From: Dave Long (dl@silcom.com)
Date: Mon May 14 2001 - 11:09:19 PDT
> > Dave Long's perennial argument that pisses me off every time he spouts it...
> > namely "if you want to pay less taxes, just get a job that pays less." Not the
> > same, of course, but similar and suggestive.
>
> That's totally the opposite in reality: if you want to pay less taxes,
> get a job that pays MORE.
What I've tried to say, evidently poorly,
is: "if you want to pay less in taxes, make
money in ways which aren't taxed as heavily."
I suggest not getting a job in this case, as
those tend to involve payroll taxes. Capital
gains are taxed at a lower rate than income
(and though I'm not sure that's a good thing,
it probably has much to do with the reasons
that IP enjoys distinctive treatment), and
one can even avoid capital gains altogether
on certain real estate transactions.
So for the person wishing to avoid taxes,
capital, and especially land, seem to be
better inputs than labor; labor capacity
may be distributed more evenly across the
population than either of the former, but
we needn't think it the only option.
-Dave
On the main topic, I pretty much agree with
Mr. Mohr's post; see also:
<http://www.xent.com/april00/1182.html>
:: :: :: ::
What is property? The simple idea is that
the sorts of things that are "mine" or are
"yours" are property. In nature, it might
relate to the territory one can defend. A
better definition for the purposes of our
discussion is that the sorts of things that
a (strong) third party is willing to defend
on my or your behalf are property.*
Generally, this involves publicizing claims
to property (so the third party knows what
to defend) and often involves making some
sort of payments (property tax, building of
triremes, whatever) to that third party, in
some proportion to the size of one's claims,
to defray the cost of that defense.
If it's possible to receive the protection,
yet have others bear the costs, then even
Ec 101 agrees that the existence of such an
externality implies a suboptimal status quo.
--- * I know lots of folks dont wnt to fight for thier rights to <fill inthe > blank> , they would rather have it handed to them by some all controling > gov. Thing is , there are too many strrings that way.
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