Behavior modification, and taxes. In my opinion, policy makers need to take a new approach to taxes in order to change society. A paradigm shift is needed, else it will not matter who is in office, or who in the white house. The problem, human behavior. The solution, behavior modification technology. Think about the problem scientifically and not politically, and the solutions are easy to figure out. However if you think politically and not scientifically, then not only will problems get worse(and BIGGER), but no one will be able to agree on any solution and the consensus solutions usually tend to be the weakest. Some new idea's to consider. A. Corporations are not evil, corporations are organizing tools for political activism. B. Greed is good when channeled properly, and destructive when channeled improperly. Greed is also a tool to be used for political activism. C. Equal taxation in the form of flat taxes or income taxes are not always good. Maybe we should make the people who support the war pay for it? Despite what a lot of people tend to think, society is not guided by facts or reason.Society is actually guided by emotions, instincts, intuitions, feelings. Society is guided by people who follow their gut, even when it goes against the facts. Consider the possibility, that our current society, and many other situations in human history were guided by emotions. Humans, have weaknesses, psychologically, biologically, which prevents us from being immune to addiction. We are in the age of neuro-politics, it's definitely a science. But the key to political victory, on any level, is getting people to do what you want them to do. How is that done? That's where behavior modification comes in. Money is a tool, to modify human behavior. In reality, it's just paper with ink, just carbon, just atoms, but it's also the main behavior modification tool that humans use to guide behavior. Humans tend to follow the money. By moving the money, you modify the behavior. The corporation is simply a tool to organize humans around their greed. Addiction to money, is very common, and a lot of people don't care who's in office as long as they can make a quick buck. The reason why progressives in specific, have problems organizing, is because progressives tend to organize intellectually, around ideas, and sometimes around feelings of hope and faith, but often the practical side, the actually application, is missing. Progressives therefore have to also, in my opinion, work with greed to accomplish important goals instead of working against greed. Addiction to greed, is also why gambling addiction exists. In general, every human is weak to something, and some humans are sucked in by their greed. Tax policy, is one mechanism, which can be used to appeal to greed, to induce behavior modification. Let's say the problem is pollution? A pollution tax can be used to minimize pollution. Let's' say the problem is violent crime? Tax violent crime to reduce violence. Let's say, gun violence is an issue? Instead of gun control, which is framed in a way which pisses libertarians and free thinkers off, create a tax on bullets. If the taxes on bullets are high enough, gun violence will go down because it will be more expensive to use a gun to be violent. These are examples of punishing bad behavior. How about rewarding good behavior? What are progressives going to do to reward citizens for being good? How about, guaranteeing, that if a person is a good citizen, has no criminal record, no history of violence, pays their taxes, etc, that they get rewarded for being a good citizen. The government can make it so that the model citizens pay the least taxes or even get paid by the government to be model citizens, as an incentive to others which says <b>"If you follow the law, if you are non-violent, and if you are a model citizen, we will reward you."</b> Model citizens should be given grants for being a role model to their community. Model citizens should be given a free college education. Model citizens should be free from the income tax which in my opinion is completely regressive and encourages good people to break the law. The income tax should apply to people who adopt the sort of behavior that makes them dangerous to society. If people are taxed or rewarded based on how damaging they are to society, it will cause a change in behavior, and people will eventually adopt behavior that protects society. So, if you don't want higher taxes, don't get convicted of a violent crime, don't pollute, don't try to pull an Enron. It should be, "be an ethical/model citizen, and have your taxes reduced, be unethical and damaging to society/environment, and have your taxes increased". Now, I don't know what form this should that, thats why I present the idea to you. But in general, the question is,<b> how can human behavior be modified, to limit destructive behavior and encourage constructive behavior?</b> If you have values or morals, how can you reward others who have values or morals through the tax system? Examples: 1.Reward people who stay married with a stipend that doubles each decade. This would strengthen families even if it would be like welfare lite. 2.Reward individuals who have less than 2 children, and who stay married, with an even larger stipend, that doubles each decade. 3.Reward good parents with a huge stipend, if their children finish college and have no criminal record. 4.Reward teenage students with a stipend if they keep above a B average while in high school. 5.Reward parents with a tax breaks, when their children are highly successful. Strong healthy families, produce strong healthy societies. The types of reward mechanisms for good behavior, could be grants, stipends, tax-breaks, tax-credits, but the ultimate result should be that the individual receives a cash reward or prize worth cash. This could be bonds of some sort, some sort of government coupon system, some sort of token which can be exchanged for something of value, The government has the ability to create new tools, that's a policy issue, but there is no will to create new tools or promote good behavior through rewards. People think it's easy being good, when in reality, it's hard to be a model citizen, and it's easier to be bad than it is to be good. So why punish people who are being good yet happen to be rich?<p> That's the main problem progressives have. Progressives punish (The rich), including their rich. And most often progressives punish the poor at the same time by supporting the outdated income tax on the poor and middle class. It's really simple, taxes are a punishment to most people, and if you are a progressive and you pay taxes, then you are paying for wars, and that's not going to change anytime soon if ever. Services? The government can provide services, but the government should provide for left-libertarians as well, who may not like gun control, or any sort of government control that tells them what to do directly. Does that mean there should be no taxes at all? Of course not. Bullets should pay for the war. If you buy a lot of bullets, you should pay the taxes that go along with them. And corporations that pollute, or that are criminal, should pay criminal taxes, that punish the corporation with a high income tax or something else. Taxing corporate behavior changes corporate behavior, if the taxes are scary enough. A corporation will not care about human rights unless the taxes for human rights abuses are so high that it could put their corporation out of business if they exploit human rights. A corporation will not care about the American worker, unless corporations which get caught hiring illegal immigrants get taxed to such a degree that they'd have saved a lot of money just hiring American workers in the first place. And if you happen to support illegal immigration, but you are tough on crime, judge each illegal immigrant by behavior. If an illegal immigrant is a model citizen, they should get all the rewards of being a model citizen, but if the illegal immigrant is a criminal and not a good role model for the community or society, then that illegal immigrant should be punished, but it should be individualized, not across the board reward or punishment. The goal is to create model citizens, to improve society, and security in the process. The main focus of government is supposed to be national security, and the best way to have national security, is not by having a police state which punishes all citizens, and it's not by raising taxes on all of the rich or all of the poor citizens. Security is improved by figuring out who has the destructive behavior, and making them pay for the damages they cause. If you've never committed a crime, if you've done everything right for your whole life, and worked extremely hard to get where you are, you should be rewarded by society. However, if you've been destructive to everyone your whole life, you've done everything wrong, and you've damaged the society, then you should be punished, or at least made to pay for the damages. All problems in society are generated by certain behaviors. Concepts like race, party, religion, or country, are concepts that individuals with bad behavior tend to hide behind. These concepts are mere illusions to mask the truth, and the truth from a scientific perspective is that each of us, are of a certain behavioral type. We may not all be angels, but thats not the point. The point is that government exists to protect society from destructive behavior. Too much destructive behavior destroys society. Therefore destructive behavior must be managed by the government to protect the integrity of the country itself. Laws don't matter without law enforcement. The constitution is just paper without enforcement. 1st. Identify damaging behaviors, don't try to personalize it, or racialize it, or politicize it. 2nd. Figure out how to modify, or limit these damaging behaviors.<p> The second part is easy, the tools for behavior modification through policy initiatives are already active and in place, The first part, identifying which behaviors are most damaging, is controversial because it will be difficult to come to a consensus on it. The main consensus we seem to have reached, or at least the majority have reached, is that pollution is wrong, and corruption is wrong. Most Americans dislike these behaviors. Figure out how to modify and limit these behaviors, using tax policies, laws, and all of the legal mechanisms currently thought of and not thought of. One way to think about it is, think of a corporation as a person. What sort of new laws would be needed to treat a corporation that is currently a criminal, more like a person? A corporation is immortal, and that's fine, but what stops congress from enacting new taxes on behavior that is considered environmentally or socially damaging? Questions? Comments? Ideas? Please discuss.
I'm all for applying behavioural science on the topic of taxes. And for this we have to look past the rhetoric which is learned and look at what the human brain really thinks about taxes. They are lovin' it! People love to pay taxes! People are probably unhappy because what they have learned in some societies, such as the American one; that paying taxes is bad; conflicts with their nature; which flashes the message; PAYING TAXES IS GOOD, IT MAKES ME FEEL NICE! source: http://www.spuriousmonkey.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=156
In Finland we have that in mild scale; pack of cigarettes cost 4 € because of taxes, gasoline is something like 1.30 €/liter for same reason and alcohol has pretty heavy taxes too, but that is just not enough actions, we are fuckin up with bioenergy too, we should invest to small scale powerplants using variable sources locally instead looking for some miracle that solves everything instantly.
If you ask most people they say they willingly pay taxes because they think they should to pay their "fair share" for the services government provides. They say this more often than they say to stay out of jail, which is my reason for paying them. I think this new willingness for people to pay versus historical evidence of people hating taxes is the result of just the kind of behavior modification you suggest. We're all being programmed by the maestros.
