Running late, so we’ll call it Midweek Message Board. Post comments on any topic. As usual, civilised discussion and no coarse language.
- Comment
- Reblog
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
John Quiggin 
One of the things I find curious in your formulation of the problem, Alice, is why you think my proposal is inherently inequitable.
You speak as if imposing the charge on Coles and Woolies in a direct sense would be less inequitable, but I’m unable to follow that reasoning, if there is any in it.
When one asks the question: “What stakeholder interests do the descriptors “Coles and Woolies” describe? one might assemble the following list:
1. Equitable interest holders, including superannuation funds and by extension their members and employees
2. Employees from management down to shopfloor
3. ATO/State Governments
4. Suppliers of services to Coles and Woolies
5. Those offering credit not listed above
So if profits for Woolies and Coles go up, to a greater or lesser extent everyone on that list benefits. What you need to show is that the difference between levying Coles and Woolies directly (which I suggest in part anyway on junk food) or imposing a ration on CO2 emissions payable to third parties would in some way disrupt the balance in benefits within the above stakeholder group or transfer benefits from less advantaged external groups to more advantaged ones within the stakeholder group.
Whoopee!!!. Fran (dont give up your day job to become a technical writer! And I wont give up mine and become part of the netgen!!) I finally got it!!.
@Alice
Being a technical writer (consulting) has been one of my jobs over the years. This medium is a little harder to work with especially when one is discussing items that self-refer such as those tag enclosures. In good technical documentation, one uses diagrams, and online one would use animated graphics to aid grasp of sequence …
For the record, you don’t need the “” in the text to make it work.
Thanks Fran and a short answer to the Coles Woolies question. By all means give concessions to ALDI – as for Coles and Woolies, they have already reaped considerable benefits from their alnmost too cosy duopoly – they have put pressure on the original producers (all downward) and they have put pressure on consumers (all upward) by virtue of their nice integrated structures (vertical) with their own wholesalers.
Bah Fran. They dont need any more concessions. I dont give a fig about their shareholders if it means they are decimating many other folk out there (producers and consumers). Its a question of numbers and who would get the most benefits. Its time they rolled over and produced and offered more for less Fran. As for Aldi – do everything to let that company grow (and anyone else who wants to take on Coles and Woolies).
PS – the gap between the downward and up ward price pressure has gone straight into the pocket of Coles and Woolies. They dont need extra protection (thats all it is) from carbon taxes. Damn it. NO.
We either want competition or we dont Fran. If you want it (and we do), it needs protecting. Coles and Woolies have had a dream run with the regulators half asleep having been hypnotised into thinking everything just trickles down…Im over it, in this country. Where are the competition regulators? On holidays in the Bahamas??? (along with Coles and Woolies profits???). We need to get real in Australia. We have a propensity toward uncompetitive and exploitative oligopoly formation due to the small numbers of our market.
Seriously Fran – Im amazed you even asked me the question (about Coles and Woolies getting an exemption from carbon costs….by any other name…or any other large retailer for that matter…..). We either do this game properly or we dont do it at all. As Christine Milne says – climate change concessions are becoming a dutch auction for both political parties to award concessions to large firms (why bother?????????).
We either do it properly or it collapses into yet another politicking fiasco – and you play right into the hands of the “government is inept” crowd.
One rule – all pay.
How many jobs will be lost because of the ETS? What will the cost to consumers and business be?
Genuine questions here. Has the government released this information and what are their underlying assumptions?
@Alice
Very disappointing Alice. Four responses and not one attempt to address the key equity question, but instead an attempt to redirect the focus to competition policy.
The way to ensure that every player is discouraged from reckless emission of CO2 is to put the constraint with the end-user. There would of course be nothing to stop Woolies and Coles themselves from buying credits in the same market as the consumer and attaching these to some or other of their products so as to lower the net CO2e ….
My exchanges with Alice above prompt me to ask a question regarding the well-known pareto rule. This rule-of-thumb suggests that in any system roughly 80% of the effects are caused by 20% of the instances. Applying this rule would imply that 80% of crime was caused by 20% of the criminals. I don’t know if this is actually so of course, but it is apparently the case that the wealthiest 20% of the world owns 83% of the world’s notional assets. The rule is apparently recursive too, so that within this wealthiest 20%, roughly 80% of that wealth is owned by this cohort’s richest 20%.
I wonder how (and if) one could structure a system of burdens and benefits to create a reverse pareto rule. Could one structure a system in which 80% of the costs of providing the public goods and services societies needed was borne by the richest 20% and so on down the chain?
It might be that such a system would be too steeply progressive to be sustainable, but it would be interesting to see some modelling.
@Fran Barlow
Fran it used to be called a “progressive” tax system in the olden days when we had one.
@Alice
True enough, and we still do have one, but I wonder if consumption-based systems + transfer payments, especially payments in kind, might not be a more effective way of ensuring that the wealthiest pay their share of the burdens of looking after public goods.
@Fran Barlow
Sorry Fran but you need to explain to me how “payments in kind” ensure the wealthiest pay their share of burdens of looking after public goods. I am missing something.
I’d be interested to know what the wealthiest’s share of the burden is for a public good that they don’t want, don’t need and most probably don’t use, and why it is an additional burden on top of their provision of many private goods that do so much to ameliorate our way of life.
Regarding that pareto rule above, I’ve also found that a large proportion of the “have nots” also have a tendency to be “work nots”. Perhaps if they went out and generated some wealth of their own instead of petitioning the government to give them somebody else’s, we’d all be better off.
Better the wealthy pay for something “real” than something speculative Sea Bass where their excess wealth devises ways to cunningly misappropriate someone else’s wealth. No – let them pay more tax for the unemployment messes and social problems the wealthy create by being too anxious not to trickle down (and dont say it Sea Bass…you know what happened last time…)!!.
@Sea-bass
Would you now? How very uninteresting. Perhapsd if you explain your reasoning, it will become interesting and pertinent, but I doubt it. Why not skip the palaver and simply stipulate that inequality is an intrinsic good, especially if you’re one of its beneficiaries?
You are naughty, Sebastian. You and I and everyone who follows your posting pattern know that you have done no such thing. You’ve read about it in The Telegraph but that doesn’t count as it’s a mouthpiece for privileged interests.
I’m going to put that under the heading or outrageous and egregious misdirection. In a world where the people who make it possible for us to have cheap computer gear and jeans work from the age of 9 or 10 until they drop in utterly unsafe condition for 60 and 80 hours each week for about $AUS3-500 per year while others at the other end of the value chain make $AUS10,000 per hour and more, your claim is intellectually offensive.
Plainly, if they were able to “went out and generated some wealth of their own” it would be at our expense, so in practice we’d all be a lot worse off, albeit in their favour.
oops …
@Alice
All I’m saying is that people won’t get trickled on if they’re not out there putting in their best effort, and that government-mandated trickle-down isn’t nearly as good.
@Fran Barlow
Wealth-creation isn’t a zero-sum game. If they went out and generated some wealth, we’d all be better off. And that they want to work for that wage clearly shows that it’s a better choice for them than the next best option (look for Krugman’s Slate article “In Praise of Cheap Labour”).
At any rate, my comments weren’t directed at the third world poor, but at the parasite class occupying the coucil flats who make their living almost entirely at somebody else’s expense.
@Sea-bass
This side of an increase in labour productivity, then of course it is a zero sum game. Every good and service must be paid for out of the labour power of those working. If more goods and services are available they can only be sold if people give up some of their earnings to have it. Once everyone has given up as much as they can or are willing, the remaining unsold services have a value of zero.
Now, there are some ‘services’ that are of negative value which we are forced to pay for — military ‘services’ and the human costs of their deployment for example and if those were radically scaled back then productive labour would be freed up to produce more worthy things, but in the end, that’s still a zero sum game. Instead of paying someone to build a B1 bomber, they get to build a powerplant, and instead of paying someone to treat a victim of burns or bombs, you pay them to treat civilian injuries.
We would be better off in that scenario, but of course the ruling classes of the world don’t trust each other enough to scale them back, so we’re stuck with them.
For the record, I read Krugman’s essay and it’s a fabulous excursion into specious reasoning. Yes, being in Dickensian employment is arguably preferable to being some cast-off lumpen, but that doesn’t raise it to the level of a boon to humanity. Maybe if the choice is between “nasty brutish and short” and “nasty, brutish, and slightly longer” then “dead and forgotten” would be best of all.
Of course, from the point of the ruling classes of the world, the continued existence of a desperate underclass is a salutary cautionary tale to those of us who can see that things might be worse, so their suffering is, from a privileged POV, rational and useful.
Oh you are such a mischievous scamp! Your intent is beside the point, as you well know. The maldistribution of world wealth is hardly affected by the people you describe as ‘parasites occupying council flats’. It’s more about the 3 billion or so without reliable access to potable running water who wouldn’t know a council flat except through extraordinary rendition.
In any event, it’s irrelevant even in Australia to that 80-20 rule. The vast majority of us are in gainful employment, and even if you excluded these the rule would still apply.
@Alice
It seems so Alice, but it’s perfectly simple. The funds for the payments in kind come largely from people paying the charges who are socially skewed up the income stream, whereas the class of beneficiaries are skewed down the income stream. The really poor avoid the taxes and charges by not taking up the goods and services, or taking them up less often and getting valuable goods instead, avoiding expenditure. The privileged simply pay the charges and taxes but don’t get the services available to the really or somewhat poor.
@Fran Barlow
I agree wholeheartedly and I find quite a lot of Sea Bass’s comments about at the level of the Telegraph, short on facts, but long on ideological hyperbole.
Fran, arguing about what proportion of taxes should be paid by the wealthy is pointless without considering what the overall size of government should be.
If you only had a small amount of government, it would be quite viable to fund most or all of it through taxing the wealthy. But if you want Scandinavian levels of government, this is not possible. You need to tax the bulk of the population more through things like consumption and payroll taxes. In much of Europe the VAT is around 20% and payroll taxes around 40%.
@Fran Barlow
Such as free healthcare for pensioners Fran? These transfer “income in kind” payments have always been around and were perhaps more generous in times past. I still recall all children having their sight and hearing checked in schools more than once (and of course vaccinations) etc
What I would like to raise here is the large and successful campaigns for the lowering of income taxes on the wealthy and corporate sector over the past three and some decades. Now it may be no accident that public services and social capital and government infrastructure (and the role of the government as an employer) in this country started a long decline into a run down state about the same time. It may also be no accident that inequality started its long trajectory rise from the 1980s most researchers acknowledge – yet in terms of tax income forms it was actually from the mid 1970s. In that year alone the tax system was altered and became likely harder to assess outcomes. There is researcxh suggesting it was more progressive and other research suggesting it was less – but then they hadnt even noticed the rising inequality, because of course it was the start of it.
I am suggesting that it may be no accident that inequality started to rise, and public services started to deteriorate, after taxes to the wealthy were lowered.
For example, nurses were shuttled off to universities on the promise of higher qualifications and higher status and pay (But Im sure it was to save money feeding, housing and and training them as was done under the hospital based system).
Then of course, neither the status nor pay rises came and now they are making registered nurses redundant and attempting to replace them on wards with Assistants in nursing or ENs. Yet hospitals remain in a parlous state.
Having trained (many years ago) I was horrified recently when my mother was admitted. Just the walls that had not been painted for years, the shabby wards, the lack of anything (milk in the fridge for cups of tea in 100 ml bottles and only two for a whole ward??), the general demoralisation of nursing staff. Those that spoke of redundancies being offered to nurses 5 years out of their training and of those girls being unable to get jobs (despite desperate shortages) because they were now “too expensive” compared to girls one year out or ENs. Just recently this ward made three senior knowledgeable nurses who had been there many years with a lot of experience, redundant.
The NSW Government, despite constantly telling us know how cash strapped they are, despite 10 years of real estate developer deals,donations and stamp duties rolling in, despite flogging public asset after public asset, despite review after review after review into health systems at capacity and malfunctioning, then puts on these wasteful car rallies and holds picnics on the harbour bridge.
There seems little public sector accountability, but more importantly there is almost no political accountability.
Nero fiddles while Rome burns.
@Monkey’s Uncle
I’ve no problem taxing the bulk of the population through the most cost-efficient means available and then using transfer payments/payment-in-kind to narrow the gap between the richest and poorest.
Over time, the result of this should be a fall in the proportion of people needing transfer payments and/or in the magnitude of the payments as early intervention improved health and educational outcomes, reduced the call on the justice system etc. Improved housing stock and better utilisation should lower the cost per person of housing and water and supply of electricity.
@Fran Barlow
That’s what they said about Britain’s NHS when it was first started. It had a budget of a few million, and it was estimated that gradually the system would be phased out as people became richer and less needy. Of course, this didn’t happen, and it’s now a gargantuan bureacracy that costs about £250 billion a year.
The funny thing is, when you arrange transfer payments to address needs, you more than likely end up creating more needs.
@Alice
Did you miss my proposal for free quality food, laundry and other services at community centres? For before and after care at high schools? For close case managing the first five years of a child’s life? I’d also favour improving the public housing stock and urban consolidation and better public transport …
I hear what you’re saying about the run down of public services, and I agree. That’s part of my point.
@Sea-bass
Either that or the needs were always there but not addressed. The NHS has undoubtedly made the UK a better place. Could it be more efficient? Of course. One of the issues in health funding is the change from the 1950s vision of accident and emergency + pregnancy to a whole raft of much more discretionary services. And of course, these days, we know a lot more about treatment for the various cancers, and other more exotic conditions. Then there is the whole deal with “fertility services” which is something that the state ought to stay clear of, IMO.
There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of overservicing and this afflicts the US system too. Yet this is essentially to do with the way the system is administered and its structures. It is so, yet it need not be. There are certainly some ways in which a rational and socially inclusive state could reconcile good health practice with least cost servicing, foreclosing all but trivial fudging by people in the “industry”.
There should be a healthcare system that does not exclude the poor but the structure should be a public-private provision. In the end of the day the government is not the best manager of services and if they act as a purchaser of services then if that is the best way of getting an end-result instead of offering it themselves then that is what they should do. The NHS is not that, but rather the national religion according to many on the left.
Sea-bass/Sebastion, it is obviously from the above that you are unaware of the many social problems public housing tenants have before the State offers them accommodation. And to call public housing tenants ‘parasites’ is very demeaning and unnecessary.
Here’s something bizarre:
Successful renewables investor to be deported from Australia
How you can help:
I think Sebastian provides the government with money via tax to house them. He has the right to call them what he wants.
@SeanG
Last I heard, he was a student, so he’s unlikely to be contributing much right now to their support.
GST!
Ah, the problem with council housing is that for the first generation to go from slums to a council house it was a privilege to have a country that cares. Two or three generations down it because a “right” or expectation which meant that people did not appreciate the effort that others put in to pay the money via tax to build them the houses.
On a different note. I see that ProfQ has taken away the link to the Catallaxy blog. Why is that?
No SeanG, if you are of the same opinion as Sea-bass/Sebastion then I suggest you backup the claim being made.
@Fran Barlow re: Mr Taggart
If you choose the help function, stay clear of the email sign up — could be spam … the link failed and when I searched it looked a little dodgy …
I don’t think they are all parasites, but there are parasites living there. You will always have problem people and there are people who will destroy their house, hurt their neighbours and expect another handout from a government agency. It is a mentality that I abhor and disagree with.
No SeanG, there are many people with social problems that cannot look after themselves and need assistance. You can thank the lucky stars that you are not in the same position.
@Fran Barlow
Fran – re health services – I partially blame the medical profession. Yes, the run down wards, increasing lack of experienced nurses. Believe me, this is dangerous, and especially after admission. Its what happens in the first few hours after admission that may matter the most – to even consider shortstaffing or underresourcing emergency depts at any time, is criminally negligent.
My mother waited all day for the test in severe pain. Nothing happened except the necessity for nurses to complete a small thesis of “cover they backside” admission notes including the question “do you have an animal at home requiring looking after?”
The test came at 7pm, at night. Too late for an operation. I whinged about the state of NSW Health to the surgical registrar. He said “oh but some things are wonderful – this test your mother had will be read by radiologists in Israel or the US and Ill have the results back ion five minutes.
I thought to myself after my mother’s operation –
“what a shame she couldnt have had that test sooner (MUCH sooner !!!! and the operation sooner!!!) seeing as her appendix had ruptured in five places and there was considerable infection involved”
Nevertheless, I imagine the foreign radiologists were extremely well paid but would it not be better to have one on staff and more testing staff on site (and more emergency nurses so that what should happen, happens faster????).
@SeanG
Sean G – it could be because the catallyx blog side contains some serious nutters? Nutty enough to want to destroy other blogs they perceive as an enemy tribe?? Or could it just be because the Catallyx blog, associated as it is so often with the hard (harder, hardest) right wing propaganda rags CIS or IPA, is just not sensible reading now? Ive often wondered why there are few (if any) females in that blog but I think I know why. It typifies the cruel view.
MoSH,
There may be many people that need assistance – and I have no real problems with a society helping in that way. There is, though, a legitimate debate about what exactly is the best means of assisting those people – private charity or public taxation.
Government has a claer role (IMHO) in the provision of the basics as well – defence forces, police, justice and many items of infrastructure. Personally, I have no problems with taxation for those purposes – although I would like some greater transparency in both the taxation and expenditure.
To me, though, the real problem is the literally billions of dollars that are taxed out of the working economy every year just to be repaid to those exact same people minus the 20% or so that is used for administration costs. This is, to me, sheer lunacy.
.
Alice,
If that is a “…cruel view…” of the functions of government then I would be interested in your justification of why the current “nice view” is justified. I suspect that the view above is one that many at Catallaxy could live with.
@Andrew Reynolds
Andrew- its been shown in study after study that private charity is grossly inadequate, unreliable and piecemeal. In short there is no way, ever enough of it. People have to be compelled through taxes to contribute.
Great – it is a legitimate area of study and work can be done to show which works better. How about the rest, though? Do you defend the system that takes billions of us just to hand a large percentage of it straight back again?
@Andrew Reynolds
Short answer – yep…because it works better than anything that crowd at catallyx (your friends…the Dr Doolittles of the world) espouse Andy. You are prepared to watch social problems like unemployment and disadvantage and inequality just keep on rising and then say “the problem is made worse by government intervention” BUT you and the other Doolittles have NO workable solutions except to vaguely mumble and mutter about private charities (if they feel like it on the rare occasion).
As far as I can ascertain Andy, “private charities” operated under John Howard as a tax evasion entity for wealthy liberal voting elites. For the tiny cost of a website where they attempted to sell such useful items as self empowerment books and other feel good badges and hats they got a whopping tax deduction.
Oh spare me Andy. There has been more than enough rorting of government subsidies going on in the name of private charities….except its not charity AT ALL. Its was a policy of feed the rich mates.
It just disgusts me Andy so dont even try mumbling that “private charity” nonsense my way.
A nice long rant, there Alice. You did not answer the question though. I repeat – “Do you defend the system that takes billions of us just to hand a large percentage of it straight back again?”
@Andrew Reynolds
Read my anser again. The first line Andy. Then go google a piece called “the alms race”. Search emmanuel Margolin and how that family used chaitable dedeuctions and subsidies. Then google Steve Vizards “charity” for tax evasion / minimisation. You would be amazed at the names in this game Andy. If you dig hard enough you will find most of the elite running dodgy charities – De Crespigny’s etc.
John Howard made it happen but notwithstanding ANDY – YES I do support redistributive taxation Andy BUT I think rates need to be raised on the wealthy to support and maintain civilised public infrastructure and welfare systems (now, not later). Is that clear enough for you??
So – you like a system that takes money from a person, keeps 20% (or so) of it and then hands it back for no gain, rather the loss of 20% of the value taken?
Seriously?
@Andrew Reynolds
No worse than what private charities take for admin fees (in fact much better…much much better return) Andy. That admin also provides public sector employment and those employees generate income instead of needing charity.
Of course I prefer it. Your point is?
@Andrew Reynolds
Do you prefer a system where people like the Margolins call themselves some sort of wildlife protection fund, then establish a mansion that they use 99% privately, with a tiny zoo attached at Mulgoa (very small – Ive seen it. Ive also been inside the mansion with the helipad on the roof the Koi carp ponds, the mirror bathrooms and the pools and the generally exceptionally bad taste opulence on display, where one of the sons claimed a caretakers allowance from the charity of $1000 a week to live there and do nothing and where the expenses for both rolls royces were claimed against the “charity.”
It was shut down by the authorities.
Yes I dont mind the authorities when they work Andy. I dont have a problem with an admin fee. What I dont like is people like you telling me the private sector does a great job with charity. You cant deny these tax evasion strategies have been going on (using bogus charity fronts) but I really suspect dont really care about charity Andy – be honest. Its every man for himself in your ideal world.
You probably even think others like the Margolins are clever for ripping off the tax system and their fellow Australians.