Imposto Negativo e o efeito tendencialmente auto-destrutivo do Estado-Social

Uma diferença entre o chamado imposto negativo (talvez deficientemente descrito no meu post anterior no VentoSueste e já comentado pelo Miguel Madeira) e por exemplo o nosso rendimento social de inserção (RSI) é (pelo menos em tese) o grau de eficiência da sua aplicação. Ou por outra, é a ainda não imediata e automática aplicação do RSI a todos (embora seja nítido que esteja a crescer a sua base), o facto de ter de ser pedido algures com maior ou menor dificuldade e exposição social, o facto de existir um filtro que avalia a situação, o facto de mesmo uma parte das pessoas que poderiam ter direito ao RSI e não o fazem (por pudor social, por ignorância, etc.)...faz com que funcione (ainda) como travão ao efeito (podemos baptiza-lo de “efeito tendencialmente auto-destrutivo do estado-social”?) que tentei anteriormente descrever.

Recorde-se, imposto negativo ou não (embora seja mais nítido se pensarmos em termos de imposto negativo)...

... todo o esquema de ajuda tende a desincentivar rendimentos imediatamente superiores, além do incentivo a beneficiar de forma permanente ou seja o desincentivo a tudo fazer para recuperar um rendimento superior.

O imposto negativo, em tese, seria aplicado de forma muito automática e o conceito é simples: Todas as pessoas com rendimentos inferiores por exemplo a 500 euros mensais (assim fosse decidido) receberiam a diferença para esses 500 euros. Podemos até imaginar que tal esquema fosse aplicado mensalmente (seria o ideal). Todos os restantes esquemas de ajuda poderiam como que desaparecer. Seria simples e eficiente decidir colectivamente e de forma igualitária que nível de redistribuição aos mais desfavorecidos se deseja.

Muito mais simples de analisar, de propor, de decidir, do que a habitual mistura de várias e complexas medidas de ajuda, uns cumulativos outros não.

O que quer dizer é que a democraticidade da comparação de propostas é quase impossível pela população votante, comparar com Proposta Partido A: 600 Euros, Partido B: 400 Euros.

Dito isto, ou seja, depois de defender que o imposto negativo parece responder em democraticidade, igualdade, eficiência, a tudo o que é suposto num Estado Social virado prioritariamente para os mais desfavorecidos – e o qual tudo tem para ser defendido de forma alargada…

… Parece-me que o imposto negativo torna claro, precisamente pela sua democraticidade e eficiência, o tal “efeito tendencialmente auto-destrutivo do estado-social”:

1. Decisão inicial quanto ao rendimento mínimo (por exemplo 500 Euros mensais)

2. Análise inicial determina uma dada receita fiscal a ser pago pela restante população não beneficiária

3. Rendimentos imediatamente superiores (para não falar dos inferiores) a 500 Euros são desincentivados a trabalhar mesmo que isso signifique passar a auferir menor rendimento

4. Necessário agora aumentar receita fiscal para um menor número de contribuintes

5. Aumenta assim a desutilidade de trabalhar dos rendimentos próximos de 500 Euros (rendimento líquido de imposto fica mais próximo dos 500 euros por isso… mais vale passar a beneficiar)

6. Reivindicação (ou proposta por partido) do aumento de 500 Euros para 550 Euros

… e assim começa novo “Round”, em que cada vez existem menos contribuintes para maior receita fiscal necessária e mais beneficiários.

A forma como o imposto é colectado parece-me uma questão menor. No final, todo o imposto recai sobre a produção (rendimento), se existir imposto sem existir rendimento (possível por exemplo no imposto sobre propriedade) ainda pior, o imposto recai sobre a propriedade obrigando à sua venda mesmo que em parcela para poder pagar o imposto.

As indústrias discográfica e cinematográfica e a pirataria

De vitória em vitória, até à derrota final. Por Miguel Botelho Moniz.

As indústrias discográfica e cinematográfica já deviam ter percebido que cada vez que derrotam um adversário na luta contra a pirataria, um pior surge. Um pouco como uma doença que sendo mal curada com antibióticos vai desenvolvendo resistência, o uso dos tribunais para lutar contra a pirataria torna-a inevitavelmente imparável.

Robert Lucas e as expectativas

My Lucas Critique

by Bob Murphy

Over at the Mises blog--and note that the Mises blog is different from the Mises Daily article--I have a short postabout Robert Lucas' defense of mainstream economics. Lucas basically argued that nobody could have predicted the housing crash, because if they had predicted it by the day before, then it would have happened the day before. And so on. I wrote:

This is far too clever and slippery. Someone can evaluate a situation as unsustainable (or poised in an "unstable equilibrium") without being able to predict exactly when the break will occur....

Also...I'm starting to think the efficient markets hypothesis is a state of mind, a consciously chosen way of looking at the world. I'm not sure what it would mean to really falsify it. It seems that any attempt to test it would rely on assumptions about seemingly random events, which in the final analysis would mean you weren't really testing the efficient markets hypothesis alone.

In the comments Troy Camplin argued that, contrary to Lucas, the existence of price bubbles obviously shows the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH) is false. I responded:

Troy,

Your understanding of what the EMH is, is obviously different from Lucas'. Lucas obviously is aware of what happened to housing prices, and he doesn't think it violated EMH.

This is partly what I was getting at in my post. I'm pretty sure that Lucas thinks the housing market was hit with a really big shock in 2006, and that made prices fall.

Lucas knows it must have been an unexpected shock, because...(you fill in the blanks).

So my point is that Lucas thinks he just empirically tested whether EMH held up during the housing boom and bust, and he thinks it passed through with flying colors. Yet what wouldn't pass with flying colors?

Don't misunderstand, I'm agreeing with you: The housing bubble is a great reason that I personally don't endorse the EMH. But technically speaking, the EMH is consistent with what just happened. So Lucas isn't wrong, he just doesn't realize how a priori his worldview is.

Bubble Economics: The Illusion of Wealth, Douglas French

"Since 1998, the money supply (as measured by M2) has doubled. In fact, it has increased elevenfold since 1971, when we gave up the last ties of the gold standard. So we have an expansion in the money supply now that is similar to what we had during the Roaring Twenties. We also have a series of bubbles: a tech bubble, then a real-estate bubble — all part of what Bill Fleckenstein calls "Operation Enduring Bubble." Of course, inflation and the resulting bubbles have disastrous economic effects. But in Human Action, Mises wrote that

The boom produces impoverishment. But still more disastrous are its moral ravages. It makes people despondent and dispirited. The more optimistic they were under the illusory prosperity of the boom, the greater is their despair and their feeling of frustration. The individual is always ready to ascribe his good luck to his own efficiency and to take it as a well-deserved reward for his talent, application, and probity. But reverses of fortune he always charges to other people, and most of all to the absurdity of social and political institutions. He does not blame the authorities for having fostered the boom. He reviles them for the inevitable collapse.

That is exactly what most people are doing today. They're blaming Wall Street. Everyone congratulated themselves when their homes were doubling in value. Everybody thought they were smart to pick those stocks in their 401(k) plans. But now that the bubble has popped, it's all Wall Street's fault."

Alguém falou em flat taxes ?

Fiscalidade 101. Por Carlos Martins.

"Com Lucros não há despedimento"

Se assim fosse:

- qualquer ganho de produtividade deixa de ser possível por Lei

- Se mesma produção via inovação passa a ser possível com 9 pessoas em vez de 10, e a redução fosse proibida, seria impossível reduzir custos e preços

Consequências visíveis e invisíveis

Sobre manifestos, parasitismos culturais e obras públicas

A cartoon, circa 1934, during the Great Depression

Criação de moeda pelos Bancos I

O esquema dos aumentos de capital dos bancos financiando o Banco os próprios Accionistas

Movimentos contabilísticos:

1. Concessão de crédito por criação de moeda

Activo do Banco: Concessão de Crédito ao accionista A em X Euros

Passivo do Banco: Criação de moeda por crédito da conta DO do accionista A em X Euros

2. Aumento de Capital

Passivo do Banco: Conta DO de A é debitada em X Euros para pagamento do aumento de capital

Capitais Próprios do Banco: Aumento de Capital em X Euros

Resultado:

CP: Capitais Próprios sobem em X

C: Carteira de Crédito sobe em X

Rácio de CP para Crédito ou Activo até sobe para = (CP + X / C + X),

É só vantagens... tirando o facto de ser tudo uma ficção.

Islândia - Boom and Bust

In Iceland's specific case, broad-based monetary aggregates such as M1, grew at a rate of 20–30% per annum every year between 2002 and 2007 (...) With a bountiful quantity of liquidity available at historically low prices, the outlets of this monetary expansion saw their values rise to ever greater heights. The average house price in Iceland saw its value increase almost 30% in domestic króna, and every year between 2003 and 2007 saw a greater-than 10% annual price appreciation.

A significant boom had materialized, much of it realized in foreign currency at captivatingly low interest rates. However, when the house of cards finally came tumbling down, this boom sustained on foreign currencies soon came to an end.

Iceland's Banking Crisis: The Meltdown of an Interventionist Financial System, Mises Daily by Philipp Bagus and David Howden

Mises, o método da ciência económica e o seu conflito com o Historicismo alemão

Mises claimed in Human Action that the only pure economic science is radical apriorism – using solely deductive reason without the help of experience. He built his entire system on logic and self-evident assumptions, similar to geometry. Mises rejected all forms of inductive aposteriorism, or the use of empirical studies or history to prove a theory. Mises solemnly declared, “Its particular theorems are not open to any verification or falsification on the grounds of experience.” Mark Skousen

"Economics in the second German Reich, as represented by the government-appointed university professors, degenerated into an unsystematic, poorly assorted collection of various scraps of knowledge borrowed from history, geography, technology, jurisprudence, and party politics, larded with deprecatory remarks about the errors in the "abstractions" of the Classical School.

After 1866, the men who came into the academic career had only contempt for "bloodless abstractions." They published historical studies, preferably such as dealt with labor conditions of the recent past. Many of them were firmly convinced that the foremost task of economists was to aid the "people" in the war of liberation they were waging against the "exploiters."

This was the position Gustav Schmoller embraced with regard to economics. Again and again he blamed the economists for having prematurely made inferences from quantitatively insufficient material. What, in his opinion, was needed in order to substitute a realistic science of economics for the hasty generalizations of the British "armchair" economists was more statistics, more history, and more collection of "material." Out of the results of such research the economists of the future, he maintained, would one day develop new insights by "induction."

The political significance of the work of the Historical School consisted in the fact that it rendered Germany safe for the ideas, the acceptance of which made popular with the German people all those disastrous policies that resulted in the great catastrophes."

A ameaça neoliberal

Quem tem medo do “neoliberal”? Por Miguel Botelho Moniz.

Authors@Google: Peter Schiff

O custo da "segurança laboral"

Segurança laboral. Por André Abrantes Amaral.

De acordo com o INE, os recibos verdes aumentaram 50% em quatro anos. Agora que nos encontramos em vésperas de eleições para o Parlamento Europeu, vem inevitavelmente à conversa a segurança no emprego, que o modelo social europeu pretende garantir. No entanto, se há algo que muitas pessoas já sentiram na pele é a dificuldade de, estando desempregadas, arranjarem novo trabalho. Bem sei que não é fácil, mas convinha que fossemos honestos nesta matéria e tivéssemos em conta que, quanto mais custoso é despedir, mais difícil é contratar e mais complicada a vida para quem perde o emprego.

Pete Boettke sobre o Mises Institute

The Mises Institute Does Amazing Work. Por Pete Boettke.

The Mises Institute is the world's leading web-based resource for Austrian economics. Students interested in Austrian economics benefit greatly from the books and articles made available on their website. Also, the Mises Institute sponsors conferences that bring students in from throughout the world to learn about the teachings of Mises. And the scholars associated with the Mises Institute publish widely and have a broad audience.

I congratulate them on all this great work and I don't want my "dispute" over (a) GMU and (b) which direction forward for Austrian economics as a progressive research program in the modern economic profession to confuse people. The Mises Institute is not just an important resource for students of the Austrian school of economics, it has become an inspensible one thanks to the efforts of Lew and Jeff.

Also, I should add that on an ideological front the Mises Institute has been the most steadfast defender of libertarianism, anti-war, and a consistent voice against the policies that led us to our current situation, and the policy responses of Bush and now Obama.

Teoria Monetária: 100% de Reservas versus "Free Banking"

Para quem se interessar pelo assunto que mais controversia gera entre "austriacos" e quiser seguir a discussão que gerou (atá agora) 164 comentários onde tenho tido o prazer de participar, assinando como Carlos Novais, e com a participação de George Selgin e Lawrence H. White, ambos no lado "Free Banking" (na verdade as duas maiores autoridades académicas no assunto), pode encontrar na sequência de um post de George Selgin no Mises Institute: Interview on Free Banking.

O que está em questão é saber da possibilidade legal e económica, em liberdade económica de emissão de moeda e livre circulação, da existência de depósitos à ordem e emissão de notas com 100% de reservas ou com fixação livre por parte dos emitentes - situação a que provavelmente um dia chegaremos dada a tendência natural do presente regime intervencionista (como outros no passado) de colapsar ou o que seria melhor, a consciência da irracionalidade e de risco sistémico bem evidente nas crises cíclicas permitir a introdução da concorrência na emissão e circulação de moeda.

Coloco aqui os meus sucessivos comentários, a minha linha de argumentação corresponde a uma tese que eu espero vir a ser capaz de produzir num texto mais elaborado com a ajuda de Luis Aguiar Santos.


I.

Posted also in "Larry Sechrest's Free Banking: Live Blog Prelude"

In honest and free competition Free-Banking: "Good Money drives out Bad money", and that means... 100% Reserves because:

- "Free banking" to be honest require that banks that issue notes and accept deposits of a commodity (let´s say gold and silver) to be absolutely clear about the service and contract provided.
- "100% Reserve Bank" could say something like: "This note is a receipt of a gold coin deposit" or "Your balance in you demand deposit current account is covered 100% by gold deposits"
- Bank "20% partial reserve" should say: "this note or balance in demand deposit is a claim/IOU of gold coins covered at demand by at least 20% of gold"

So, the free banking argument is valid in the sense taht each issuer is perfectly clear about the contract established.

The thing that the "free banking" argument misses is that:

- notes/deposits from diferent issuers will not be in anyway fungible
- in a free market with an honest Free-Banking, Good Money will drive out Bad Money... just imagine an arbitrage between asking credit in a partial reserve bank (that wil expand it´s money supply wiht the new credit) and "buying" notes/deposits in a 100% reserve bank.

The partial reserve bank will trade at discount sooner or later.

The discount will also appear if you think yourself making a deposit of 100 gold coins that you are adding to your hoarding. In a partial reserve bank, in the moment that you deposit 100 coins, you are receiving notes/deposits that will be exchanged for sure at discount.

II.

1. Honest free banking requires that each partial reserve bank states clearly what the note/deposit issued means (ex: "This is not a 100% reserve bank. A minimum of 20% reserves will be deposit").

2. Notes issued by partial reserve banks will trade at discount because it´s possible to ask for loans (which will increase the partial reserve bank money supply) and buy a 100% reserve notes.

It seems that the defenders of "free banking" are willling to exchange theirs 100% reserve banks notes for "partial reserve notes" at par value... until....some one realizes that there is a risk in its partial reserve notes

At some point the discount must appear, the extra interest in deposits in partial reserve banks are a premium for its risk loosing power purchase and even default , not a "out of thin air" advantage against 100% reserve banks deposits.

3. It´s funny to realize that a "partial reserve bank" could use "100% reserve banks notes" as part of it´s reserve.

III.

A speculator could even ask for loans in a partial reserve bank and immediately call for the physical gold.

I suppose a partial reserve bank would want to control this possibility in some way.

And it is difficult to imagine that someone is willing to deposit physical gold in a partial reserve bank, knowing that maybe the free banking guys are right and no one will ask for a discount.
i think that the historical examples of at par exchange value to physical gold and silver are subject to critical review of things like clear disclaiming of the partial reserve banks.

(I have exchanged comments with historians here in Portugal where it seems different notes from different issuers were exchanged at different discounts but this is something to be confirmed).

As i said, a partial reserve bank could use 100% reserve note, but the other way around it is not possble. So...?

I am sure that people (or sofisticated speculators) would realize the difference on bank runs in one kind of bank and another.

IV.

Credit risk in 100% reserve banks does not have an impact in demand deposits.

Demand deposits are suposed to be equivalent to ... full hoarding. Only time deposits would be at risk.

PS: actually a 100% reserve bank must carry more than 100% reserves because of the time deposits that expiry and turns to demand deposits.

V.

I think one thing is certain in the current "consumer protection" legislation environment:

Pure receipts of gold deposit (100% RB) and "promisse of payment" (FRB) are different contracts and the client of one or another must be warned.

FRB defenders claims that promisse of payment and pure receipts will both be valued at par value.

100% RB defenders must prove that it is possible to arbitrage the risk, making loans in FRB notes (supply of promisse of payment is increased) and buying pure deposit certificates at par value (so the FRB says)... till for instance a last loan is made and the arbitrager ask for immediate redemption in physical cold, reducing the reserves ... till the market begins to ask for a discount for the FRB.

VI.

We can at least discuss at what level of reserves would today, in a age of information, cause a discount.

Would 5% of reserves notes (or promisses of payment) with public information be the same as 50% reserve notes?

Would the discount never happear beggining in 100% and ending in 0%?

Would not the process of risk arbitrage described make it appear sonner than latter?

What i am saying is that i agree with Free Banking, let them live. Let them put in the notes issued and in the deposit contracts the precise terms.and publishing what amount of reserves are held, making it clear the difference between physical and 100%RB notes and such FR promisses of payment.

And let´s buy all the physical gold at par value (if any) with money lent from a FRB (Free Bankers will sell it).

VII.

About George Selgin saying: "Even a pure gold system allows some scope for ABCT"

Two types of inflation:

- pure (let´s call it "pure") inflation that enters the economy through direct spending
- inflation through credit expansion

My opinion is that the first one causes prices to go up but not "pure" ABCT in the sense of serious direct misallocation between investment and previous and voluntary savings, although also interferes with relative prices and economic calculation

The second one is the root of ABCT.

The first one is caused by gold discoveries and at the present by printing money to pay for deficits (even if from buying public debt).

The second is the real ABCT problem because investment is funded by expansion of credit form pure money creation distorting interest rates and pressuring asset prices more than "consumer" prices.

VIII.

FRB Notes and deposits are honest if proper disclosure and with that i think the term "note" and "deposit" is not apropriate for FRB, but "promisses of payment" and "credit current account" (or something like that).

Only 100% RB should be able to use the ter "note" and "demand deposit".

If the market would ask for a discount or not between "promisses of payment" or not is the real discussion that is worthy.

Desculpem lá a presunção, mas este discurso é muito ... CN

(e felizmente para melhor)

Negócios:

Paulo Rangel diz que Estado está "num caminho de declínio"

"O Estado é a criação humana que imita Deus. É omnipresente, é omnisciente e nunca ninguém o vê"

"Acho que o Estado está num estado final, não sei prever é quando. Está claramente num caminho de declínio. A União Europeia é uma solução para um Mundo que tem algumas parecenças com a Idade Média",

"tem de competir com um conjunto de organizações", a nível local, supranacional, desportivo, religioso ou confessional, para concluir que: "o Mundo é mais competitivo". "

Via outra fonte diz qualquer coisa como ""...uma Europa medieval, com tribunais mas sem Estado, mais civil e menos política"

Os "depósitos" à ordem

BPP suspende pagamentos ... com autorização do Banco de Portugal (BdP).

Parece que os Bancos só estão obrigados a fazer pagamentos se o puderem fazer. Porque se não o puderem fazer, o Bdp actua com o seu privilégio de poder substituir-se ao direito comercial e civil permitindo aos Bancos fugirem ao processo de falência.

Assim, quando falamos dos depósitos à ordem, é mais um factor de incerteza a adicionar às reservas parciais:

1- os depósitos à ordem de moeda só existem realmente em moeda no banco numa pequena porção (3% a 5%), o que faz com que no limite apenas os primeiros 3% a 5% a "correr" (hoje é mais via pedidos de transferência electrónica) ao banco recebam o seu dinheiro (ou será crédito ao banco?).

2- e para piorar, quem queira levantar o seu dinheiro e perante a impossibilidade do Banco o realizar, não pode recorrer ao pedido de falência e despoletar quanto antes a sua liquidação.

A Credit-Crunch Reader

Free-market blog and think-tank responses to the crash of 2008


In the 29th IEA Current Controversies Paper, Robert Rosenbleeth provides a valuable compendium of free-market blog and think-tank responses to the crash of 2008. A short summary of each article or paper is provided, together with a link to the original piece.

Material is selected from the world's most renowned classical-liberal and liberarian think tanks, including the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, as well as the Institute of Economic Affairs.

The overriding message from these readings is clear. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the crash was not the result of unchecked "laissez-faire" capitalism. In fact the credit crunch can be explained by a combination of misguided regulation, government intervention and loose monetary policy. Unfortunately, as the authors point out, governments' responses to the credit crunch would appear to be equally ill-conceived.

Sobre o Certificado Energético

IMPOSTOS OCULTOS (1) - ADENE - Certificado Energético. Por Mentat.