View Poll Results: Which is better?

Voters
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  • world where everyone earns $40,000 a year

    0 0%
  • A world where 75% of the population earns $100,000 a year while the rest earn $25,000

    6 46.15%
  • A world where 25% of the population earns $100,000 a year while the rest earn $25,000.

    7 53.85%

Which is better?

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  1. #31

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    [QUOTE=pinko;281399
    Compare the education system of USA and Sweden: In USA as you know in primary (and I believe secondary) school the education is paid by local taxes. So if you are a poor kid born in a poor neighbourhood you are very unlikely to make it to university, however smart you may be (the only way to get out of poverty is to 1) steal, 2) be very good at sport, 3) join the army, and just look at the 1) prison population, 2) olympic medals, 3) number of wars started by the US). [/QUOTE]

    You also forgot about Scholarships


  2. #32

    Join Date
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    You completely miss the point Jimbo. How many scholarships do you have for primary school children?

    So your little yellow man with sun glasses just makes you look silly.


  3. #33

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    Quote Originally Posted by pinko:
    You completely miss the point Jimbo. How many scholarships do you have for primary school children?

    So your little yellow man with sun glasses just makes you look silly.
    Ummm no because you mentioned secondary as well in your statement.

  4. #34

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    Pinko,

    Sweden and the US? Well yes Sweden is doing well...but Sweden is also a FRACTION of the size (territory wise, population wise..) of the US...


  5. #35

    Join Date
    Feb 2008
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    Jimbo, you never give up, do you? You completely miss the point, but you still go on repeating the same stupidities again and again and again. It must be a pleasure working with someone as mature as you.

    For the benefits of others, who may have something intelligent to add:
    High taxation redistributes wealth, and allows more people to fulfill their full potential. So society as a whole will be better off. In other words, although there will be losers (e.g. Movingin07), there are more winners than losers.

    I rest my case.

    Mat, yes indeed. But I fail to see how this is relevant. If anything, a large country should do better than a small one (it has more natural resources, for one). (Except, of course, if you consider a very very tiny country, like Singapore for example, which is cheaper to run).


  6. #36

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    High taxation reduces incentives for innovation and growth - how can you possibly say it allows more people to fulfil their full potential?

    I'd love to know who you actually are, my current view is that you must be a HK local teenager with a keen imagination and a desire to seem more important than you actually are.


  7. #37

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    Quote Originally Posted by MovingIn07:
    High taxation reduces incentives for innovation and growth - how can you possibly say it allows more people to fulfil their full potential?

    .
    Sweden: IKEA and ABBA

    Hong Kong: Cantopop

    I rest my case as pinko would say.

    And no I'm not being serious.

  8. #38

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    Quote Originally Posted by MovingIn07:
    High taxation reduces incentives for innovation and growth - how can you possibly say it allows more people to fulfil their full potential?
    I would respectfully dispute this. I think this is a street legend promoted by those who lose out of high taxation (like you for example). You can check out Total taxation as % of GDP and GDP (per capita) and try to find a negative relationship. My guess is that there is a positive relationship (higher taxation=higher GDP per capita). You should compare the level of taxation to other indices (apart from GDP) that actually show something important (e.g. murder rates, education, health care), because as you know the GDP index is silly and doesn't show anything of value.

    Quote Originally Posted by MovingIn07:
    I'd love to know who you actually are, my current view is that you must be a HK local teenager with a keen imagination and a desire to seem more important than you actually are.
    Well, nope.

    But I am sure that Jimbo will very take this up with something very mature, and add a yellow man.
    Last edited by pinko; 24-11-2008 at 02:55 PM.

  9. #39

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    Quote Originally Posted by pinko:
    Mat, yes indeed. But I fail to see how this is relevant. If anything, a large country should do better than a small one (it has more natural resources, for one). (Except, of course, if you consider a very very tiny country, like Singapore for example, which is cheaper to run).
    It is somehow relevant since you can't run a large country (300 Mio ppl) the same way you would run a small one (9 Mio ppl).

    The same applies in business, you can't run a big corporation the same way you run an SME.

  10. #40

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    Just to prove how bored I am...

    The taxation and GDP figures (using rankings as opposed to actual numbers) do seem to show a slight positive correlation, i.e. the higher the tax the higher the GDP per capita. Actually they seem to show that it is best to either have low taxation or high taxation but not in between. What the causality is, and whether there is any, is another question (or two). My theory would be that it is more related to culture as, using Hofstede's categories, there are many "feminine" countries with high taxation and the "masculine" countries with lower taxation.

    What it really shows IMHO is that macro-economic best practice theories are generally rubbish and there are many ways to skin a cat with whatever matches the culture being the best for any country.

    Edit: what I meant was that saying there is one macro-economic theory that would be best for all countries is rubbish, not that all theories are rubbish - just to clarify my rambling.

    Last edited by hullexile; 24-11-2008 at 03:27 PM.

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