81–90 of 552 posts
You're talking here about distributing amounts starting in the hundred-200 billion dollar range and eventually ramping that up to 4-8 trillion. Is this just going to redistribute wealth from income taxes, or is it going to be an incredibly high corporate tax, or what?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The drawback of taxing wealth is that it distorts markets, it discourages saving. EDIT: Can't comment ("You're posting too fast, blah blah blah"). Here are some replies to the comments bellow: > It's encouraging people to make their money be productive instead of stashing it under a mattress. When you have money in the bank, you're effectively lending most of it to other people. Your money is "productive", which is e…
Indeed. And saving/investing is important! It's not a coincidence that the industrial revolution happened in a country with a secure established rule of law such that people could make investments without worrying about losing them at the whim of a dictator. Much better to tax consumption .
Something very similar was tried in Russia after the fall of communism, as voucher privatization. The vouchers were immediately bought up at a discount and concentrated wealth in the hands of a few oligarchs. A similar dynamic led to massive pyramid schemes in Albania, which badly eroded public trust in government. A common thread in Altman's proposals for a better world are their ahistorical presentation, as if no o…
People already have a share in the GDP. That's what it is, the total domestic product, the sum of all the little parts. The problem is not that people don't have share in it (and this goes for every country, not just for the USA), but that they have a disproportionate share in it. Bill Gates' (to name a random American citizen) has a far larger share in the GDP than most other Americans. If you want to solve that rai…
This idea is basically UBI couched in capitalist terms. If every American gets a share of GDP, and GDP is concentrated, then that means that either 1) the share of GDP that each person gets is tiny and inconsequential (see: GOP-style tax cuts) or else 2) you need progressive taxation. Another difference, aside from wording/marketing, is that the UBI is implemented as a progressive redistribution of future wealth gene…
"Universal Basic Income" is already a radically capitalist idea. It's often discussed using terminology borrowed from Marxism and socialism, but it couldn't be any more capitalist of a construct. We're just not used to hearing it discussed with that language.
The way you get that income into a shareable pot is via Tax.
So the best way to do this is still good old "Income Tax."
Unfortunately those with the most income don't like to have it taxed. And national policy tends to correlate pretty reliably with whatever those people want. Anything akin to what he's suggesting would help even things out, but that is precisely why they won't permit it. The only way for the masses to assert themselves is through their brute numbers.
It's "a monetary measure of the market value of all final goods and services produced in a period of time," to quote its Wiki definition. That is, we're summing up the value of everything we made that year. It's like a hypothetical number meant to evaluate what we accomplished. It's not like accounts receivable or something. And we already all have a share, by definition....it's the sum of what we all did.
Am I missing something here? Or does Sam not know what GDP is? Seems unlikely, but I really don't get it.
People already have a share in the GDP. That's what it is, the total domestic product, the sum of all the little parts. The problem is not that people don't have share in it (and this goes for every country, not just for the USA), but that they have a disproportionate share in it. Bill Gates' (to name a random American citizen) has a far larger share in the GDP than most other Americans. If you want to solve that rai…
>Bill Gates' (to name a random American citizen) has a far larger share in the GDP than most other Americans. If you want to solve that raise your taxes on the rich and lift up those that are at the lowest end of the scale. I don't understand why this is something people believe needs "solved". Did you build Microsoft?
Yes. I purchased several of their products, thereby increasing the capitalization of Microsoft.
I expect you intended the answer to be "No," implying that Bill Gates (and a few others) built Microsoft. However, that rests on a specific understanding of ownership and causality that not everyone shares.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>do what nobody has the balls to do: tax wealth Just to clarify, nobody in the US is doing this, but it's not unheard of elsewhere. For example, Norway has a wealth tax of about 0.85% and there are some other examples at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#Current_examples .
The drawback of taxing wealth is that it distorts markets, it discourages saving. EDIT: Can't comment ("You're posting too fast, blah blah blah"). Here are some replies to the comments bellow: > It's encouraging people to make their money be productive instead of stashing it under a mattress. When you have money in the bank, you're effectively lending most of it to other people. Your money is "productive", which is e…