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Life During Class Wartime

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Re: Life During Class Wartime

#21

Post by timbray »

AlexandrB wrote: post #18

The elephant in the room is why governments need more money: old age benefits like social security. I fear that taxing wealth will just be a tax on future investment while funnelling that wealth to the elderly. Already, folks are pushing to make the key asset owned by the old - housing - free from property taxes (if you're over 60, naturally)[1] which will only push housing prices up and drive more budget deficits th…

Well, healthcare is an increasing piece of government spending all over the world, and the population is aging, so politics and policy aside, that number is going to go up.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#22

Post by verall »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #9
tardedmeme wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extreme power inequality seems to be the default state of human society. Power concentrates until it's maximally concentrated, then stays there. Power shakeups seem to usually replace one group of elites with another group of smaller or the same size. Exceptions to this rule come about for specific reasons. Before the industrial revolution, there just wasn't that much power to go around. Everyone was working their la…

I don't know why you're down voted. Perhaps the observation that inequality is often and the noble savage utopian dream of "all pigs are equal" is not the norm is too a bitter pill to swallow

I believe it's because in many cases, the unspoken follow on to "inequality is the norm" is "and so it's useless (or actively harmful) to try to defy that norm."

Not that above commentator is meaning that.

But many "thought leaders" i.e. Jordan Petersen play around with similar motte-and-bailey - "hierarchies are natural" (examples with lobsters, apes, whatever) --> "existing hierarchies should be preserved" (not defended in the argument but implied).

Probably some downvoters are reacting to the structural similarity, although taken in good faith i think above commenter makes a fine point about the historical pattern of periods of equality being short lived and brought about by great intentional effort while sliding back to inequality seems to occur all of the time.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#23

Post by harimau777 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #20
hootz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the west, the prevalent idea is that socialism/communism lost and that there is nothing beyond capitalism. This is it, we will forever live in a social-democracy state. I wonder who promotes this idea.

> In the west, the prevalent idea is that socialism/communism lost and that there is nothing beyond capitalism. It didn't just "lose", it killed millions of its own people in the process. Having been born in a communist state, I'd rather clean toilets in American than do anything else in the USSR. Edit: It's basically impossible to communicate the day-to-day misery and deprivation of late stage Communism without soun…

What about all the places where that didn't happen? E.g. the Nordic countries where social democracy has been extremely successful.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#24

Post by hootz »

AlexandrB wrote: post #20
hootz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the west, the prevalent idea is that socialism/communism lost and that there is nothing beyond capitalism. This is it, we will forever live in a social-democracy state. I wonder who promotes this idea.

> In the west, the prevalent idea is that socialism/communism lost and that there is nothing beyond capitalism. It didn't just "lose", it killed millions of its own people in the process. Having been born in a communist state, I'd rather clean toilets in American than do anything else in the USSR. Edit: It's basically impossible to communicate the day-to-day misery and deprivation of late stage Communism without soun…

We are currently killing millions of our own people. Communism is not stuck in time with the USSR.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#25

Post by hootz »

harimau777 wrote: post #23
AlexandrB wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the west, the prevalent idea is that socialism/communism lost and that there is nothing beyond capitalism. It didn't just "lose", it killed millions of its own people in the process. Having been born in a communist state, I'd rather clean toilets in American than do anything else in the USSR. Edit: It's basically impossible to communicate the day-to-day misery and deprivation of late stage Communism without soun…

What about all the places where that didn't happen? E.g. the Nordic countries where social democracy has been extremely successful.

But why is it successful? Where did their money come from? How sustainable is it? The core issues from capitalism still exist there, but they have more money with a smaller population.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#26

Post by tantaman »

Increased taxation would be defensible if it was paired with spending reform. Increasing the tax to just inflate a bureaucracy helps nobody. Increasing the tax and then directly paying people, with no PMC in the middle, seems win-win-win.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#28

Post by Muromec »

nervysnail wrote: post #8
zug_zug wrote: post #3

Yeah I'm glad somebody's talking about it. Wealth inequality seems like it will be THE defining issue of our lives (accelerated drastically by AI). I think there are many practical ways to solve it, and would love to see more proposals out there. Instead I tend to see nihilism or division.

[flagged]

... was an ideology that gave 200 million of people universal healthcare, universal childcare, public housing and increased luteracy rates but took away democracy and national self determination, unleashed genocide and allied with literal Hitler

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#29

Post by enoch_r »

FabCH wrote: post #15
readthenotes1 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then?

Not to condone the violence OP is calling for, but we have very recent examples of what happens when somebody does this. The factual answer to your question is: „for a limited time, rejections rates by health insurance companies plummets“

This doesn't appear to be true at all. Do you have a source?

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#30

Post by Muromec »

cfst wrote: post #2

Regarding the IMF report, is it actually harder to hide wealth than income, or is it that there are so few global taxes on wealth that nobody's currently bothering to hide it? It seems like income, being a continuous series of transactions, would be the more difficult of the two.

Fun fact: when there was meaningful data on Ukraine, it was number 1 in the world by wealth inequality and at the same time had the best score at income equality.

Likelt has to do with not having any property or wealth taxes, but having modest incone taxes that were rigorosly collected

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