Quote Originally Posted by Seraph View Post
We can discuss marginal tax rates and depreciation schedules if you wish. And corporate tax rates and exemptions if you wish, comparing to personal tax regulations. And how they relate to other policy issues, and other social issues. And how they lead inevitably to events, like poverty, or hunger, or protests, or not, as the case may be. How subjective is a balance sheet? The protests are subjective, the hunger and poverty are real, but the policy issues that lead to them are crystal clear and not subjective. Policy can be used to increase prosperity, subjectivity is not really required to improve the standard of living, if that is what is wanted. These issues are political, and sociological, and the numbers tell what is really going on. But if you are not used to examining such things, I suppose they might appear subjective.
In other words, you can tell objectively if a person is starving. It is not really subjective what needs to be done to fix the problem. The problem can be fixed objectively. But perhaps it is not generally known how the tax code relates to this and other issues. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. The power to tax is the power to destroy. Or to make flourish.
St. Paul didn't particularly care if people thought he was a fool, and so neither should I, I suppose. Knowing the tax code makes up for it, in my wallet.
Food is objective. Understood. We know where it comes from, how much it weighs, what it's made of. It's not a model or representation of nutrition - no, it's food. Objective.

Money? Not objective. Even its value and meaning are transient concepts. We can't say what it is, what it weighs, what it means - it's a model, and an inaccurate one - or at least a highly fluid one. It's mired in subjectivity, and that even still is an attempt at mathematizing and mapping the human value system, in which politics and money are both central, which one could equate to an ocean of mutable, shapeless subjectivity. We can try all day, but we aren't going to objectify the subjectivity of human value. Which is of course part and parcel with politics (leadership - kingship? alphaship?) and money (clams, koku, pork bellies?) ... What's the value of a pork belly to a hungry man? (Not a common question on wall st)

Many times in the history of humanity has someone claimed that their stone-tablet balance sheet, their abacus, their papyrus, notebook, i-pad, contained numbers that would objectively solve the financial problems of the leader/king/world.. Most recently, Greenspan.. all were wrong, as far as I know..

..and maybe it's just me. Maybe I fell and hit my head on the way to work today. But how could all of Politics and Money be objective? Why would we need a voting system, two parties, a system of checks and balances, an electoral college, and all that - if it were all objective, we would have one totalitarian leader, and no one would question it, because who could question the objective?

And, just a small example of subjectivity: "the power to tax" is mitigated by a subjective force called "the people's willingness to stand by and be taxed." To quote (probably to my ultimate demise - watch me get banned for quoting hip hop) Tupac: "Bush wanna throw down, he better bring the guns out - now they wanna ship me off to Kuwait - gimme a break - how much <stuff> can a <person> take.. - <forget> bailin' hay, I'm bailin' straight with an AK" ----> the subjective line of rebellion rests just beyond the "objective" threshold of taxation.. be it monetary, military, spiritual or property.. (And on close inspection I find that all the 'objective' in politics and money becomes 'subjective' when transmuted to such form by the human observer.)

This response sucks compared to the first one I wrote, but I deleted it.. It was not my intention to come off as an adversary.. I think we disagree, but that doesn't mean I can't be civil. =)