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Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

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Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#141

Post by WWLink »

deevolution wrote: post #128
dickeytk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between big companies and monopolies. Big companies will likely always be the ones offering the highest salaries and they'll always exist. Once they monopolize the labor market though: they'll no longer have a need to offer those wages as high (even if they're the highest within the market).

How do you break up alphabet?they will just move their corporation over seas, set up in africa and avoid any monopoly breakers. The government has no power over these companies. They would have to raid the offices and send the ceo to prison before alphabet agrees to break their monopoly.

The same way that most companies end up when they leave California. The engineers don't move away. They start up new companies that end up being competition to their old employer. Half the time, after some years, the big old company buys out the new competition and ends up with offices in the area again.

This happens all the time in the space industry lol.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#142

Post by dlp211 »

robomartin wrote: post #105

The only reason anyone in the US supports these people is because they have never lived in the socialist big government utopia these politicians champion. In fact, not even the politicians themselves have lived in the society they propose! How is that for a brilliant starting point. Ask anyone who has experienced these ideas in the flesh and you’ll find someone absolutely perplexed that US voters don’t laugh these pe…

Now name the Democrats trying to replace capitalism...I'll wait.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#143

Post by dlp211 »

rayiner wrote: post #135
dlp211 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France/EU is not the United States. There are structural reasons that make a wealth tax virtually impossible to implement in the EU, but aren't present in the US.

Like?

That if you lived in France and were subject to the wealth tax, you could simply leave France and no longer be subject to the wealth tax.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#144

Post by klaudius »

confidantlake wrote: post #44
throwGuardian wrote: post #18

[flagged]

The internet itself was in large part created by the us government.

Internet wasn't created by the government. Government simply stole from mostly wealthy people through taxation and paid researchers to develop basic technology. Also, the value of the internet is purely in the network effects. Internet is valuable because people use it and create stuff on top of it.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#145

Post by hollerith »

klaudius wrote: post #144
confidantlake wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet itself was in large part created by the us government.

Internet wasn't created by the government. Government simply stole from mostly wealthy people through taxation and paid researchers to develop basic technology. Also, the value of the internet is purely in the network effects. Internet is valuable because people use it and create stuff on top of it.

Downvoted for using words in a very idiosyncratic way that does not cast any additional light on the subject.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#146

Post by rayiner »

dlp211 wrote: post #143
rayiner wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like?

That if you lived in France and were subject to the wealth tax, you could simply leave France and no longer be subject to the wealth tax.

You can easily do this in the U.S. (See, e.g., the wave of corporate inversions that caused U.S. companies to re-incorporate in Canada and the U.K., which often required executive teams to move to those countries.)

The Canadian corporate tax rate is just 15%, and even Trudeau is pursuing aggressive neo-liberal policies. Canada would happily take our billionaires. (So would other English-speaking countries. Ireland, the U.K., and Canada have been the destination for dozens of corporate inversions over the last couple of decades.)

The U.S. is already the least economically free country in the Anglosphere: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking. Do we really need to test how much we can squander our prosperity by being to the left of countries like France? https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/emmanuel-macron-cont...

Especially when it's unnecessary? Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax, even on paper, will raise a fraction of the revenue that a VAT would. (Which Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and Australia all have, unlike the wealth tax.)

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#147

Post by dlp211 »

rayiner wrote: post #146
dlp211 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That if you lived in France and were subject to the wealth tax, you could simply leave France and no longer be subject to the wealth tax.

You can easily do this in the U.S. (See, e.g., the wave of corporate inversions that caused U.S. companies to re-incorporate in Canada and the U.K., which often required executive teams to move to those countries.) The Canadian corporate tax rate is just 15%, and even Trudeau is pursuing aggressive neo-liberal policies. Canada would happily take our billionaires. (So would other English-speaking countries. Ireland, t…

America subjects you to tax as long as you remain a US citizen, and we have an exit tax. Simply moving to another country does not absolve one of their burden unlike in the EU.

I don't know what economic freedom means, but the last time I checked, the US is doing just fine in the Capital department.

And a VAT is highly unpopular.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#148

Post by throwGuardian »

confidantlake wrote: post #44
throwGuardian wrote: post #18

[flagged]

The internet itself was in large part created by the us government.

Agree. Hence, the government should acquire Google et al, fix salaries at government wages (1/5th of Googlers' 350K take home) and run these companies like the utilities they are. We need a socialist takeover, and deliver to googlers that sweet sweet Castroism that their Democratic socialist heroes recently ratified [1]

[1]: https://www.dsausa.org/statements/statement-on-cuba/

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#149

Post by rayiner »

dlp211 wrote: post #147
rayiner wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily do this in the U.S. (See, e.g., the wave of corporate inversions that caused U.S. companies to re-incorporate in Canada and the U.K., which often required executive teams to move to those countries.) The Canadian corporate tax rate is just 15%, and even Trudeau is pursuing aggressive neo-liberal policies. Canada would happily take our billionaires. (So would other English-speaking countries. Ireland, t…

America subjects you to tax as long as you remain a US citizen, and we have an exit tax. Simply moving to another country does not absolve one of their burden unlike in the EU. I don't know what economic freedom means, but the last time I checked, the US is doing just fine in the Capital department. And a VAT is highly unpopular.

Giving up US citizenship is pretty easy. “Economic freedom” means a legal and regulatory environment that encourages relatively unfettered economic development. It generally means low taxes on corporations and capital, strong enforcement of property rights, and streamlined regulations. While the US is doing well on that front relative to say Bangladesh, it’s falling behind the other Anglosphere countries (U.K., Canada, New Zealand, Australia).

As to VAT being “unpopular”—that’s a very odd statement. The US is the only OECD country without a VAT. (By contrast, a dozen OECD countries have no taxes at all on long term capital gains.)

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#150

Post by rayiner »

tfehring wrote: post #109
zozbot234 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth taxes are actually bad for society, and especially bad for altruistic people who care about the less fortunate. A wealth tax is a tax on capital, period - and making capital more expensive hurts everyone, but it hugely hurts those who need capital the most. If you care about lowering inequality without hurting folks more than you have to, what you want is a mildly-progressive consumption tax. (I.e. an income t…

Government spending in capitalist countries creates returns to capital. Financing that spending almost entirely through taxes on labor, as the US does today, means that government spending is (in part) a direct transfer from labor to capital. Also, capital is not a scarce resource in the US today. For firms that would be worth investing in but don't have access to capital on reasonable terms, the reason for their lac…

> Government spending in capitalist countries creates returns to capital. Financing that spending almost entirely through taxes on labor, as the US does today, means that government spending is (in part) a direct transfer from labor to capital.

You’re engaging in a slight of hand. Leaving aside capital gains taxes, returns on capital are taxed as income when companies pay dividends. So the income tax covers both returns to labor and returns to capital.

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