Mind... the (income) gap

[HitandRun]

I am saying the EFFECTIVE tax rate on a person's net worth should be roughly similar and equitable Simple way is of course to have a flat rate across the spectrum and minimise tax breaks... but the actual execution will be difficult, together with policy bent. Estate tax for eg is not even supposed to be fair per se, but to level the playing field for the younger generations for longer term self-enlightened social goals.

Bro

I think your suggestions are long on rhetoric but short on details, i.e. nice sounding motherhood statements without any practical details. At the end of the day, we cannot pretend that we start off from a clean sheet.

Last but not least, allow me to quote Yogi Berra:

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

I rest my case.

[specuvestor]

Bro

You seem fixated on singulars, either gini coefficient or income tax. The real world is more complex than that. If it were that easy then it wouldn't take seven (and counting) property measures just to soft land the market. And numerous bailouts and QE and what-not for the CDO and eurozone crisis. Instead of increasing tax, how about reducing fiscal expenditure? Or grow the GDP (which seems to be govt's solution) that the tax base is larger? Real world solution is not a simple iPad game with limited dynamics.

Even if I think top tax rate should be 40% and Corporate tax rate to be 30%, it has to be implemented slowly and progressively, having a feedback loop to understanding how it affects stakeholders and incentives. Case in point is the new loan policy of cars which in principle I support wholeheartedly but the execution sucks. The repurcussions are extensively too much shock to the dealers and the sector literally collapse. That is not what I called a well planned policy, especially after they made the idiotic policy move to raise loans to 100% few years back. To me this looks very much like a scholar's implementation with singular objective but no regards to the system as a whole.

There are many factors to consider and how they affect the stakeholders. That's why we need an army of civil servants reaching out into numbers, statistics, grassroots, etc to have a gauge of the impact. But end of day if the ideology is right, the direction will be right. Khaw has the right idea but Goh's idea of "Singapore Inc" has repurcussions to the FT, transport, cost of living, etc issues even until now. It cannot be taken in isolation. So specifics is important for implementation, but ideology is more important. Get the latter right and it will be effective. If only get the former right you will have people "doing wrong things very efficiently".

Between the two of us it may well be that I am the more practical and pragmatic one.