This is just communism lite. Communism doesn't work and had killed hundreds of million s of people in the last 100 years.
This is a terrible idea.
American Equity
91–100 of 552 posts
Re: American Equity
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 .
Taxing consumption is regressive; as your wealth increases, the amount of dollars spent relative to your wealth continues to decrease.
In the long run, every dollar of wealth gets spent.
As a practical matter, consumption taxes can be made progressive by combining them with a low-income tax credit or a universal basic income.
Re: American Equity
#93To turn a Nation-State into a "for-profit" for citizens will make US a weird version of Petro-State without Petroleum.
> for citizens will make US a weird version of Petro-State without Petroleum
The US has a technology sector that is as much, if not more, productive than a resource extraction industry. Why not use that sector to raise quality of life for citizens?
Re: American Equity
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure to whom or what you are responding. The book I linked to is a couple hundred pages long, explores moral and practical issues, and has almost 20 pages of notes and citations. Far from attempting to "kill the discussion", which is in fact what your blithe comment is attempting, it explores the topic of inequality in a uniquely deep way.
Why would you name the book "Equal Is Unfair" if you wanted to explore the topic in a deep way?
It is a provocative claim that I think the book succeeds in showing to be true.
It is a worthwhile book and, even if you disagree with it, I think you'll find it intellectually stimulating. If you think you'll read it, I'll happily buy you a copy, just PM me.
Re: American Equity
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without a doubt, a global wealth tax would significantly improve the quality of life for every human on this planet; even those with the large amounts of wealth being taxed.
I'd be fine with a wealth tax on a national level with restrictions on offshoring cash, but I don't want to steal wealth from everyone in the west to distribute it globally. You'd also have a very difficult time getting nations like China to agree to something like this. Edit: sorry, wasn't aware of the exact definition of this. Having everyone pass this sort of thing is a great idea imo.
A global wealth tax does not distribute the tax globally. It just means that every nation collects a wealth tax. This is to prevent a race to the bottom which would penalize the first countries that enacted a wealth tax.
Re: American Equity
#96Here's my feedback: 100M people died of socialism in the 20th century. Can we just STOP with this madness please?
On the other hand, China's implementation of socialism has taken it from a third world country to the most powerful nation in the world in a little under 40 years.
Yeah that's not really socialism that's doing that. They're become pretty capitalistic over there in certain respects.
Re: American Equity
#97Earlier 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…
There are plenty of analogous policies in America. For example, universities are required to spend 10% (or some other percent?) of their total endowment each year in order to keep their tax-free status. This is why Harvard & Co. need to continue fundraising each year despite their massive endowments - they're massively discouraged from just 'saving' as well. Everything distorts markets. The question is how to distort…
Other non-profit entities (such as private foundations) are required to spend a certain fraction of their money each year or pay taxes. Universities are exempted from that requirement.
from [0]: "Harvard targets an annual endowment payout rate of 5.0 to 5.5 percent of market value. The University's actual payout rate has fluctuated over the past 10 years, from a low of 4.2 percent in fiscal year 2006 to a high of 6.1 percent in fiscal year 2010."
[0] https://www.harvard.edu/about-harvard/harvard-glance/endowme...
[1] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/private-foundation...
Re: American Equity
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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?
Did bill gates build Microsoft? He had a larger part than probably anyone, but he wouldn't even be remembered if he ran it on his own. The reason people think it's something to be solved is because for some reason our society attaches all the reasons for success, and the associated benefits, to a handful of people for enterprises that are a group endeavor
Than any one person through the lens of an authoritarian hierarchy that’s structured to reinforce the necessity of top-down rule.
In reality, all the laborers at Microsoft built it into what it is today. And it (like most companies) are at a scale of complexity that is far beyond the fiction that workers are acting out CEO’s “visions.”
Re: American Equity
#99I'm a little unclear how this would work in practice. What is the financial instrument and is it equity in the government or equity in all the companies in the US? I see no reason why companies would do it and no incentive to take a part of the government (is the US government going to pay a dividend?), I'm not certain everyone having a share they couldn't trade would be worth it. I think the ability to trade state m…
>is the US government going to pay a dividend? First, the US government would have to turn a profit...
If you think of the population as the government (a democracy, in other words) then our gross domestic product is our collective revenue. How we allocate that revenue to different accounts -- yours, mine, roads, military, etc. -- is just accounting.
Re: American Equity
#100People 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…
This would address one (but not all) of my fundamental complaints about UBI though: What do you do when due to some disaster, you must pull back your UBI payments? Consider significant war losses, for instance. In this case the answer is that GDP would go down and so would the payment. (Though maybe we can't tie it to GDP per se, since in a war situation you can't afford to see your GDP rise due to forced construction and then also have to pay your populace more.)
That said, it addresses it structurally, but I still think the result would still be a disastrous political explosion if that ever did happen. UBI seems to be fundamentally predicated on the idea that growth and improvement are inevitable, the only possible way that things will develop going into the future, including any structural or societal changes that may develop as a result of UBI or GDP-sharing itself, and therefore there's no need to ask who starts swinging from trees the first time that UBI or GDP-sharing has to be cut back, and what disastrous decisions will be made on the basis of not wanting to be the one swinging from trees.