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As posted on Diaspora Europe on 27th October 2021.
@freemo
@iankenway
I agree with Freemo. The problem is not capitalism in general but its contemporary laissez-faire, neoliberal and crony capitalist forms. In the George Monbiot article linked in Ian's previous tweet, most if not all of his proposals, including the wealth tax and the idea of public luxury and private sufficiency, are quite compatible with social democracy, and thus with some form of capitalism.
In my opinion, the meme itself is more likely to alienate than convince, because while some people will associate the use of the word "capitalism" solely with the aforementioned forms, others will associate the use with any system involving some private ownership of capital. The people who are undecided on the matter of climate change action will be more likely to have the latter association, and will be more likely to recoil at the meme than agree with it.
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I strongly disagree on wealth tax, that is not healthy for a society and people having wealth, even a lot of it, is not an indication of an unfair society.
I do agree with the fact that there is a problem where the poor dont get as fair a chance to rise up out of poverty as they should. I also agree markets arent as free as they should be both in terms of corruption as well as excessive regulation. But wealth tax implies that excessive wealth is the problem, it is not. At worst it may be a symptom of other inherent problems.
@freemo
To be clear, I am still undecided on wealth taxes myself.
The point is that few, if any, of the proposals I have heard from Monbiot or most other people in his crowd are even incompatible with at least some form of capitalism, so saying that capitalism itself is the issue rather than the particular form of capitalism seen now (or, as some other than me might argue, specific swathes of policy rather than the entire form of capitalism used) is at best hasty and at worst motivated reasoning.
@iankenway
I would argue a wealth tax is directly contrary to healthy capitalism or capitalism at all. It penalizes anyone who makes money, thats the opposite of a free market where making or loosing money is considered natural and desirable for the population.
Indeed, a business can succeed or fail if it fails you learn and try again.
Of course business can't survive without workers so in that resect you are still going to have the people at the top and people below doing their job. if your business makes and sells products you need a whole range of people.
Surely however the important thing is people feel they can truly move up and progress.
A company need not give the opportunity to move up if the world you live in is designed in such a way that you have good opportunity to start your own company that can compete with large companies well. In fact what youll find is that the easier it is for a worker to go off and start their own competing business the more it is in the best interest of large companies to provide career advancement opportunities in the first place, otherwise they loose their best workers and drive competition growth.
Yeah move up either in the same company or a higher position at a different company, or starting on your own.
@freemo
I'd agree that a general wealth tax is certainly not conducive to a market economy and very likely not a good idea, but one can still have it without getting rid of private ownership of the means of production.
Monbiot's proposal is presumably to do it on people with more than a certain amount. I am still undecided on whether this is a good idea; while it would probably lower inequality, it seems to be a bandaid on the problems of corruption, regulatory capture, and monopolization that seem to be what got much of the West into the current mess in the first place.
@iankenway
Surely it is not about who pays what taxes. Once that money is collected, it is what is done with it.
We need to have first class, equal education for all, that means regardless of where you are and the area you live in from rich areas to very poor areas, every person has a chance of a good education and can move forward, and should be encouraged to do so.
"its not about"... lets be careful here. There is what capitalism is about, and ther eis what the ideal form of government is about.
In a true capitalism you wouldnt have progressive taxes. A market isnt free if your penalized for using it successfully. So yes wealth tax is anti-capitalism.
That said a government should not be an ideologically pure capitalism either. While I do beleive capitalism should be a central tenant and most things operate with the intention of creating free markets, there are exceptions to this. A good government in my mind should be mostly capitalistic with a few exceptions.
For me I am a large promoter of a flat income tax (that means no wealth tax) and to shift most of our taxes to sales tax, particularly where luxury items have higher taxes than necessities. The sales tax therefore is still sort of a flat tax in that it isnt effected by your income, but it does mean that people who waste more money on luxuries rather than investments will pay more. Its not exactly capitalism since it discourages luxury purchases and thus not entierly free market. But does lean towards capitalism strongly and I think finds the proper balance.
I think this is what our chancellor has done with alcohol taxes,
the higher the alcohol content, the higher the tax on that product, a major shift from the previous model of taxing alcohol.
Seems to make more sense .
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/budget-2021-what-you-need-to-know
That one seems like a hairy one to me. On the one hand alcohol is a bit of a luxury so I get taxing it more than, say, a glass of club soda which is ultimately healthy and you need hydration.
At the same time i suspect the tax here is specifically intended to discourage people from drinking, a sort of punishment tax like we do with gasoline. I'm not so keen on that approach except where the tax is on something harmful. Like with gasoline I'm ok with it because gasoline causes harm and the tax money can be used to repair the damage (though sadly it rarely is but thats another issue)... but drinking alcohol, at least in moderation, is not something that strikes me as something that causes much harm (Again when not abused).
I think if the tax on the higher content could be put in to the NHS to help deal with alcohol related problems it may be a good idea.
But I do see your point, however what is has done is updated these taxes which have not changed since the mid 1800s or something.
To your other point about wealth concentration. I think thats a bit of a misnomer. The way you describe it seems to view wealth as a fixed quantity whereby if one person has too much there isnt enough for others. In fact wealth is not at all a fixed quantity and it is generate in large quantities, and tends to be generated whenever wealth itself moves around or even accumulates.
If a market is truely a healthy version of capitalism then having extremely rich people who own large amounts of wealth in fact would garuntee that large amounts of new wealth are created and owned by the masses, and ultimately this creates a healthy standard of living.
Now that said the USA is **not** a healthy capitalism, so having rich people int he USA doesnt always lead to the level of public wealth generation it ought to in a proper capitalism. But even int he USA this is generally true, the wealthy people generate massive quantities of new wealth for the general populace.
Its a simple concept to understand.. most rich people invest almost all their wealth. If you invest in things that are successful then you are generating new wealth for the businesses and share holders of these new companies. If you are rich you are probably very good at successfully investing. Ergo rich people having control over the majority of the money to invest insures we have new successful companies that represent newly generated wealth in large quantities. In turn that means every little old lady and worker with a 401K is making good money on a healthy economy with a lot of wealth growth.
Yea if 100% of the excessive tax on alcohol went to treat alcoholism then I would absolutely support this.
@mathlover @freemo @iankenway i'm going to have to read the thread, this sounds interesting. one of my main issues with capitalism - just offering this up - is it tends to remove personal responsibility from people untoward- they treat others in a transactional sense, vs a more communal sense. also- they tend to lack basic survival skills for life, if money wasn't in the picture. why "learn" when you can pay someone to do it? this is clearly bad.
Tht depends. If society cares about community then they will favor stores that are community minded. As such a capitalism where the culture of the society is communal will itself naturally take on a communal tone.
@freemo @mathlover @iankenway yes, the issue primarily there is when the body politic or law body decides to draft in favor of the governance and special interests rather than allowing people to live within safe and reasonable conditions that allay such things as community gardening, even at the expense of say grocery retail. but yeah agree. happy halloween, or some shit. :)
My apologies for not responding earlier.
There are many points I would like to make here, so I shall just make a few.
First, I'm not sure that any national government can be described as capitalist. It may however arise within a capitalist economic milieu or order and can promote and/or facilitate the same. (There is of course the slightly tricky question of how governments establish legitimacy in the first place within nation states and the legitimacy of nation states themselves!)
Secondly, while I believe in free markets myself, they are not in my view synonymous with capitalism, but simply a sine qua non for its emergence and continuation. The other factors that characterise it include share-holding, capital accumulation, pricing systems, private property (with associated recognised rights), voluntary exchange and wage labour. In addition, of course, capitalism is essentially predicated on usury.
Here's a starting point (and there others)
Marxian critiques of capitalism are well known, if not always well understood. However, the critiques arising from the current climate crisis are based on the central recognition that capitalism is essentially predicated on indefinite growth, is ideologically resistant to external constraints that limit profitability to shareholders, and ultimately puts consumerism before sustainability in the use of the finite resources of the earth. In short capitalism always has been and always will be rapacious and exploitative.
To be perfectly honest, I think that the problems with capitalism are simply legion and these will become more and more evident in the years ahead. There are many alternative economic and social models.
@iankenway "Nature's P&L statement day of reckoning..." http://bit.ly/1frMP4H
@iankenway I agree with the notion that binary choices are short sighted and generally wrong... I strongly disagree with the notion that capitalism is an inherently harmful form of government. In fact most things that people blame as hallmarks of capitalism are in fact by their nature a quality that is anti-capitalism. For example corruption caused by greed, when that occurs you no longer have a capitalism because corruption implies manipulation which implies you dont have a free market, which is what defines capitalism.