On Jul 10, 2010, at 4:56 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
> so, there is no practical goal? the whole point of whether or not
> corporations slough off the costs of corporate taxes and make
> customers/employees pay for it doesn't matter for any practical
> reason?
>
> you're not saying that it would be important to get people to
> understand this basic point about how firms work, so that we can
> push for tax policies that tax corporations...
The practical (implicitly, not explicitly, socialist) political goal, once a "people's party" movement forms that would make political goals practical, would be the funding of major social programs and public investments through major redistributive increases in taxation. Increasing marginal corporate and individual income tax rates might be part of it, but the capitalist system at present is so complex that evasion (for example by transfer pricing, redefining expenses, or simple concealment) could make the collection process excessively bureaucratic and expensive if the rates became too punitive. The way to go, IMO, is: a high VAT with the tax on the basic middle-class consumption level--perhaps half of total receipts--refunded ("prebated") in advance equally to every individual consumer; a revenue-raising (not protective except in its overall effect) general tariff on imports set at whatever rate would be calculated to maximize collections; a confiscatory tax on realized appreciation of land values; a large carbon tax entirely recycled into renewable-energy investment; a substantial estate tax on inheritances above one million or so. At the same time, employment taxes should be abolished for both workers and employers, with pensions and medical care paid for out of general tax revenues. And of course there must be reduction of military spending to the minuscule level needed to protect against actual invasion.
This is meant as a practical, not socialist (no nationalizations!) program, though a real struggle to implement it would in fact open the transition to the socialist transition. Discussion and debate on all these concepts is all we can at present do to prepare those transitions. "Winning" is not important--gradually changing political consciousness is.
> you just want to win an intellectual debate. and that scoring points
> in debate is a political process that will help achieve the
> communist resolution to the problem of capitalism.
Shane Mage
"This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
kindling in measures and going out in measures."
Herakleitos of Ephesos