Earlier quoted context omitted.
Owning wealth imposes a burden on the society to the degree that it needs to be protected.
How so?
Police. Judiciary. Military. It takes a lot of infrastructure to defend property and property rights.
California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state
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Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
Owning wealth imposes a burden on the society to the degree that it needs to be protected.
Which is typically a function of sale price.
I don’t think sale price of a big mansion sold 100 years ago and passed down from generation to generation would cover maintenance cost (road, sewers, electricity, police etc) for 100 years.
Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point being made above about property rights is much bigger than “does my local police do a good job finding burglars?”. The point is that the government maintains an entire system for tracking, resolving disputes, and enforcing ownership. Think about who has the final say in a dispute over whether you own your car or your house or your company. The government adjudicates ownership disputes and then enforces that…
Or, alternatively, you'd need to buy a gun and defend your property yourself. Which many people do, and has become even more prevalent with the spate of looting in major cities with no police response last summer. You seem to be approaching this from a highly theoretical and ideological position, but that ignores the reality of the current situation, and the fact that the proposed law does not exist in some hypotheti…
> Which many people do, and has become even more prevalent with the spate of looting...
Only 42% of US households own at least one gun. Which means at least 58% of households depend on police for protection. Moreover, having just a gun is not going to be sufficient and you will need other forms of protection offered by police and judiciary. Finally, just having an effective property rights protection and enforcement system deters a lot of crime. None of those things are available for free and property taxes are an effective way to pay for them.
Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state
#604Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, and you are given the amount you negotiate with your employer, less any taxes. Which is the amount you are compensated for the value of your labor. The amount your government retains is not a total loss for you either. > Given this, I do 100% believe I am entitled to 100% of my Labor, time and knowledge. If you produce a profit for your employer, you are not earning 100% of your labor, time, and knowledge. Real…
>>The amount your government retains is not a total loss for you either. I assume here you are implying I get something of value from my tax dollars, but this does not make it any less of a theft. If I come to your home, mow your grass then "tax" your car from you as payment for my services you would still call that theft. and rightly so. Simply because the government "gave" me services I neither asked for nor consen…
> Simply because the government "gave" me services I neither asked for nor consented to does not mean their taking of my labor / money is ceases to be theft
Well, such is the price of citizenship. You certainly are free to exercise your freedom of exit to move to a country where the government behaves otherwise.
Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state
#605Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see it the opposite way around. We should only have a wealth tax and no income taxes. Capitalism means capital that earns for you while you sleep. Those who benefit the most from the system should pay for it. With only a wealth tax more people would have the means to amass wealth and there would be a greater incentive to spend rather than sit on money which would be good for the health and dynamism of the economy.
capitalism means creation of capital. [..]In economics, capital consists of human-created assets that can enhance one's power to perform economically useful work. For example, a stone arrowhead is capital for a hunter-gatherer who can use it as a hunting instrument; similarly, roads are capital for inhabitants of a city. Capital is distinct from land and other non-renewable resources in that it can be increased by hu…
>Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.
Mostly it's about creating imbalances particularly great ones so that power can be projected through coercion. The world runs on on the wealthy getting poor people to do the work they don't want to. With the rise of the finacialised economy we are far away from your definition.
Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state
#606Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many people actually believe they will become the next Musk, to an extent that they are willing to move out of state in preparation to maximize their greed in the off chance they will succeed in this impossible task?
Do you know what the "ycombinator" in this site's URL is a reference to?
Are you talking about the startup accelerator or the functional combinator used to achieve recursion without naming a function that calls it self?
Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state
#607Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue is the 'progressive' nature of the tax code. Everyone could be taxed at the same rate and the 'rich' would still pay the most in tax dollars. The only reason ever given for why the 'rich' should pay a higher tax rate is 'because they can afford to.' Which then leads to tax code legislative loopholes to try to offset the excess taxation and then more resentment when those loopholes are used to shelter income…
> The only reason ever given Not true. I just gave another reason - to offset the built-in drivers of disparity. Transfers between wealth and income (i.e. labor) always favor the wealth holder. It's the very nature of capital, part of what makes it so great but also with not-so-great consequences that must be compensated for. The problem is not the progressivity of taxation, but the fact that it's primarily on the wr…
I think economists universally agree income tax is suboptimal.
I'm not sure if a wealth tax is the answer.
Personally I'd like to see taxes on negative things. Taxes invariably have the effect of discouraging the thing taxed. Which is why taxing income sucks. Let's tax pollution, traffic congestion, advertisements, and social media. Ok, well the last two are half joking.
Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state
#608Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, I fantasize about a California with population levels pre-Gold-Rush, pre-Dust-Bowl and pre-Silicon-Valley.
Why not just move to a place like Idaho or Wyoming instead? You can have it right now instead of dreaming about it.
_You_ go to Idaho and Wyoming.
California is our state.
Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state
#609Earlier quoted context omitted.
In either case, the workers produced more value than they were compensated for.
The thing about this logic is it breaks down once you replace "workers" with robots (which companies of the future will).
It doesn't break down. Machines have been replacing workers since the dawn of industrial capitalism. That's not a new or future development.
The value that a machine imparts to its end product is equal to the portion of its total value which is used up in the process of production. Same with other forms of constant capital like tools and raw materials. So if a shirt machine costs $500 and can produce 1000 shirts before it wears out, then it imparts $0.50 of value to each shirt produced. When the end products are sold on the market, their price always covers the cost of replenishing the constant capital.
Constant capital is merely "congealed labor" meaning that labor had to be performed to produce it in the first place. When workers utilize the constant capital they unlock that value and also impart the additional value of their labor to the final product. The sum of the value of this labor plus the value of the constant capital expended equals the total value of the end product. When this end product is sold on the market as a commodity, its exact price fluctuates based on supply and demand and other factors, but its center of gravity is always the amount of labor required to produce it and all its components at a given level of technology.
Capitalists are the people who own the machines, tools, and raw materials. They pay workers a wage to utilize that constant capital and produce commodities for sale. This wage is determined by the conditions of competition in the labor market, but fundamentally it is anchored to how much it costs a worker to provide for his subsistence (e.g., food, clothing, shelter) and not the amount of value that his labor imparts to the commodities he helps produce. The difference between the value a worker's labor imparts and his wage is what the capitalist appropriates as private profit.
The development of automation like the robots you mention is incentivized by market competition. Automation enables capitalists to produce more commodities with less labor. Any competitor who can't match the level of production is driven out of the market. But because automation reduces the amount of labor required, it also necessarily reduces the rate of profit on each commodity. Thus to maintain the previous level of profit, production must be increased and/or wages and labor conditions must be suppressed. Over time, at the scale of the whole economy, this leads to crisis as neither the capitalists nor the workers can consume all the commodities produced (the capitalists are too few and the workers' wages are insufficient by definition).
Re: California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state
#610Earlier quoted context omitted.
Profit comes from ownership, a wage comes from selling one's labor-power on the labor market. The only risk an investor assumes is of having to transition from the ownership class to selling his labor-power on the market if all his investments fail catastrophically. A worker assumes many more risks on a daily basis.
Why? If a worker loses his job, he also has to sell his labor-power on the market. But if the investor diversified well his investments, he's likely to have lower risk than an average worker. Ownership requires management and the steps which were required to achieve that ownership. Somebody maybe had to work hard to own, while others inherited.
Yes an investor has lower risk than a worker. A worker depends on continually selling his labor-power to survive. He can't do that if he gets sick or injured, if he gets laid off, if his area of expertise gets automated out of existence, etc. When an investor makes an investment all he risks is maybe eventually having to become a worker (only a real potential for small investors and small business owners).