David, some of your 'libertarian' ideas are the most radical in the Senate, but you have the right to express them.

Actually I agree with you that Direct Action is a waste of taxpayer dollars and so is Tony's paid parental leave scheme. I also agree that proposing a medical research levy is a crazy waste of money.

But you advocate taking more from the poor / middle classes and giving it to the top top 5% (e.g. GP visit levy and deregulating Uni fees).

Meanwhile you criticize the sensible things they have done:
- Reinstating indexation of fuel tax, which is long overdue. Australia's fuel taxes are the 4th lowest of 30-odd OEDC countries. The current rate does not come close to covering the the road costs plus the currently externalized costs of carbon, traffic congestion accident and pollution trauma and deaths. It should be doubled to nearer the $1/litre that European nations pay.
- Raising the top income tax rate, which is sensible as it's still below that of many European nations, which also have higher VAT taxes than us. (and if you think a 1.5 c tax rise will make them walk into equally high paid jobs in low tax places like Russia or Kazakhstan or NZ then you must be joking)

Do you think governments can provide the services demanded by modern societies and at the same time reduce taxation?

If you think government workers are overpaid and underproductive try working as a schoolteacher or contract professional as (both jobs I have done).

True libertarians should advocate 'user pays' and 'polluter pays'; for example carbon pricing.

What about the current situation of giving a 15% marginal tax break to the wealthy who want to put up to $50,000 a year into superannuation; is that fair?

Or allowing negative gearing on established homes for speculator investors, pushing up house prices and rents?

Is libertarianism all about giving the wealthy more tax breaks, so they they pay less tax and screw the poor? If not then these are two areas you could work on.

Roses1

You've got it back the front in a number of ways.

A policy needs to be justified in its own terms. The fact someone else is doing it is no justification. According to your theory, if slavery was legal elsewhere, we should up the rate of slavery here. It's moral and intellectual nonsense.

There is no evidence for your assertion that societies "demand" services provided by taxation. If it was true, then obviously taxation wouldn't be necessary to pay for them, would it? People would pay for them voluntarily, just as they pay for other services that are genuinely in demand. You are only defending parasitic behaviour.

Also people are not chattels owned by you or the state. Other people are not your property. Okay? Got that?

You have consistently failed to establish that carbon or carbon dioxides are pollutants, or any justification for any policy whatsoever on carbon. You have been specifically asked to answer the questions which prove you wrong here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16680&page=0
here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16726
here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16753&page=0
and here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16757&page=0

This means you are saying things that you know to be untrue, which is commonly known as lying. You need to stop lying first and foremost before any talk of policy, because it invalidates your reasoning. All it means is you're hoping to get an advantage from people who are poorer than you by using force and threats, and your pretended moral superiority is false.

By the way, what are you using to power your computer?

A couple of things: Firstly we should reintroduce a carbon tax, but only if it's accompanied by a cap, which could be current emission, and then only tax that part above the cap, by say a million dollars a ton!
And then very slowly very progressively, lower the cap!

And genuine tax reform and vast simplification, will end all avoidance, say if an unavoidable expenditure tax replaces all the current complexity, and indeed, ends forever the need to shell out for tax compliance costs, which currently averages around 7%!

Meaning a tax rate set at 18% initially, will be an effective 11%, given just such a stand alone and entirely unavoidable system, would hand back former tax compliance costs!

Not only that but finally make all tax avoidance a thing of te past and in so doing massively swell government coffers and allow the final rate to be as low as 5% or 2% less than current tax compliance costs.

A broken system actually encourages that level of quite massive avoidance; it needs to be fixed!

And an expenditure tax can also be applied to all international remittance or exchanges, which would wipe out a black market!

A single stand alone tax means just that, with things like fuel tax, payroll tax and the ubiquitous and cascading GST, given the flick, and replaced by a direct funding model of all public health and equally autonomous education; thereby reducing the cost of those two to the long suffering taxpayer, by around 30%.

Moreover, a stand alone direct tax as outlined, would end forever the destiny of demography; and enable the tax rate to be marginally varied as and where necessary; up or down, to alone control all inflation or stagnation, and much more effectively and rapidly, than current interest rate regimes!

Of course those currently avoiding a fair share, and those who help them do it, are going to scream like stuck pigs; and obtusely, obdurately, obfuscate or try and make a case for their obscene profits/economic survival, as the virtual unproductive parasites they clearly are?
Rhrosty.

Jardine, people with no money can still demand things.

And isn't ocean acidification proof that carbon dioxide is a pollutant?

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Rhosty, why should incumbent polluters get such a big advantage over startups?

And as I've said before, an expenditure tax is a very bad idea, firstly because, at least in this economic climate, expenditure is a good thing, and secondly because such a tax would be relatively easy to dodge. Most banks would dodge it by offshoring most of their operations.

Aidan

No-one's talking about "people with no money".

Bank robbers can "demand things". So what?

"And isn't ocean acidification proof that carbon dioxide is a pollutant?"
I don't know. Can you prove it?

Aidan: Because start ups start with a huge advantage and a choice of technologies, like say Apple, who are building a new H.Q, powered by solar panels and biogas coupled to ceramic fuel cells; meaning, their operations will be carbon negative or carbon neutral and still under a cap, when it finally descends to zero, say fifty years from now!

An expenditure tax won't work?
Man will never learn to fly, let alone break the sound barrier, or put a man on the moon; all far more impossible than a government deciding to reform the tax act, so as to impose a stand alone, unavoidable expenditure tax, with the stroke of a pen!

Banks can offshore their operations all they like; but particularly if they take their foreign debt burdens with them!
Sure and I can fly to the Canary or Virgin Islands to organize a business loan to minimize my tax, and be spoiled for choice!

And if only they would head out, we the people could create a brand new one of our own, and keep all the profits right here, and continually reinvested into our own economy.

One cannot simply leave with a bundle of cash, which could be seized at the border; but need to use a local bank in order to transfer much more than a thousand bucks?

And people journeying with large sums of money about their person risk being beaten and robbed, as the least serious consequence!

Incidentally, a friend went to the canary Islands recently and was disappointed at not being able to see even one canary!
Guess where he's going for his next holiday?
Rhrosty.