"While the 1980s have been described as the "lost decade" in terms of economic development for the rest of Latin America, since global recession in the early 1980s Chile's economy under Pinochet has enjoyed a sustained strong expansion. His government implemented an economic model that had three main objectives: economic liberalization, privatization of state owned companies, and stabilization of inflation. However, these reforms came with high transitional cost and in the mid-1980s 45 percent of population was still living under poverty level. In 1985, the government started with a second round of privatization, it revised previously introduced tariff increases and gave a greater supervisory role for the Central Bank. By 1992 the unemployment had declined to below 5 percent and the growth of GDP averaged 6.2 percent a year. Pinochet's market-oriented economic policies were continued and strengthened after he stepped down."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinochet#Economic_policy

Are you not tired of being right all the time?

At this point no one knows what the hell you talking about Artysim.

Naw, Artysim is just one of those people who would rather take a circular object and turn it slighty sideways and call it an oval.

Not necessarily. It would be expected to increase the aggregate income for the country in question, but whether that translates to the poor getting richer depends on where it falls, while the same is true for the reverse. If you're raising taxes on the rich and giving that money to the poor, then the poor are likely to see an increase in their incomes; it would take a severe decrease in total income for it's effect to outweigh that of the redistributive effect on individuals, because you have the two competing impacts - the change in total income, and an opposite (for the poor) change in their own income. For the rich they're both negative, but for the poor your statement is at best highly misleading.

Well part of a tax cut would pay for itself typically (it'd only be in very extreme cases where a tax cut would increase income sufficiently for tax revenues to actually increase). As for the rest of it, it'd need to be funded by cuts in government spending (since borrowing, the 'third way' that is so favoured by conservative and liberal politicians alike, simply isn't sustainable). So you have to weigh up just how much any government spending is worth - are the beneficial effects of that spending so great as to outweigh the negative effects of the tax imposed to pay for them? (i.e. increase taxes = lower income overall. You can then try to equate this monetarily in terms of a ratio - is $1 of spending on say healthcare worth $2 lower total income? Or is it $3? Or maybe just $1.5? This will in turn affect how large a government you have. Some government services could well have a beneficial impact on total income that outweighs the decrease in total income caused by taxes (such as correcting market failure), and of course some taxes can themselves correct market failure and therefore be beneficial. As a result regardless of your beliefs as to the right size of government, these should be present anyway, so the focus can be on the more 'optional' spending programmes that don't have such 'win-win' benefits.

Incorrect, their choice changes, depending on how the tax is done.

For example, if you will tax profits only, and not provide a tax rebate for losses, you have an obvious effect: Say I can undertake a project for $40k that will either be successful (50% chance) and make $100k, or be a failure (50%) and make nothing, and this will happen fairly quickly (i.e. ignore time value of money). On normal grounds, this sounds like a great project - it'd expect to return $10k on average. Now let's introduce taxes though, and say I'll be taxed on any profits at a rate of 50%. Suddenly my expected return has fallen from $10k to -$5k. In other words on average I'd lose money by undertaking this (profitable) project.

Even if you introduce such a rebate, you still have the impact on risk - in the above case, I was using a risk neutral evaluation for simplicity. In other words, I was assuming that you'd be indifferent between a guaranteed return of $10, and the equal chance of making either $60k, or losing $40k. For most people (habitual gamblers excepted) you'd prefer the safe return of $10k, and this is borne out in the economy - the result is that if you take on more risk, you should expect a greater reward to compensate you for that risk. Thus you can lend to the government (deemed super-safe in most cases) at a rate of say 3% a year, or alternatively lend to a bank (slightly riskier) for 4%, or lend to a new startup company at a rate of 15% (numbers plucked out of the air since I can't be bothered to check the specific rates at the moment). Taxes don't take into account risk or (usually) inflation though, meaning that an increase in taxes can negatively affect investment decisions.

To give a few more numbers to illustrate this, lets say you're considering investing $100 in company A. You reckon it's fairly risky, and require an expected return of $115 to be indifferent between investing and not investing. Without taxes, it works out as being $120. With taxes at 50% of the 'profit', this falls to just $110. That means you wouldn't invest, because you'd effectively be 'losing' money. Alternatively, think of it in terms of inflation (which is a similar concept) - say that prices are increasing at 15% each year, then $115 in a years time can buy you the same things on average as $100 today. Thus if you invest in something that after taxes is only giving you $110 (but before taxes would give you $120), you're losing money.

Now the magnitude of these effects is debatable, but they do exist.

Now onto individuals working - you have a choice whether to work an extra hour, or take it as leisure, and will likely pick the option that benefits you the most. If you impose taxes, then that decreases the value of working that extra hour, since you're receiving less money from it. Meanwhile the value of that hour of leisure will be unchanged to you. Thus you would expect such an increase in taxes to decrease the amount of hours worked. There are some exceptions to this (e.g. people on low incomes will typically want to work up to a subsistence level, and it is also proposed that in some situations you can have a backwards sloping individual supply of labour curve which is based on the idea that once you hit a certain level of income you don't really care much about more income and instead prefer leisure, meaning that if you get a pay rise you'd actually decrease the hours you worked, therefore meaning a tax cut could for such a person increase the amount of hours worked), but the general rule here is also that an increase in taxes will decrease hours worked.

Quite possible (at least in theory, I can't be bothered to gather together all the various statistics and relate them to specific taxation policies to try and determine whether certain situations can happen), because of the redistributive part of the taxes. To give an (abstract) example, lets say you have two scenarios, A and B. A is a low tax scenario, and results in $100mil in the particular area (total income). Scenario B is a high tax scenario, and only results in $50mil. In both cases, the distribution of wealth/income pre-taxes is the same, with the 'rich' having 90%, and the 'poor' 10%. Now in the low tax case, this doesn't really change, so you have the poor sharing $10m, and the rich $90m. In the high tax state, we're taking lots of money from the rich and giving it to the poor, so let's say we're taking 40% of the rich's wealth and handing it over to the poor. Prior to this, the rich would have $45, and the poor $5 (with that level of total income). With redistribution, the rich now have $27m to share, and the poor have $23m. Total income has fallen, but the amount of money for the poor is higher than before (it's an extreme example btw, I'm not suggesting in real life the figures+changes would be like this, it's more to illustrate you can have falling total income yet have one group benefiting from increased income, or similarly, increasing income with one group having reduced income).

Well to be picky, a business would cover one run by an individual (sole trader), and hence personal taxation would be applicable, as opposed to a company which would be a separate legal entity and hence have corporation tax apply (although to be fair at some point I forgot the specific mention of business that you gave and looked more at rich/poor, so hence could've tailored my answer a bit better).

Anyway, if talking about companies, the same effects can also occur. If companies taxes are increased, that means they will likely reduce employment slightly and/or increase prices. However the end effect on the poor can still be positive, since they're getting the money from the company.

Wealth redistribution isn't communism. Communism is simply the extreme where (in pure form) you take all the income from everyone and have the state redistribute it. To argue redistribution is communism is to argue almost all of the developed countries are really communist states! As for "all" the rich leaving, again that's wrong. Some may leave, but not all, because money isn't the only consideration here (and even if it was, income after taxation wouldn't be the sole consideration) - you have the (1-off) relocation expenses, the fact that you will move away from all your friends+family, you might not be moving to an english speaking country, etc. etc., meaning you can increase taxes on the rich to make the poor richer. The same with companies, although slightly differently - as long as you can make profits, you'll have companies. An increase in tax won't remove profits, it'll simply affect the return provided. So, some companies may relocate, but not all.

A poor example, which suggests you're confusing taxation with property rights. Zimbabwe has suffered (in part) because they've ignored property rights, which form the backbone to a functioning economy. Remove them, and people will no longer be confident that they will be able to keep any of the benefits of a risk they've taken by say setting up a business or company. Companies won't want to invest for fear that the state just comes in and takes it all over, and the end result is you have an economy at deaths door. That's before you get into the issues of taking say farms away from the productive+more efficient people of society, and giving it to the less efficient ones, which obviously then reduces efficiency/productivity (ontop of the damaging effects of the destruction of property rights). Also I'm assuming we're talking about the more general taxes on income/profits (i.e. % based) as opposed to windfall taxes which would bear a bit more relation to the extreme cases such as zimbabwe.

Actually, you never do. Do you think you are known for providing sources? I think this is the first time I ever saw a posting of yours with links!

Trust me. I never ever do. You are the most unreliable source I know of. Whatever you tell me, I can safely assume that the exact opposite is true. It has been hilarious.

I never said it did. The fact that George Bush also "admits" that Iraq had nothing to do with 911 doesn't surprise me.

Except in Halabja. I was there. People told me.

Thanks for the sources.

Next time please give sources for things you said which someone actually doubted, not other things that we hadn't even discussed and possibly never disagreed about (Iraq and 911).

I have heard other reports.

Plus I don't even know how you can tell the age of a gas that falls apart within weeks and then remains the same for decades. I have seen pictures of the gas being used in civilians from 15 years before the invasion. How could it have been "decades old" if it had been used less than 20 years before?

It was and is politically impossible to invade Iran. It would also be the wrong strategy. Iraq had violated a cease-fire several times. It was a reasonable assumption that international law would be applied and that the UN would allow the invasion. The UN refused to follow international law, so the coalition went "alone".

I can tell you that Israel and Kuwait were concerned about Iraq as a threat, given that Israel was still suffering from Iraq-funded terrorist attacks and Kuwait was still trying to find out what happened to their citizens abducted by Iraq during the occupation.

It's the old thing again: you are telling me one thing and the locals are telling me something else. And, obviously, you are right and they are wrong.

That doesn't make any sense. The "progressive system" is a redistribution system. "Subverting" it thus means stopping redistribution.

(I assume "subverting" is the new double-speak for "disagreeing with"?)

The most generous country in the world in voluntary giving, both to our own citizens in need and those of other countries, and you consider it an 'accident' on the part of people 'concerned only for themselves.'  Arrogant demagogic class warfare.

You can obfuscate all you want but income redistribution (not 'spreading the wealth' - that's a fiction intended to buy votes) which is the objective of BO & the Dems is not 'progressive' anything.  A nation that decides to no longer reward hard work & success is a nation that deserves what it gets.