sharetrader

View Poll Results: Should there be a Capital Gains Tax on Property

Voters
131. You may not vote on this poll
  • No

    213 100.00%
  • Yes

    74 56.49%
  • Goff is just an idiot

    2,147,483,658 100.00%
  • Epic fail for Labour

    1,935 100.00%
Multiple Choice Poll.
Page 86 of 101 FirstFirst ... 367682838485868788899096 ... LastLast
Results 851 to 860 of 1008
  1. #851
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2013
    Posts
    1,165

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by fungus pudding View Post
    'Ability to pay' does not make for fairness. Should a tin of baked beans cost more if you happen to be very wealth? You and Karl Marx might think so, but not many do.
    What Is Fairness? It depends on the situation. Ideologues believe that only their notion of fairness is correct.

    1. SAMENESS: There is the fairness where everything is equal. So everyone pays the same price for a theater ticket, whether a child, an adult or a senior citizen. No one has more than another. Everyone eats or no one does, for example. Logically, then, an infant and an adolescent will receive the same amount of food. It doesn’t matter that one needs more than the other. Fairness is finding the average and applying it across the board. This is fairness as equality of outcome.

    2. DESERVEDNESS: In this notion of fairness you get what you deserve. If you work hard, you succeed and keep all that you earn. Fairness means keeping what you deserve and deserving nothing if it isn’t earned. The hardest working, most diligent, smartest and most talented should have more because of their attributes; the lazy, indifferent, stupid and inept deserve to have less. Fairness is a rational calculation. This is fairness as individual freedom.

    3. NEED: The third idea of fairness is that those who have more to give should give a greater percentage of what they have to help others who are unable to contribute much, if anything at all. Fairness here takes into account the facts that humans have obligations to one another and the more one has the more is demanded of that person to contribute to the common good. Fairness and responsibility are linked. Compassion plays a role in the calculation of fairness. This is fairness as social justice.

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...at-is-fairness

  2. #852
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2013
    Posts
    1,165

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by artemis View Post
    "Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?" Thomas Sowell
    Actually it is labour that does the work to produce the goods or services, while the capitalist does not need to do any work.
    Profits from capital invested don’t need to involve work, so labour should get most of the income because they do the actual work while the capitalist sits on the couch. But that is not how it works because capitalism is based on exploitation due to the imbalance of power between capital and labour.
    But it is like the myth of the self-made man. Does he grow and cook his own food? He uses the resources of society like roads, electricity, buildings, knowledge, and other people, including his customers.
    He is successful because he uses the “common wealth” of society which has been built up by others including previous generations.

  3. #853
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2013
    Posts
    1,165

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Bjauck View Post
    I Wish that that were true...

    If not a Punishment...taxes are used to encourage certain activities (and resulting in deterrence for others)

    Ability to be able to pay taxes must be a factor in deciding whether to levy them in the first place.
    True, ability to pay must be a factor in levying taxes.

    ​However the main function of taxes is social investment, or public investment. And tax is the foundation of a civilised and fair society.
    The more investment in society, in infrastructure, education, health and other public services the wealthier the society which is of benefit to everyone. You would think capitalists would understand how necessary investment is and therefore be willing to pay their fair share of tax, but it seems that many don’t see it that way.

  4. #854
    Banned
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
    Posts
    8,516

    Default

    Why is there an estimated 20 billion dollar black economy in NZ if its fair then? Change to a flat tax rate of 20% and watch a lot of that 20 billion make its way back into the system.

  5. #855
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2013
    Posts
    1,165

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by couta1 View Post
    Why is there an estimated 20 billion dollar black economy in NZ if its fair then? Change to a flat tax rate of 20% and watch a lot of that 20 billion make its way back into the system.
    There is a black economy because unfairness and exploitation are part and parcel of capitalism. It is normal business practice. Changing to a flat tax rate of 20% would not change the behaviour of those who operate in the black economy.

    Winning and success are what matters and honesty and integrity are secondary and are surrendered in order to get what you want.

    Predatory capitalism is encouraged. Predatory capitalism is where a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. Predatory capitalism refers to cultural acceptance of domination and exploitation as normal economic practice.

    The appropriation and accumulation of wealth occur in two different ways.
    There is a vast array of extra-legal activities such as robbery, thievery, swindling, corruption, violence and coercion along with a range of suspicious and shady practices in the market (monopolisation, manipulation, market cornering, price fixing, Ponzi schemes etc.)

    Secondly, individuals accumulate wealth by legally sanctioned exchanges under conditions of non-coercive trade in freely functioning markets.

    The first sort of activities are typically excluded as external to the “normal” and legitimate functioning of the capitalist market. This is a misleading fiction. It is stupid to seek to understand the world of capital without looking at the drug cartels, traffickers in arms and the various mafia and other criminal forms of organisation that play such a significant role in world trade.

    There is a vast array of predatory practices e.g. falsification of assets, money laundering, Ponzi finance, and interest rate manipulations revealed by the GFC and by the Australian Royal Commission into Banking. We are talking mainstream organisations here, not “criminal organisations.”

    An economy based on dispossession lies at the heart of what capitalism is foundationally about. Bankers do not care in principal whether their profits and excessive bonuses come from lending money to those who exploit others.

    The desire for money as a form of social power becomes an end in itself which distorts the neat demand –supply relation of the money that would be required to simply facilitate exchange.

  6. #856
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2013
    Posts
    1,165

    Default

    Here is what Albert Einstein had to say about predatory behaviour and socialism in 1949.

    http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/

    Why Socialism?
    But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called “the predatory phase” of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases.

    Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.

    But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept “society” means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations.

    The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society.

    It is “society” which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.”

    It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate.

    All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life.

    Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.

    I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.

  7. #857
    always learning ... BlackPeter's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Posts
    9,497

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by lissica View Post
    Treasury states that the top 3% pay 24% of income tax. I'm paying more than my fair share.

    https://www.treasury.govt.nz/informa...ays-income-tax
    Well, but then the top 5% in NZ own 39% of all wealth. Maybe they don't pay their fair share of taxes?
    ----
    "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future" (Niels Bohr)

  8. #858
    always learning ... BlackPeter's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Posts
    9,497

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by couta1 View Post
    I don't give a toss what any Green Party candidate says about taxes, they are all economically inept so why should I trust them?
    Well, everybody is entitled to their opinion, but if you consider e.g. James Shaw as economical inept, then you might be in a minority position. I had some interaction with him and consider him as highly intelligent and economically ept.

    I guess what you really want to say is that you don't like what they say, but this does not mean that they are wrong and you are right.

    Throwing around unproven generic statements like "they are all ... inept" is a sad reflection on the person making this statement. I know you can do better.
    ----
    "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future" (Niels Bohr)

  9. #859
    Banned
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
    Posts
    8,516

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by BlackPeter View Post
    Well, everybody is entitled to their opinion, but if you consider e.g. James Shaw as economical inept, then you might be in a minority position. I had some interaction with him and consider him as highly intelligent and economically ept.

    I guess what you really want to say is that you don't like what they say, but this does not mean that they are wrong and you are right.

    Throwing around unproven generic statements like "they are all ... inept" is a sad reflection on the person making this statement. I know you can do better.
    Well if James Shaw had his way with the NZ economy how would it look in a few years? If the economy suffers big time because of their environmental obsession then that is inept IMO.
    Last edited by couta1; 22-10-2020 at 11:49 AM.

  10. #860
    Guru
    Join Date
    Aug 2012
    Posts
    4,661

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by couta1 View Post
    Well if James Shaw had his way with the NZ economy how would it look in a few years? If the economy suffers big time because of their environmental obsession then that is inept IMO.
    I am not sure how any Party can avoid being concerned about the environment these days. That is unless they want humans to be part of a man-made mass extinction event. The longer things are swept under the carpet, the more we will have to become "obsessed with" the environment.

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •