oddsox—Now you’re expanding the area of inquiry.  I just wanted to point out that in capitalism there is no production independent of consumption and no consumption independent of production.  Particularly trying to inhibit consumption alone would have various ill effects, which I’ve mentioned, but that’s not an argument for payroll taxes.

Anarcissie, you’re ignoring that while the sales tax will inhibit consumption and demand, the elimination of payroll taxes will increase employment and income as a counterweight.

One more thing:  Many of the purchases we make, that would be subject to a point-of-purchase sales tax, are voluntary. 
Of course, so is employment, but much less so.

Tax consumption, not labor!

If production and consumption are symbiotic, then if you inhibit one, you effectively inhibit the other.

For instance, if you impose a sales tax you particularly inhibit consumption and demand.  Thus, producers can sell less and their profits and wages fall.  In addition, the Adam-Smithian efficiencies of the market will be degraded.

Anarcissie, you’re so funny:

Not looking to smite Adam Smith—or even Paul Krugman at this juncture, although the Nobel Recall Center is still holding for him on line 2.
 
You’re VERY right about unintended consequences.
Let’s set that one aside for now, lest I go on a tangential rant!

And, yes, I do appreciate that we need all facets of the economic cycle to complete the circuit.
Mental Image Flashback 2008:  Acres of unsold inventory at GM’s production facilities.

But you posted that it doesn’t much matter where in the cycle taxation occurs—and, with respect, that’s where you’re mistaken.

Look at it another way.
When you tax something, you discourage it.
The higher the tax, the less of whatever activity is being taxed.

Discouraging consumption encourages saving. 
And saved dollars can be spent another day.

But discourage labor and the moment lost.
Gone.

Mental image #2: 1997 UPS labor strike—it took workers many months to recover from the 15 day strike.  Worse, some of these same workers lost their jobs because UPS lost market share which it still hasn’t recovered.
Lost labor = unintended consequences = lose-lose.
To wit: time now for me to go to work!

Tax consumption, not labor.

oddsox—I don’t think you have answered my objections.  I’ll add another one: attempts to manipulate market economies often have unintended consequences.  If you are going to strike at Adam Smith, you had better kill him.

Basically, though, I don’t think you appreciate the symbiotic relationship between production and consumption in an industrial economy.  You can’t have one without the other.  For better or worse, inhibiting one inhibits the other.

Anarcissie:
Labor indeed comes first.
Stop working and it all shuts down.

If you like, substitute “creates” or “leads to” for “comes before” in my prior post, it’s all true.

The notion that doesn’t “doesn’t matter much where in the cycle” taxes are applied just isn’t so.
As I explained in the same post.

Really.

Tax consumption, not labor.

Oddsox—I believe we’re talking about capitalism.  There is no ‘first’.  Producers need consumers; consumers need producers.  No consumption, no demand, means no business, no need or use for capital, no capitalism.

Anarcissie—
Labor comes first.
Before capital, which comes
before production, which comes
before consumption.

It matters greatly that we not inhibit labor with taxes, as Labor is the sine qua non (without which, there is nothing).
If we inhibit consumption, that serves to increase savings. 
Not such a bad thing on it’s face—we could use a little more saving right now.

Tax Consumption, not Labor.

oddsox, January 31 at 3:30 pm:

‘... Tax consumption, not labor.

In capitalism, you can’t have production without consumption.  Labor—the working class—is assigned both tasks.  It doesn’t matter much where in the cycle the ruling class bleeds them.

@Caroline, one thing I’ve marveled at is how we tax labor, then seem surprised that we have such high unemployment.

If we were to get rid of payroll taxes completely and fund FICA/Medicare with a national sales tax instead, I believe that would help greatly.

Tax consumption, not labor.

America! The NEW Warsaw Ghetto! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!!!!!

The powers that be want to keep the illusion that everything is normal lest you will get wise and social unrest will be the norm. They can’t have that.

entropy2—The problem with the oxen model is that (as Marcuse noted) there is an increasing discrepancy between what is really needed and wanted by the people and the desires of Capital, which are primarily to preserve and increase their power and status.  As this discrepancy becomes wider and wider, the means needed to cover it become more extreme.  Although the working class is constantly flogged, consumerism fails and increasing war and waste become necessary.  Things deteriorate until they reach the state we find ourselves in today.

The system does not want citizens or thinkers. It only wants non-thinking, juvenile consumers.
The Democrats (and the Republicans of course) want this too so they can preach how they will fix
things while they instruct their personal investment managers to employ that loophole that they
helped craft. The whole thing is a racket!

@Anarcissie—

It may be for the best, since when it fails the ruling class is motivated to employ worse methods of maintaining their dominance.

I think you’re right to some degree in this.

But, ultimately, the elite (left and right) do not really want slaves, whipped, bullied and chained into resentful and tenuous submission.

They want oxen, yoked together and pulling in service of the “greater good,” as defined by the elite. Not to say that you might not need to take the lash to a particularly dense or stubborn beast. But, it’s much easier and more profitable to keep the working class mindlessly, but cheerfully, dragging your plow.

As long as we’re dependent on the carrots they dangle in front of us, we’ll be at their mercy.

In order to keep capitalism going, it is necessary to create scarcity.  There are many ways of doing this, such as war and waste, but one of the major methods of the present era is consumerism, in which working-class people are harried to the malls to buy junk they don’t need.  A good deal of technology (more waste) goes into the project.  It may be for the best, since when it fails the ruling class is motivated to employ worse methods of maintaining their dominance.

It’s easy to see the need for keeping personal spending in line and managing household debt.

And anyone in business knows that too much debt will crush an enterprise. 
Fiscal responsibility is critical.

But when it comes to reining in government spending; reducing the deficit or National Debt—nah!
That’s different!

Our debt is now larger than our yearly GDP but so what?
Japan’s is DOUBLE theirs!
Besides, we only owe the money to ourselves.
We need MORE stimulus! 
More!
More!

(Dr. Krugman, the Nobel Recall Center is holding on line 2)

@greg_2

Individuality is literally crushed in our society.

There are new signs throughout the land now, “Individualists Need Not Apply.”

Well…yeah. Except, the signs are not new.

We are programmed in our state schools to obey authority without question (in order to make us compliant workers and docile citizens), to hand our lives over to the corporate-state and to periodically validate our masters’ supremacy through meaningless elections.

Modern liberals like to pretend that it all started with Ronnie Rayguns, but it has been thus for the working class since we were sold out to the plutocracy by the “progressives” in the early 20th century. (Those who want to deify Teddy Roosevelt might want to read “The Triumph of Conservatism” by Gabriel Kolko.) Neither did Saints FDR and LBJ ever truly challenge the PTB.

Anyway, keep talking about this *individualism* stuff and serious liberal folk might think you’re one of them selfish libertarian types.

@peggy “Shopping is a stress reducer.”

@Tim “Cutting is a stress reducer.”

Drinking booze is a stress reducer. Shooting dope is a stress reducer. Easting junk food is a stress reducer. The list goes on.

As someone who has done all five, and more, to cope with this upside down country of ours, they all do not actually help in the long run.

The worst part of all these ‘coping mechanisms’ is that most of them are pushed upon us by Capitalism—buy, buy, buy; eat, eat, eat; makeup, makeup, makeup; new, new new; fashion, fashion, fashion; Bieber, Bieber, Bieber. If you are not ‘hip’ you are a loser.

Individuality is literally crushed in our society.

There are new signs throughout the land now, “Individualists Need Not Apply.”

There was a documentary a fews years back about this young man growing up in New York city who turned to graffiti, as did many of his peers; but his young man was an artist that could do magnificent work. He was noticed by “mainstream” artists and gallery hosts and they worked with him to put his portfolio together. His work stood out and one would think that his work alone would get attention; and at first it did.

This young man eventually had a meeting with a publisher. When they day came he dressed in probably the best clothes and jacket that he could afford. When he arrived at the publisher’s studio he was immediately asked to leave—his work was not even looked at. Why? Because they said he was “underdressed.”

That is the sick fucking Consumerist, Makeup, Look-Alike, Society that we live in:

Conform or you are out.

My hat is off to the author but he missed the mark by several degrees.

Capitalism is Consumerism

Consumerism is Advertising

Advertising is Manipulation

Manipulation is Propaganda

Propaganda may invoke Authoritarianism in prople’s minds, by Propaganda is alive and well in America because so many in politics still truly believe in the trickle down theory.

“... many who are faced with imminent disaster instantly convince themselves that everything is normal and that they don’t have to modify their behavior.”

That is a physiological response called ‘shock’.

anarcissie,
thanks for educating me on book reading.
“we met the enemy, and it is us”, i do not evaluate as true.
perhaps a rewording such as this might be just the right way
of putting it: we BECAME enemy of some people and we met
them.
in iraq, iran, c. america, china, c.asia, s.e. asia, venezueala,
cuba, libya, palestina, afgh’n, pakistan, usssr. thanks

Speaking of normalcy, there’s lunacy right behind it.

Occupy is on a different plane—one which, if given the proper care will restore democracy.

jill stein does not see that some things never change and some change all the time.
so, what changes then and what never does? well, interpretation of the bill of rights, constitution, weather, lying, shoes, tv shows,
deceiving, ‘promising’, tactics of all kinds, my mood, my wife and her mood, etc., always change and the ideology, at least in basics,
never.
so, obama, as i expected, had been a candidate of more of the same and for no-more-of-the-same.
no more of the same, because—if am to believe some americans—situation for some people in US had worsened and for some
improved or at least stayed the same.
more of the same means that ideology on which US runs and now skids, squishes all over the place is the same as the one in 1778
ad, 1717bc, or 4777 bc.
now we can excuse OUR GREAT BLACK FATHER [oh how i love that change; the change from GREAT WHITE FATHER—that every
‘indian’ loved so—to great black father] for not knowing EVERYTHING and knowing that not telling us that.
and the onepercent still need the GBF and much more than any new GWF; so, no change there, but lots of other changes for worse.
and damn it, gods still refuse to talk to me; so. i just can’t tell you what exactly to expect. maybe you can ask pope, a high priest,
hillary, but don’t bother me.

and folks that’s why the onerpercent is now using paul, romney, gingrich as sacrificial lambs on the altar of its ideology. i hope
they’d read this and wisen up and get palin back in the game! i am available, too. my wife thinks i am cat’s meow. so will every
american woman under 90 think if she’d catch even a glimpse of me let alone see my famous pope paul’s
smile.
now that i am over yet another of my very rare stupidity attacks, i better sign off! thanks

The word ‘normalcy’ was invented around 1920 by then U.S. Senator Warren G. Harding—not the brightest bulb on the marquee—displacing the normally formed derivative of ‘normal’, ‘normality’, which was probably too many syllables for Harding, and certainly for his audience.  It’s no wonder, then, that the country, burdened by Harding-thought, is going to the dogs wearing happy-face masks.  Woof, woof!

Balkas—most people don’t read books, so they can’t stop reading them.  And the saying is ‘We have met the enemy, and he is us’, a Walt Kelley parody of Commodore Perry’s ‘We have met the enemy, and he is ours,’ which was patriotic gore famous long ago.  All too true, I would say.

QUOTE, David Sirota:

“...normalcy bias—a cognitive phenomenon whereby many who are faced with imminent disaster instantly convince themselves that everything is normal and that they don’t have to modify their behavior.”
___________________

Normalcy bias is why people continue to stupidly cling to inertial faith-based hope in each new product line of corporate money manufactured candidates — an illogical hope that good results will eventually come from more evil done.

Jill Stein for President:

http://www.jillstein.org

Voter Consent Wastes Dissent:

http://chenangogreens.org/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=498&Itemid=1

Any who are addicted and frozen (like a deer in the head-lights) by a “normalcy bias” of ‘growth’ as a natural aspect of the economy need to read Richard Heinberg’s newest “The End of Growth: Adapting to our New Economic Reality” (June 2011).

http://richardheinberg.com/bookshelf/the-end-of-growth-book

http://www.amazon.com/End-Growth-Adapting-Economic-Reality/dp/0865716951/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308160539&sr=1-1

While Heinberg covers the 2007 to 20??  .... Wall Street Ponzi scheme, looting, negative externality cost dumping scam, etc., etc., as well as noted economists like Simon Johnson (“Thirteen Bankers”), Joseph Stiglitz (“FreeFall”), Yves Smith (“ECONned”), et.al., Heinberg additionally brings to light the type of broader societal blindness that Jared Diamond focuses on in “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”.

I was struck not by the idiocy of the Republican’s auditioning for the 2012 contest to become the next faux-Emperor/president of this collapsing global “Vichy Empire” (which many still think of as ‘our country’), but rather of the more dangerously insane and guileful lies of Obama in his SOTU (or more accurately SOTE - State of the Empire) speech, in which this consummate con-artist repeatedly used the words ‘grow’ and ‘growing’ multiple times to describe the economic trajectory of what he called, this “Indispensable Nation”, which this old ‘OKie Doke’ scammer used as both a means to further disguise the FACT that our nation has actually now been fully ‘captured’ and “Occupied” behind the facade of a global corporate/financial/militarist (and media) EMPIRE merely posing as a “Vichy” sham of faux-democratic and totally illegitimate government, and to also give a tip of his hat to international war criminal and mass-murderer of a million Iraqi children and citizens, Madeleine Not-so-bright, who coined the term.

Obama is clearly the Global “Vichy” Empire’s first choice as the world’s best deceiving cheer-leader for continuing on this path to extinction via lulling Americans into sleep with “normalcy bias”—- as Sirota brilliantly terms it!

Yes, when it comes to using “Friendly Fascism” [Bertram Gross] and “Inverted Totalitarianism” [Sheldon Wolin] as the most favorable anesthetics for fooling “all the people, all the time”, this death-star Global Vichy Empire has all the faith in the world that “Nobody Does It Better” than Obama.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMOd1JJvwlM

Best luck and love to the Occupy Empire educational and revolutionary movement.

Liberty, democracy, justice, & equality
Over
Violent/Vichy
Empire,

Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine

As I approached work today riding my bike (only a two mile commute in a tiny Montana town of 5,000 with no traffic, no traffic lights), two 19-21 year old college students were getting into their cars to drive 200 yards to go to school.  Two fat, lazy, illiterate, in-debt, materialistic, gun-toting, USA-USA chanting morons.  Almost all of my students are exactly like these two losers.  This country is going down the crapper fast.

sirota does not tie in [modern] consumerism with the root cause for it.
and even blaming advertising, cheney, giuliani, et al does not teach.
in addition, peoples in other countries use and waste too much and not just americans.
one should at least postulate a FIRST CAUSE for all of our destructive behaviors and not just for consumerism. naturally, i prefer one
affirms the FIRST CAUSE for all negative things we do ourselves and others and biota.
and let’s not please confuse reasons for our unedesirable and very hurtfull behaviors with the cause for them.
the CAUSE IS ONE and never changes; behaviors change always.
it is obvious that the reason for overusing and overwasting is the fact [yes, to me, fact] that people are ashamed of poverty and fear
criticism or accusations that they are misers for not buying this and that.
so fear of condemnations and shame of appearing poor constitute the reasons why people avoid at great cost to appear poor to
others.
a question arises now: who creates poverty and/or perception of it? and creates it on and on and on and on…forever if we let them?
and from which results shame? which is not pleasant!
and why do these people create poverty? what’s the real purpose of it?
—-
and i do not buy into the sayings: we’ve met our enemies and we are it, people ARE stupid, lazy, uncaring, greedy, wasters, bellicose,
wanton, etc.
that’s the clero-noble millennial propaganda. it is time we deal with it!
but first, i suggest, we either stop reading almost all books or burn almost all of them. that includes the “disaster capitalism”, bible,
talmud, quran, or any book by any MSM journalist, actor, singer, politician, et al.
thanks bozhidar balkas, planet

I’m afraid that the word for someone’s response in an traumatic airplane accident is not ‘content’ but more accurately ‘shock.’