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Life During Class Wartime

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Re: Life During Class Wartime

#111

Post by jimbob45 »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #95

> As a resident of a wealthy West-Coast New-World city, the effects of pathological inequality are in my face every day: Bentleys gleaming on the road, ragged people huddled in the rain cadging cash outside the drugstores, thousands homeless. I also live in a wealthy West-Coast New-World city, and attributing these phenomena to pathological inequality badly misdiagnoses the problem. Most visibly homeless people in we…

At some point, it’s not a shortage. Everyone naturally wants to live in the best city on earth but expecting one city to house 8 billion people is silly. It’s okay to admit that some cities are at their natural reasonable capacity.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#112

Post by georgeecollins »

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.

A great practical suggestion comes in the recent book: "The Second Estate" by Ray Madoff. It is an excellent analysis of the changes to tax policy in the US that have gotten us here. (Yes, I know this isn't just a US problem, but the US is the most important part.) One key suggestion is just to make transferring money into any trust (any!) a taxable event so that capital gains must be realized.

It sounds trivial but the effect to various tax evasion strategies is very important. It's also something that really ought to be uncontroversial. Read the book!

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#113

Post by jacquesm »

nervysnail wrote: post #72
Muromec wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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

How did it take away national self-determination exactly? The Soviet model regarding self-determination was definitely better than what any other nation had. I probably don't have to mention that Lenin wrote a whole book on national self-determination, defending the right to self-determination on the condition that it does not harm the socialist project. Although one may call it superficial, a mere formality no indic…

Well, in large part by murdering those that were actually trying to self-determinate...

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#114

Post by jacquesm »

cdrnsf wrote: post #80

Reversing Citizens United, publicly funding elections, installing a functional regulatory regime and equitable taxation would go a long way. Perhaps we could also engage in less ill considered military adventurism as well? Causing a domestic affordability crisis as a distraction and a salve for one's ego seems like a bad idea.

You'll find half the voting population is aligned with the capital against that. So I don't think that will fly until the situation becomes quite dire.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#115

Post by themafia »

yabones wrote: post #52

For the vast majority of human civilization, all taxes were based on wealth. Your emperor, pharaoh, czar, or whoever was in charge sent a dude around to take a bit of everybody's stuff. Not how much income they made but how much stuff they actually had . It's only been the last 120-ish years that the idea that wealth and income were totally different things as far as taxation is concerned emerged. I think almost ever…

We have property tax, sales tax and inheritance tax.

We also have mountains of loopholes through all of these.

If you can afford a tax attourney your outcomes will be far better than those who cannot.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#116

Post by themafia »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #95

> As a resident of a wealthy West-Coast New-World city, the effects of pathological inequality are in my face every day: Bentleys gleaming on the road, ragged people huddled in the rain cadging cash outside the drugstores, thousands homeless. I also live in a wealthy West-Coast New-World city, and attributing these phenomena to pathological inequality badly misdiagnoses the problem. Most visibly homeless people in we…

> Most visibly homeless people in wealthy west coast cities are severely mentally ill

Is that _why_ they're homeless? And are you aware of "drug induced schizophrenia?"

> which local authorities are reluctant to do because there's no nice way to institutionalize people.

There are no _cheap_ ways to do it. There are _tons_ of nice ways to do it.

> so all types of housing are very expensive.

And you're speaking of an area that has weather patterns that are conducive to living outside.

> Neither of these problems has much to do with extremely wealthy people, or wealth inequality in a general sense.

Immediately? No. Proximally? Yes. Obviously.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#117

Post by snapdragonzoro »

Atlas667 wrote: post #11

Do you really understand class war? Your suggestion is having the state legislate this away as if the state isn't fully compromised by the capitalist class? This is the main lesson of the 20th century that liberals refuse to accept; that the state is controlled by capitalist class interests. Capitalist democracy is a curated racket. And even if we were to force legislation exactly as described above it can't and hasn…

Every state that has implemented marxist ideals has had their economy made up almost entirely of the state, that level of state oversight over the economy is just an extreme version of our current model of highly bureaucratic, bloated states where the owners/controllers over the means of production are syncronized with the state and its interests.

It was an ideology that at its height ruled a third of the world including some of the most populous and resource rich territories on earth yet still fell within decades.

The increased income inequality within much of the developed world has happened at the same time as ever increasing state influence over the economy.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#118

Post by denkmoon »

wrqvrwvq wrote: post #78
tantaman wrote: post #26

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.

I don't think just paying people will make any difference at all. Most of the chronically poor in US at least have underlying problems such as addiction, schizophrenia or other affective disorders. Most chronically homeless people have turned down multiple state subsidized living options or have been booted from them for anti-social behavior. Studies routinely show that 30-40% of food stamps are sold for pennies on t…

> Most of the chronically poor in US at least have underlying problems such as addiction, schizophrenia or other affective disorders. Most chronically homeless people have turned down multiple state subsidized living options or have been booted from them for anti-social behavior. Studies routinely show that 30-40% of food stamps are sold for pennies on the dollar to pay for drugs or other unnecessary things.

Completely unsubstantiated FUD. The underlying problem is the structure of the economic system they reside in.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#119

Post by tmsh »

I agree with this. I think the point that's often missed about taxing the ultra-wealthy is it incentivizes them to work through people more instead of doing it all themselves. This is a good incentive.

E.g., if I have no noticeable tax on my wealth as I create impact for the world through my companies I'm going to keep being the one person in charge of that (to achieve my mission of reaching mars, etc.). But if I'm going to get nicked (to the tune of billions of dollars even at 2% etc), on average I'm going to redeploy my assets via people I trust in the company etc. I might even invest more in public welfare projects. It is fair arguably that there is this forcing function because one's value accrues from those projects originally. So there is an elegant symmetry at the end too.

It would be unfair to tax billionaires more if they truly worked in a vacuum and provided value to the economy through very few dependencies. But that's never the case. And right now too much excess is spent on things like these sport teams via inherited wealth etc.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#120

Post by jrflowers »

hermitcrab wrote: post #108
sophacles wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most ideologies are terrible in those regards. The various forms of democratic capitalism have been pretty big on genocide and oppression too. Most of them were were pretty unconcerned with Hitler until after the marxist-leninists were already fighting him. Not sure what point you're trying to make.

>Most of them were were pretty unconcerned with Hitler until after the marxist-leninists were already fighting him. Britain, France and allies were fighting Hitler in 1939. Russia was allied with Hitler until 1941, when Hitler attacked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...

I love this link about a treaty, which the Soviets broke quickly, that was the direct result of a different treaty between Nazi Germany, the UK, France, and Italy that was signed a year earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement

It seems like the signatories to that treaty had no issue with the Nazis annexing particular bits of Europe at the time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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