it.
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How does one know if one has it?
Watch your foot whilst listening to "Like a Virgin". If it taps*, you've got it.
*Edit: the tapping must be in time, btw.
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So Ben you are against owning capital and charging other people to use it. - I wonder do you think it should be free?
No. I'm not against owning capital. I'm not even against profiting from owning capital. But I don't think it's productive, so I don't see why it should be exempt from taxation. That only adds to the already very high incentive to just own and cream it. I'm not against even productive activities paying taxation for profits - I sure pay enough myself for producing software, and think that's fair. But I definitely value productive activity much more than I value ownership. Of course, looking after myself involves increasing my ownership, but I'm happy to continue doing that by being a producer. I even dream of a day when I've accrued so much that I could sit back and let profits roll in, but being an entrepreneur, I doubt that would keep me really happy for long. And certainly the government should get a decent cut of it, so they can make society better.
If I were redesigning society, perhaps I'd be against capital. But I think it's much safer to move towards private capital being less of a factor gradually. I don't want to string up capitalists, considering I'd end up swinging myself - I just want them to pay fair tax.
The government making “heaps” is not a good thing - as it takes money out of circulation and will contract the productive section of the economy
It doesn't take it out of circulation - the government spends most of the money it takes, which maximizes circulation. As for the "productive section of the economy" you'll note that this tax is not on production. It's on capital growth, which as already discussed, is not synonymous with production.
Good for you, has the better society your grandad wanted from his colossal tax payments eventuated? If it didn’t wanted stopped it from happening?
Yes, it has. We have a considerably more developed and fair country than we did in his time. Education is a norm, all of my grandparents were incredibly proud that not only their children but also their grandchildren are educated to very high levels, and (with the exception of the starving artist), employed in well paying and satisfying work. They were lucky to finish high school. Industry has diversified. Health care has blossomed. People don't starve, the way they did during the Depression he lived through. Getting around is much easier, thanks to all the roads we've made. Women can work if they want to. Maori tribes have got some big pieces of their stolen land back. Gays don't have to hide in shame.
What has got worse, though, is the attitude towards wealth. We've developed a reverence for it that his generation unlearned during the Great Depression. I suggest that we learn from the mistakes of the past and unlearn it quick smart this time, lest we are plunged deeper into the Depression and the catastrophe that followed it.
Stop. Feeding. The. Troll
I'm not so sure Dex is trolling. He's just not slotting into the norms of debate we've got used to, where you answer questions people ask, and move forward. Trolling is more characterized by deliberate antagonism, typically through personal attacks...he's polite enough. But I'm certainly over hearing his 2 numbered points every single post, like we didn't get that's what he thinks right from the first comments.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Sacha,
Cullen did - right down to zero net government debt, before the handover into English's hands. Next.
Yes, and he got the shit kicked out of him on a daily basis by National over this too. Imagine how screwed NZ would be if he hadn't done it. Every year the Nats screamed that we needed to increase debt to encourage growth. If we'd done as they demanded, with many a "You Grinch, where's my Christmas?", the country would be actually bankrupt right now.
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The Govt making heaps of revenue is a good thing how??
Right at the moment, I think it would be good because we could actually balance the government's books, reducing debt, and removing excuses to sell off things we paid to build that make heaps of money.
The profit on what, and what profits are taxed unfairly and why do you think that??
I presume you're addressing BEN2? If so, for fucks sake, stop being obtuse. The profit on buying and selling property. Like everyone has been talking about. Like CGT is designed to address. It's taxed unfairly in a lot of cases, by which I mean it's not taxed at all. I think that because I know a lot of people who have done it, and made fucking fortunes and the only input they had was ownership of some capital at some point. What the fuck is hard to understand about this? Have you seriously never met anyone who has used this tax loophole? Perhaps I just know a few more people than usual, since the family fortune comes from property development and investment, and it's been discussed in great detail since I was on my mother's knee.
Which means I have a lot to lose by this tax, actually. I'm not just rubbing my hands with glee at swelling government coffers. I'm saying this shit because I take the same attitude as my fortune-making grandfather who paid colossal taxes and never grizzled at all about it - he considered it a fair return for living in a society that had made him stupidly rich, and he sincerely believed in funding a better society for his children, and also other people's children.
Do you see capital loss as being productive, and do you actually favour capital values being lost ??
Fucking hell. CGT is not a tax on capital losses, otherwise it would be called CLT. So this is a non-sequitur. But I'll certainly address the flipside of this - I don't really see capital gains as being productive, no. Not in themselves. The only thing I see as productive is production. If capital gains accrue from actual production, then I'm much more favorably disposed to them than I am to capital gains that are just from owning capital, charging people to use it, and waiting.
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Second rule of PAS, if it's your first time in PAS, you have to talk about copyright.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to DexterX,
With all that is being done to ensure that people (also those who "trade in property") comply with the law and pay tax on their effective capital gains I can't see the point of introducing a CGT/Land Tax.
BEN1. To make heaps of revenue.
BEN2. To tax profit fairly
BEN3. To discourage the whole idea of capital gain being productive business.I've numbered these points so you can respond to them unambiguously.
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