James Kroeger’s Nontrivial Pursuits ANS

Hi Everybody -- this is an old "blog" from Non-Trivial Pursuits.  those of you who have been reading this newsletter from the beginning have probably seen it before.  But I hope you read it again, as I think it is really important for The American People to start having some understanding about economics again.  The American People -- that's you.  this short article includes links to longer ones; I especially recommend the one called Republican Nemesis, which is really more psychological than economic or political. 
Find it here:  http://nontrivialpursuits.org/WordPress/
--Kim

James Kroeger's Nontrivial Pursuits

December 17th, 2005

Important links of interest:

Republican Nemesis

Economic Justice

Nontrivial Pursuits. That's what I decided to call my new website. I think it captures reasonably well the fact that I spend a lot of time thinking about nontrivial matters, like political threats and wars and economic injustice and the ultimate basis for morality. My thinking on these various topics is what I will be putting on this website. The old website concept, Taxwisdom.org, defined my interests much too narrowly.

Why Taxwisdom.org? Well, when I first started putting my stuff on the Internet, the first thing I wanted to share was my analysis of the economic theory that current tax policy is based upon. I put it on a website I called Taxwisdom.org because I entertained hopes that it could lead to an internet-based organizational effort to enlighten the public regarding the ultimate price that we pay­-or don't pay­-when the government taxes the incomes of its citizens in a certain way.

I still entertain those hopes. But since that early effort, the 2004 election came to its disappointing climax. Like others, I decided to put down my analysis of why the Democrats lost and entitled it The Republican Nemesis. Apparently a lot of people liked what I had to say in that article. It soon became clear to me that far more people were interested in what I had to say about political matters than were interested in what I had to say about economic policy. After all, economic theory can get pretty complicated pretty quickly.

I'm still entertaining hopes for the tax policy advocacy effort, but it is no longer the priority in my mind. Right now, I'm focused on an effort to articulate my ideas on how we can achieve an 'almost ideal' level of economic justice in America: economic security and prosperity. I know, I know, that's the kind of language that convinces many orthodox-types you are a crank, but I really don't know how to modify it. I really believe we can make great improvements in our economic lives and that it's just not that difficult a thing to do.

The vast majority of professionals have been conditioned to believe that Painful Imperfection is something we just have to accept in our economic experience. They are unenthusiastic about efforts to eliminate poverty because they are convinced that they would have to give up some of their 'standard of living' in order to make poverty go away. They hold this view because they don't keep their attention focused on the real economy.

If you reduce the economy to its most essential elements, you will be looking at the real economy. Forget about the numbers. The ultimate thing that determines how many rich people and middle-class people there are in a society is relative scarcity. Generally speaking, you will have as many rich people in your society as you have scarce "experience opportunities." Nothing you can do with 'money' is going to change that.

That means that you can tax the hell out of the rich and it will change nothing for them for they will remain just as rich as they ever were, in real terms. None of the mansions or yachts or beach front property would disappear. Everything that the rich normally buy would continue to be just as affordable to them as before because prices would drop to levels that they could afford. The Marketplace guarantees that this will happen.

No matter how much you take away from the rich through taxation, if they continue to have more money than everybody else, they will still be the ones who end up with the scarcest things. Indeed, it is not possible to deprive the rich of any of their purchasing power through heavy taxation, as long as they are taxed in a way that preserves their 'rankings' within society's total distribution of disposable income (or money wealth, to be more precise).

You can get a more complete idea of the economic agenda I am proposing if you work your way through some of my articles on the Economics Justice pages of this site.