Because the real world is more complex than a lever, and there are many unknowns in how either physical or human manifestations respond to actions, and doing nothing removes your intent from the mix.
A very clear example of this is medicine with the "do no harm" principle - that the actions of the physician should be chosen to minimize the scenarios of harming the patient under any circumstance - under chance, under lack of patient compliance, etc.
Furthermore, the actions in the real world have also different experiences and meanings. Its easy to think about pulling a lever to kill 1 instead of 5, but not easy to think of killing one to harvest their organs and save other 5, though they are, with a lot of abstraction, "equivalent moral actions".
The content range is very wide, and some of the most popular anime's/mangas are geared towards pre-teens.
But there's plenty of art that has no match in any other field. A list of my favorites if you want to test them out, that don't include "fan-service" (most of what you mention).
Wolf's Rain
Fullmetal Alchemist
Evangelion (includes some pandering, but the content is way
too original to care)
Berserk (recommend manga over anime)
Vagabond (manga)
Death Note
Attack on Titan
Utena (old, but a very strong story about grooming and abuse)
And these are the popular ones. If you start going deeper and branching out you can find jewels, specially in manga.
Generally the issue with pricing in healthcare is insurance, which has the perverse structure of being consumed as a tax benefit without competition to get patients.
There isn't a specific rule that explains this but there is a whole system that begets this as the most efficient system by the current players.
Can’t point to the source, but I think we all know that there is some sort of regulation requiring us to pay providers for services when those providers refuse to provide pricing information at before or during the time of service.
And you'd be wrong: that may be an issue, but it just doesn't relate to OP's idea of some regulation prohibiting health care providers or insurers from publishing prices.
I think you just have you sign documents saying you're responsible for paying whatever the cost turns out to be. Why would a regulation be required to enforce that?
Its better at preventing a type of scam, but significantly worse at legal scam -> how much is an 8% inflation of the dollar on dozens of trillions of USD denominated financial instruments?
And there is also plenty of equity scams that are sanctioned by government - the kind that suppresses the ability of people to invest or get funded, to give special permissions to those that play the rules, etc. The way some get bailouts at the expense of the rest.
A system with a high degree of freedom and lack of oversight will have higher scams. The big question is, if people were given the choice to participate in both systems, which one will thrive?
What do you mean conspiracy? It's the official purpose of the Fed to maintain inflation low, it has failed, it has cost a devaluation of the assets of everyone holding dollars or dollar-linked financial instruments, and it's gone significantly down in value.
> Well, crypto has been around for about 10 years. There's been plenty of choice, and yet what do you see today?
A thriving crypto market big enough to be acknowledged as a threat by the head of the federal reserve, the head of the central european bank, and several other high ranking officials.
Taxes on land dont have economic incidence on rents.
The reasoning is that land's profit stems from its location and the land owner doesn't have any bargaining power - his only choice is to not rent the land and absorb the loss of all value.
Its not the same with property taxes because builders/buyers can choose not to build, so there is some distortion.
A land owner has a whole continuum of choices because he is setting the rent price. It's no different from any other seller on the market. The higher price will push the potential tenant elsewhere but if other places are taxed the same way they may also need to raise prices so it will be a wash in lost customers and higher rent across the board.
They can't set rent prices - prices occur when supply meets demand, it's not unilateral.
The origin of rent in land - beware it is not the same for buildings - is the difference in value from one land to the least valuable land. (roughly, David Ricardo). A land tax is about taxing this rent, not about nominal land taxes on everything.
If the land tax is roughly correct, the owner of land cant charge more with the tax because it is less competitive than land that is a little farther away.
Adam smith, David Ricardo, Henry George, Milton Friedman and even Stiglitz have all lauded that land taxes are less distortive than any other tax and would be great as a local tax policy. (In the us, for cities and states).
They totally can. Go to any marketplace and see for yourself: sellers set prices. Buyers can negotiate, accept or refuse, but the seller setting the price (ask) is completely unilateral and happens billions of time every day.
>If the land tax is roughly correct, the owner of land cant charge more with the tax because it is less competitive than land that is a little farther away.
If this theory had been correct than raising taxes on businesses would not result in the increase of consumer prices.
>land taxes are less distortive than any other tax
Might be true or false, is orthogonal to the fact that land taxes, like any other taxes will be paid by the end consumer through increased prices.
> They totally can. Go to any marketplace and see for yourself: sellers set prices. Buyers can negotiate, accept or refuse, but the seller setting the price (ask) is completely unilateral and happens billions of time every day.
There is some subtlety about talking about prices conceptually. Both sellers and buyers can make an offer or a bid at any price, but market prices are the result of sellers and buyers meeting - about making the actual exchange.
In this context, saying "sets prices" would mean that the buyer takes the price, not that the seller has made a listing at an arbitrary number. Offering 1$ for a car and not buying a car is not setting a price - neither is Asking 1000000$ and not getting an offer.
Rent prices are paid at all because there is a benefit to the land. If the Ask for the land is higher than the value, it will meet demand and validate the price.
> If this theory had been correct than raising taxes on businesses would not result in the increase of consumer prices.
Thats not true - economic incidence requires evaluation in a case by case basis. It depends on the relative market strength or demand/supply elasticity. For example, a tax on life saving medication is borne by the consumer, but a tax on skittles is born on the skittles manufacturer (as consumers replace skittles with other candy).
The point is that the economic incidence on unimproved land is very much against the landlord - he can't do anything with the unimproved land but rent it.
For longer, wider and more interesting historical analysis of LVT I recommend reading from source - Henry George and Provery and Progress, a book denouncing homelessness and land speculation in...San Francisco, 100 years ago.
I understand what you are trying to say but your concept of market price is only applicable to fungible goods. "Market price" for land leases makes very little sense and only implies that it's whatever price you've managed to negotiate. There are no supply/demand curves, there is no spread, nothing like you are used to with pricing fungible goods.
But that is not the point of my argument, your original assertion was that "the land owner doesn't have any bargaining power - his only choice is to not rent the land and absorb the loss of all value." Now you are saying seller and buyer negotiate? Why would they do if the seller has no bargaining power?
> but a tax on skittles is born on the skittles manufacturer (as consumers replace skittles with other candy)
Why then a 1kg of Skittles on Amazon.co.uk costs more than 50 oz (1.5kg) of the same on Amazon.com (GBP 9.43 vs USD 9.98)? Is it really because British people want to taste the rainbow so much more than Americans?
> I understand what you are trying to say but your concept of market price is only applicable to fungible goods. "Market price" for land leases makes very little sense and only implies that it's whatever price you've managed to negotiate. There are no supply/demand curves, there is no spread, nothing like you are used to with pricing fungible goods.
To make sure I understand - you say that because each land is as unique as an NFT, the market for every single piece of land has supply of 1, and the classical supply/demand curves don't make sense/apply.
I have multiple answers to that concept:
1- From a mathematical abstraction, the key to riches would be to get one land and split it into as many sub-pieces of land as possible and sell them all at the same price as the larger one!
2- There are differences between fungibles and non-fungibles, crypto has taught us, but overall most properties are similar and allow for the exchange of a non-fungible for another. Each land NFT is unique, but there are many land NFTs, and they compete against each other as if they were fungible. Each wine is unique too, even each bottle of wine is unique! but albeit this does affect demand, it doesn't turn supply to perfect inelasticity. There are subsitutions!
> But that is not the point of my argument, your original assertion was that "the land owner doesn't have any bargaining power - his only choice is to not rent the land and absorb the loss of all value." Now you are saying seller and buyer negotiate? Why would they do if the seller has no bargaining power?
Bargaining power to increase rents to cover the land value tax - he cant change the supply of land, or repurpose it for something else.
> Why then a 1kg of Skittles on Amazon.co.uk costs more than 50 oz (1.5kg) of the same on Amazon.com (GBP 9.43 vs USD 9.98)? Is it really because British people want to taste the rainbow so much more than Americans?
I've waited all my life to a microeconomics conversation about skittles. The bigger question, sir, is why do blue skittles sell at the same price as all the other skittles, when they are clearly the worst.
Many equal goods have different prices in different parts of the world for cost of labor, supply, taxes, etc etc. I have no idea in this particular case why it would be so, but relevant to economic incidence of taxes, sales taxes do change supply/demand curves of skittles bought on amazon. Because skittles are a unique product, but also substitutable for other non-sales taxable foods, its very likely both producer and purchaser eat part of the tax hike - they both lose.
Not exactly as NFT, which has no value at all and, in fact, is chiefly traded on the basis of other NFTs of exactly the same kind (but for some reason considered different).
The market model of fungible goods is based on maximizing the product number of items and price. It means that sellers will be increasing price as long the number of items sold also increases and will decrease price when the number of item sold drops, since the supply and demand is monotonic (someone willing to sell at $X will also sell at $X + anu positive number and someone willing to buy at $X will also buy at $X - any positive number) there is naturally a point where the number and price product is at the maximum. It still is affected by taxation and adding taxes moves prices up but this is besides the point.
None of the above applies to the land lease. The number of items to sell is 1, the value that the seller is maximizing is the lease value. If the price is too high then the land will stay unleased for longer time than acceptable to the particular seller and that may cause him to lower the price. The land will stay unleased longer because the prospective buyers will be choosing cheaper land elsewhere even if they otherwise would have chosen this particular parcel. But if all land owners are hit with the same tax then all of them can raise price and that will not affect unleased time because there won't be a price advantage for the buyer to go elsewhere.
>I have no idea in this particular case why it would be so, but relevant to economic incidence of taxes, sales taxes do change supply/demand curves of skittles bought on amazon.
Okay, we agree then. I was under impression you said they don't. Or you meant just sales taxes? What about VAT? What if there had been special Skittles tax in UK, would the manufacturer eat that since it's not a sales tax and the sellers are very inclined to just take a loss according to you?
You can draw the supply and demand curves to see what happens when you add the tax. The supply curve is a straight vertical line since land is in fixed supply. When you tax someone $2000 for land, their demand for the same land falls by $2000. So if you charge the tenant the tax, prices will fall by $2000 making the landlords absorb the cost. If you charge the landlord the tax both the supply and demand curves are unchanged and the tenants pay the same.
Taxes on most things change prices by adjusting both supply and demand, it’s the adjustment to supply that can pass on part or most of the tax to the customer. If supply doesn’t adjust you can’t do that.
> So if you charge the tenant the tax, prices will fall by $2000 making the landlords absorb the cost. If you charge the landlord the tax both the supply and demand curves are unchanged and the tenants pay the same.
Beautifully correct. Can you imagine peddling in politics a tax on renters claiming it is in their benefit?
I really can't. What are supply and demand curves for non-fungible goods? Each plot of land is unique. The asking price doesn't not affect its size. It does affect the time on market: the higher the ask, the longer it will take to rent out.
And some pieces will take infinite time to rent out if the price is set too high. The point is the land was just as unique before and after the tax. If you believe in supply and demand curves at all, this example is straight forward. Land has essentially fixed supply, so the curve is vertical and outside of a few weird exceptions can't change. The demand curve for your individual unique piece of land will be unchanged if the landlord pays the tax (taxes don't cause tenants to be willing to pay more) or be lowered by the tax if the tenant pays the tax (total spend by tenant unchanged). The new intersection of the lines determining the market price is either unchanged or lowered by the tax depending on who pays. This is unlike other supply and demand examples where in response to the tax you reduce supply causing the supply and demand curves to intersect at a higher price point.
>And some pieces will take infinite time to rent out if the price is set too high.
Yes. Same as the demand curve goes to 0 if price is high enough.
>If you believe in supply and demand curves at all, this example is straight forward
I believe in supply and demand curves for fungible items. It's easy to observe that you can acquire less of a particular item at a lower price than at a higher price and also true that you can sell more at at a lower price than at a higher price. I don't see how, say, a particular painting becomes bigger or adds detail with price increase or how one can sell two Mona Lisas by cutting down the price.
If you have a unique item your supply curve is flat at 1 supply and steps down to 0 at a price at which you refuse to sell. It’s still a supply curve and there is still a corresponding demand curve that determines the price you can sell at. In this case, it’s the demand of the highest bidder that causes the intersection. But the theory of supply and demand doesn’t go out the window because items are non-fungible.
There are also no individual demand curves. The whole idea of supply/demand curves is statistical and does not apply to a single individual (as same as unique items). I have no more questions about the "land tax won't be passed to the end consumer" though so here is some result from this exchange :)
I think cash-wise i would fall in this bucket. Of course i have plenty of savings, but most of my income is spent away.
One issue when talking about incomes is that its not properly adjusted for COL and taxes. A 250k salary in the bay area is about 12k a month in hand.
Im a head of family - I support my wife and my kid with this income. Rent is 5k, and pre-school is another 2.5k. Between unnegotiables like phone lines, food, internet, electricity etc etc the reminder to be stingy about is not a lot.
I used to live in this area with 100k and still save, but as a single person living in a dump and eating in the office every day.
A very clear example of this is medicine with the "do no harm" principle - that the actions of the physician should be chosen to minimize the scenarios of harming the patient under any circumstance - under chance, under lack of patient compliance, etc.
Furthermore, the actions in the real world have also different experiences and meanings. Its easy to think about pulling a lever to kill 1 instead of 5, but not easy to think of killing one to harvest their organs and save other 5, though they are, with a lot of abstraction, "equivalent moral actions".