taxes

Bernie Sanders Proposes a $1 Trillion Heist

rafifarber Economics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

What makes taxes not theft in the public eye? It must be the dilution.

Colonel Sanders wants to spend $1 trillion to “improve infrastructure”. Where does the trillion come from? Does he summon it ex nihilo? Perhaps in his mind yes. Because he in his idiocy thinks that the very concept of value was invented by Johann Gutenberg with the printing press. You can print dollars, so no theft needed?

But people with more than two ganglia understand you can’t get something from nothing. And most people understand Colonel Sanders is not God. The dollars he prints would only represent value which was accumulated by someone else’s work that Sanders wants to accumulate through a monopoly on what qualifies as “money”.

So he must take the value from people who have worked. At what point is it theft? If Sanders found one trillionaire and passed a bill to “tax” him of everything he has and used the money to finance 17 new Boston Style Big Dig projects, would it be theft? Yes, the public would see it as theft. What about taxing two people each worth $500B and taking everything? Would that be theft as well? Yes, and actually worse because theft is a violation against person, not inanimate objects. Theft against 2 is worse than theft against 1 even if the values are equal.

And so on to 3 confiscations of $333.3 million. What about 4 of $250M? 5 of $200M? Are we getting better or worse here?

Worse.

But what about taxation as it is, or at least at its most equitable? Colonel Sanders spends $1 trillion by taking $333 dollars from every single person in the United States of America. That would be the worst possible situation. But it’s not even taking $333 from everyone. It’s “borrowing” $166.67 from everyone and printing the other $166.7 promising you’ll pay it all back when you’re already over $18 trillion in debt in the first place and inflation is no big deal.

You’ll never pay it back. And it is a big deal, the more marginal of a producer you are.

Privatize the roads and everyone will know it’s theft when the roads company proposes to “tax” you $1 trillion dollars for a Big Dig. And you won’t be happy at all if said company decides it has a monopoly on money supply and prints a bunch for itself to partially finance its schemes. In that case it’s fairly obvious that inflation is theft just as well.

But for the government, it’s just “stimulating the economy”.

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One Cheer for Moshe Kachlon – Lower Alcohol Taxes!

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , , , ,

I’ve written a lot about Kachlon in the past and how much I can’t stand the guy. Notwithstanding all the damage he’s done already in raising all kinds of housing taxes, he actually did something good today and lowered alcohol taxes from 4.33 shekels per liter of beer to 2.33. He also lowered taxes on hard liquor from 106.9 shekels per liter of ethanol to 85 per liter.

This was the status quo ante 2012, when Yair Pretty Boy Lapid came into office, who I should mention is publicly know to have once been, and may still be, a raging alcoholic. Pretty Boy Lapid, seeing the light and crusading against alcoholism by making everyone who buys alcohol pay him more money, had the goal of lowering the consumption rate of alcohol in Israel.

And by some kind of miracle called markets and supply and demand (miracle to Lapid anyway), it didn’t work. Why not? Because it’s not that hard to brew your own alcohol. You can do it yourself with some grape juice, some yeast, and a Water distiller.

I used to buy Arak from time to time. I haven’t bought a single bottle since 2012. They will not get extra tax revenue from me. I can theoretically make my own Arak now with anise extract and all the above materials.

The politicians just figured this out, the idiots:

הצוות התייחס גם למיסוי המוטל על משקאות משכרים (כגון וודקה, וויסקי, עראק, ג’ין וכו’). מנכ”ל האוצר מסר לשר כי בחינת העלאת המס בשנים 2014-2015 הצביעה כי למרות התכנון המקורי, הרי שהעלאת מס הקנייה כלל לא הביאה לתוספת הכנסות במונחים ריאליים.

בהתאם להמלצות הצוות, נדרש שינוי מבני מיידי גם בשל ההתפתחויות השליליות בענף האלכוהול – התפתחות של תעשייה פיראטית שמייצרת משקאות מזיקים לבריאות, פגיעה בציבור העוסקים הישרים שנאלצים להתמודד עם שוק שחור בהיקפים לא מבוטלים ופגיעה בציבור הצרכנים בשל העלאת המס.

The committee also changed the tax level on hard drinks like vodka, whisky, arak and gin. The director of the finance department told Kachlon that the 2014-2015 tax raise showed that despite original planning (sic), raising the sales tax did not bring in additional tax revenue.

In keeping with the recommendations of the committee, an immediate change is needed due to the negative developments in the alcohol sector – the development of pirate manufacturing that can harm health, hurt the alcohol industry that needs to compete with a substantial black market, and hurting consumers who need to pay the higher tax.

And as an additional testament to the BS you often find in mainstream state-controlled media, here are two paragraphs. The second from the article about lowering the tax, and the first from an article when Lapid raised it.

מלשכת השר שטייניץ אמרו בתגובה לדברי לפיד על המס על האלכוהול: “בהמשך לדברי שר האוצר לפיד בנוגע להעלאת המס על האלכוהול האחרונה, אמר השר שטייניץ כי מעולם לא קיבל החלטה ולא התחייב לקבל החלטה לעלות את שיעור המס. במסגרת התהליך המבורך של קבלת ישראל ל-OECD הוסכם על שינוי שיטת המס החל משנת 2014, בהתאם למודל הנהוג במדינות הארגון. אולם, ההחלטה עצמה על גובה שיעור המס נותרה לשיקול דעתו של שר האוצר בלבד.

(Short translation: The rise in alcohol taxes is due to a deal with the OECD, which just accepted us yay, so we’re doing this as a favor to them, because they said so and we made a deal. And by the way, the actual level of the tax is only up to the Finance Minister, Pretty Boy Lapid, raising a big question about what the heck the first sentences of this paragraph about the OECD even means.)

And now for the article that just came out about lowering it back down:

רמת מיסוי הנהוגה כיום גבוהה משמעותית מזו הנהוגה במדינות ה-OECD. בחינת התוצאות של העלאת המס על בירה בשנים 2013-2015 הראתה כי למרות ההכפלה של המיסוי, הדבר כמעט ולא השפיע על היקפי הצריכה של בירה. המשמעות כי המס שהוטל בשנת 2012 הכביד על ציבור הצרכנים מבלי תרם באופן ממשי לעניין צמצום השתייה המזיקה.

Short translation: Taxes were lowered back down because they were much higher than the level accepted by the OECD. And tax revenue wasn’t increasing so there was no point.

You have to laugh at this. I hope Lapid falls off the wagon and goes binge drinking tonight. Maybe he’ll come down with the DT’s and have a near death experience, be saved in the emergency room and then retire. (I’m joking, I don’t wish him the DT’s.) I’ll fund his alcohol budget personally if he would just go away and stop passing any laws. I wish him well, and to leave me alone. As they say in Hebrew, תהיה בריא.

One cheer for Kachlon. Just one.

BASTARDS Karnei Shomron Taxes Residents RETROACTIVELY

rafifarber Economics, Hebrew, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , , ,

I didn’t think I could be surprised by the AUDACITY of government officials. But this is REALLY something.

The bastard YIGAL LAHAV the mayor gangster around here has decided to tax all of us in Karnei Shomron RETROACTIVELY for the months January to October 2014 and he has the kindness of heart to allow us to pay it UP TO THREE INSTALMENTS.

Is this even LEGAL? Is there any lawyer out there who can step in and help us 7,300 people?

Any private person who DARED charge someone retroactively for services already rendered and paid for would be PUT IN PRISON.

What disgusting GALL.

Here’s the sick letter.

http://www.karneishomron.co.il/?CategoryID=430&ArticleID=1760

How to shrink government in Israel step 1: Zero taxes for public employees

rafifarber Economics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

I was listening to a lecture by Murray Rothbard the other week about John Maynard Keynes the man. The lecture itself was fascinating, and revealed to me that Keynes referred to himself as an “immoralist” who lectured about the virtues of homosexuality over heterosexuality, actively preferring the former even though he was actually attracted to women. It became clear to me that this man was entirely backwards to the core, and now has the world addicted to the idea that in order to become rich, one has to go into debt.

But there was one thing that stood out that had little to do with Keynes in that lecture. That is, Murray made the offhand remark that public employees – meaning anyone receiving a government paycheck – should not pay any taxes. In fact, public employees are the ones that are living off of private sector tax money, and it makes no accounting sense to have them pay back into the very funds they are living off of.

Instead, public employee pay should simply be reduced by the percentage they would have had to pay in taxes had they been private sector workers. For example, let’s say a Knesset Member gets 20,000 shekels a month and pays 6,000 in withheld income tax, arnona, bitach leumi, and whatever else he pays. Instead, he should simply earn 14,000 shekels period.

What’s the difference? The difference is huge. The fact that public employees “pay taxes” so to speak blurs the line between private and public sectors – between who pays taxes and who consumes them. It makes people think that the tax eaters pay equally into the trough, when in fact that are simply consuming and vomiting back into it. If public employees – ALL of them – paid ZERO taxes – no bituach leumi, no income tax, no arnona (land and property taxes), nothing at all as all these taxes go to fund their salaries anyway, then it would become much clearer who is eating and who is producing. It would give Israel a much better idea of exactly how big their government is and how destructive. And people would start to wake up about what exactly they’re paying and to whom.

Special pay stubs should be made for all public employees that show ZERO withholding. These should be plastered all over the place. They would not be required to file a return at all. They would simply earn less. This means no doctor would pay any taxes, no state-employed Rabbi, no Knesset member, no government clerk, no judge, no police officer, no Shabak agent, not a single active duty soldier, the prime minister, the cabinet, their aids, no child day care employee, no school teacher, no public university professor, no histadrut labor union worker, garbage man, no public radio talk show host, no school administrator should pay a single shekel in taxes of any kind whatsoever from their tax-funded salaries.

They should not feel that they are contributing to the public tax burden, because in fact they are feeding off of it. Every penny of their salaries is tax money. They should understand that very well. And the people of Israel should understand very well just how much of their lives the state runs, how humongous their public sector is.

Only then will it start shrinking.