[southernmissouri2007]

My question is How high can tax rates go is it true can tax rates can't go past 100% because 100% would be all of a person's Income therefor if we have a Progressive Tax or a Flat Tax the tax rates can't go past 100% the reason Im asking this question is because in the United States of America we have had 90% tax rates than 70% tax rates on the Rich/Wealthy and we still had Capitalism the Tea Party people seem to think that a Progressive Tax System equals Socialism which makes no sense to me because Adam Smith supported Progressive Taxes in his Book the Wealth of Nations and he was a Capitalist right ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations

[Wolfman]

My question is How high can tax rates go is it true can tax rates can't go past 100% because 100% would be all of a person's Income

There wont be taxes under Socialism, or any other command economy.

therefor if we have a Progressive Tax or a Flat Tax the tax rates can't go past 100% the reason Im asking this question is because in the United States of America we have had 90% tax rates than 70% tax rates on the Rich/Wealthy and we still had Capitalism

Only in the broadest since of the word "capitalism". Accurately speaking, at that time we were a Social Democracy.

the Tea Party people seem to think that a Progressive Tax System equals Socialism which makes no sense to me because Adam Smith supported Progressive Taxes in his Book the Wealth of Nations and he was a Capitalist right ?

To the modern Libertarian, Adam Smith wasn't a Capitalist. And the Tea Party is full of dim wits who should be thoroughly ignored.

[Lightman]

There is a mark commonly used in English writing. It is called the period. It looks like this: "."

[exploitedworker]

It's a question of correct computation of benefits that accrue and the productivity of labour. In Cuba, taxes do not exist or if they it all amounts to 3% while 6% goes to house rent. If only the state planners know how to allocate resources and not to produce products and food in a haphazard manner, giving more time or contemplating more on cost accounting and the like, I believe Cuba can deliver the goods no matter how consumerist the people are. Nonetheless, no person goes hungry or homeless in Cuba. That relieves people in Florida of stress and prevents them from suffering from mental illness like some homeless beggars in New York and Toronto.

[ThePublicOpinions]

Adam Smith was an economist but his work represented a decline from that of Turgot or the Spanish Scholastics. He was wrong on many areas, like the labour theory of value (which has been replaced with the Subjective Value Theory).

[Wolfman]

His work was only a decline, and he was only wrong, because you disagree with him. The fact that Adam Smith was the most popular economist for generations, and he is still a hugely influential economist should say something about how important the man was and is, regardless of whether or not he was "wrong" to some Libertarian. Never mind of course, that self professed 'Classical Liberals' are following in the school of though Adam Smith pretty much created.

[ThePublicOpinions]

This article basically sums up many of the misconceptions regarding Adam Smith.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard104.html

[Wolfman]

I skimmed it and got "he was wrong, he inspired Marx making him doubly wrong, and he stole shit". In order, he was writing in the 1700s (no shit he was wrong), Smith and a lot of people, and so did everyone.

[TropicalK]

It is idiotic to believe something merely because Adam Smith said it. And a logical fallacy.

How high can tax rates go

100% in the case of income tax, more in the case of use taxes like taxes on cigarettes. Whether this is a good idea is another question.

Capitalist

What is a capitalist?
Before we can determine if Adam Smith falls under the category of capitalist, we must first agree on what factors describe a "capitalist."

[Negotiator]

Adam Smith was a philosopher and a moralist. He did not intentionally create capitalism to be a system that supports the rich at the expense of the poor. On the contrary, he believed he would construct capitalism in a way that everyone would in the end benefit from it.

Rich people love to argue about the income tax and act as if the income tax is the only tax in existence. Thats because the income tax is a social tax - the rich have to pay more than the poor.

Thus it is completely normal that taxes can surpass 100% of income. Just imagine a person that owns 100 mio ($ or € or some such) of wealth (in various forms) but did some bad business decisions this year. Lets say he only earned 100,000 this year. In most countries, his taxes will be bigger than this sum, because he is so wealthy.

[Lightman]

Saying Adam Smith created capitalism is a misunderstanding of what actually happened. Capitalism was not some great ideological experiment in the sense that socialism was; capitalism simply happened. Adam Smith was describing the world that he in fact lived in, not proposing a new one.

[Paradigm]

Saying Adam Smith created capitalism is a misunderstanding of what actually happened. Capitalism was not some great ideological experiment in the sense that socialism was; capitalism simply happened. Adam Smith was describing the world that he in fact lived in, not proposing a new one.

Not exactly. Adam Smith lived in a time of mercantile capitalism, while he was advocating a different kind of capitalism, called laissez-faire. And of course, the term "capitalism" had not yet been coined at the time he was writing. The was still some residual feudalism at the time, and the bourgeoisie were still a revolutionary force against the landed gentry, which is why Smith supported the capitalists against the landlords. That's why Marx respected Smith and Ricardo while considering later defenders of capitalism to be "vulgar economists."

[Nets]

I think there is more to it than that, Paradigm. Smith, Ricardo were classical economists who along with their contemporaries were groping towards some objective theory of value (input costs, labor, what have you). In method of argument and research goals the classical economists were economists Marx could feel comfortable with. But Marx's major works were published in the second half of the 19th century, when economics had more or less given up on any meaningful theory of value (hasn't picked the project up since). Economists were become increasingly sophisticated, relying on marginalism/optimization and for the first time putting real structural models on paper. Neither of these were projects Marx was comfortable with as a theoretician. (To my knowledge, Marx only really constructed one model in his time, a model of balanced (LOL!) growth in a two-sector economy in the second volume of Capital.)

Jurg Niehans puts it really well: "Marx was an analytical anachronism, the rearguard of the Ricardians, an afterthought of classical economics as he had himself defined it."

[Kman]

I would claim capitalism existed in the Roman era also, they had factories in ancient Rome and a pretty sophisticated division of labor as well as limited government regulation during its early stages, capitalism is not something that was invented in the 17th century. It has existed for as long as there has been people engaging in a division of labor, voluntary trade and the build up of various capital goods, be they hammers, anvils or ovens. People might not have understood the process going on but it was still technically capitalism.

[Wolfman]

I would claim capitalism existed in the Roman era also, they had factories in ancient Rome and a pretty sophisticated division of labor as well as limited government regulation during its early stages

And an incredibly powerful slave trade.