7 ms·

I can't think of any laws/rules/different version of our world where wealth won't always concentrate to the top. What is the right answer on "how much taxes sh

I can't think of any laws/rules/different version of our world where wealth won't always concentrate to the top. What is the right answer on "how much taxes should these 45 people pay"? How much pain + suffering should they be responsible for helping/healing with their funds that the lower half experiences due to lack thereof?

buzzdenver 7y ago
The question is where the equilibrium is. You can tweak it with estate/income/property/other taxes.
peisistratos 7y ago
> always concentrate to the top Your imagination is limited, especially considering that there was no class system when people were painting caves in Chauvet, nor was there one for the 20,000 years after then. One class of heirs parasitically expropriating from a class of workers is a new phenomenon for humans, over the long term. Capitalism is even more short lived. > wealth...their funds Talk of inanimate things is just an obfuscation of theirs (and yours). There are no signs pointing down from the heavens that some heir owns this or that. It scarcely matters any way. The heirs who do not work have a social relationship with those of us who do work. We work and create wealth, they expropriate surplus labor time from us - if we are carpenters turning $150 of wood and material into $200 every hour, we keep our created wealth as wages in the beginning of the day, at the end of the day we are working only for the heir. They expropriate all the wealth we create toward the end of the day. The important thing is the labor time and social relationship, not the expropriated product of labor. > helping...responsible They have no role in such things. History is replete with revolutions and the overthrow of economic systems. Their role is like the czar and his pretenders in Russia - to receive the bullets and bayonet thrusts of the Bolsheviks who were replacing them.
- sdfin 7y ago
  Wait. The problem is not that some people is rich. If we agree that poverty is the problem, we can see that capitalism decreased the percentage of poverty in the populations where it was active. It seems you are saying that "the rich are the ones causing the misery of the poor". If it were so, poverty wouldn't have decreased with capitalism. If it were so, you should explain why are there more poor people in countries without capitalism, and why so many people want to migrate to the US and so few people want to migrate to Cuba. https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=508 https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=508
  - peisistratos 7y ago
    > If we agree that poverty is the problem You must not have read what I wrote. The important thing is the social relationship between those who work and the heirs who don't work and expropriate from those who do. Also, you mention the US, the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage in the US is below what it was in the early 1970s - that is not progress for people who work. > so many people want to migrate to the US and so few people want to migrate to Cuba The migration ratio between the US and Cuba is about what it was a century ago.
    - sdfin 7y ago
      Labor can only be paid at the present value of any foreseeable output. Without the investment of a capitalist there's no foreseeable output. Where there is equality of value there is no incentive to exchange. "Also goods such as the soil, wood in trees, water power, coal beds, stone quarries, petroleum reserves, mineral waters, gold mines, etc. are often the subjects of exchange. And they embody no labor time. How then can Marx explain the exchange value of these goods? Surely the common element that governs the exchange values of these goods cannot be the amount of labor time embodied in them"[1] If you are interested in seeing the other side of your beliefs you might like to read Böhm von Bawerk's refutations of Marx's theory of capital. Are you against inheritance by heirs? Would the State manage wealth better than heirs or than the market? According to what I see in totalitarian states, I believe the answer is no. Anyway, I believe there's room for improvement, I don't think capitalism is the ultimate system. By the way, I think this article is pertinent regarding this topic https://mises.org/library/b%C3%B6hm-bawerk%E2%80%99s-critique-exploitation-theory-interest https://mises.org/library/b%C3%B6hm-bawerk%E2%80%99s-critiqu... [1]https://mises.org/wire/labor-and-capitalist-exploitation-bohm-bawerk-and-close-marxs-system https://mises.org/wire/labor-and-capitalist-exploitation-boh...
- lostmymind66 7y ago
  "especially considering that there was no class system when people were painting caves in Chauvet, nor was there one for the 20,000 years after then" You're right. The strongest/most aggressive person won. While there was no class systems, there was most likely considerably more bloodshed. I don't think we want to go back to a world like this. "Capitalism is even more short lived." I sure hope not. Forced egalitarian systems usually end up with everyone poor and a few wealthy people in government. I have this theory that the people suggesting these sorts of changes either think they are going to be at the top or just hate their life and want to watch the world burn. While capitalism has its flaws, I don't really think any other system comes even close to pulling so many people out of poverty. "if we are carpenters turning $150 of wood and material into $200 every hour, we keep our created wealth as wages in the beginning of the day, at the end of the day we are working only for the heir." Nothing is stopping you from advertising your services and charging what you think you deserve for your services and keeping all the profits. That's capitalism for you. "We work and create wealth, they expropriate surplus labor time from us" You may be creating value, but wealth isn't comprised of just work. You act as if most companies are providing no value on top of your work, which just isn't the case.
KUcxrAVrtI 7y ago
>I can't think of any laws/rules/different version of our world where wealth won't always concentrate to the top. A progressive corporate income tax. Small businesses will finally have an advantage to big ones and there will be no need for captains of industry to lead behemoths the size of Amazon.
- RhysU 7y ago
  Wouldn't large owning interests simply control many small operating entities thereby dodging such a tax while simultaneously introducing pointless inefficiency?
  - LeifCarrotson 7y ago
    The owning interest would be taxed.
    - RhysU 7y ago
      Nope. A strongman tells the underlings to vote their shares as they're told else he/she doesn't bestow extraordinary gifts on the underlings. Tada, oligarchy.
      - KUcxrAVrtI 7y ago
        You should look up rico laws. They were made for stuff like this.
  - KUcxrAVrtI 7y ago
    The efficiency to spend a billion dollars for defending the patent on a black rectangle is not one worth defending.
ajross 7y ago
> I can't think of any laws/rules/different version of our world where wealth won't always concentrate to the top. The question is numeric. Obviously any system is going to be disproportionate in some way. The question is whether it's OK as it is. The answer for liberal democracies of the last three quarters of a century has been some variant of "this is fine, rising tides lift all boats". But at this point that's becoming increasingly hard to justify. In fact by most measures the boats stopped rising about 20 years ago, yet the people in the yachts off shore have continued climbing higher and higher. So the answer to your question is "more than they are now", almost certainly.
ranprieur 7y ago
Depreciating currency would help, or permanent negative interest. Then the default behavior of wealth would be to shrink, rather than grow. The deeper problem is that wealth is power, and power can be leveraged into greater power. I can't see any way to fix that except a culture where it just really bothers people to see any differences in power. In hundreds of years, if we manage to eliminate all suffering from lack of food, health care, etc, the next thing might be to eliminate the suffering of lack of social influence.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  The deeper problem is that wealth is power No, the deeper problem is that wealth comes from power. And you can't eliminate all differences. Trying just shifts the difference that makes a difference elsewhere.
Iv 7y ago
Here is a simple one: Have a wealth cap and an income cap. State that after X million dollars in bank, societies is not interested in making that specific individual richer. I have yet to see a good, non-ideological argument as to why this would harm the economy. Someone unwilling to work correctly even for the maximum amount is probably someone we don't want to have in a position of power.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  This is a horrible idea, because it removes any reason for a billionaire to keep working, or to work harder. Spend nights and weekends at work for an extra million, or spend it with your family because you won't spend the money anyways? People, in general, do not work for free.
  - foolrush 7y ago
    They aren’t working. You will never be a billionaire, so stop defending them. “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
    - RhysU 7y ago
      No, I will never be a billionaire. But I am an incredibly rich man in other ways on account of my labors. Family, career, etc. And I shudder to think that someone might take away all the non-monetary wealth that I have accumulated by convincing others that they can never be as happy as I am.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - foolrush 7y ago
        Again, this is not about you. This is about you in as much as increasing the standard of living of you and your family’s medical, education, living, etc. The alien billionaire empathy narrative myth is being used against you.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Perhaps not now, but for much of the post-war boom most countries had very high top rates of tax: 90%+, sometimes 98%, including in the USA. Corporate taxes were much higher. We had the longest sustained period of growth in history. Obviously that's a progressive tax as only the very highest earners hit the top rates of tax. Many countries had full employment. Yet inequality was at some of the lowest levels ever recorded. Capitalism's golden age. Business was doing just fine, and nations had enough income to provide generous and growing services. Wealthy people kept working. CEOs went to work quite happily. Wealth still concentrated at the top, just far, far less of it. This only really broke with the arrival of the 73 oil crisis. Seems like a return to something along those lines is long overdue to trim some of the excess greed.
- j7ake 7y ago
  It's a nice description, but what was the wealth distribution in the 1920s in USA?
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Probably fairly similar to now, considering it was the end of the period of attempts at reform after the Gilded Age. Reform that often deliberately avoided the problem and made it worse, and noted now as the period when the number with extreme wealth sky rocketed. Again like today the extremely wealthy were distorting the agenda via targeted philanthropy. We talk now of billionaires, they of millionaires, when a million was still a huge amount. Makes it very analogous to the scene after 2008, and the attempts at "fixing" the 08 banking crisis economy by not fixing the system but treating the symptom, or even climate change response. The 1920s wealth distribution and economy was structured to set the scene perfectly for the great 1929 crash and great depression. It remains to be seen how closely we track those... It took a global depression and the two decades leading through WW2 to fix. 1945 on was a very different era. And we forgot - or deliberately threw out - every single lesson and regulation.
- e40 7y ago
  I don't think people realize how these tax rates mobilized the rich to create the system we have today. The "no increase taxes" pledge that many Republicans take. Read this and it becomes clearer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist
akudha 7y ago
I don't know about taxes, what annoys me most is when the ultra rich own a large portion of limited resources - land etc. I could care less if the ultra rich own all the luxury goods in the world, but please, not land/forests/waterways etc

buzzdenver 7y ago

The question is where the equilibrium is. You can tweak it with estate/income/property/other taxes.

peisistratos 7y ago

> always concentrate to the top Your imagination is limited, especially considering that there was no class system when people were painting caves in Chauvet, nor was there one for the 20,000 years after then. One class of heirs parasitically expropriating from a class of workers is a new phenomenon for humans, over the long term. Capitalism is even more short lived. > wealth...their funds Talk of inanimate things is just an obfuscation of theirs (and yours). There are no signs pointing down from the heavens that some heir owns this or that. It scarcely matters any way. The heirs who do not work have a social relationship with those of us who do work. We work and create wealth, they expropriate surplus labor time from us - if we are carpenters turning $150 of wood and material into $200 every hour, we keep our created wealth as wages in the beginning of the day, at the end of the day we are working only for the heir. They expropriate all the wealth we create toward the end of the day. The important thing is the labor time and social relationship, not the expropriated product of labor. > helping...responsible They have no role in such things. History is replete with revolutions and the overthrow of economic systems. Their role is like the czar and his pretenders in Russia - to receive the bullets and bayonet thrusts of the Bolsheviks who were replacing them.

sdfin 7y ago
Wait. The problem is not that some people is rich. If we agree that poverty is the problem, we can see that capitalism decreased the percentage of poverty in the populations where it was active. It seems you are saying that "the rich are the ones causing the misery of the poor". If it were so, poverty wouldn't have decreased with capitalism. If it were so, you should explain why are there more poor people in countries without capitalism, and why so many people want to migrate to the US and so few people want to migrate to Cuba. https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=508 https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=508
- peisistratos 7y ago
  > If we agree that poverty is the problem You must not have read what I wrote. The important thing is the social relationship between those who work and the heirs who don't work and expropriate from those who do. Also, you mention the US, the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage in the US is below what it was in the early 1970s - that is not progress for people who work. > so many people want to migrate to the US and so few people want to migrate to Cuba The migration ratio between the US and Cuba is about what it was a century ago.
  - sdfin 7y ago
    Labor can only be paid at the present value of any foreseeable output. Without the investment of a capitalist there's no foreseeable output. Where there is equality of value there is no incentive to exchange. "Also goods such as the soil, wood in trees, water power, coal beds, stone quarries, petroleum reserves, mineral waters, gold mines, etc. are often the subjects of exchange. And they embody no labor time. How then can Marx explain the exchange value of these goods? Surely the common element that governs the exchange values of these goods cannot be the amount of labor time embodied in them"[1] If you are interested in seeing the other side of your beliefs you might like to read Böhm von Bawerk's refutations of Marx's theory of capital. Are you against inheritance by heirs? Would the State manage wealth better than heirs or than the market? According to what I see in totalitarian states, I believe the answer is no. Anyway, I believe there's room for improvement, I don't think capitalism is the ultimate system. By the way, I think this article is pertinent regarding this topic https://mises.org/library/b%C3%B6hm-bawerk%E2%80%99s-critique-exploitation-theory-interest https://mises.org/library/b%C3%B6hm-bawerk%E2%80%99s-critiqu... [1]https://mises.org/wire/labor-and-capitalist-exploitation-bohm-bawerk-and-close-marxs-system https://mises.org/wire/labor-and-capitalist-exploitation-boh...
lostmymind66 7y ago
"especially considering that there was no class system when people were painting caves in Chauvet, nor was there one for the 20,000 years after then" You're right. The strongest/most aggressive person won. While there was no class systems, there was most likely considerably more bloodshed. I don't think we want to go back to a world like this. "Capitalism is even more short lived." I sure hope not. Forced egalitarian systems usually end up with everyone poor and a few wealthy people in government. I have this theory that the people suggesting these sorts of changes either think they are going to be at the top or just hate their life and want to watch the world burn. While capitalism has its flaws, I don't really think any other system comes even close to pulling so many people out of poverty. "if we are carpenters turning $150 of wood and material into $200 every hour, we keep our created wealth as wages in the beginning of the day, at the end of the day we are working only for the heir." Nothing is stopping you from advertising your services and charging what you think you deserve for your services and keeping all the profits. That's capitalism for you. "We work and create wealth, they expropriate surplus labor time from us" You may be creating value, but wealth isn't comprised of just work. You act as if most companies are providing no value on top of your work, which just isn't the case.

KUcxrAVrtI 7y ago

>I can't think of any laws/rules/different version of our world where wealth won't always concentrate to the top. A progressive corporate income tax. Small businesses will finally have an advantage to big ones and there will be no need for captains of industry to lead behemoths the size of Amazon.

RhysU 7y ago
Wouldn't large owning interests simply control many small operating entities thereby dodging such a tax while simultaneously introducing pointless inefficiency?
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  The owning interest would be taxed.
  - RhysU 7y ago
    Nope. A strongman tells the underlings to vote their shares as they're told else he/she doesn't bestow extraordinary gifts on the underlings. Tada, oligarchy.
    - KUcxrAVrtI 7y ago
      You should look up rico laws. They were made for stuff like this.
- KUcxrAVrtI 7y ago
  The efficiency to spend a billion dollars for defending the patent on a black rectangle is not one worth defending.

ajross 7y ago

> I can't think of any laws/rules/different version of our world where wealth won't always concentrate to the top. The question is numeric. Obviously any system is going to be disproportionate in some way. The question is whether it's OK as it is. The answer for liberal democracies of the last three quarters of a century has been some variant of "this is fine, rising tides lift all boats". But at this point that's becoming increasingly hard to justify. In fact by most measures the boats stopped rising about 20 years ago, yet the people in the yachts off shore have continued climbing higher and higher. So the answer to your question is "more than they are now", almost certainly.

ranprieur 7y ago

Depreciating currency would help, or permanent negative interest. Then the default behavior of wealth would be to shrink, rather than grow. The deeper problem is that wealth is power, and power can be leveraged into greater power. I can't see any way to fix that except a culture where it just really bothers people to see any differences in power. In hundreds of years, if we manage to eliminate all suffering from lack of food, health care, etc, the next thing might be to eliminate the suffering of lack of social influence.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
The deeper problem is that wealth is power No, the deeper problem is that wealth comes from power. And you can't eliminate all differences. Trying just shifts the difference that makes a difference elsewhere.

Iv 7y ago

Here is a simple one: Have a wealth cap and an income cap. State that after X million dollars in bank, societies is not interested in making that specific individual richer. I have yet to see a good, non-ideological argument as to why this would harm the economy. Someone unwilling to work correctly even for the maximum amount is probably someone we don't want to have in a position of power.

DuskStar 7y ago
This is a horrible idea, because it removes any reason for a billionaire to keep working, or to work harder. Spend nights and weekends at work for an extra million, or spend it with your family because you won't spend the money anyways? People, in general, do not work for free.
- foolrush 7y ago
  They aren’t working. You will never be a billionaire, so stop defending them. “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
  - RhysU 7y ago
    No, I will never be a billionaire. But I am an incredibly rich man in other ways on account of my labors. Family, career, etc. And I shudder to think that someone might take away all the non-monetary wealth that I have accumulated by convincing others that they can never be as happy as I am.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - foolrush 7y ago
      Again, this is not about you. This is about you in as much as increasing the standard of living of you and your family’s medical, education, living, etc. The alien billionaire empathy narrative myth is being used against you.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Perhaps not now, but for much of the post-war boom most countries had very high top rates of tax: 90%+, sometimes 98%, including in the USA. Corporate taxes were much higher. We had the longest sustained period of growth in history. Obviously that's a progressive tax as only the very highest earners hit the top rates of tax. Many countries had full employment. Yet inequality was at some of the lowest levels ever recorded. Capitalism's golden age. Business was doing just fine, and nations had enough income to provide generous and growing services. Wealthy people kept working. CEOs went to work quite happily. Wealth still concentrated at the top, just far, far less of it. This only really broke with the arrival of the 73 oil crisis. Seems like a return to something along those lines is long overdue to trim some of the excess greed.

j7ake 7y ago
It's a nice description, but what was the wealth distribution in the 1920s in USA?
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Probably fairly similar to now, considering it was the end of the period of attempts at reform after the Gilded Age. Reform that often deliberately avoided the problem and made it worse, and noted now as the period when the number with extreme wealth sky rocketed. Again like today the extremely wealthy were distorting the agenda via targeted philanthropy. We talk now of billionaires, they of millionaires, when a million was still a huge amount. Makes it very analogous to the scene after 2008, and the attempts at "fixing" the 08 banking crisis economy by not fixing the system but treating the symptom, or even climate change response. The 1920s wealth distribution and economy was structured to set the scene perfectly for the great 1929 crash and great depression. It remains to be seen how closely we track those... It took a global depression and the two decades leading through WW2 to fix. 1945 on was a very different era. And we forgot - or deliberately threw out - every single lesson and regulation.
e40 7y ago
I don't think people realize how these tax rates mobilized the rich to create the system we have today. The "no increase taxes" pledge that many Republicans take. Read this and it becomes clearer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist

akudha 7y ago

I don't know about taxes, what annoys me most is when the ultra rich own a large portion of limited resources - land etc. I could care less if the ultra rich own all the luxury goods in the world, but please, not land/forests/waterways etc