241–250 of 367 posts
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The US is a long way away from trying to "soak" anyone. We have a top rate on long-term capital gains of 20%.
That's pretty average (which is a good thing). Japan: 20% China: 20% India: 13% UK: 24% Italy: 26% Germany: 26% France: 30% Then there's Canada of course... 50% with a proposal to make it 66% in 2026. Let's see how that works out!
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You think that Bezos and Musk have billions in their own personal bank account? So what do you mean be "extreme wealth"? Companies? Dividend payouts? House? Yachts? I agree that luxury items that are out of reach of the middle class (eg sport cars etc...) should be taxed highly, but a toy that a rich person can buy vs a rich person investing money into his own or other companies is a problem if you want to tax that s…
Paper wealth used as collateral for loans should be taxed as income (or capital gains).
Most regular people could sit down and cut a billion dollars of dumb shit out of the budget in a few hours (every Congress person has their little pet projects they slide in to omni bills).
The fixes needed for this are massive, and the pain will be felt by everyone. Even taking the harshed path against the 1% will still leave plenty of pain for average folks.
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My friends in Taiwan think they will be invaded before 2030 so we’ll see
They won’t do it until they actually know how to make SOTA AI chips which won’t be for a very long time.
Basically, when China is at maximal power relative to the US. Most credible commentators in the West say that'll be in 2027.
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There's been a spike in news articles on the invasion the last couple of weeks. Given that the US appears to not hold on to any alliances or assurances, and ~~incontinent~~ incompetent in chief is on the helm, it seems that they've the perfect opportunity. Europe's busy with Russia, US is busy with itself, so honestly, why not?
> so honestly, why not? Because it might not work out so well for them? Let's not kid ourselves, this would be an invasion by sea against an opponent who's prepared for many years, has a modern defense force, and has explicitly designed a defense protocol to inflict as much damage as possible. This is not Russia stepping over fields they already encircle that are governed by a dysfunctional government. And it's not I…
Slightly less compressed, it should be "When a nearby state keeps saying they own you, then take the credible threat seriously and pretty much pretend they're going to act on that, even if you think it would be stupid of them to do that, because history is full of examples of states doing this kind of thing. Prepare accordingly".
USD strength comes from military. Just as it was the case with all other currencies in the past. Do you see anyone challenging the US in a conflict? China won’t even invade Taiwan because they are afraid. ‘Nuff said.
What, if I (a European) decide not to buy American treasuries, a squad of Marines is going to bust my front door?
Liberals are like libertarians in this regard. Housecats that don't understand what the actual source of stability and prosperity is.
The idea that a basket of foreign currencies or "BRIC+" will replace the dollar is absolutely not going to happen. If the dollar goes down it takes the entire world with it. Nobody is insulated from the risk of a dedollarization.
This has happened before. GFC 2008 comes to mind.
The country is getting forced by markets into realizing pain for overspending, and only congress can manage this pain. Manage the pain, not remove it is key here. Manage it. Conrgess is totally inept and ridiculously politicized, so it's unlikely they will do anything except make the problem worse. That leaves only the natural fall out of refusing to acknowledge a financial injury before going out on the field to pla…
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There is no "overspending." There is only undertaxing. The debt is literally just the accumulated difference between spending and taxation. If extreme wealth was taxed, the debt would be zero. The point isn't even to "pay for spending" but to enforce a functional social contract, and to limit the political and democratic distortions created by extreme inequality. "Markets" should not have a veto on policy in a democr…
>"Markets" should not have a veto on policy in a democracy. capitalism is meant to be organic thing like a bacteria. a self-organizing network. one cannot legislate nature, one cannot legislate human nature. Imagine making crimes illegal and then nobody committing crimes. Imagine making it illegal to change lanes without using your turn signal. a democracy can give an antibiotic by dr. democracy to clear the infectio…
We have a system of laws that undergird the economic system - the legal protection of private property being the main one. Private property requires a monopoly of violence to enforce.
When capitalism colonizes a legal system, it necessarily creates the incentives for the legal system to adopt laws to maintain itself. If for some reason private property was not legally enforceable, capitalism wouldn't get off the ground.
I used to think that the dominance of the US dollar in world trade would fade as technologies like crytocurrencies rise, but the dominance of stablecoins pegged to the US dollar has shown that without, or even despite, policies and practices of the US government, society is adamant that USD be the reserve currency.
Also USD's circulation in US markets has nothing to do with maintaining reserve currency status.
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Europe has repeatedly tried to soak the rich, and the results are always the same: the rich move their wealth somewhere else and you end up breaking even or even reducing your tax revenue. France: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/31/france-drops-7... UK: https://obr.uk/box/effect-of-the-additional-rate-of-income-t... Sweden: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/course/seimAEJ17wealth.pdf It's interesting to note…
The IRS taxes americans no matter where they are or where they take their money. The US is only one of two nations in the world with citizenshp based taxation. And if you want to renounce your citizenship, 35% exit tax. The only solution is to make a foreign corporation (Apple keeps its income in Ireland for example) and hide your money there (The City of London does a brisk business setting up corps in their old col…