The Negative Income Tax

Alright it seems my last post warrented a death threat in rhetort. How do I follow that up. Christ there are lots of crazies. I came home wanting to talk about the Negative income tax. Oh well. The show must go on. I have already done posts on the evils of its opposite-- the graduated or progressive tax model (see earlier post)

The easiest way to increase the amount of money available to welfare programs is by changing the means in which they are administered, first, simplify the program to protect them from being exploited from loophole abuse, and secondly, reduce the size of the ever growing bureaucracy that does the administering. Current regulations are complicated with deductions, credits, differing allowance rates, and property considerations, which allows them to be easily exploited by individuals, and even worse than that, a massive bureaucracy is required to monitor and administer the complex program, a bureaucracy also equally vulnerable to abuse and unnecessary waste. Fixing both of these problems can be specifically achieved through the introduction of a negative income tax - subsidy program to replace the current, overly complicated, and mottled legislation of the positive income tax system, which drains our welfare revenue base at an ever increasing rate.

The positive income tax system allows people to receive a certain level of income exempted from taxes. The exempt amount is based on rates, which are deemed as a minimal for subsistence. This level is superficially low so that the government can begin taxing income as soon as possible. Any income earned over this level is subject to being taxed. The problem lies in the fact that if the marginal earner makes under this exempt allowance level nothing happens. The unused allowances simply put, goes unused and wasted, plus he is ineligible for welfare benefits, as he is considered employed. This system punishes the low wage earner as he is unable to recover these unused benefits, and this in effect begins to transfer the incentive from working to not working, as welfare, monetarily speaking, is comparable to the artificially low level of exempt allowances.

A negative income tax system would allow for some portion of the unused allowances to be recovered up to the specified exemption level at a set subsidy rate. Milton Friedman, the system creator recommends a rate of 50%. This rewards the low income earner versus the non-worker, instead of punishing him with essentially 100% tax rates, as all earning are essentially deducted from welfare payments in a positive income tax system. A negative tax system with an exemption level of $20,000 for a family of four with subsidy rate of 50% qualifies a family of four with no income to be eligible for $10,000. Any income made on top of this initial amount reduces the subsidy by 50%. If the family of four earned $12,000 in a single year, the subsidy would be reduced by $6000, giving the family an overall income of $16,000, at an expense of $4000 to the taxpayer. Where as with a positive income-tax systems, the family of four would be left with the decision of taking their earned amount of $12,000 or being completely unemployed and still earning $11,500 from the government, with no incentive to earn the $12,000 as it would be only a $500 improvement over not working at all.

Positive income tax guidelines are designed to benefit only those who are completely unemployed. Unused credits from those that are marginally employed are not refunded, which shifts incentive from working to not working for the low-income earner.

Lack of skills is the biggest problem facing recipients. Keeping recipients in the workforce is of optimal importance as it is the only way to build the worker’s skills, and prevent already present skills from further atrophy. Welfare handouts have no way of passing on the virtues of the employed to the unemployed.

Welfare mother’s are penalized, instead of rewarded when they earn extra money, through such pursuits as babysitting or working one day a week in a restaurant, men turn down the opportunity to drive a cab once a week, because it is essentially deducted 100% from their welfare payments. When the tax rate for low wager earners is essentially 100%, there is little incentive to work.

The primary goal of the state whenever dealing with the unemployed should be to keep them working. A penalty of 100% on extra initiative should be reconsidered.

The strength of a country lies in its citizens and their productivity. A government’s role is to nurture this productivity and not to destroy it with insecure legislation.

A little help...

So here I am appealing to the intellectual masses out there... My wife is a highschool teacher, and she needs some good fictional and non fiction movies (books as well if you got them) to show her students-- ranging from grade 10 to 12. When it comes time to show a non fiction movie the students and staff line up with Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky as if they're de facto intellectual choices. This sickens the wife-- also a proud individualist and I-- and worse we don't watch a ton of movies, so once we get past Animal farm ans atlas Shrugged we've nothing left to counteract the leftist nauseum. So we are looking for non fiction movies which represent the spirit of liberty and individualism as opposed to the slavish Moore cult movies which our public education and television push on every young amateur thinker out there.

Thanks

Roughneck Phil 101

Recently I spent a night locked up in a Grande Prairie motel. The rig was landed and the boys were off to get drunk. So there I was alone, watching TV and drinking warm beer. But enough about me, the television is where this story starts. Six channels, and I was trapped within the CRTC nightmare of forced Canadian content watching a CBC documentary that sought to define Canadian culture. The usual elites were rounded up and sat down to give their feedback on this controversial topic: the Atwoods, Suzukis, Ardens, Mansbridges, and Izzy Asper journalists, combined with a consortium of “democratic” opinions – these are coffee shop sitters, social activists, union laborers and bus drivers. It was a Canadian spectacle! Everyone sat calmly in oversized Victorian chairs with warm light shining downward from outside the camera, lighting the speakers face, giving them instant credibility and wisdom. And true to form they spoke eloquently about Canada and it people. Our culture was anything but vague to the intellectual elites. We were defined by our tolerance, a sentiment repeated over and over again by every intellectual questioned. “Canada is recognized for its tolerance” or “our commitment to the virtue of tolerance is what separates us morally from the United States”.

The intellectuals and cultural elite sung a Trudeaupia’n gospel proclaiming tolerance as a defining Canadian value. What made Canadians Canadian was our common aspiration for increasing tolerance. First, let us examine other virtues that people claim or aspire to. If a country was defined culturally by its honesty, it would be a place where citizens would be consistently honest, regardless of the consequences. Spouses would tell wives when there dresses were unflattering and employees would have an uncommon knack for always being brutally frank with their employers. It would be considered a cultural atmosphere of frankness and honesty. For Canadians this defining virtue is tolerance, which equally means that we make our most sincere commitment to tolerance. Tolerance as defined by the Canadian Oxford dictionary: a willingness or ability to accept or allow without protest or irritation.

Before I argue against tolerance being declared our national identity, I want to discuss the opposite of tolerance; discrimination. Discrimination is the end result of an active process known as discerning. To discern means to judge the worth between competing values, and this is achieved through the mental process of comparison and value ascribing. For example, every individual must decide between career choices, education opportunities and even mating partners. At one point in history, through the innovation of fire, man chose to cook his food over eating it raw. This was achieved by weighing the pros and cons of the two competing values; eating raw food as compared to cooked food. Raw food was more efficient to eat, but caused more sickness compared to food prepared with fire, which also tasted better, but took more time, energy and labor resources to prepare. Though fire building was troublesome, most eventually chose to cook their meat, or said differently discriminate against uncooked food. The ability to discern between abstract values is what separates man from the lower animals and to the extent we properly discriminate is what separates successful humans from not successful humans.
Claiming tolerance as Canada’s defining virtue says what makes Canadians distinctively Canadian is our refusal to discriminate or judge. Claiming the refusal to discern as a virtue is in effect an attack against the practice of holding values in the first place. It makes holding values naïve and foolish when your moral base is biased against ascribing higher conviction or more significance to certain values over others. Tolerance seeks to dismiss the human practice of using our minds to judge and quantify. Tolerance, as a virtue, says there’s no difference between good and evil, that there’s no such thing as right or wrong. It seeks to destroy the importance of the individual mind. It says the mind is incapable of making rational objective judgments, that people are unable to use reason and debate to cooperatively fix human problems, so we must equally tolerate all ideas and things. Making tolerance our moral base makes being Canadian synonymous with believing in nothing; a docile complacent beaver.

Now I know the liberals and activists out there are mired in a huff and I’ve probably been labeled as a racist, bigot and reactionary, due to my insistence at promoting discrimination. Their perceptually wired brains are awash giving examples of how discrimination affects people personally. They are saying “racists are in the business of discriminating”, that “discrimination only divides society, and discrimination was the catalyst for nationalism.” They say “the mandate for a progressive mind is to rid itself of discrimination”. But this is untrue. A civilized man instead seeks to refine and sharpen his ability to discriminate. To discriminate better and more articulately, for instance I refuse to discriminate on racial basis, but in refusing to discriminate on the basis of race recognize that I’m still discriminating against racist values and the people that hold them. People that preach unabashed tolerance are only discriminating against values and the people that hold them.

And now the neophytes have circled their wagons and admitted that everyone discriminates sometimes, but that I’m taking the virtue out of context and confusing its real meaning, but I want to leave you with one final example of our cultivated tolerance manifesting itself practically. Liberals, during Trudeaumania created the philosophical bankrupt hippy doctrine of absolute tolerance, and yet just last election Liberals routinely called conservatives un-Canadian when they presented any alternative solutions to Canadian problems. Harper was scandalized as being un-Canadian without the merit of the issue even being tackled. Their tolerance, like all other values is in effect a preference, and that preference is for statist liberal values over conservative individualist values. Citizens, through the liberal propaganda of tolerance, have admitted the faulty in discernment, and consequently given the government responsibility over our powers of assessment. We’re a country which lets liberals think for us, and the liberals, so intellectually diverse, are a group that evaluates ideas on their origin instead of their merit. Liberal tolerance is an intellectually and morally bankrupt ideology based upon the inclusion of faithful members and the exclusion of outside ideas. Our institutionalized tolerance has left citizens without confidence in values, and our entrenched absolute faith and reliance on government paternalism is more than enough proof in that.
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Lesbian Right's

Recently I spoke about the importance of maintaining logical consistence. For instance if you believe it is wrong to consume meat it logically follows that you don’t eat any animals. You don’t just haphazardly choose which animals are fine to eat and which are not right to consume, based on some arbitrary moral stance of say-- cuteness or size.

Leftism has problems maintaining logical consistency-- mostly they ignore it all together, championing themselves as pragmatists-- but Guadalupe Benitez takes this form irrational thinking to a new height. Guadalupe, an announced lesbian is suing Dr. Brody for refusing to artificially inseminate her. Guadalupe and homosexual activists are up in arms crying discrimination-- that a healthcare worker has no right to discriminate against lesbians in a free country.

Well, sort of but not really. In a free country the law does not discriminate against individuals and minorities. But the law is not discriminating against Guadalupe. Lesbians have the right to receive insemination from any willing doc, they have the right to inseminate themselves if need be, thye have the right to find a willing doc to do the procedure, they have the right to hire a quack from the classifieds if that toots their horn, they even have the right to receive insemination from an untrained circus midget midget willing to do it for a six pack and a baggie of tobacco. What Guadalupe does not have the right to do is coerce a particular individual to perform the insemination. This government coercion is in direct conflict with Dr. Brody’s right to be a free thinking, self determined individual. It is possible that Dr. Brody’s employer would see differently and fire the doctor for refusing to inseminate the lesbian and that would be the employer’s right, but it is not the government‘s right.

This is not an issue of homosexual rights it's an issue of individual rights. Couls she refuse the insemination if Guadalupe was a drug addict. What if she was mean and abusive? What if she openly supported the murder of Catholics?Doctors have the right to refuse patients for any number of reasons. religous choice is only of them.

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Evil Oil

A late night on site and what am I rewarded with-- Paul Martin claiming that Ottawa has a duty to expand Alberta's oil trade to China and India. So there it is liberal campaigning in all its glory: 1) attack Alberta, which gains poll points in Ontario and Quebec- 2) increase trade with Communist China, an even more inflamatory assertion of pseudo statist Canadian Soverignty to the Americans, which will gain him gain credibility with the insane left. 3) A false statement-- Canada doesn't own the oil, people do.

A question; Who needs to government to sell their oil? This is ridiculous. Is it hard to find countries willing to buy oil nowadays. As the price of it increases worldwide it is getting harder to sell. This is like hiring a salesman to sell alcohol to drunks. Maybe we should have ad campaigns explaining the benefits of this unknown mystery fuel.

What about the logistics. The United States is willing to consume as much oil as we can provide-- a free country, a trusted friend, and its markets are located on the same continent., and oh yeah, they pay their bills. While China is the worst abuser of individual that exists on the planet(because it's abuse is legislated by law and philosophy, proven by history and happens to a billion citizens), and is located across the ocean (the main reason why India doesn't consume more of oil is that it is very expensive and dangerous -- see Exxon-- to transpot oil across the ocean, and once again, oh yeah-- all their wealth and technology are the direct result of looting.

Another thing-- Ralph Klein doesn't sell the oil, because he doesn't own the oil or gas. Private individuals, groups and companies produce, market and transpot oil to where the need is the highest. Ralph Klein was explaining that in a free country, the government doesn't get involved in the producing or selling of oil. Free citizens sells our oil on the market, which means the state doesn't own the oil, and Martin rhetorts thatCanada will do as it pleases with the produced wealth of individuals.

Ahh Paul could this have anything to do with you and you old buddy Maurice Strong developing massive business interests in China.?

But where is Harper? Is this another example of inept Conservatives or media bias?

-Angry Roughneck

A good Question

I found this question on Werner's site of socialism. Since he oly prints comments which reflect his own point. I decided to answer the question on mine.

Although I'm a lefty, I do have a bit of a libertarian streak.
Why are their artifical controls on the number of taxi s in the city (any city for that matter, we have the same here in Ottawa)? I mean, what is the rationale for rationing the number of licences?
If the only requirement for a licence was a safe care, a good driving record and the payment of a $500 fee, there would be a lot more taxis and better services and prices.
Honestly, I've never understood this. If there is a good rationale for doing this, then I'd be ok, but I've never heard it.



Of course there is a rational. If you restrict the number of people in a given profession then you can keep wages artificially high. Welcome to Unions and all other forms of job regulation. Why would you need a license to give manicures? For Safety? No, because white people want to get paid a certain amount to give them, and Chinese immigrants are willing to do them for a third of the price and this would eat into the white beautician’s clientele. Taxi licensing, as are most other forms of job licensing based on racist policies meant to prevent competition. Welcome to leftism. Welcome to Socialism. Welcome to the ideology that promotes itself based on its compassion for people. The only people that succeed with leftism are the people closest to the bureaucracy—unions, civil servants and people with government ties.

-Angry Roughneck

A Question of Fairness

There can be no doubt liberals and leftwing academics agree virtually unanimously on the mixed economy model of a progressive tax system. The usual model correlates an individual’s tax rate proportionally to his or her earnings. Liberals generally view the taxation policy as justified morally on the grounds of altruism, but if the socialist was pushed to be more specific as to whom the system benefits I believe he would answer that graduated tax systems benefit wage earners more than professionals. His arguments imply the wage earners higher degree of dependence on the welfare state relative to the educated professional, combined also with his equally implied lower earning potential over the course of a life time. A model like this is based on the misassumption that wages and earning potential stay consistent over the course of a lifetime, which is true for the educated professional (the liberal ha ha), but untrue for the ambitious wage earner, the person most hurt by this discriminatory socialist tax policy.

Industry has always traditionally been subject to market extremes, known as boom and bust cycles, the boom associated by high wages and ample opportunity, the bust with the opposite. While doctors, lawyers, and teachers will be affected by these cycles they are less affected than other workers, due to the fact their skills are a service, and thus not directly affected by market forces. For example, when the demand for oil is low, the doctor’s income may slightly fall, but not dramatically, as health would still be high on the value lists of most citizens. The people most affected by boom and bust cycles are private industry wage earners. Cycles, the result of market forces, make them hard to predict, both regionally and world wide, as they are affected by many variables, such as quotas, technology, investment, foreign relations, resource supply and access. This makes the wage earner more dependent on his high wages when there is a boom cycle as he’s always preparing for the possibility of a bust cycle and unemployment. The progressive taxation policy pretends that there is no such thing as a bust cycle, predicating itself upon the myth of consistent earning potential, which professionals have and laborers do not.

If a worker is lucky enough to live and be employed through a consistent boom period he will then be subject to another factor of wage fluctuation and thus progressive taxation discrimination. Industry work is hard, lonely, and dangerous. Loggers are injured and killed by runaway logs every year in B.C, Alberta’s oil patch can lose up to 15 good men in any year, and everyday fisherman lose fingers in out rigging equipment in the throes of Atlantic ocean climates. And besides the obvious danger, the physical nature of the hard work also wears out backs, knuckles and knee joints. Combined with the danger and physical wear is the individuals desire to be closer to his family, as high paying industry jobs are most often found in remote locations. The results being that the vast majority of industry careers are over after 10 years. Consequently, the worker is faced with a much shorter period of peak earning potential. It is during these 10 years a laborer can match the salary of a doctor, but when his body begins to show wear and when he’s forced to leave the demanding trade the graduated tax model truly fails the working man.

Compare the laborers short peak earning potential with doctors, lawyers and engineers that are guaranteed a high salary long into life. Professionals work successfully into there 60’s, making them less affected by excessive taxation on peak earnings. There is little doubt the doctor unjustly feels the sting of socialism when his $130,000 salary is reduced to $70,000, but strictly from an economical standpoint he will be guaranteed high a standard of living based on his forty years of high earning potential.

A progressive tax system presumes workers earning potential remain consistent throughout the course of a worker’s life when clearly this is not the case. This mistake is most destructive to the individuals the flaw doesn’t take into account: namely workers that have careers where incomes are prone to fluctuation. Regardless of what amount of tax was paid when income levels were high, the benefits aren’t transferable to the times when his earnings are restricted. A time when he’s faced with switching careers and the possibility of low wages none of his “boom” paid taxes will be redistributed to him

Taxing the roughneck close to 45 per cent during the years of his highest wage levels restricts his ability to develop his capital the only time in his life he has it. It’s these years that a roughneck needs to pay his house off faster than other workers, organize enough capital to start a business, or save enough money to afford post secondary instruction. Yet it’s during these exact years that a progressive tax system punishes the young ambitious worker most severely almost guaranteeing his inability to be financially secure when he tries to make the eventual move to working and providing closer to his family; a period where his earning potential is sure to dramatically drop, as he will have to learn a new trade starting as an apprentice.

Inherent, in the graduated policy is its inability to compensate workers when their incomes change for the worse, as compared to its precocious ability to punish them when incomes are high. A policy like this condemns the wage earner to mediocrity, by negating his capital advantages during the only times he has it, as compared to the lawyer’s lifetime consistent capital advantage, which makes progressive tax policies overtly discriminatory toward the wage earner.

-Angry Roughneck

A question of Smoke

Is it just me or does it seem like the crowd that protests for litigation against evil tobacco companies is the same crowd that's in favour of legalizing marijuanna? Believe me I am against drug prosecution, as it is in contradiction to individual rights, but it is asanine for these people to champion law suits against tobacco companies and at the same time defend the local dealer. It's as if what makes it morally right to sue them is the fact that they were good at selling cigarettes. They claim on one hand that cigarette makers manipulated the puiblic, tricked them into smoking knowing it was harmful and in the same paragraph they celebrate the local dealer who fights against arbitrary persecution of fascist lawmakers. The pot dealer's only crime being that he provides a service that helps people relax; a product people want. Well what difference is there between stoned Jonny and Tobacco pickin' Pete? there is none except that Pete eventually got good at tobacco farmin' and eventually became a coorporation and switched his name to Players, thus logically making him evil. Could you ever imagine sueing your highschool dealer when you hit 40 and you're memory isn't as good as you think it should be. "Well he offered it to me at a party and i was too drunk to say no." Ridiculous! This is just another example ofs young activists who are unable to intergrate their thoughts and form a complete uncontradictory philosophy.

-Angry Roughneck

Education: Part Deux

The suggestion of mandatory post secondary-- fully subsidized-- education is a Ralston saul idea and is morally wrong. John Ralston Saul (former Petro Can bigwig--I fight for a new renissance by displacing individual freedoms) is a puppet of the corrupt socialist syndicate lead by Maurice Strong that endeavors to take over the world with Capitlaism and socialist propoganda, and subsequently, Saul is one of Canada'a best known intellectuals--wretched.

But to the point, endorsers of extending mandatory education for two years of post secondary classes are willing to obliterate the highest principle of freedom--choice-- in order for their chance to stand on a soapbox claiming "I know what is best for every person and if you don't listen to my ideas you are in violation." This is evil social engineering. To force a free thinking adult to take two years of education is abhorrant and antithetical to principle of individual freedom. What right does the government have to force me to take classes. What if I don't want to takee more schooling? What if I want to be a logger, a fisherman, a mother, a taxi driver, a writer, or an artist? What happened to my right to choose my life course?

Now evil leftists wil decree that there is no freedom without education. Wrong. There is no freedom with an intervening government. And if this was remotely true that higher education promoted freedom and choice the Communist club at the universites wouldn't attract more members than the young Conservative party. State sponsored education is no means of promoting freedom. To ensure freedom you want the largest amount opf people possible living lives independent of the government teat.

It sickens me that in this country ideas such as forced adult education pass as progressive, compassionate and intellectual.

-Angry Roughneck