Calls to tax the superrich grow as economic inequality surges
Calls to tax the superrich grow as economic inequality surges
Billionaires have seen their wealth expand by 109 percent over the past decade as their fortunes increase $2.7bn a day.
Trickle down never worked, this is end game capitalism, something else needs to be added to this mix to fix this mess.
Capitalism naturally ends up in this position. That's why it's so hard to "fix" -- to those at the top, nothing is wrong.
Exactly. Capitalism is, ultimately, a variant of the Pirate Game, which has some spectacularly unintuitive results.
Of course, unfortunately, replace the word "capitalism" with pretty much every at scale economic "system", and you get similar results: some group granted authority and power over the rest and "everythings fine" even when they are not.
You just described all major human societies over the ages. The issue is corruption and exploitation regardless of the core sociopolitical idealogy.
Trickle down didn't work in the 1980's or anytime after that.
Trickle down did work in the 1940's, 1950's, and most of the 1960's, it just wasn't called "trickle down" at that time.
The difference was a punitively high tax rate that nobody actually paid, because they found better ways to spend their excess revenue than simply giving it to Uncle Sam.
It turns out that when the richest among us are forced to spend instead of lend, the rest of us finally start to earn fair wages.
Well, that's not really "trickle down" as championed by Reagan, that's more "use it or lose it". He wanted to reduce those crazy high tax rates to give the rich the choice of whether to keep the money for later or to spend it now, with "trickle down" being the phrase to tell people that it's fine, it'll make it's way out to everyone else... eventually?
something else needs to be added to this mix to fix this mess
Could Universal Basic Income play a role in this?
Well at least after AI and robots replace a good portion of the workforce, detaching happy, educated citizens from the societies money flow.
My guess is gouverment by powerful corporation and people unable to adapt dying in gutters, rather that universal income.
There was a "this day in history" tidbit a day or two because it was the anniversary of the last guillotine execution.
The last so far.
Well there was this guy called Karl Marx, who tried to suggest solutions to the problems of capitalism.
...but I hear he's not trending these days. Wrong kind of people liked his stuff.
This is where it's time to revisit why and how the economy fared so well in the USA when high top marginal tax rates incentivized top earners (and business owners) to spend on things that got them something when the alternative was paying 90% on money above the line to be in that bracket.
When that money was spent on higher wages or hiring more people or funding pensions or on research & development, the result was growth and a prosperous middle class. The super-wealthy were still super-wealthy, the major difference was that high top marginal tax rates created incentives for them to spend their money in ways that actually did trickle down
Indeed, "use it or lose it" versus "keep it and we presume you might use it... one day"
surges
Forgive me if I wait for changes before believing anything is happening. Shit surged a long time ago.
Let’s set aside all moral debates about freedom, punishing prosperity, blah blah blah.
There is one very simple and practical reason to tax the rich:
because that’s where all the money is
Conversely there is one simple reason why politicians who hope to get re-elected will never tax the rich.
Because that is where all the money is
Get the special interests and money out of politics and we may have a chance of taxing them.
74% of it, in fact, concentrated into the hands of the wealthiest 10% of Americans.
If we don't tax the rich, they will only continue to get richer while everybody else gets poorer and the economy continues to fall apart as we print more and more money to keep everybody paid and it all gets vacuumed up to the top.
It seems like solid economics. We need to keep capital in motion. 10% of the population cannot meaningfully deploy 74% of the capital.
To quote the 1985 movie Brewster’s Millions, it doesn’t count to buy the Hope Diamond for some bimbo as a birthday present.
We're seeing so many economic problems being caused too much wealth being concentrated. Supply side economics was a stupid idea from the outset, but now we're in the supply side economics endgame.
The wealthy are using that wealth to make products no one needs while people are struggling to afford the things they actually do need. $3500 for Apple goggles? We don't need that and couldn't afford it if we did. How about yet another streaming service? Don't need it, can't afford it. Maybe some VR goggles the you can use to go into a virtual world where you're a legless cartoon character? We'll rename the company after this new product, that'll get people to buy it for sure!
Well shit, it seems the wealthy have so much money, they don't have anywhere to put it. Doesn't seem like enough people are buying the products they develop with that wealth, so what can they invest that money in? I know, maybe they should put it into real estate! Great, now ordinary people can't afford a place to live. Yay, supply side economics is working great!
Isn't the usefulness of ventures rewarded or not by the efficient market? I really like VR. An emerging market like that is bound to have some design dead ends and wasted money.
What efficient market?
This is one of the main factors behind my vote this year.
That, free dental, and also keeping the ocean from getting too close to my house.
Is anything ever going to happen though?
Sure, once the people who have their entire campaign funded by these rich people vote on our behalf
The calls are growing up so fast, like weeds. /s
We, the wealthy ALREADY pay all of the taxes, lazy poors need to stop complaining! They drive around in fancy cars that they bought with their food stamp money
NOTE TO DOWNVOTERS: @[email protected] is a parody account. Their comments are always a caricature of things wealthy/business people say. They don't use /s flags to indicate sarcasm. I am not this person, but I've seen them comment elsewhere and usually people understand the sarcasm.
People on the lemmyverse are just as stupid as the average redditor it seems