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Life During Class Wartime

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Re: Life During Class Wartime

#121

Post by strongpigeon »

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…

Wow, exempting people over 60 from property tax is such a fiscal self-own... The way to do it is to provide a deferral with interest which becomes a lien on your property. This way you can still live in your house, take advantage of your asset appreciating and the county still gets its taxes in the end (and can better handle the delayed cash flows). King County in WA does this for example.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#123

Post by deschutes »

100721 wrote: post #103
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 in ways that prevent them from living a normal life or even living peacefully with other people without some kind of institutionalization Sources? This just sounds like cope from a wealthy individual who wants to feel better about not helping the problem.

It's hard to find anyone that doesn't have some motivation in this problem. I won't claim any percentages because I do not know them and I would not trust them even if I did.

That said, my experience in a urban area on the west coast has given me many examples that support this notion that it's not just a housing problem. Indeed many of the local governments own attempts to house the unhoused fail in no small part because the unhoused create conditions incompatible with staying housed.

Furthermore there is a steady drip of examples in regional news that raise serious questions about the efficacy if not motivations of the judiciary, politicians, law enforcement and local beuracracies charged with addressing the problem.

I do believe that housing costs are a major part of the problem but I also believe that treating the population as if they have no obligations to society is a major and fatal mistake to the whole enterprise. For one the policy approach has invited contagion by not addressing the population of unhoused that cannot or will not uphold the most basic aspects of the social contract. For two, it turns away a large number of people that would otherwise be sympathetic to the cause.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#124

Post by NickC25 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #31
harimau777 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think it helps to draw some distinctions here. Nordic countries have strong social welfare systems, but private property and free enterprise are still a thing. This is not at all the same as communism where everything is ultimately state owned and operated. China is an interesting example too because it's basically capitalist with strong government oversight. So you can go hog wild on exploiting labor and amassing…

>So you can go hog wild on exploiting labor and amassing wealth as long as you don't oppose the overall goals of the government

Or get TOO big. You can get a few billion here and there, but don't think that you're bigger than the government. And don't act like it, either.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#125

Post by w10-1 »

OK, sure, tax wealth of the rich -- if you can somehow outdo their self-interested political action. Even the most extreme viable wealth taxes proposals target ~2%.

My question is really the economic efficiency of their other 98%, which is becoming about half of available resources.

I suspect the evidence would show their investment gains are less from productivity and more from coordinated extractions, and that there are severe limitations that come from consolidated decision-making (after all, the premise behind the market is that the collective is smarter than the king). Not to mention that buckets of money probably are also alienating and defeat healthy self-discipline, particularly for the next generation.

I would love instead to find that new money seeks and creates new opportunities, particularly those that are beyond what you can convince collectives to do.

It's pretty obvious that ants threatening elephants won't go far, but (to abuse the analogy) I suspect elephants would take helpful hints. Expanding wealth inequality should make it easier for great ideas to take off, so perhaps that's a better focus.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#126

Post by tyg13 »

thunky wrote: post #93
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…

> I think almost everybody would be better off if taxes were something like 1% of total assets rather than off the top of your income No thanks. Any discussion about tax reform has to start with government spending otherwise it's not serious. Nobody wants to give away a slice of their net worth to pay for bullshit wars and ballrooms.

> Nobody wants to give away a slice of their net worth to pay for bullshit wars and ballrooms.

The vast majority of people in America are already doing this, because their wealth is entirely derived from their income. Your complaint isn't relevant to the discussion of wealth vs income taxes.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#127

Post by xboxnolifes »

timbray wrote: post #99
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…

I'm highly unconvinced of the proposition that most homeless are severely mentally ill; the data I've seen doesn't support it. That's some of it, and also addiction. But a lot of them just can't make the rent. Agree on the underbuilding.

As an anecdote, two people in my family have been or are homeless (don't know their current situation) entirely because they are incapable of continually making basic, smart financial decisions. At the level of "I decided to just not show up to work today" or "I spent my entire week's pay on a new toy". They both received enormous financial and social support from various people in the family, but always eventually just end up spending all their money somehow, or they get fired, or even just quit their job(!). Both eventually ran away from the responsibilities they built up into a different state.

I don't know if we should call this inability to make basic, smart financial decisions a mental illness or not, but it's something. And these 2 people aren't/weren't even what I would consider visibly homeless. At least as long as you didn't see them living in their car behind a convenience store.

Starting with the framing that housing is just too expensive makes the problem simple. You build more housing, or you subsidize housing for these people, or somehow just inject money into services for them so they can get back on their feet. But if that's not the core issue for some or many of these people, how do you actually help these people? How does a society help people who are incapable of handling their own finances? That's where the hard questions begin.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#128

Post by [deleted] »

deschutes wrote: post #123
100721 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most visibly homeless people in wealthy west coast cities are severely mentally ill in ways that prevent them from living a normal life or even living peacefully with other people without some kind of institutionalization Sources? This just sounds like cope from a wealthy individual who wants to feel better about not helping the problem.

It's hard to find anyone that doesn't have some motivation in this problem. I won't claim any percentages because I do not know them and I would not trust them even if I did. That said, my experience in a urban area on the west coast has given me many examples that support this notion that it's not just a housing problem. Indeed many of the local governments own attempts to house the unhoused fail in no small part be…

[deleted]

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#129

Post by metabagel »

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…

I think you're seeing a segment of the homeless population and assuming that it represents the whole. It's likely that you encounter homeless people in your daily life and don't recognize them as being homeless.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#130

Post by FireBeyond »

inglor_cz wrote: post #70
gazebo2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that state action is the direct result of wealth's influence over the state and how it operates

Two of the three (housing and education) don't seem to be caused by that. Neither restrictive zoning, nor the administrative bloat in academia that caused tuition to skyrocket, were lobbied into existence by people like Bezos and Musk. They are result of tireless lobbying of relatively unimportant people seeking their own little rent.

> nor the administrative bloat in academia that caused tuition to skyrocket

While, let's be clear, administrative bloat in academia is a very real issue, pointing to that as the true root issue is far more nebulous. Student loans being made non-dischargeable by bankruptcy meant that universities could afford to raise tuitions because lenders would be happy/ier to fund those loans because they will get their pound of flesh, even if it takes decades longer than designed.

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