371–380 of 587 posts
Coin flip is pure luck, so there’s no accountability in losing the game. Hence, redistributing the wealth sounds like a fair idea.
The catch is that some people actually believe in luck, so they believe accountability doesn’t count.
Plus, taxing the rich will (and rightfully so) make them leave. And then, who will pay the taxes? Who will create jobs? How many people will lose their jobs?
To solve all this, it's pretty simple, and the U.S. actually used to do it: heavily tax the super rich. Heavy taxation and then appropriate use of those funds for education, R&D funding, infrastructure, etc. is actual trickle-down economics. And mega corporations should be heavily taxed instead of holding the country economically hostage. They jumpstart their companies off of government funding and R&D and then act a…
Like the phrase "tax the rich" makes people think of their neighbor George who as a nice house or even themselves if they make six figures. Nah man, tax the person who can literally buy the NBA and still be a billionaire.
To solve all this, it's pretty simple, and the U.S. actually used to do it: heavily tax the super rich. Heavy taxation and then appropriate use of those funds for education, R&D funding, infrastructure, etc. is actual trickle-down economics. And mega corporations should be heavily taxed instead of holding the country economically hostage. They jumpstart their companies off of government funding and R&D and then act a…
You are treating the government as if it had even the tiniest bit of fiscal discipline, as if it says, ok, we only have $x coming in, therefore we can only spend $x this year (or alternatively, we plan to spend x, therefore we're obliged to collect x in revenue, but no more than that.)
US government hasn't worked like this in decades. Our debt is out of control and growing exponentially. The government has the green light to spend spend spend without any caution whatsoever. Joe Biden has a 4000-page, $1.7 trillion spending bill working it's way through Congress right now that nobody has read. Do you think any politician actually cares how it's going to be paid for? Do you think there are enough ultra rich people in this country, that even if taxed at 99.9%, will dig us out from a 30+ trillion hole?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see you have a bottomless appetite for taxing more and lots of imagination on how to do so. Do you have any answers on how that taxed money will be spent? How we can ensure that it's not just lining the pockets of the politicians and bureaucrats in charge of disbursing the money? How we measure the successes and failures of any taxpayer-funded program, so that we can be reasonably confident that the money is being…
Public healthcare, schools, universities, decent infrastructure. With proper checks and balances, those things are possible.
To solve all this, it's pretty simple, and the U.S. actually used to do it: heavily tax the super rich. Heavy taxation and then appropriate use of those funds for education, R&D funding, infrastructure, etc. is actual trickle-down economics. And mega corporations should be heavily taxed instead of holding the country economically hostage. They jumpstart their companies off of government funding and R&D and then act a…
If the government is not bound by a balanced budget amendment (can spend more than it takes in), and can print money whenever it wants, why do I pay taxes? If the entire monetary system is fake, why do they need 40+% of my paycheck?
Funnily enough Britain just demoed that for everyone. the prior pm tried to reduce taxes a ton and everything nearly went to hell in a hand basket.
So at least we can be confident the taxes are actually doing things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because new resources don't materialize like manna from heaven. Someone, somewhere needs to reorganize resources in a more efficient way or discover new ones. If you benefit "equally" from that change in dynamics to the person who actually catalyzed the change, then there would be less incentive to catalyze it in the first place. It may happen from time to time because people are curious and benevolent. But, in g…
>No, because new resources don't materialize like manna from heaven. No, you're wrong. Me finding gold or pretty much anything of value does mean that it did materilize from heaven. Many more examples...
1. 20% of 1200 is more than 20% of 800. Duh! But the practical insight is simply that people with more wealth can afford bigger bets and expect bigger payouts.
2. Many systems are sensitive to initial conditions. In this model, the first coin flip matter vastly more than all others and determines almost the entire outcome.
As others have pointed out this is really not a good description of the economy as a whole due to its zero-sum assumption.
However I think it’s a relatively useful analogy for the stock market and how other passive investment markets work.
Passive investment is a larger percentage of the economy than ever before and is increasingly how the “rich get richer.”
A very simple distribution solution therefore is to stop privileging capital gains and tax all income equally. But of course this has been considered and hasn’t gained traction.
Another solution is to disrupt passive investment markets. The one that comes to mind is rental housing. If we made it much much easier to build housing then then rental housing market would be like the used car market: viable but not an easy place to sit back and make passive income.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is reasonably easy. Step 1. The country creates a law forbidding any financial interactions with "offshore" countries (list is populated manually by lawmakers) and also with companies working with such offshore companies (shell intermediaries) in "good" countries. Step 2. Country forbids its citizens from owning any assets or be incorporated in the same "offshore" countries. Step 3. Blanket ban of cryptotokens. St…
You lost me at step 1. Punishing people because their families live in what some people deem "offshore" is heartless. Also, forget modern technology like smartphones if you only can do trade with "good" countries.
If it were the only way to address societal inequalities, is it more heartless than letting those continue?
The whole yard sale model suffers from the fallacy that there is a predefined amount of wealth. If that were true, we’d have exactly as much wealth as our cavemen brethren did, which is clearly not the case. Every time anyone creates something more valuable than the sum of its parts, value is added to the system. A bow is far more valuable than the wood used to build it. A hammer and nails far more valuable than the…
To solve all this, it's pretty simple, and the U.S. actually used to do it: heavily tax the super rich. Heavy taxation and then appropriate use of those funds for education, R&D funding, infrastructure, etc. is actual trickle-down economics. And mega corporations should be heavily taxed instead of holding the country economically hostage. They jumpstart their companies off of government funding and R&D and then act a…
One thing I've noticed consistently, is when politicians talk about "taxing the wealthy", they almost always follow that with "earning more than $xxxk a year". This is conflating wealth with income. Being within this tax bracket myself, I do not deny that I am biased, but I do hope this bullshit gets called out hard whenever someone brings up yet another underhanded measure to milk us (typical SFBay SWE) above and be…