Top income brackets should be taxed at 99%.

Thank you.
(It's not an easy task to raise the consciousness of you lot.....but I'm not complaining...)

 

I agree that it has utility, but it doesn't have any specific intrinsic value.

Or would you like to tell me the intrinsic value of a gallon of water in dollar terms?

 

You should work on not believing in fairy tales

 

There you go again, confusing utility, "value" and money.

My interest is in the productive capacity of the economy.

Like squidward, your premise ie "what is the value of a gallon of water in dollar terms" - is erroneous.

Its value is in its contribution to the productive capacity of the economy.

 

My point was that value is subjective.

Which do I value more and which do I value least: a gallon of water, a gallon of beer, or a gallon of diet soda?

 

ANY 'social programs' arising from a democracy are luxuries, paid for via the fruits of capitalism. You cannot 'buy' services when you have no profits/money. This is a fundamental, and not negotiable.

Socialism (collectivism) has nothing to do with any of that. Socialism is baseline subsistence, predicted upon all members pulling their weight. THAT is the clincher, not what you buy with your surplus (not that you have surplus in a collective to start with).

 

So the 'value' of money, whether fiat or commodity, is subjective also...

Well this is where our world views differ.

For me, with a view to a better world, the first of these is "priceless", whereas we would be wise to drastically reduce consumption of the second (eg, by taxing it sufficiently*), and eliminate the third altogether, preferably by education (eg what's it good for, considering the public-health destroying diabetes and obesity epidemics associated with sugar water. I notice you said 'diet soda', but its consumption must be a tiny fraction of the sugar-drinks industry).

It's pity we don't agree, and I will leave you to examine the reasons why we don't agree - I have discussed this before - you might consider which sets of reasons are likely to result in a better world...

* btw, taxing is Jeremy Rifkin's (author of "The Green New Deal") preferred 'market-based' approach to eliminating the filthy fossil industry ie, by gradually increasing a carbon tax until CO2 emissions are eliminated, when clean green with almost 'zero marginal cost' (after the infrastructure is established) takes over.

My preferred solution is a planned approach: simply build the solar/wind infrastructure (backed by pumped hydro-storage) across the globe as fast as available resources will permit, and close the filthy fossil industry in a corresponding manner....funded by a global bank that can issue national currencies as required to achieve the most efficient infrastructure build, given the different resource capacities (including labour) of different nations.

Est. "cost": ?$500 trillion US? ....not a problem, because that global bank can after all create the required currencies 'ex nihilo', for the purchase of the necessary resources and labour to complete the job.

[It seemed appropriate to me to bring this discussion about the subjectivity of 'value' (including money) back to the MMT idea of the increased policy capacities available to currency-issuing sovereign governments; a global infrastructure bank would possess the same capacity in this regard].

 

Something for nothing.
Fools never learn.

 

Another poorly formed premise: <<"ANY 'social programs' arising from a democracy">>

Guess what: social programs are a feature of communism also.

Doesn't sound like your 'capitalist democracy' is very good at maximising productive capacity....obviously a half-decent system would supply the basics to all, AND the luxuries to those who .....earn?..... them.

Actually you have that entirely back to front (understandable, since you don't even recognise the reality of macroeconomics).

Fact: a currency-issuing government is not constrained by money, but by the availability of resources.

You are up to your old tricks of defining terms (eg socialism) to suit your purposes.

Socialism: def.
a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

Nothing about subsistence there (and btw, the USSR had free education, free health, and launched the first manned space flight, .....while engaged in an arms race with the US, while the US - with an economy twice the size - were grooming their pet dogs and had no universal health or free tertiary education - perhaps that's why soviet scientists and engineers led the way into space...).

 

er....building infrastructure (or whatever) is not "something for nothing": it require materials, labour and knowhow.

Try again.

 

You don't say. Do you want a gold sticker ?

 

You mean the stale bread instead of the stale, moldy bread? Ooooh boy, were eating good tonight!

 

Of course. Nothing has intrinsic value. All value is subjective.

So does this long missive mean that you're not going to defend your stance that things have intrinsic value?

 

Free, secure, exclusive tenure on enough of the available advantageous land of their choice to have access to economic opportunity without having to pay a parasite just for permission to access it.

 

True: value is always dependent on the market context.

False by definition. Value is what something would trade for. Trade requires buyer and seller. Nothing that requires more than one person's opinion can be subjective. QED.

 

It's life for the rich, greedy, privileged, parasitic, soulless, amoral greed robots.

 

Too long for you to digest? OK I'll reduce it to this:

"the first of these is "priceless", whereas we would be wise to drastically reduce consumption of the second (eg, by taxing it sufficiently*), and eliminate the third altogether"...…..because of the intrinsic value (defined by me as life-supporting value) - in each of your examples - which is self-evident (given my definition).

Over to you, to defend your <death (ill-heatlh) engendering stance> which is the logical consequence of your assertion that value is merely subjective...

 

Right. Now we're getting somewhere. Neither an apple nor a pear have intrinsic value.

Trade is a perfect example of value being subjective. Let's say you and I trade an apple for a pear. You give me your apple in return for the pear, because TO YOU the pear has more value than the apple. I, on the other hand, give up my pear in return for the apple, because TO ME the apple has more value than my pear.

See? To you the pear has more value and to me the apple has more value. Because value is subjective.

 

I'll repeat my example I gave to @bringiton.

Trade is a perfect example of value being subjective. Let's say you and I trade an apple for a pear. You give me your apple in return for the pear, because TO YOU the pear has more value than the apple. I, on the other hand, give up my pear in return for the apple, because TO ME the apple has more value than my pear.

See? To you the pear has more value and to me the apple has more value. Because value is subjective.

 

Not so fast...

Bringiton concluded: "Nothing that requires more than one person's opinion can be subjective. QED".
In the sense that objective truth (which is a reality) lies beyond the subjective opinion of each individual.

Whereas your trade/exchange example occurs by <voluntary agreement>(….where have I heard that phrase before...).

Which has nothing to do with (objective) intrinsic value, which once again, I define as promoting/supporting life.

[So Ted in the Shed - our resident 'pure' Libertarian/Anarchist - might have to rethink the (false) implications of your example].
……...
Back to the 'value' of money; since we agree it has no intrinsic (objective) value, obviously a currency-issuing government can create deposits in its own (ie central) bank, alongside the usual - socially 'blind' - money creation that happens in private banks, when banks write loans for credit worthy customers.

[Btw, you think banks can only write loans if they have sufficient reserves in the form of savers' deposits? ...which is false, as discussed by Mervin King several years back and widely accepted by economists now...
so if you reject this truth, you have to answer the question: where did the money originally come from, that savers now possess? (think about it carefully........]

 

Lets punish wealth and give everyone every reason NOT to earn more than the bracket....

 

What, you won't work your ass off so I can take a big chunk of your earnings, making as much as you, for sticking my thumb up mine all day?

 

One guy invested $10,000 in the Dow in 2009, he's now worth 30K.

Bloomberg (or whoever) invested $15 billion, he's now worth $50 billion...
( btw both unearned income)
"punishing wealth" and "working your ass off"....

 

I believe you're conflating the term "intrinsic value" with something like "usefulness or utility".

I'm talking about value in the economic sense, not usefulness.

If you want to say that various things have uses to which they can be put, I'm fine with that, but I'm talking about the economic concept of value. And economics tells us (as demonstrated by two people valuing the same thing differently) that in economics, value is subjective.

Of course a currency-issuing government can create deposits in its own central bank. We see this happen all the time.

Nope.

The government printed it. The government prints all money. Or deposits it into the central bank. Under our fiat money system, the government can make all the money it's little heart desires.

 

Others should risk for your benefit eh?