Nad R wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
Bill who putters wrote:
...

What is the "Laughers Curve" ?

It's the economic joke that Reagan pulled on the U.S. Sometimes spelled
by the less humorous as "Laffers Curve", it is supposed to justify
"Trickle Down" economics, a.k.a. "VooDoo economics". The theory was that
there was an optimum level that would generate the most revenue. The
irony is that America was at its most prosperous between 1947 and 1964
when progressive tax rates went as high as 91% to 70%.

c'mon, i expect more brains from you billy.

study a small amount of history and note that
the USoA from 1945 on was perhaps the only major
industrial country that didn't suffer damage to
it's manufacturing infrastructure.

given the state of the rest of the world we had
no place to go but up. you can tax that sort of
system heavily and not kill it. taxing a weak
growth system (like we have now) with many other
issues and it's not going to perform very well.


songbird

If one does not increase taxes on the wealthy, the greater the disparity of
the rich and poor. The rich will continue to squeeze the middle class to
get richer.

only if the middle class and poor continue
to buy their products.


What if, Songbird, in the future, that ten percent of the worlds population
can provide for one hundred percent of all goods and services for everyone
on this planet through automation and mass markets. What kind of economic
system would you have? It will not be capitalism!

it's not capitalism now (it's a mix of
capitalism and socialism). it really hasn't
ever been pure capitalism and it won't ever
be pure capitalism (because people can
voluntarily form socialistic organisations
and then distribute their wealth in any
way they choose within a capitalistic
system -- and they always have).

ok, what if? then you have 90% of the population
texting and playing social website games and
living off solar energy and organic farmed produce
picked by robots. i doubt many of them will even
notice the shift because much of it has already
happened (the change from production being
about things to production being about service
jobs and jobs that involve entertainment and
other forms of intangibles (like art, food and
derivatives).


The world is producing twice as many cars with half of as many people ten
years ago. This trend is coming across all manufacturing/service areas.
Without an equal distribution of wealth, this world will have misery the
likes of no one has ever seen.

i'm thinking it's already got it but not
many people actually are acknowledging it.
in other words, looking around at the
amount of violence, substance abuse,
vandalism, environmental destruction,
obesity, etc.


Population reduction is a must, this can be done with civil planning or be
done with mass starvation and disease from the result of poverty.

it's supposedly coming about by educating
women and getting them into the workforce.
i'm not sure that alone it will be enough.

i think it likely we'll have some more
epidemics of some kind. population density
continues to increase as people move to
the cities. more people are raising
chickens and pigs in close proximity again.
these sorts of trends are asking for
trouble. on top of the likelyhood of
food shortages, riots, wars, water
shortages, etc. it's going to be an
interesting period of time coming up.


songbird