 Quote by IMP
Income should not be taxed to begin with. If you are forced to give up a portion of your labor, at the threat of prison, well that is just wrong. Taking someones labor against their will should not exist in 2007.
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So you're saying taxation should be "voluntary"? You might as well just abolish government completely, since all government services will be left to the market anyways.
Quote by Economist
Not true. Even in a world where everyone does not start at the same starting point, policies built on freedom may still be optimal. In fact, most of the economists I know who have strong libertarian ideas, don't even think that it's true that people are all equal.
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If people are unequal, and thus inequality is "natural", then you're advocating then that one should "leave the poor to be poor" and "leave the rich to be rich"?
See, your argument is predicated on the assumption that
the market reflects people, that is, people are paid exactly what they are "worth". However, this is simply not the case, because you're saying then that a CEO is "worth" 600x more than a wage-labourer than say, years ago when it was simply just 60x. In fact, there is a nasty tautology that develops where the logic becomes that the CEO is paid a lot of money because he is rich (since he is worth more).
Even Adam Smith knew that large inequalities will be a bad thing for society, and criticized "materialistic excesses".
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Yeah, obviously gender, race, and class exist. But that doesn't prove anything about the role they play in our society currently. Even in economics it is still not completely understood the role these things play in peoples job opportunities, incomes, etc. Some people say they don't matter at all, because the market cares mostly about talent, ability, productivity, etc. While others say that it does matter, and that there is discrimination in the labor market, etc. However, for you to sit here and act as if you know the role these things play in the US, is hugely a misrepresentation of your knowledge. What you should say is that you think they play an important role, just like I think they don't play that large of a role.
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It's not an issue of "I think this" and "you think that", because gender, race, and class are
real and have
real effects that are
empirically measured. How else can you explain women making 70% of what men make, when given the same job, qualifications, and abilities? Just because your fantasy economic modelling don't see this doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
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As far as I am concerned, in economic areas gender does not play that large of a role. The gender earnings gap has continued to sharply decrease over the past 30 - 40 years, college is currently female-dominated, and many careers and majors that used to be male-dominated has seen increasing number of women in recent years. Furthermore, it is not known whether in the past females didn't earn much mainly for social reasons (oppression, discrimination, etc) or economic reasons (stable income because less likely to divorce, technology advances that allowed both members of a household to be able to work (vacuums, dishwashers, washers, dryers, etc)).
In regards to race, yes there still is inequality when you look at raw numbers. However, this still doesn't mean it's a result of racism, discrimination, or oppression. One thing that jumps out at you when you look at the data is the difference in schooling, especially between whites and blacks. Some blame this on peer effects and cultural values (read some of the work done by the African American Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr). Some blame this on the horrible public schools that are disproportionally black (the same schools that liberals seem so worried to bring economics competition to). Even in regards to race, the explanation of racism, discrimination, and oppression don't seem to hold up that well when you look at some things. For example, black women are quickly increasing in both the amount of education they get, as well as the amount of income they earn. Another example is Asian Americans, who generally have average incomes above that of whites. Racism, discrimination, and oppression is not really consistent with either one of these cases.
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So essentially in two paragraphs you say that race and gender do not matter, there are other factors beyond this. The most elementary of sociological articles can easily refute your claim that there is just "something other" that is causing this oppression and not admitting that there is blatant discrimination in the world because it doesn't follow your neoclassical model of economic outcomes.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/conten...00005/art00002
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/conten...00005/art00006
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/conten...00001/art00001
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi...467-9620.00277
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=002...3E2.0.CO%3B2-U
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/rec...accno=ED397148
But according to you, "nah, race and gender don't matter, it's just the individual and it's unexplainable factors like culture that bogs them down." Sociologists are just making stuff up. They're full of fluff.
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It's interesting to me that sociologists dwell so much on the role their ideas play in the private sector. They almost seem obsessed with it, and I don't understand it. Maybe they think if we can't find much evidence of all their theories in the private sector, maybe they think it's a huge knock to their ideas and concepts.
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Thank you for the ad hominems Mr economist major, but sociology is as empirical as economics and hardly needs "evidence" that you feel that they "can't find".
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LOL. Yeah, government is the great equalizer. Sure. That's why the founding fathers of the US were largely skeptical of government.
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Well, I guess taxation doesn't exist, universal education is a failure, and government doesn't do anything but waste money. I'm sure the founding fathers said that. After all, they say things that both liberals and conservatives use that "support their argument".
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What you should have done is replaced governments with one of the following words: individual liberty/freedom, limited government, economic freedom, markets, free enterprise, capitalism, etc.
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You somehow unabashedly think market fundamentalism will solve the problems of the world.