Quoting Yellowstone (Reply 56): The earth is finite, ergo any economies limited to the earth must also be finite. They may get very big, but at the end of the day there are finite supplies of resources. Of course, reasonable people can disagree on when "at the end of the day" will actually matter. |
Yes but the limits are very high. The #1 valuable thing you can have is human resources. Humans who know how to bank, set up engineering firms, consulting firms, design drugs, manufacture things, take care of sick people. Some of the richest countries in the world are relatively low impact environmentally.
Japan is by and large a sustainable developed country. Their electricity is mainly nuclear. They can go for 1,000 years as long as they quit fishing the seas extinct of fish, so much.
About taxes, Bush has shown that Reaganomics works in the limited case. However the tax cuts are excessively lenient on the super wealthy. Yes, their capital should be quite free to move about, and not become stale. The 2003 tax cuts made sure that previously "stuck" capital was not free at only 15% capital gains tax. This was fine.
But the tax structure is still too friendly to the super-rich. They only pay 15% taxes while the upper middle class gets hosed at around 30-40% tax, in some cases over 40% if you include payroll, income, social security, property taxes. And, the super-rich can deduct the interest on their $12 million home from their taxes, which is stupid. Deductions should have limits. The rich should not be paying below 20% taxes on their income. This alone would be a massive shift, totally curing all government money shortages. Would they leave America? Some would. That is a serious problem. But for me to pay higher tax rates than Warren Buffet, I don't see the logic. Neither does he. Warren Buffet is known to support higher taxes on the super-wealthy, which here I am defining as the 50 million - 50 billion $ net worth club.
The tax cut on the rich was not entirely bad. But it needs to be made more reasonable with some cleanup measures to restore a bit of their tax burden.
Finally, as a side note I don't want to hear about American families who make $50,000 a year and are burdened with taxes. American families at $50k and below really do not pay jack squat for taxes. It's only when you get to $75-200k that your taxes start climbing above 10% of your gross. The middle class has a great deal in America today, just like the rich.