661–670 of 697 posts
Why did you feel the need to post this article? It totally lacks substance. The above quote says it all.
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Is that the topic of discussion? I thought it was something along the lines of “tax the rich so we can do things with the money”. That is the area I’m saying it is a no-op in. Statements without context frequently don’t mean the same as what they mean with context.
this argument ignores basic opportunity costs. taxing that wealth allows the state to redirect labor and materials production and distribution toward high-utility public goods: high-speed rail, dense urban cores, and affordable housing. instead of subsidizing insolvent suburbs, we could be modernizing the logistics network and actually growing the real economy. worse, you completely miss the political dimension. hoar…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A system that is closer to physical, tangible reality is more "real" than one built on many layers of concepts, beliefs and ideas. Just as "real assets" like buildings, machinery and metals are more "real" than abstract assets. Abstract assets like shares of a corporation, intellectual property, cash in a bank account, promises to deliver a commodity in the future, and other intangible concepts only exist because we…
"rules-based order to might-makes-right" These are the same. They are the same because someone has to enforce the rules. The reason why this entire discussion is so obtuse is because you refuse to accept this. If I was wrong and they were different, you wouldn't treat the US and others (say China) by the different moral standards. To bring this back to an individual level, this is the same as saying police don't dete…
You don't know anything about me, but the strawman you're describing sounds like a real dipshit.
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There's no law of nature that proves democracy can't be overthrown, but ICE is currently struggling against popular resistance to merely enforce immigration law in a single medium-sized city. Right now there's not much indication they have either the desire or operational capacity to pull off nationwide voter suppression. (And a number of special elections over the past year have defeated regime-backed candidates wit…
If they tried to merely immigration law, they would had no issue. They were successful at creating fear and making conflict avoidant people stay home. Despite large amount of protesters, that is real effect. And it would create real vote suppression. You would had people not voting out of fear. And the opposing side having less votes (even if they win, they win less)
Equally importantly, this is not an operation that could be planned in secret or at the drop of the hat. If the Trump regime tries to do something like this, we'll know weeks or months in advance, and there will be plenty of time to make it clear that anyone who participates will face swift and severe justice.
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Yeah basically every single academic and economist knows the Chinese government lies about its GDP numbers and pumps out fake stats. Its the Chinese way.
People say this, but it’s also not the exact reality. You can verify a lot of things, like import/export data. Basically import stats from one country should match China’s export to that country stat and so on. People just have trouble understanding the complexity of China, and assume nothing they say can be true. It has a lot of problems, but progress and ability to make money isn’t one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that the topic of discussion? I thought it was something along the lines of “tax the rich so we can do things with the money”. That is the area I’m saying it is a no-op in. Statements without context frequently don’t mean the same as what they mean with context.
this argument ignores basic opportunity costs. taxing that wealth allows the state to redirect labor and materials production and distribution toward high-utility public goods: high-speed rail, dense urban cores, and affordable housing. instead of subsidizing insolvent suburbs, we could be modernizing the logistics network and actually growing the real economy. worse, you completely miss the political dimension. hoar…
Printing money and spending it on those projects would have literally the same effect.
I’m responding to what I infer as the notion that people must have to say what they say about UBI, which is the implicit “we will pay for X and that will be it” not “we will make other goods more expensive in order to have X, and how we are happening to implement that is by taxing the rich”.
Like how about we just eliminate corporate-government corruption? Like there are a lot of shit business people today with a lot of shit politicians in their pockets, and many of them did not legitimately earn what they have, but is it really better to prevent the accumulation of capital over a certain amount? Then the powerful in your society are people who won a popularity contest.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
this argument ignores basic opportunity costs. taxing that wealth allows the state to redirect labor and materials production and distribution toward high-utility public goods: high-speed rail, dense urban cores, and affordable housing. instead of subsidizing insolvent suburbs, we could be modernizing the logistics network and actually growing the real economy. worse, you completely miss the political dimension. hoar…
I can’t tell if the commenter you replied to is being deliberately obtuse, or if they were literally born yesterday
I’m certainly open to a direct counter argument, but all I’ve seen so far is tap dancing.
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Laws aren't fictitious just because people/countries break them. No one writes a law thinking "that settles that, no more embezzling." Laws simply tell you how that system works: you embezzle, FBI arrests you, you get tried, etc. Also the US always made a big deal about not joining various treaties, with their reasoning explicitly being "we actually plan to do a lot of things that would violate that treaty." In that…
Ofcourse people break laws. But they are enforceable and the authorities have absolute power to enforce them. Putin can get away doing whatever the f he wants but nobody in Canada can get away with breaking any law they want whenever they feel like it, for example. That's the difference between the very real Canadian laws over Canadians and "international law" over nobody. Now Canada can pass a law that is in line wi…