What do you guys think of reaganomics?

>Conservatives just want tax cuts for their own businesses

What's wrong with wanting tax cuts for businesses?

It doesnt work. The rich doesnt spend more if they get more money nor do they create more jobs. Ideas and demand creates jobs, not just money.

>doesnt work

It doesn't matter whether one policy works or doesn't work. Wealth redistribution and engineering of social welfare is WRONG as it violates basic property rights.

Deontology > Consequentialism

A tax cut isn't "giving money" to anyone. It's not taking it away.

He wasn't advocating for wealth redistribution. Also, I suppose you think starving to death is better than stealing bread?

Taxing one person and subsidizing another is wealth redistribution.

I think individuals should do whatever they'd like but I think our LAW should everyone's individual right to property and enforce such law. So yes, if someone steals bread rather than starving, they should be prosecuted against.

It is morally and legally wrong to steal another individuals property as you have violated their natural right to property. Their right to property doesn't go away just because someone else wants or needs their property.

>Liberals will tell you that "trickle down" doesn't work, except for when government does it though
He wasn't advocating for wealth redistribution. He made a simple statement on what he thinks liberals say.

Also,
>property rights
>morality
top kek

I was quoting him to make the point that it doesn't matter whether a socialist policy works or not because socialism is fundamentally morally and legally wrong.

>top kek

This is not an argument.

>I was quoting him to make the point that it doesn't matter whether a socialist policy works or not because socialism is fundamentally morally and legally wrong.
An irrelevant point, as he never made a point in favor of or against socialism, and also, socialism may or may not involve wealth redistribution via taxes.

>This is not an argument.
Wasn't arguing. Just laughing at your idiocy

You have no reading comprehension

I never said the first poster was arguing for wealth redistribution.

You're obviously a socialist since you have no respect for property rights

It didn't create wealth, it transferred it. The technological revolution of the '80s created massive new industries that created tons of jobs and revenue streams while massively increasing productivity. Stock buy-backs, higher salaries, Swiss bank accounts and lower taxes for the top earners meant the rich pocketed most of the gains despite doing very little of the actual work. Considering the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs started in the '80s you could blame Reaganomics for the Rust Belt and Detroit, but it's more complicated than that.

Isolationist policies are blowback for Wall Street favoring extreme efficiency over nationalism; stock traders don't care where the product is made as long as it cuts costs. Republicans and conservatives don't mind because they reward the best earners due to social Darwinism and most of their voting base doesn't understand that that means the end of their genetic lineages. Trump won on populism, but Bernie and even Hillary would have done more for the common American.

Just admit that trickle down is about social Darwinism and has nothing to do with sound economic policy. It's Libertarianism at its finest and if you had your way most of the Rust Belt would be working like Chinese ants in an iPhone factory.

Nothing, but "tax and spend" Democrats make more financial sense than "tax cut and spend" Republicans.

>You're obviously a socialist since you have no respect for property rights
You are correct, I am a socialist, though I prefer the term communist, and I don't think your logic is very good.

The only way to get the rich to part with their money is by creating artificial inflation, forcing them to invest it.

That being said, now that we do this already Reaganomics is more practical than it was at a time when people were comfortable with holding cash.

It wasn't a bad idea for the stagflation and high interest rates - we're talking credit card 12-18% on mortgages - of the late 70s and early 80s. Volcker had to jack up rates to control inflation, the recession sucked, my parents nearly lost their house, but they were able to prepay before rates went completely apeshit. That left them with enough cash left over that when rates topped out 15%+ they could buy bonds yielding comfy% and either take the payments or sell the bonds. Parents weren't smart, just really fucking lucky. If they'd invested in those bonds too early they wouldn't have been able to afford the house and the bonds would have been worth shit.

But I digress. The conditions that made Reaganomics effective then do not exist today. We're at interest rates of basically zero. The EU countries that went full austerity got completely fucked. In the US, QE worked and would have worked better if we'd spent more fiscally, but the house was determined not to let the guy from the other party take the credit. So it was all up to Bernanke and Yellen.

>forcing them to invest it
Great, you've stimulated investment by robbing the purchasing power of everyone who holds that currency, rich and poor alike. Truly a public service from the benevolent and wise government.

the first tax cuts that were passed in 1982 were acceptable. the second set of tax cuts were retard-tier

top marginal tax rate of 28% and raising the "middle class" rate from 10 to 15% would be political suicide these days. i guess it didnt matter to him since he was halfway through his second term and not eligible to run again

>fiscally conservative
>triple the government debt

definitely a quality meme that one

I am the harshest critic of utilitarianism and other full-blown consequentialist ethics, but let's not kid outselves - full-blown deontology has equally retarded outcomes.

Your brother comes into your house saying he's being chased by a mob that wants to kill him due to a mistaken identity. He hides in your home. A minute late the mob knocks on your door and asks where your brother is.
>Better tell them, because lying is WRONG!

I like a consistent principled approach like the next guy, but they just don't mesh with reality. You run into conflicts all the time. You can frame the same problem in different ways to come to different results.

>You can't tell them, because getting an innocent man killed is WRONG!

The same with property ideas. Stealing is wrong, but so is letting people starve when the loss of a loaf of bread wouldn't hurt you.

Plus, if you take a closer look, I don't think there are many systems out there that put property rights on the same level as human suffering. Since you're such a fan of deontology, let's take a closer look at the grand daddy of deontology. Kants categorical imperative (in one variant) says you should always act according to a maxim you'd want to become a universal law.
I don't think an absolute ban on redistribution of wealth by legal mandate is a good universal law as it would entail a lot of suffering.

Personally I think Rawls is onto something with his veil of ignorance. Would you actually make the aforementioned a general rule when you wouldn't know your position in the world? When after making that rule you could wake up as the poorest person on the planet?

Wrong, the only way to get the rich to part with their money is by putting more money in their pockets so they build and expand in the interest of making more money. Gotta spend money to make money, and when they spend money, we get money. Macroeconomics 101, kid

>trickle-down works

When will this meme die?

>government in my country slashed corporate tax rates because it will make us more competitive and create jobs
>employment rates kept falling
>still hasn't recovered to pre-2008 levels
>companies are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars that they haven't invested back into the economy

Governments need money to function. When they can't make enough money, they have to borrow it. At interest. It's possible to reduce the amount of money needed to function but for some reason these tax cuts come with more spending. At least the Democrats are financially responsible - they raise taxes and spending.

>At least the Democrats are financially responsible
hahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahhahaha

They don't build and expand; they stuff their money in the stock market where it benefits nobody except themselves. Consumption doesn't increase past a certain point and most rich people don't make enough to create new jobs with the money they save from tax cuts.

Only works if the bottom classes aren't retarded.

They are retarded.

So it doesn't work.

It's worse when you learn that stock buybacks are used to manipulate stock prices in the short term and that most large companies use their profit for that instead of investing in growth. CEOs are paid in stock because capital gains taxes are super low and their average tenure is 3-5 years so they don't care about long term viability. It's a cash grab thanks to the 1982 sec rule change.

Well, republicans traditionally had a hard-on for Keynes (muh defense spending), but Trump has promised to go mad with public spending (muh wall, muh border patrol, muh police, muh job creation) while cutting taxes.

Neither of the main parties is fiscally responsible. But in the current cycle the Dems are substantially more responsible than the Republicans. We live in bizarro world now.

It doesn't matter what the bottom classes are if you have no plans to service their needs. It's social Darwinism.

>I don't think an absolute ban on redistribution of wealth by legal mandate is a good universal law as it would entail a lot of suffering.
But the forceful redistribution of wealth by legal mandate already entails suffering. If that's the end goal, you've lost the race right off the bat.

>stuff their money in the stock market where it benefits nobody except themselves
Do you understand what stocks are?

Don't argue with Trumptards, a sentence that doesn't have the words 'libtard', 'cuck', or 'niggers' will never be read.

I think I must be somehow misunderstanding your argument, because I cannot comprehend how taking $1,000 from a millionaire causes him to suffer.
However, giving a hungry person without access to welfare even $100 bucks across a month will prevent so much immediate suffering.

I'm conceding that there are unfair and harmful ways the current tax system affects people. But that's not my argument. I'm arguing that the concept of taxes is not substantially immoral.

>Democrats are financially responsible
What?!

We are not saying that the Republicans are better. They both suck.

I'll just leave this here for you stupid reagan-fags

Why can't people just admit everyone sucks and they MUST choose a side?

Of course nobody has a problem with Obama's 10 Trillion to boot up the economy again because he has the most dreamy smile eveerrrrrr.

Bitch, please.

At least Reagan had the excuse for designing a new never before tried Economics plan and even if it sucked it was a real plan.

Debt is really no reason to hate Reagan because we all know that debt is imaginary anyway, results only matter, people got rich and had jobs in the 80s, it was the happiest decade ever. /thread

It's incredibly simple. He was rich and had rich friends, but they wanted more money, so he tried to get stupid poor people to cover their bill.

>debt is imaginary anyway
lol

Reaganomics may appear to work, but it ignores the opportunity costs. Enabling the rich to make more money is inferior to enabling the poor to make more money, from an economic standpoint as well as from a social standpoint. And for business, low interest rates are generally better than low tax rates.

Why do you regard property rights as more important than all other rights?

Property rights involve curtailment of everyone else's rights – specifically their right to access the property owner's property. Shouldn't the public get something in return? I certainly don't think it's right that the benefits of government should flow disproportionally to the rich.

I know property rights are essential to modern society, but so are many other rights. And a lack of taxation is not essential to modern society, and was not a feature of property rights when they were first developed.

>I'm arguing that the concept of taxes is not substantially immoral.
Is taking a box of chocolates from a Wal-Mart without paying substantially immoral? Society seems to think so, because the punishment for that is significant fines and potential jail time. All this, even though a box of chocolates is such an insignificant a cost to the company. would you argue that society is wrong in this regard, and that this kind of minor theft isn't really theft, but should be seen as wealth redistribution?

Do you? They are shares of a company which don't increase revenue after the initial buy. An IPO puts money in the corporate bank account, but after that it's daily trading volume among stock traders which doesn't make money for the company. People put their money into funds or individual stocks and let the value of the stocks go up, but that increase in value does not mean more revenue for the company. No extra revenue means no extra jobs or growth.

A lot of companies issue shares to fund expansion long after the IPO.

Debt is not imaginary, but nor is it a constraining factor. America only borrows in the currency it prints.

Deficit is far more important. In the Reagan era, the government was running a big deficit so they had to keep interest rates high to control inflation. But right now the private sector's weak, so the government can afford to run much bigger deficits without any inflation problem.

QE came from the fed after the crazy 2008 crash that was worse than the 1929 crash. The money was needed to cover bad bets by too big to fail companies and that's very different than deficit spending. Don't forget the 2 wars Obama inherited and the costs of those. Bush and Cheney gutted America just like Reagan and bush sr.

Yeah, but my point was that daily trading does not affect their revenue at all. Most stocks are day traded or bought and held.

I'd certainly be open to the idea. I don't know how your local laws handle this, but mine recognize petty theft out of personal need as a lesser crime. Granted, a box of cholocates is not a prime candiate for a basic need.

I think you've put yourself into a bind though by starting to argue with laws. Taxes are mandated by law as well. If you argue that criminal laws against theft are self-imposed by society, then so are taxes and wealth redistribution. You can't be for one but not the other. Either we trust that the legislature expresses the will of the people or we don't.

Besides, it's not exactly an outrageous concept that we have monopolized power with the state. Say Adam owes you 100 bucks. Even though the money rightfully belongs to you, we as a society have agreed that you can't go over to Adam's place and just take it. You have to go through the court system and finally have the state seize his assets on your behalf. We *do* care about a legitimate process, not only the result. The same is applied to your Wal-Mart story. We don't condone self-righteously taking a box of choloclates from a store. But we do condone receiving (the money for) a box of cholocolates from the government, paid for by the store's taxes.

>Either we trust that the legislature expresses the will of the people or we don't.
We cannot, through even the most simple examination. First, we are faced with defining what the "will of the people" even means. Which people? All people? >50% of the people? Some specific group of people? Then, we must ask whether a given law is supported by the people in question. Then we must see whether ALL laws are supported by those people. At the end of this, we find that a given law only has the support of some people, the opposition of others, and the ambivalence or most commonly complete ignorance of the rest.

It is also important to note that I wasn't talking about laws specifically, but about immoral action. I just mentioned a common reaction to that immorality. Absent those laws, I'm sure you would agree that people would still respond with violence to instances of theft. It is not immoral because it is against the law, but rather against the law because it is first immoral.

>so are taxes and wealth redistribution
Is there such a thing as an unjust law? Would you say that North Korean society has appointed Kim Jong-Un as their representative, and rejected personal liberty and not dying in labor camps?

this.
trickle up is the only way

Low interest rates cause overinvestment in unproductive industries which then fail when interest rates rise to control inflation.

This malinvestment is a major cause in boom and bust business cycles

That hypothesis is utterly ridiculous! Often we don't know which industries will be productive, and low interest rates don't cause banks to make unprofitable investments. And no matter what interest rates are set to, the least profitable businesses are at risk if interest rates have to rise to control inflation.

>It is not immoral because it is against the law, but rather against the law because it is first immoral.
Okay. Not paying taxes, not contributing your share to redistribution of wealth is against the law. Is it because it is first immoral?
If you say no, then laws obviously don't matter to this discussion. As you allude to in bringing up unjust laws - there is no causal link between illegality and immorality. I agree with you on that, but that's not your original position:
>substantially immoral? Society seems to think so, because the punishment for that is significant fines and potential jail time.
Not paying your taxes carries the same punishments. So what exactly do you gain from this argument for your position?

I don't know what the "will of the people" means. You brought up "society" first without ever defining it. What does "society" mean? Which society? All society? >50% of society? Some specific parts?

I'm just echoing your arguments. It's strange that you criticise the style of argument when it comes from me but support it when it comes from you.

It is not ridiculous, it is just applying the principles of supply and demand to physical capital.

Lack of aggregate demand, economic bubbles, malinvestment, inflation and external problems like the oil crisis all have an effect on the economy. Sometimes it is not largely due to aggregate demand and sometimes you have to keep interest rates nice and high.

Any money going into the stock market at any time is good for the market and therefore good for everyone who has money tied up in the market aka anyone with a pension or retirement plan. You know, people who have actually worked for their living.

>Bush and Cheney gutted America just like Reagan and bush sr.

And what do you think would have happened if they sat back and allowed saddam to sell oil for euros? Preventing that was more than worth it.

It's good for the stock market, but that money is being taken from the rest of the economy.

The Iraq war wasn't the only thing that gutted America. Maybe gore would have found a diplomatic solution like reducing sanctions instead of trillion dollar lies that gave billions to halliburton and Bush's oil cronies. It isn't so simple.

Except when companies are issuing shares, money going into the stock market equals money going out of the stock market. Indeed if you include dividends and share buybacks, more money's coming from the stock market than going into it.

The Iraq war was nothing to do with what currency Saddam was selling oil in. For GWB it was personal; he wanted to succeed where his father had failed.

>It is not ridiculous, it is just applying the principles of supply and demand to physical capital.
Doing that isn't stupid, but if you do that properly it does not lead to the conclusion that low interest rates cause over investment in unproductive industries.

>Lack of aggregate demand, economic bubbles, malinvestment, inflation and external problems like the oil crisis all have an effect on the economy.
Malinvestment is the odd one out on that list. Bad investments cause problems, of course, but bad investments and "malinvestment" are totally different things.

>Sometimes it is not largely due to aggregate demand
Lack of aggregate demand is one problem the economy can have. But the cure for it is always more aggregate demand, even when the problem was originally caused by something completely different.

>and sometimes you have to keep interest rates nice and high.
High interest rates are far from nice; they greatly strengthen the short term bias of the markets, and ensure that more money flows to the financiers rather than those who actually do the productive work. High interest rates can be used to control inflation, but fiscal policy (raising the tax rate) is a far better way of doing so.

It was a good policy at the time as the West was coming out of an era of high taxes, high inflation, inefficient businesses and overzealous unions.

Reagan's policies brought inflation down from an all time high of 15% to around 2 - 3%, so they were pretty good.

However, trickle down carried on for too long, and this led to rampant stock market speculation which contributed to the stock market crashes of the 90s and 2000s.

The key thing here to understand is that a one size policy does not fit all economic conditions. You HAVE to adjust monetary and fiscal policies in an objective manner, not afraid to use tools from Austrian, Keynesian and Classical schools of thought from time to time. But strong affiliation to ideologies often cloud politicians' judgments, so when an economy desperately needs lower taxes, the government raises them for literally no good reason.

>that money is being taken from the rest of the economy
When money goes to the stock market it is invested in businesses rather spent on conveniences and luxuries, it doesn't leave the economy.

Even if you burned money it wouldn't affect the economy, only reduce inflation.

/Thread
Reagonomics becoming gospel for the IMF was a disaster for most of the countries involved, but at the time it wasn't stupid.

I wish the social darwinists/rand supporters/hardcore libertarians would study world history. If they did, they might see that economies which allow particular interests to snowball wealth and power beyond effective control inevitably collapse due to good old fashioned nepotism and corruption.

low interest rates for prolonged periods of time can result in severe adverse selection problems for banks looking for profitable investments

I don't think there was a serious alternative, Carter would have probably went down a similar direction since he surrounded himself with similar monetarist economists.

The rich generally save a larger percentage of their income than others. People who like to spend won't tend to stay rich long if they find themselves in that position.
If everybody starts hoarding gold it doesn't magically make more "money" for everybody by just driving up its scarce demand, it just transfers spending power around.
Insufficient investment spending by business can persist for long periods of time under conditions of uncertainty and weak demand... even low interest rates won't induce manufacturers to borrow and invest or expand when there's little real chance of selling products profitably.

When money is "spent on conveniences and luxuries" it's also flowing into businesses but doesn't create claims on their profits which must be paid out; money flowing into the stock market leads to growing capitalization upon a growing mass of intangible assets and general growing indebtedness.
If you start burning money but not writing off debt you would make it impossible to pay off all the accumulated debt throughout the economy leading virtually all the non-banking institutions of society to the verge of bankruptcy

I hate it when Americans start lumping together ideologies that are separate, because of their 2 party system. Leading to a complete misunderstanding of the term "liberal", which further leads to the unnecessary term "libertarian", which is just the actual definition of "liberal".

Liberals are per definition for "more freedom"
>less government
>fuck whoever you want to fuck (gays)
>buy whatever you want to buy (guns)
>do with your money whatever you want to (lower taxes)

That is what liberal means in literally every country on the planet so I refuse to pretend that it means "leftist+progressive+socialist+pro-immigration", just because the US can't into politics.

>there is no causal link between illegality and immorality. I agree with you on that
That was my position all along. I only framed it in the context of laws and society at large because that's the context you used first, so I figured that would be the best place to start. Legality is not necessary for my arguments to stand.

If you'd like, we can define society (or "the people") to mean some minor part of the population within the country. We can see that not everyone in the population knows about all laws (and knowledge of a law must precede consent of that law), and among that set, not all agree with them. So it becomes clear that the legislature cannot possibly represent the "will of the people" unless we narrow the definition of "the people" such that we are left with only those who have expressly consented to the particular law in question (which leaves us with a circular argument). We can only refer to specific laws, since someone who consents to one law may not consent to another; it's not an all-or-nothing situation.

Anyway, back to the original point. If you claim that taxation is not theft, but taking chocolates from a store without paying is theft, then the burden is on you to account for this apparent discrepancy.

>You HAVE to adjust monetary and fiscal policies in an objective manner, not afraid to use tools from Austrian, Keynesian and Classical schools of thought from time to time.
But the Austrian and Keynesian schools are diametrically opposed. You can't say both are right, when each one is saying that the other is fundamentally wrong.

>claims on their profits
What is wrong with multiple people owning shares in a company?
>If you start burning money but not writing off debt
Only if you have debt. The people who are "taking money from the rest of the economy" through dividends from the stock market and interest from their bank account could burn money with virtually no ill effect besides inflation figures being lower than expected.

In reality most spend it or reinvest it because it is pointless to leave it sitting around doing nothing, it goes back into the economy. The businesses invested in hire people and buy from other businesses, money eventually circulates back into the pockets of consumers.

>What is wrong with multiple people owning shares in a company?
Noting per se, but understanding corporate structures tells you how money is really moving around and not much is actually going back into real investments or increasing employment... credit doesn't generally go towards really creating goods but to shape the future of a business by capitalizing income flows associated to immaterial assets

>Only if you have debt. The people who are "taking money from the rest of the economy" through dividends from the stock market and interest from their bank account could burn money with virtually no ill effect besides inflation figures being lower than expected.
The accumulation of debt is how most corporations grow... the multiplication of all this credit on previous loans that become collateral for yet more credit creates the foundations for the financial sector to profit from foreclosing on and cannibalizing the real economy

Bruh taxation is theft

...

Property rights are just as much of an entitlement as anything else. Don't expect a desperate underclass of people who have been cut off the safety net (entitlement) to have any respect for your property ownership (opposing entitlement)

This just furthers the point that welfare is just a form of weregild. Property rights require nobody to do anything aggressive in order to be preserved. It is a negative right, inasfar as it doesn't require any active effort to have it happen. Welfare, on the other hand, requires property to be taken from one person and given to another, regardless of the "donor's" thoughts on the matter. Call them entitlements if you want, but they are definitely not equivalent in nature.

>Property rights require nobody to do anything aggressive in order to be preserved
Tell that to the non-owners aggressively excluded from the property!

Aggressive exclusion first necessitates incursion. The non-owners are not property owners, therefore they are guests.

Reagan passed tax cuts, raised spending, and massively increased the deficit.

In spite of this, the Republicans declared him the paragon of fiscal responsibility and threw H.W. Bush out for attempting to stem the bleeding by raising taxes.

Then they called Bill Clinton a welfare queen for balancing the budget and voted in Dubya, who prudently enacted more tax cuts while starting two expensive wars and, in the ultimate example of Republicans free market virtues, dumped trillions of dollars into the banking system in order to save it from collapse.

Then they shit on both the method and impact of Obama's stimulus, half of which came in the form of tax cuts.

The incursion would not be incursion if the property rights hadn't restricted the liberty of the non-owners.

Property rights require the right to use the property to be taken from everyone except the owner, regardless of everyone else's thoughts on the matter. They are very much equivalent in nature to welfare rights.

No, issuing shares is the only way to direct money into the company. Dividends are almost always

It doesn't work. End of discussion.

The right to any and all property doesn't exist, because accepting it would render any system of rights inconsistent. When an individual invests his labor and ever-dwindling lifespan into some productive means (say, going in the woods and building a cabin, assuming there was no claim to these woods prior to his arrival), he gains ownership of it as an extension of his self-ownership. This is the philosophical argument.

The practical argument is that biologically and socially, humans have evolved to require some form of property. We can see that animals are territorial, and that children are possessive of objects. Humans cannot survive when the food or shelter or other possessions they gathered are perpetually at risk of being taken. No animal can. This is the naturalistic justification for property.

>Dividends are almost always

Good for the 1%

Bad for everyone else

I'm not arguing against property rights! What I'm arguing against is the notion that they're somehow more natural than other rights and should therefore be regarded as more important than other rights.

Of course we need property rights. But we should recognise that we have a duty to those people disadvantaged by our property rights.

If you want to continue the philosophical discussion then there are a couple of things you should note: firstly, people have property rights over a lot more than just the results of their labours. I notice you had to include the assumption about there being no claim to the woods prior to his arrival; if there is, what did the claimant do to gain the right to exclude him from the woods? Secondly, a lot of wealth is inherited; should people be perpetually disadvantaged just because their parents were poor?

As for your practical argument: ownership hasn't existed in isolation. There has always been some sort of obligation, and taxation is a prevalent former that.

>we have a duty to those people disadvantaged by our property rights.
Justify this.

>Is taking a box of chocolates from a Wal-Mart without paying substantially immoral? Society seems to think so, because the punishment for that is significant fines and potential jail time.
Something being illegal doesn't necessarily mean that the people think it is immoral.

That is precisely my point.

Are you saying that taxes are immoral because property rights are the supreme good?

pls respond

But the money is still in the stock market and not in the rest of the economy. The stock market is in a Venn diagram with the economy where only a small portion of it intersects.

>supreme good
What does this mean, exactly?

I'm saying taxes are immoral because they violate property rights. And the right to property is important because it is a necessary consequence of the right to life. How do you propose to develop a consistent set of ethics by discarding these concepts?

No, the shares are in the stock market.
The money is with whoever sold the shares.

>communist
>in a position to assess anyone's logic
why the fuck are you even here

It's in their trading account, not pocket and able to be spent on things.

Not who you are replying to but two things:

1) Taxes do not violate property rights.
2) A "necessary consequence of the right to life" implies an individual has the right to live life safely and prosperously. That requires a society with government and taxation.
3) Taxation is a long term benefit to property owners. A society without public goods raises prosperity for those with property. Taxes simply make us better off.