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Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

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Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#21

Post by einhverfr »

whatshisface wrote: post #10
ClutchBand wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobility is great but when on .001% of the entire global population gets to do it, and they get to do it much easier than anyone else would have (sometime skirting laws and requirements that normal people would). The rich and elite get special treatment, when they should not. It leads to more unfair conditions.

The question should be, how can we give the average person the freedoms that the elites have, not how can we enslave the Chinese elites in the way we've enslaved the average Chinese person.

The first point would be policies aimed at distributing ownership of property etc. So for example we could have a high tax for:

1. Real estate not directly used by the owner as his or her residence or place of work.

2. Shares of a business where he or she does not work (Zuck doesn't get taxed as heavily on facebook shares as the investors do)

A major part of the problem is that ownership itself is so heavily concentrated that freedom for ordinary people is not possible. But if we have policies which encourage smaller businesses, weaker concentrations of wealth and more ownership by more people that would be a major start.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#22

Post by [deleted] »

whatshisface wrote: post #4

This article is painting mobility as a bad thing, but it also has a good side. China's capital controls are a big part of how it oppresses people: if they could just leave, China would have no ability to make itself into a productive dystopia. The ideal situation would be if countries had to compete for everyone's presence, but as it stands limitations on mobility mean that only the very powerful can leap over the bo…

[deleted]

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#23

Post by einhverfr »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #16
einhverfr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I am in favor of a high tax on absentee ownership of real estate. Deduct the property where you live and where you work. Everything else gets taxed heavily.

But then either you can afford to buy your home or you have to live on the street...

We should exempt rent-to-own contracts. If the contract vests ownership over a 20 year period or less, then it should count as owned by both sides for the purposes of this tax proposal. Bonus, we reduce the influence of banks.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#24

Post by sjogress »

einpoklum wrote: post #13
sprafa wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Channel Islands, Gibraltar and the Isle Of Man I believe are constantly being used for the purpose of tax evasion, money laundering etc... that’s what frightens me about Brexit - I think the hard Brexiteers actually want to make this easier, not harder. I.e. I met a software guy from Sachs who told me about what he did there. Essentially he built automated software to flag “suspicious transactions”. So ie if 200…

So a positive thing about Brexit would be that it makes it easier to declare war on the Faroe islands... Only need to fend off the British not all Europeans.

I'm afraid the Faroe Islands is an autonomous region within Denmark, not Britain.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#25

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

alfromspace wrote: post #3

Imagine if instead of constantly building horrific low-income housing projects to (fruitlessly) retroactively "solve" the problem of middle and lower-class people being unable to afford housing in major metropolitan areas, we didn't poison the market in the first place by treating housing as foreign investment vehicles.

The cycle works like this:

- we have people who live in subpar conditions

- let's build some cheap houses and rent them at discount to those in need

- actually not that cheap: why is that only rich people deserve to have a balcony?

- within a decade the houses turn into a ghetto

- oh, but there is a research which suggests if people actually owned the houses instead of just renting them, they would stop throwing garbage on the floors. So we sell these houses at discount.

- goto step 1

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#26

Post by Barrin92 »

whatshisface wrote: post #4

This article is painting mobility as a bad thing, but it also has a good side. China's capital controls are a big part of how it oppresses people: if they could just leave, China would have no ability to make itself into a productive dystopia. The ideal situation would be if countries had to compete for everyone's presence, but as it stands limitations on mobility mean that only the very powerful can leap over the bo…

The majority of people have no interest to float around the globe without any ties to their home or culture.

The idea that this cosmopolitanism of the elites is something that the average person even cares about is a fiction peddled to maintain the status quo. If you look at the rise of populists around the globe, are they nationalists or are they hyper-libertarians who want to give John Doe the ability to move to Swasiland?

The productive 'dystopia' you're talking about isn't China, it's West Germany in 1960-1970. As the article points out, the world under Bretton Woods had strict capital controls, was everyone in the Western world living in a dystopia? Obviously not. And by the way, the average middle class person in China these days isn't exactly living under dystopic conditions either.

I absolutely don't see how taking control away from elites, restoring capital controls and national autonomy and reigning in global capital is dystopic. It was the primary development model for any country on the planet whose general population, and not just elites, are prosperous.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#27

Post by whatshisface »

einpoklum wrote: post #11
whatshisface wrote: post #4

This article is painting mobility as a bad thing, but it also has a good side. China's capital controls are a big part of how it oppresses people: if they could just leave, China would have no ability to make itself into a productive dystopia. The ideal situation would be if countries had to compete for everyone's presence, but as it stands limitations on mobility mean that only the very powerful can leap over the bo…

A billion people can't "just leave". Even 10 million people can't "just leave" - look at Syria for example.

It only takes the margin leaving to give oppressive policies a sting.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#28

Post by scandox »

The idea of The Perpetual Traveller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_traveler) had been around for a long time (at least to my knowledge since the 1960s).

It has simply got easier and in fact the group of people who can attempt it, though tiny, has grown much larger.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#29

Post by kingkawn »

sprafa wrote: post #17

Moneyland is a good book on this topic. Rich people (top 1%) don’t live or earn money “anywhere” anymore. There’s so much ease to global movement of capital they just move it around so they pay - no taxes - have no accounts with their name on it - launder all their money legally (if need be) - buy up property and invest without any interest in any country in particular. It’s a depressing read.

Just a temporary state of affairs that will soon be resolved in a global tidal wave of resentment and desperation, not to worry

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#30

Post by anovikov »

sprafa wrote: post #17

Moneyland is a good book on this topic. Rich people (top 1%) don’t live or earn money “anywhere” anymore. There’s so much ease to global movement of capital they just move it around so they pay - no taxes - have no accounts with their name on it - launder all their money legally (if need be) - buy up property and invest without any interest in any country in particular. It’s a depressing read.

Vast majority of top 1% don't even have much capital to speak of. They are just workers making somewhere in the mid-6 figures - doctors, lawyers, small mom-and-pop business owners, best coders, etc. And they pay the majority of taxes, actually. Bottom half of Americans pay nothing and top 1% pays 35-40% of all taxes. You are not fair to those educated, strong, hardworking people.
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