161–170 of 193 posts
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But will their choice of health insurance provider be accepted at the hospital an ambulance took them to? Who knows but for that person, its time to play bankruptcy roulette.
Many healthcare plans cover emergency out of network hospitals.
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The fractional reserve system and its associated fiat currencies will always drive "banking" as a service in the same direction: loans that become increasingly predatory. The root problem isn't the banks, per se, rather the problem is the underlying system that modern banks are incentivized by. Remove usury (loans at a profit) and base the national currency on something (anything is better than nothing, but the Socia…
They wouldn't because you literally changed nothing. The USD is on a failed gold standard. We are still living the aftermath of a failed gold standard. Also, in theory a gold standard does absolutely nothing. All the theoretical benefits you think that come from a gold standard can be implemented today. The only difference is that a gold standard collapses when you go out of its modus operandi. The obvious problem is…
The gold standard was removed in the 1970s. There has been no value behind the dollar since then. During the same time, the US Gov't actually seized citizen's gold.
> The obvious problem is the concept that money from this period should be valid in any future period with no decay or costs associated with holding the money.
This statement is confusing to me. Are you saying that there is not time-cost to the holder of cash if that cash is backed by gold? That is, if I have 100USD (gold backed) there is no downside to holding that cash as opposed to spending it?
> The only known solution is to get rid of cash or to introduce some sort of time bound money like demurrage currencies.
You may like the idea of CBDCs, then. With a centrally controlled digital currency it would be possible to put expiration dates on cash in order to force people to spend their money. Hyper-inflation has the same affect, though. If you look at the Argentine economy and how people spend money with 40-200% inflation year-over-year, you'll see that no one holds onto their cash. They all spend their cash in a very short period of time. People convert the currency that cannot store value into things that can; things like goods, US dollars, crypto currencies, etc.
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Irrespective of the the benefits and/or feasibility of competition to bring prices down, the larger problem with this ad-hoc windfall profit tax is that it is ad-hoc. This is changing the rules after the game has started. The article reports the effort as a "surprise tax".
its not a “game”. Its the people of Italy legislating whats best for the people of Italy. This is what government is. You are pre-supposing a capitalist framework where private enterprise should compete with the people. You could alternatively think of private enterprises being allowed to exist at the pleasure of the people. And that is the way it should be. People are real, companies are fiction.
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They're not changing the rules of the game on Jane Public's family here. They're sur-taxing banks' already exorbitant profits. Oh no, the bankers bonuses will be 20% instead of 30%!
Profits are net of expenses. This is, if anything, an incentive to pay higher bonuses to bankers. So it's more like the bankers will make 500% bonuses instead of 200% and local pension funds will take the penalty.
Pensions don’t take a penalty. A penalty implies something being taken away from them or a charge to them. Nothing is being taken away from the pension.
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I don't think 401k is a thing in Italy.
"401k" as in subsection 401(k) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code might not be a thing in Italy, but personal pension/savings account probably is.
"Go ahead BP and VW, keep polluting the world, we're not gonna touch you because we don't want your shares to go down and in turn the retirement funds of those tied to you."
Am I the one seeing the slippery slope here, or am I being crazy?
Can we have energy companies next? Pocketing record profits during this situation is just disgusting.
Ideally we'd just nationalize them: state- or municipality-owned power companies in the US routinely provide cheaper and better service than their private counterparts[1]. [1]: https://wgme.com/news/local/are-private-or-public-electric-u...
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Thanks to excessive regulation
... which is there for a reason.
And then the incentives are all wrong if you bail your buddies out anyway. Play with fire and the fed will bail you out is terrible.
This is an old European disease. Corporate profits are often seen as an adverse result; of consumers being taken advantage of unfairly. Taxing excess profits beyond what are already high tax rates is popular amongst voters (e.g. see poll results in the UK, 2022). However, this lowers the appeal for new entrants to enter these markets to compete for these excess profits through better and more efficient products and s…
Also, I’m in Europe and my bank gives me better deals on savings than any American bank offers.
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In the UK (but Italy as well), banks are routinely bailed out. Government takes over, absorbs liabilities, sells back to the market an unburdened company ready to make new profits (and new debts). Utilities are similarly bailed out, because what are you going to do, leave people without water and electricity? If we have risk floors, we should also have profit ceilings.
In the US utilities are subject to profit ceilings, and I'd be surprised if that wasn't the case in Europe. That's one of the reasons to classify something as a utility. By "energy companies", I'm assuming the top comment means fossil fuel companies.
Be surprised, then. European regulators typically influence consumer prices, one way or the other, but profits are not capped.