What Energy And The Economy Have In Common

[Photon Guy]

Lets say you're driving a car, as you're doing so you're converting energy into lots of different forms. The energy starts out with the gasoline in the gas tank. The gasoline has chemical energy. As the gasoline burns the chemical energy is released and converted into kinetic energy as it drives the pistons. The pistons turn gears which turns the crank shaft which finally turns the wheels that sends the car forward. 

Now each time the energy is converted some of the energy is lost. When the gasoline burns not all of the energy it gives off goes towards driving the pistons, when the piston turns the gears not all of the energy goes towards turning the gears. When one gear turns another gear not all of the energy goes towards turning the other gear, when the gears turn the crankshaft not all the energy goes towards turning the crankshaft and wheels and so forth. Energy is lost in the form of heat and friction. That is why engines get so hot and need cooling systems, because of all the energy that is lost as heat which heats up the engine. 

So anyway, I see something similar with the economy and with money. Whenever money switches owners some of it is lost, it is lost in the form of taxes. Lets say you buy a pair of shoes,  money goes from your pocket to the shoe store and in exchange you get this nice new pair of shoes. When you buy the shoes in addition to the price of the shoes you also pay sales tax. So not all of the money you spend on the shoes goes to pay for the shoes, some of it is lost in the form of taxes. If you work a job where you're paid an hourly wage you pay income taxes on the wages you make. So not all the money that goes from your employer to you per hour actually goes to you, some of it is lost in the form of taxes.

So this is what energy and the economy have in common.

[Phi for All]

Bad analogy, I'm afraid. Taxes get used for something, but energy losses in physics are usually to unused heat and friction. 

A better analogy would be an unnecessary middleman on a deal, someone who does no real work but gets paid anyway. Or using private funding for something that would be more cheaply done with public funding, like building toll roads instead of public highways, where profit for the private company is taken unnecessarily from the system without doing any extra work.

[swansont]

Governments can print money, economies can multiply it, but energy is a conserved quantity.

If you can track where energy goes, it will all add up to the same amount.

 

[Phi for All]

3 hours ago, Photon Guy said:

So not all the money that goes from your employer to you per hour actually goes to you, some of it is lost in the form of taxes.

Besides taxes not really representing a loss, since you benefit from them in other ways, it's also only around 10-25% of your wages. In your automobile analogy, you could be losing 80% of your energy due to internal combustion and the associated systems. Imagine if you only made 20% of what you do now, and there were no public roads, no libraries or parks, no public schools or airports, and no other services your taxes provide.

[joigus]

Money is debt. Debt is not conserved; it blows up. This debt, in turn, can be re-sold. Besides, money "created" anywhere affects you by dwindling the purchasing value of your money --as Swansont said. On top of that, there's always less money in circulation than there is debt, so the whole system is a runaway process, and needs issuing more credit. The driving force is expectations of future profit.

[Photon Guy]

8 hours ago, Phi for All said:

Bad analogy, I'm afraid. Taxes get used for something, but energy losses in physics are usually to unused heat and friction. 

A better analogy would be an unnecessary middleman on a deal, someone who does no real work but gets paid anyway. Or using private funding for something that would be more cheaply done with public funding, like building toll roads instead of public highways, where profit for the private company is taken unnecessarily from the system without doing any extra work.

But when you drive a car 100% of the energy is being used, its just not all being used for what you want it to be used for. When you drive a car you want the energy to be used to make the car go. In Physics we know that not all of the energy is being used to make the car go but it is being used in one form or another. The energy that is not being used to make the car go is being used to do other stuff such as heating up the engine. We might not want the energy to be used to heat up the engine but the fact remains that its being used to do that whether we want it to or not. As cars get more advanced and more efficient less of the energy will be used to heat up the engine and more of it will be used to make the car go but the fact remains that all of the energy is being used, for one purpose or another. Whether or not the energy is being used for purposes we want it to be used for is a different matter. 

Therefore the same can be said about taxes. Taxes are used but they're not always used for stuff we want them to be used for. Just to name one example I certainly don't want my taxes to be used to pay the salaries of certain politicians who I am not going to mention and Im sure most if not everybody here agrees with me, that their taxes aren't always used for what they want them to be used for. But that's the way it is and so therefore I do see taxes as a loss, at least when they're not being used for what we want them to be used for. 

8 hours ago, swansont said:

Governments can print money, economies can multiply it, but energy is a conserved quantity.

If you can track where energy goes, it will all add up to the same amount.

 

At one time gold was the standard and although its not that way any more, it used to be that the government could only print enough money as there was gold to equal it so money at least used to be a conserved quality.

[studiot]

8 hours ago, Photon Guy said:

But when you drive a car 100% of the energy is being used, its just not all being used for what you want it to be used for.

Driving a car is a process involving the material world.

Waste is true of just about any procees you can think of in the material world.

So what ?

A few examples:

Go down to the lumber yard and get some timber to make a table.
When you bring it home and cut the pieces to exact sizes there will be offcuts.
There will also have been waste in preparing the timbers in the first place trimmin the unwanted bark etc.

Say you bake a cake.
Some residue will stick to the side of the mixing bowl and baking tin.
More waste, along with the shells the eggs came in.

Say you grow some wheat to make the flour.
The ears grow on wasted stalks, and are covered by wasted sheathes.

Waste is just a fact of the natural universe.

[swansont]

12 hours ago, Photon Guy said:

 

At one time gold was the standard and although its not that way any more, it used to be that the government could only print enough money as there was gold to equal it so money at least used to be a conserved quality.

Because gold (and silver) clearly can’t be mined and minted into new coins, or formed into bars and added to the reserve? What do you think “conserved” means?

[Phi for All]

12 hours ago, Photon Guy said:

But when you drive a car 100% of the energy is being used, its just not all being used for what you want it to be used for. When you drive a car you want the energy to be used to make the car go. In Physics we know that not all of the energy is being used to make the car go but it is being used in one form or another. The energy that is not being used to make the car go is being used to do other stuff such as heating up the engine. We might not want the energy to be used to heat up the engine but the fact remains that its being used to do that whether we want it to or not. As cars get more advanced and more efficient less of the energy will be used to heat up the engine and more of it will be used to make the car go but the fact remains that all of the energy is being used, for one purpose or another. Whether or not the energy is being used for purposes we want it to be used for is a different matter.

You're moving the goalposts here. Are you claiming up to 80% of taxes aren't being used in ways we would like? I'd like to see a citation on that, but we're moving out of physics here. 

[swansont]

37 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

You're moving the goalposts here. Are you claiming up to 80% of taxes aren't being used in ways we would like? I'd like to see a citation on that, but we're moving out of physics here. 

(I moved this to politics, because there’s no physics insight being revealed here.)

[Photon Guy]

7 hours ago, Phi for All said:

You're moving the goalposts here. Are you claiming up to 80% of taxes aren't being used in ways we would like? I'd like to see a citation on that, but we're moving out of physics here. 

You're the one who came up with the 80% figure. If you say that when you drive a car 80% of the energy is being wasted I'll take your word for it but that's beside the point. The point is that not all of the energy being used when you drive a car is being used in ways you want it to, whether its 80% or some other figure. The same thing with taxes. Im not saying as much as 80% of taxes aren't being used in ways we want but I would say, for just about all of us that not all of our taxes are being used in ways we want. As for what percentage that depends on the person and exactly what they want their taxes to be used for and not used for.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Photon Guy

[Phi for All]

24 minutes ago, Photon Guy said:

You're the one who came up with the 80% figure. If you say that when you drive a car 80% of the energy is being wasted I'll take your word for it but that's beside the point. The point is that not all of the energy being used when you drive a car is being used in ways you want it to, whether its 80% or some other figure. The same thing with taxes. Im not saying as much as 80% of taxes aren't being used in ways we want but I would say, for just about all of us that not all of our taxes are being used in ways we want. As for what percentage that depends on the person and exactly what they want their taxes to be used for and not used for.

I don't think this is a good example of things energy and the economy have in common. I don't agree with your reasoning, but it's probably because I have a different perspective on taxes and their relationship to the work accomplished by them.

[Photon Guy]

On 2/20/2021 at 10:51 AM, swansont said:

(I moved this to politics, because there’s no physics insight being revealed here.)

I think that's a good idea as this discussion has become more or less primarily a political one. 

19 hours ago, Phi for All said:

I don't think this is a good example of things energy and the economy have in common. I don't agree with your reasoning, but it's probably because I have a different perspective on taxes and their relationship to the work accomplished by them.

Surely I wouldn't think that 100% of your taxes is being used in ways you want it to, I certainly can't say the same for myself. As this discussion has become more political and has been moved into the political section I am going to take a more political position. To say that none of your taxes ever go to waste would be saying that the government never wastes money.

[swansont]

7 minutes ago, Photon Guy said:

Surely I wouldn't think that 100% of your taxes is being used in ways you want it to, I certainly can't say the same for myself. As this discussion has become more political and has been moved into the political section I am going to take a more political position. To say that none of your taxes ever go to waste would be saying that the government never wastes money.

That’s not how taxes work. 

[Ken Fabian]

@Photon Guy Sounds like a variant of Libertarian or Sovereign Citizen notions. "Taxation is theft!" - says people with taxpayer funded education, driving on taxpayer funding roads, with taxpayer funded law and order to protect them and regular opportunities to vote to elect representatives, under a system where the majority get the positions of power to change things... like how much taxpayer support for education, roads and infrastructure. Messy as that gets the alternatives - eg the parts of the world where governments have little power to enforce taxation - are a LOT messier.

The very nature of government spending makes greater requirements for record keeping and accountability, that comes at costs of organisational efficiency. Yet even badly spent taxpayer money still gets spent and the recipients spend it in turn, supporting other kinds of economic activity - it doesn't disappear entirely. A lot of deliberate spending - taxes and money creation - to support economic activity, to prevent serious economic downturns is a tool widely and successfully used, to limit economic harms to citizens; the indirect effects of spending taxpayer money can count for a lot.

Remaking the nature of societies and governments is best done by evolution rather than revolution. It is an ongoing project to improve the standards of governance and balance the benefits of taxpayer funded services with the burden on citizens and businesses to pay for them.

[Phi for All]

4 hours ago, Photon Guy said:

To say that none of your taxes ever go to waste would be saying that the government never wastes money.

As I check back through the posts, I see that nobody brought up this tautology, most especially me. Why are you trying to make it seem like I did?

Sorry, Photon Guy, but the analogy obviously has flaws that are being pointed out. It's kind of the nature of analogy to be limited, and in this case your understanding of taxation has set a low threshhold. I see what you're saying, but don't agree with your take on taxes.