> We don't need to run an "experiment" to know this would be bad.
That's the kind of armchair philosophizing that leads to all kinds of problems, we need more scientific method and less philosophy if we want to get anywhere in a productive manner.
There's plenty of counter points to be made about the sales tax. Here's two.
1. Its the most efficient tax.
2. It has the lowest economic damage.
For point #2, the idea is that if you can increase the wealth everyone benefits, since economics is not a zero sum game. Also you can get around whatever you deem vital needs/rights i.e. food, shelter, in your society through subsidizing. Here's some other information from an economic perspective as well (https://www.taxanalysts.org/content/economic-analysis-can-st...).
Anyway, to say its even more regressive and we don't need to experiment is not progressive. We have ostensibly the same goals (more wealth for everyone, fewer people in poverty/elimination of poverty,etc) and the only way to get at social systems that optimally give us our goals is to apply a more rigorous scientific method and get out of the political philosophy camp - IMHO :)
How would we ever make any progress in medicine if we never conducted any experiments and relied instead purely on observational studies? How much slower would our progress be?
Let's not kid ourselves. No experimentation is needed to understand that such a policy would shift more of the tax burden onto the shoulders of the poor and away from the wealthy. If you want to advocate for that, knock yourself out, but it seems to me like it's manifestly unjust and it's unconscionable to conduct such an "experiment." The framing of science seems dishonest, especially when anyone can view your profile and see you are a fan of Austrian economics. I somehow doubt you'd be equally in the spirit of discovery of the "experiment" were a commune or large-scale nationalization of industries.
> I somehow doubt you'd be equally in the spirit of discovery of the "experiment" were a commune or large-scale nationalization of industries.
No I absolutely would be, so long as it is formed in a traditional experimental design. I wouldn't want anything I was proposing above or you are here to just be globally implemented, since we don't actually know how it would work out. So, I freely admit my bias. But the only way to counter bias and make progress is with data and a process for checking yourself. For me, that is the scientific process, anything else is really just us following our emotions which doesn't lead anywhere fruitful, that's my point.
This kind of extreme "scientism," if you will, ignores the fact that 1) we can anticipate the likely effects of a policy using our powers of reason and a large body of evidence from the various forms of government in action all over the entire world 2) it is unethical to conduct experiments on human subjects whose likely result is harm.
That's the kind of armchair philosophizing that leads to all kinds of problems, we need more scientific method and less philosophy if we want to get anywhere in a productive manner.
There's plenty of counter points to be made about the sales tax. Here's two.
1. Its the most efficient tax.
2. It has the lowest economic damage.
For point #2, the idea is that if you can increase the wealth everyone benefits, since economics is not a zero sum game. Also you can get around whatever you deem vital needs/rights i.e. food, shelter, in your society through subsidizing. Here's some other information from an economic perspective as well (https://www.taxanalysts.org/content/economic-analysis-can-st...).
Anyway, to say its even more regressive and we don't need to experiment is not progressive. We have ostensibly the same goals (more wealth for everyone, fewer people in poverty/elimination of poverty,etc) and the only way to get at social systems that optimally give us our goals is to apply a more rigorous scientific method and get out of the political philosophy camp - IMHO :)
How would we ever make any progress in medicine if we never conducted any experiments and relied instead purely on observational studies? How much slower would our progress be?
see: https://www.thoughtco.com/the-economics-of-sales-taxes-11475...