Things we'd be talking about if the forum wasn't deadFollow

Because reward is the flip side of deterrent. The cost of the deterrent should be based on the cost the action we're trying to deter causes to the rest of us. In the same way that the wages one earns should be based on the value the action that earned the wages provides for the rest of us. Those are equivalent concepts. If you argue that fines should be based instead on the relative impact the fine has on the person who suffers it, then the equivalent argument would be that wages should be based on the relative impact the wages have to the person who earns it. Of course, in the case of wages, since we're all benefited equally by having more money, the result would be that all labor should be rewarded equally. Which is an argument some have made (maybe not taken to the extreme position, but the whole "all jobs should pay a living wage" argument is based on this concept.


It's about how one views money relative to other actions. And I've observed people tend to fall into one of two categories:

1. Those who disconnect dollars from the weight of our actions on others, and instead look at them only in terms of how they benefit/harm those who earn/lose them.

2. Those who believe dollars are a measure of the weight of our actions on others and should always be viewed this way, and that how the dollars benefit or harm us is irrelevant.


So yeah. The same mindset that says that fines should vary based on how much money someone has will also tend to support the idea that wages should be based on how much someone "needs" the money. Commonly this manifests as a dismissal of the harm of taxes on those past a certain income range (like what we're talking about here). Heck, the fact that people went to the fines idea should show you that these are connected concepts.


It represents the idea that dollars are about punishing or rewarding the person. But that's not it. They should be about the value (positive or negative) the rest of us place on the actions of that person. Otherwise, the very concept of a dollar kinda loses meaning. It literally is what a dollar *is*.

Dollars aren't about punishing and rewarding, the fine is about punishing. The fact that we use money for this transaction is just because it is convenient. To posit that taking $100 away from a person is an equivalent amount of harm regardless of who that person is renders the idea of harm useless. So great, you can construct a narrow view that approaches harm from that perspective, but at that point it ceases to be a meaningful term to use, and is instead just an appeal to emotion because, you know, Harm is bad!!

You're not trying to look at this honestly. You're distorting a legitimate complaint to fit your talking points.

Mexican Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriage in the hopes of keeping frat boys from crossing the border for Spring Break and summer vacations.

Pastebin because finding an article that is acceptable for the stupid filter was impossible.

Apparently still dragging their feet, but some Southern Baptists are proclaiming they won't accept it if the decision doesn't go their way so that's a little fun.

Edited, Jun 17th 2015 10:03am by lolgaxe

I thought the Supreme Court only issued on Mondays.

We have two Mondays left in June (and two more Tuesdays -- wooo, five paycheck month!) and I'm guessing this coming one will be the ACA decision and the SSM one won't be until the 29th. No reason for my thinking that except just a gut feeling that they won't drop both big decisions at once.

Edited, Jun 17th 2015 9:29am by Jophiel

Nino, Thomas, and Alito?

No reason for my thinking that except just a gut feeling that they won't drop both big decisions at once.

Oh, I dunno, the ACA one is pretty good cover for the SSM one. The ACA one is mindbogglingly stupid, but they did craft an idiotic statue. I can see that going sideways.

No. I advocate pay for Wal-Mart employees based on the value of each individuals labor to the company. Why would you suggest otherwise? It's about the value of the thing to the person buying it. In the case of labor, the employer is buying the labor. Do you think that the grocery store should charge different amounts for its products based on the net worth of the person buying them? That's insane, right? But that's what you're essentially arguing here. It's an absurd argument generated to support a narrative, nothing more. When you actually stop and examine it closely, it falls apart.

I get that some people have this vision of "rich people" who roll around in piles of dollar bills and treat their stuff like it's nothing because they can afford to replace them easily. While that may be true for the small percentage of celebrity rich, who define themselves by wasteful excess (and who ironically are idolized by the Left), most wealthy people are wealthy because they do value things and don't waste money, and don't buy frivolous and wasteful things. Wealth accumulation is just as much about careful spending as it is about increased earnings (I'd argue moreso). So the idea that a wealthy person doesn't value a given amount of dollars the same as a poor person is just plain wrong.

I can buy just as much with a given amount of money as anyone else. To suggest that the harm to me is lessened based on my total net worth is just plain wrong.

I disagree. I'm more than willing to engage in that sort of calculation. But you can't even do that calculation if you are unwilling to first calculate the harm of taxes first. We can't even get to calculating taxes versus spending benefits your way, so I'm not sure how you can claim that I'm the one being dishonest here.



I'm just trying to illustrate my point with an example that people can more easily relate to. The argument I'm countering is that a fine of $100 harms a poor person more than a rich person because that $100 represents a greater financial burden for the poor person. But that's true of all economic factors. That's my point. Buying $100 worth of groceries is harder for the poor person than the rich person. Yet, we don't adjust the cost of goods in the store based on the net worth of the person buying them, do we?

My point is that the same argument that you make for adjusting fines in this manner applies equally to every other "cost" in our economic system. If it's unfair for the rich person to pay the same fine as the poor person, then isn't it also unfair for him to pay the same amount for an apple? Or a car? Once we adopt the idea that cost should somehow be related to the "harm" to the person, and harm adjusts based on how much wealth someone has, we rapidly find ourselves in some really silly territory.

I also just took the concept a step further and argued that if we adopt this (flawed IMO) concept of "equal harm for equal results", then a much easier way to accomplish this is to simply make everyone earn the same dollars. That's much easier than calculating earnings or wealth and then adjusting prices/fines/taxes to match. Why not just pay everyone the same number of dollars for their work? That way everyone is harmed identically for everything. Right? And even if we're not talking about going that far, the idea of artificially increasing minimum wages to "living wages" is basically an extension of this idea.


I guess my point rests on the idea that a given dollar amount represents a relative valuation of some action taken by someone by others around him. It's designed to be equivalent. For the system to work, all dollars have to be equal in value, not just when looked at as earnings, but when viewed from the spending/cost side as well. Anything that mucks with this equivalence is a problem. And as I pointed out earlier, it really is about how we view this, not necessarily what we're doing. Saying "we tax the rich more than the poor because they can handle more dollars lost" may have an identical result to "we tax the rich more than the poor because losing more dollars doesn't hurt them more", but they represent two radically different ways of looking at the valuation of money. I think it's critically important that we view a dollar lost as the same amount of "harm" regardless of how many dollars one possess because doing otherwise leads one to more easily accept some more radical and economy shattering ideas.


That may seem like a minor semantic point, but it's interesting to me how strongly people will argue it anyway. Why is it so important to say that losing X dollars harms a rich person less than a poor rather than saying it harms them the same amount, but they can afford more harm? If the action is identical in both cases, then this really is just how we view money and "harm". Which does kinda support my reasoning here. How we view this sort of thing does matter. And that's precisely why I raised this issue (I've raised it in the past too). I'm reasonably certain that the reason why many people are taught that harm is relative is so that they will more readily accept "tax the rich" schemes. As I stated earlier, it's much easier to justify raising taxes on a group of people when you don't view what you're doing as harm. Which makes it purely psychological, right?

Edited, Jun 17th 2015 7:00pm by gbaji

It may. It may not. If the value of my company today is $100m and I have 1000 employees, and 5 years from now my company is worth $200m and I have 2000 employees, then the value of each individuals labor hasn't increased at all relative to the value of my company. I've expanded the company, but I've hired more employees along the way. The contribution of each one is unchanged.

Additionally, value is not necessarily a direct function of worker labor. Let's say I have my $200m company and then I buy a shiny new building that costs $100m of my current assets (and it then burns down and I don't have insurance for some reason, so I lose the money), does that mean I cut my workers salaries in half now? As I keep saying, trying to do this sort of calculation is insane. It creates bizarre outcomes that make no sense at all. All of this to accomplish what? An easy justification for taxing the rich more? Why not just say that wages should be set the same way prices for everything else are set: Based on how much the purchaser is willing to pay. My company must have workers to make a profit. That drives my demand for labor. The workers much have jobs to be able to support themselves. That drives the supply of labor. Between those two forces a price will be reached that is fair.

Is this perfect? No. But it's better than any other method of doing this.



No, it doesn't. You're just not really thinking the whole thing through.

Edited, Jun 17th 2015 7:37pm by gbaji

Two punches "with the exact same force" are also, by definition, identical.

Let me also point out that the reason I keep going back to wage equality is that the underlying assumption behind thinking tax harm is relative to earnings/wealth somewhat rests on the denial of the idea that labor (in any form) can have different actual (real) value. If the reason one person earns $25k/year and another earns $100k/year is because the second person's actions actually benefited others 4x as much (and was therefore valued 4x as high), then we must accept that each dollar earned is equivalent (that's my position btw). Arguing that the dollars of a high earner represent less (harm in this case) then the dollars of a low earner is predicated on the assumption that all labor is really equal, and it's somehow unfair that some people make more than others. Arguing for variable "harm" based on how much someone earns is just a way of basically devaluing the high earners efforts, presumably as some means of equaling things out.

Which I find problematic on its own (for a host of economic and fairness reasons). But what I find more troubling is the number of people who support these sorts of things, but then either really don't get what the underlying assumption/goal behind them is, or pretend not to. I'm honestly not sure which it is. I just know that I see this sort of thinking all the time. I have to assume that most people don't actually believe that all labor should be valued the same, but then I see statements from people like Smash talking about how wages are just based on luck. His "you fell out of the right ******" comments fall into the same theme. The constant effort to dismiss the importance of individual efforts, work ethic, good choices, etc, all seem to fall into the same theme as well.

Dunno. It's just something that bothers me. As I said, I don't think most people actually believe this, but then I can't figure out why they adopt positions that ultimately are derived from that. It makes no sense.