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I hate to break it to you but the whole "tax the rich" thing is what the rich want you debating... why? Cause you can tax them all you want, but when our budget is 60% military they will still get rich and we will go in debt no matter how much you tax them.
Ya know what the rich really dont want? You fighting to get the military budget slashed in half leaving more than enough money to cut taxes for everyone (including the rich)... but noooo, any solution that saves everyone money, including the rich, is one that will never be supported.
So many people just get spoon fed a narrative and then its law.
taxing the rich is about reducing their political power, not the government revenue. we must also slash military spending. and provide universal health care.
Taking the money away from wealth produces like billionairs is probably the most destructive thing a society can do. There is a very good reason why over the last hundred plus years that the number of people in poverty dropped as the number of billionairs increased.
Money has absolutely no power as long as the people dont let it and the elections are fair. The only reason people with money have power is because people dont turn off their tvs when the lobbying ads come on. Money can only buy you votes when the general population is willing to sell their vote to the highest (figurative) bidder.
what's the very good reason? places with massive poverty have also had an exploitative wealthy class. you don't take all their money eliminating incentives. the billionaire didn't work harder than the multi millionaire. it was luck.
money can be used in more ways than that, and nobody is 100% immune to propaganda nor will we ever achieve near immunity to it in most of society. I agree about educating the public interest this direction, it's essential. but it will never be enough.
@wjmaggos the "very good reason" is simple... money is not a fixed quantity where in order to have mroe others must have less. Wealth is **generated** not taken.
Billionaires are the most successful wealth generators in a society. So having them means a lot of wealth is likely being generated (not always, but usually). Destroying the wealth generators and distributing what money they created therefore might temporarily feed a few people but plunge society into poverty long term.
The reason poverty levels plummet as billionairs become more numerous is because a society that has a lot of well performing wealth generators makes all of society wealthier and has been shown to significantly reduce poverty levels.
I agree that a well functioning market creates a lot of wealth for everyone and reduces poverty. There's innovation. There's cheaper and better stuff and services. I strongly support a mixed economy.
IDK why you keep saying it this way, but I am not for destroying wealth generators. Successful businesses who don't create billionaires also generate wealth. Billionaires don't prove the economy is good, but they are most easily able to use that wealth to thwart competition.
The point your missing is the existance of billionairs is in no way something to avoid... why would you want to, their existance takes from no one, and contributes **hugely** to the economy, in such a way that if they didnt exist we would all be worse off.
No billionairs dont "prove" the economy is good, but a good economy will have few poor people and many rich people, the more so the better.
do you think a gazillionaire would be something to avoid? do you think they might be able to use that money to garner power in a way that even the smart democracies might have a problem dealing with if his interests went against those of the public? maybe buying all our telecommunications infrastructure and politicians and military industries? maybe just confusing people about the threat of climate change?
> do you think a gazillionaire would be something to avoid?
No it isnt a good thing, because someone owning a fictional amount of money would make no sense and I dont like things not making sense.
in all seriousness though, in and of itself, no. But not all super-wealthy are good just as not all are bad. People who have wealth may generate it (provide services we want) or may get it through exploitation (literally stealing or inciting wars). So long as the wealthy person is one who largely made their money generating that wealth then yes its a good thing no matter how much they have (because it didnt reduce the amount anyone else had). However if they got that wealth through the destruction of wealth (for example literally robbing a bank) then no it isnt a good thing.
> do you think they might be able to use that money to garner power in a way that even the smart democracies might have a problem dealing with if his interests went against those of the public?
That depends largely on the society. While I am opposed to just taking a persons money simply for having money I am all for making sure money can not buy influence in a society when it comes to our policies and governance. A persons money only has as much power as we let it as a society. If we all had integrity then that money couldnt buy anyone or anything that wasnt something we as a society are ok with. So if you find things are being bought with money that money shouldnt be able to buy (such as votes for politicians) then that is a problem.
Remember people can pool their resources into a common organization. So I dont care any more or less about 1 super rich evil dude than I care about 100,000 evil middle class dudes.
> maybe buying all our telecommunications infrastructure and politicians and military industries?
They would be unable to do this if those non-billionairs simply refused to sell to them. Or if the government prevented it through anti-trust laws (I am against monopolies but all for the rich).
we do not have the perfect society where massive wealth cannot influence lots of people in lots of different ways. I'd be for ancapistan or communism if I thought people were interested or able to thrive in those situations too etc.
you should care whether it's a billionaire or 100k middle class dudes. because wanting to do evil is rarely the problem. it's not understanding other perspectives and not having to compromise. that's the danger of billionaires in a democracy.
my argument actually dispels conspiracy theory from a logical perspective imo. they think one evil group agrees on everything and is running shit and that's why society sucks. I'm saying people do pursue their interests but they don't think they are doing evil and they constantly disagree. concentrated wealth will unbalance democracy in that people don't have to find compromises, and that will make society suck for most people who can't push as hard as the wealthiest few.
> we do not have the perfect society where massive wealth cannot influence lots of people in lots of different ways. I'd be for ancapistan or communism if I thought people were interested or able to thrive in those situations too etc.
No we dont... which is why you shouldnt try to fix it by doing one of the most harmful things we can do: destroy wealth generators and push everyone to extreme poverty and starvation.
Its not like taking all their resources would be easy, there is a reason communist countries had uprisings by the people demanding capitalism. So you have two difficult tasks ahead, you can steal everyones money and cause massive harm to society, or take the equally hard route and try to fix our governments and people so they have values and integrity. While neither is easy at least the latter actually results in a healthier better society, rather than actively trying to make things worse by identifying the root of a problem and then addressing a symptom instead.
> you should care whether it's a billionaire or 100k middle class dudes. because wanting to do evil is rarely the problem. it's not understanding other perspectives and not having to compromise. that's the danger of billionaires in a democracy.
I see you have never gotten to know a billionaire. Many understand others perspectives rather well, in fact, its kinda a prerequisite to see success in most business (cant sell shit to people if you dont understand their points of view). As for not needing to compromise, tell that to must, he took a no-compromise approach as of late and his fortune has crashed directly as a result (and if he keeps it up he will loose it all eventually).
I'm not for stealing all their money. I'm for a much higher progressive income tax top rate at least. like we had in the US during the 50s. worldwide.
but yes, do both. imo the fedi ala media decentralization and finding an ad free way to fund media without paywalls will do more for advancing the public interest than something like campaign finance reform. billionaires will try to squash us too if we ever look like a real threat.
https://time.com/6112318/american-democracy-final-five-voting/
> I'm not for stealing all their money. I'm for a much higher progressive income tax top rate at least. like we had in the US during the 50s. worldwide.
Yes I am aware that you want a grossly unfair and abusive rate that will take the overwhelming majority of their resources/wealth but not all of it... and again, taking the overwhelming majority of money from people on the criteria that they have proven themselves the most effective wealth generators in society (several orders of magnitude above millionairs) is again probably the most self destructive thing you could do.
Thing is, you are also not well studied on this. The effective tax rate paid by the rich in 1950s was more or less the same as it is today.
Here is an explanation along with a chart of actual tax rates for you:
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/
And "do both" is hardly a solution, why do one self-destructive thing and one good thing and call that good?
You keep trying to eliminate something that isnt a bad thing, something that is actually a good thing, especially when you consider that more billionaires directly relates to fewer people in poverty. Having bigger and better wealth generators is **good** for economy, not bad, so no reason to eliminate it, full stop.
> as your article says, the 50s tax rates barely actually had any impact on the wealthy.
The article says nothing of the sort
> except you're wrong about it being a self-destructive thing.
I have presented actual evidence, namely the fact that as wealth disparity increased (more billionaires) the number below the poverty line plummited (from 70% world wide to ~10%)... So the actual numbers are against your assertions and you've done nothing to demonstrate your own stance with facts, just unsubstantiated claims about it being bad.
the article says there is an effective 6% change in taxes on the wealthy between 1950s and 2014. when we had an amazing economy and lots of govt support for science, infrastructure, education and buying homes. I agree that allowing people to improve themselves makes a strong economy but that doesn't necessarily include no limits to wealth accumulating or some mythical appropriate limit on taxing wealth. middle classes matter more. we see massive poverty with extreme wealth.
> the article says there is an effective 6% change in taxes on the wealthy between 1950s and 2014.
The article says we never really had a 91% tax rate, we had an effective ~40% tax rate... Yes having a small effective change in tax rate has a smaller less destructive effect on rich people, whereas if we had an **actual** effective 91% tax rate we would have seen a much larger destructive effect.
Your argumentitive tactics just got really weird and dishonest on that one (the rest I disagreed with but seemed in good faith)... hoping that was just a fluke.
> when we had an amazing economy and lots of govt support for science, infrastructure, education and buying homes.
As the article points out the tax rate was very similar to todays, not the 91% people claim... So your right having a more reasonable tax rate near 40% is why the economy didnt completely collapse and could still do some good.
> middle classes matter more. we see massive poverty with extreme wealth.
See there you go making stuff up again. The actual data directly contradicts this.. AS we see more extreme wealth poverty has objectively went down, but 1/7th of what it used to be when there was far less wealthy.... you cant just make stuff up like that when the data is the exact opposite.
economies opened up and poverty decreased, as expected. you are connecting opening these economies with more billionaires, such that if at the same time as the economies opened up, they taxed wealth so there were less billionaires but more education and better infrastructure and health care for the poor etc, you'd argue poverty would get worse. that's ridiculous. more billionaires and less poverty are both a result of a more open economy, but taxes used well can also help.
@wjmaggos I know @freemo is addressing the path forward, but I still want to focus on the path backwards.
How did the gazillionaire get that money?
Every rich person became rich because they provided value to other people who themselves judged that whatever the person was doing was of such tremendous value that they were willing to give up their own money in exchange for that value.
Whether you agree with them is immaterial.
The money doesn't grow on trees. The rich person provided value to society sufficient to obtain that status.
It's like complaining that a doctor got a large paycheck. Well, the paycheck was a result of the doctor providing medical care. If you just look at the paycheck while ignoring the value provided that led to the paycheck you aren't seeing the full picture.
Gazillionaires are nothing to be avoided because becoming a gazillionaire is necessarily the result of providing more than a gazillion worth of value to others.
That there are gazillionaires is a positive sign of people working for others.
I would just point out that luck counts in favor of the system, not against it.
Yes, people risk their capital against luck. They bet on questionable investments. Is this R&D on solar cells going to pay off? Are we going to be able to build this wind farm? Well, we put our cash on the line and we hope fortune favors us.
Yes, a lot of that does come down to luck, but we want people to be betting on these efforts that end up helping humanity.
Just because there's luck involved doesn't mean the effort isn't worthwhile. It's even more reason that we should applaud the people who put their own money toward these risky efforts.
The billionaire got lucky. That just means he risked his resources on an effort that ended up succeeding and helping others.
No doubt the world has an element of luck in it. But there is a reason successful people keep being successful even after bankruptcy and failures while unsuccessful people keep going back to being unsuccessfully after they get lucky and win some money they burn.
Its a bit like being a card counter in a friends-only texas holdem game (no house). Sure there is an element of luck but if you hedge your bets properly that luck doesnt matter so much over the long run.
Sure, but my point here is that even if we accept the argument, it still doesn't really work.
I think that in reality people do have some skill that choosing the better risks to take. But even if we set that aside and we accept the argument that people like @wjmaggos seem to be making, even if it is pure chance with no skill at all, even in that unrealistic case their argument still falls flat.
Even if there is zero skill to choosing the flip of the coin that might or might not benefit humanity, it's still a good thing that these people with resources take the risk and risk their resources for the sake of the coin coming up heads and benefiting us all.
The billionaire didn't work harder than the millionaire and it was all luck? Fine! Either way, their luck benefited us all. Even if you want to ignore the reality that there was work involved.
I'm saying there was equal work involved. The difference between the multi millionaire and the billionaire was luck. Right industry, right time etc. So taxing that off (not so that they are regular, just a multi millionaire now etc) should not reduce incentives, will give them less power to fuck around and help others (lower taxes or better services or investments chosen by the public through democracy, not their VC friends).
@wjmaggos @volkris Why would we want someone to be paid for doing work regardless of the value it provides, if we do that people will not provide value to society as they have no motivation to do hard work with large reward.
Bob got high and spun around in his chair in circles for 10 hours, it was a lot of work. Why should I pay him the same amount of money as the guy who built 10 cars on the construction line that actually enables other people to do their work more effectively?
I am not paying you for wasting energy doing "anything", I pay you (give you something I worked hard for) because you did something for me I **needed**.
Why on earth would you think out of fairness people who do work we need should be the same as people who do work we dont need. Wasting energy is not something we should reward.
> I'm saying there was equal work involved. The difference between the multi millionaire and the billionaire was luck.
I was responding to this part of the message just to be clear.
But also in addition the difference isnt luck or amount of work, its investment. The poor person likely took bad risks and/or focused on short term easy gains rather than harder long term gains. The billionaire on the other hand spent their time learning, studying, aquiring skills, building networks, saving and sacraficing, all while not making a penny, often over very long periods of time. They start companies that fail and eventually all that time they invested will pay off.
The poor person usually works a 9-5 and may even work more 60 hours, but they do little in investing in themselves to get out of it (usually). Those that do try are irresponsible, usually being cocky without the skills to back it up.
One common pattern is the poor usually despise the rich, so they never both to learn from them (most rich people are eager to take on mentees I find). The people who succeed usually work under someone who has been successful and cares a great deal about learning from them and will often take councel in many business experts in their journey.
why are you talking about poor people? I'm comparing the billionaire vs the multi millionaire. I'm saying what separates them is luck. and I'm saying that taxing that difference is essentially taxing the bonus one guy got from working his ass off or making a smart investment in the slightly better industry for the time. they both did great and deserve to live well etc. I'm not eliminating that by reducing the billionaire to a multi millionaire thru progressive taxes.
> why are you talking about poor people?
Because the poor people are the ones suffering, not the millionairs. I dont care about wealth disparity, I care about the quality of life of the poorest people and what percentage are below the poverty line, I work from the bottom up.
More billionairs mean fewer people in extreme poverty. That is the win, not how well off the millionairs are, who are welcome to exist, but their quality of life is not my top concern.
> I'm comparing the billionaire vs the multi millionaire
You shouldnt be, the millionaires arent suffering, improving their quality of life should not be the focus.
> I'm saying what separates them is luck.
Which is wrong, while there is an element of luck it is quite obvious if you knows these sorts of people that a millionaire has a very different approach to money than a billionaire. A billionaire isnt lucky, statistically that doesnt make much sense as most are not billionairs from single ventures, they become rich over many many short term successes and failures. Over long periods of time luck averages out and its mostly skill... Unless you became a billionaire over night or inhereited it (which is a minority among the rich) then its skill mostly with an element of luck that is fairly minor.
> they both did great and deserve to live well etc. I'm not eliminating that by reducing the billionaire to a multi millionaire thru progressive taxes.
They both did well but the fact that the difference is mostly luck is just pure nonsense... the billionaire consistently made better choices. They are usually far more skilled at generating wealth than millionaires, this should be apparent given that these are long term gains over hundreds of thousands of decisions, not a roll of the dice.
@freemo
I also want to decentralize all media and get rid of advertising and pass political reforms, but a person with a $1b is going to have a lot of power when most don't have $1m. I'm for taking the money away, not the people. I'd rather we have such a competitive market that no company or person ever has such unfair advantages imo. how is it self-destructive?