Bay 12 Games Forum

... maybe take this to, like. PMs. Or an IRC channel, or... something?

I'd question whether it'd be enough to maintain many of the lovely social institutions taxation is currently funding, firstly (and yes, I'm aware that many aren't lovely, but the point would be to illustrate the other social costs involved, should they exist). Would 17% income tax be enough? The minutes from the (a?) hearing on the bill (at least as near as I can tell, that was a pain to find) you're talking about mentioned that the government would be looking to lose a good 130 and some change billion a year, on average, with a flat tax... back in '97. What about the rest of the taxes? And... more than that (that, really), would be better for a dedicated thread, probably. Which I'm... fairly sure we've had before? The ideological and practical basis for progressive over regressive taxation has been trod on a few times, at least.

Though the minor (very minor, ha) quibble would be probably a similar deduction match to married filing jointly for married filing separately. I'm fairly sure I know why filing jointly is so heavily incentivized (it's easier to get the money if one of the pair ditches), but it's been consistently annoying as I've been running into it. Filing separately is a lot... safer.

C would be nice, LB. Any idea how to convince people to make it happen?

A more specific example, though, hrm. Decentralize as much as possible in as many places as possible. Make 90+% of every administrative/paperwork/service job done from home. Cut out a vast majority of travel time and massively reduce necessary on-site infrastructure. I'd say the most that it would take to implement would be some infrastructure shifts (more consistent internet, ferex) and maybe some software improvements, and with proper methodological shifts (go digital, damn your eyes!) you might even see efficiency improvement for the work itself. Hell, tax administration would be an excellent field to implement something like that, since it wouldn't really require much of an on-site presence if it was done properly. From what I understand, it's already something gaining a degree of momentum on a general level. There's known work separation issues for that sort of thing, but it tends to be pretty painless s'far as I'm aware.

I gave plenty of links. But an "experimental run" is pointless. A quarter of the country runs on septic already. But cities prefer sewer systems because it's a source of revenue.

Well, two links (that I noticed), neither of which had immediately accessible information of the sort a proper implementation run (especially for larger/denser areas) would provide. The wiki link even mentioned there may be issues related to urban area implementation, which is why I'd say give it a go (or two) before implementing it on a larger scale. May just not have been looking in the right place, though, which would be my bad.

And others objected to other examples. And if you gave specific examples that you thought were a good idea, somebody else would find something to complain about. We have some people in this thread genuinely claiming that working is good, proper and healthy for people, and so reducing work at all is a bad thing.

Haha, which is why I disagreed with them, yeah?

I don't see any way to make everyone happy, but if we look at what's best for society, I don't think pandering to every little special interest group is the way to do it. Yes, maybe maybe some particular income brackets would end up paying marginally more taxes with a flat tax than they do now, but too bad. Six billion hours of pointless, wasted, stupid work is not worth preventing that.

... unless that marginally more taxes (on a larger number of people... remember, you've noted yourself the median income, and that's going to be among the ones being hit) ends up forcing them into greater effort to make up the difference, or notably impacts their quality of life. It's entirely possible we can reduce those hours without that. I think we can (and I think we are -- electronic submission penetration is at something like 60-70%, iirc, which has already saved ridiculous amounts of time just re: transportation related issues), and we should try that first before resorting to something more extreme, with strong downsides. Even a flat tax wouldn't completely eliminate those hours, after all.

But yeah, pandering to every little special interest group (and, of course, every big special interest group) is part of the reason the tax code's as much as a mess as it is. We could stand to cut back on that, but there's ways to do that while maintaining a progressive tax rate, if we could just get the political capital/will to do it.

And @ TC, well... I think it's shifted as much to jobs as it has because they're currently one of the major driving issues of capitalism, as it is, and especially how the system is going to react (is reacting, really) if they start disappearing.

well, why SHOULD I pay someone more to do half the work?

You wouldn't be. They'd be producing the same output, just in less time. Instead, the situation as is is that we're paying fewer people to do the same output, or paying people less to do more output (i.e., not scaling as output increases)... or fewer people to produce more, of course. It's fairly rare you're actually seeing pay in line with output, these days, s'far as I'm aware. Production efficiency improves, wages largely do not (accounting for inflation et al, of course).

... no, I'm noting a major downside for a particular example. It's... not a little detail, in that case. It's also the only example of yours I've commented on. I'd be on board with the septic tank expansion if it was fact checked, given an experimental run (on a few different, preferably increasing levels, so town-> city-> county-> state), and actually found to reduce overall cost and effort.

Net workload reduction is... already happening. It's been happening. Automation everywhere, and expanding. They'll be automating fast food joints relatively soon, and software improvements are already cutting into the service industry like a boss. Digitalization is saving ridiculous amounts of administrative time functionally everywhere, even factoring in the effort it takes to build the software and the infrastructure for it. Work that would take several (dozen) hours (days, weeks) being done in seconds. Honestly, s'far as I'm aware, for most jobs if we wanted to cut hours significantly, we could without meaningfully decreasing overall product/service output. E: Though, well, it'd massively decrease demand because no one'd have money to spend, ha.

The problem's generally been more how people support themselves once they've been workload-reduced out of a job than it is actually reducing workload. It's not to say that further reduction shouldn't be pursued, of course, but... the actual mechanics of that we're doing pretty good on. It's the food needs work thing that's the bigger issue. Cultural more than engineering. Honestly, I've got no bloody idea how to actually shove an improvement there through. Guaranteed income, or something similar, would be nice, but in the states especially I can't see that happening any time soon. In the mean time, I'd just like the transition to hurt as little as possible, yeah? Or at least not as much as it could.

That seems like a much smaller problem to me than the six BILLION hours spent every year spent dealing with the behemoth that is our current tax code:

 -- "Americans (both individuals and businesses) spend 6.1 billion hours a year complying with the code. That’s the equivalent of more than 3 million workers toiling away full time, all year."

Nice big number, but that's... equivalent to less than a percent of the population. Barely two percent, if that, of the labor force. The effect of a flat tax would hit... a lot more than two percent of the labor force, or <1% of the population. There's definitely a lot of bullshit that could be cut out of the tax code, sure, but beyond a lot of the lobby/special-interest related crap, there's (very good) reasons it's complicated. Maybe not necessarily good reasons for it being as complicated as it is, no, but yeah.

Beyond that, flat taxes are just... generally bad. Regressive, which hits those that can take a hit the least, the hardest. Administrative easement doesn't make up for it, I'd say. Progressive tax is generally the way to go, in most situations. But tax related discussion is probably better suited for a different thread.

Nostalgia is great, but an Assault riffle is better.

So it was, hrm. Kick peewee awake and unlock it, ha. Or just start a new one, either/neither/or.

As for 35 defense, weeellll... that's definitely pretty comfortable for non-hard mode, haha. You'd still probably want ironskin (potions in general are great, farm farm farm) if you're soloing the wall (iirc it's either 30 or 40, maybe 45 to take 1 damage from one of its more dangerous attacks), but it takes, what, 50-60 (more?) to be able to coast around hard mode without much trouble. Stuff hits hard in hard mode. Top tier armor and full warding accessories and you still get pretty tanky, though. Still, if you want to kick it up another... half dozen? Flat ten? Something like that. Notches, brew up some obsidian skin potions and maybe some gills potions and go get a few stacks of hellstone (Think you need somewhere between 2-300 ore to get a full molten suit, which is a stack and some change). Underworld's pretty safe if you're under lava, heh.

Critter I've got running around in a mod game (dark souls one) currently idles at 79... and still gets his face punched in by any hard mode boss, some non-hard bosses (freaking jungle wyvern ><), and frankly half the hard mode mobs if they get close enough to get a hit in. And stuff like that bloody necromancer elemental...

... I'd never seen 10-15 chaos elementals on screen at the same time. It... it's pretty brutal. And colorful. And laggy. Which describes the mod in general, really, for all that it's pretty well done, imo.

Necro the old thread