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Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers
- mc32 7y agoTo some degree I agree that some of these companies have too much control over users and collect too much information and give users too little control in that. With that said, I feel there’s some irony in this. These companies essentially have encouraged and enabled these attitudes in their workforce thinking this would make the employers look like they shared the same goals and had to good of workers in mind. Essentially they thought coöpting the workforce was possible without negative outcomes. History shows this doesn’t work, unless you are a tyrant and have absolute control and have real ways to control them outside of work. For example Mao could have his PLA and could have his Red Guards and use them to achieve whatever policy he wanted, no matter how ill advised.
- hos234 7y agoZuckerberg is known to rave about Emporer Augustus achieving 200 years of world peace through "harsh methods". So they cherry pick whatever stories they want from history to justify their mistakes.
- methodover 7y agoDo you have a source for the Zuckerberg quote?
- jlarocco 7y agoNot hard to find... I think the original is here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zuckerberg-fix-facebook-before-it-breaks-democracy https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zucke... And then there's a ton of commentary about it: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/12/what-attracts-mark-zuckerberg-roman-hardman-augustus https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/12/what-a... https://theconversation.com/mark-zuckerbergs-admiration-for-emperor-augustus-is-misplaced-heres-why-108172 https://theconversation.com/mark-zuckerbergs-admiration-for-... ...
- justanthrtchguy 7y agoMaybe they are donating to candidates who they believe are good for everyone ( including themselves ) and not just good for their employers who could care less about them in most cases. Voting on one issue is a sure way to get a candidate who is against you when they ignore that issue.
- JKCalhoun 7y agoYes, this. I vote for candidates that will do right by my children, other's children, the future of our planet.
- yo-scot-99 7y agoalso donating to reality-based candidates; even those who want to break up larger companies at least align themselves with a bit more with science and scepticism in things as they are. And to be honest as an employee if you end up in Facebook.codebase.1 or Facebook.codebase.2 who cares, your downside is minimal.
- pytester 7y agoWasn't too surprised to see that Bloomberg neglected to mention a pretty self evident reason why tech workers might want that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... I'm pretty sure that if the anti-trust litigation in 2001 hadn't battered microsoft then tech wages would not be as high today. Competition among employers is good for wages, and the fewer and bigger the employers, the less the competition.
- option 7y agoI am not quite sure that smaller companies can offer higher wages. Also, keep in mind a story of Bell Labs - the innovation power house hugely responsible for tens of Nobel Prize winning inventions such as transistor and solar cells. You need an insanely rich and powerful parent company to fund something like this (only Alphabet is kind pf doing it these days)
- dickeytk 7y agoThere is a difference between big companies and monopolies. Big companies will likely always be the ones offering the highest salaries and they'll always exist. Once they monopolize the labor market though: they'll no longer have a need to offer those wages as high (even if they're the highest within the market).
- deevolution 7y agoHow do you break up alphabet?they will just move their corporation over seas, set up in africa and avoid any monopoly breakers. The government has no power over these companies. They would have to raid the offices and send the ceo to prison before alphabet agrees to break their monopoly.
- GhettoMaestro 7y agoYeah that's not how laws work. Sure, they can move overseas, but for the business they conduct in the US they would need to comply with the post-breakup laws (assuming that happened, I don't think it will). And if they don't comply? Fairly simple. Indictments. Raids. Arrests. Asset seizures. Public shaming of employees and executives working for the company. Etc.
- sedeki 7y agoCan someone explain why SV tech workers are more left-wing to me as an outsider? I always thought these tech workers were more libertarian.
- wpasc 7y agoI think a variety of things get conflated. (anecdotal insight here): Many people at tech companies are not software engineers. I believe they are more often to the left of the general tech workers. Tech workers can be pretty left still, but I have found to tend more libertarian/a-political. In general though, many people employed at tech companies are young, coastal (by virtue of where they work), and work in cities. All those factors tend to skew more left.
- methodover 7y agoI’ve seen a couple comments saying that it’s the non-SWE’s that are the liberal ones. That’s a very different experience than my own, and that of my friends. My experience: Designers tend to be pretty liberal. Product managers and other managers tend to be moderate (tend to be Biden and Buttigieg fans). Salespeople tend to be extremely conservative. Support is kind of all over the place. Engineers tend to be either diehard socialists or (and this is the minority) libertarian.
- JansjoFromIkea 7y ago"diehard" seems like a stretch when you consider how much support there tends to be for unionisation (and most of us could get by on way less than we make, so it's not like we don't have to power to take some stands)... Lot of social democrats in my neck of the woods for sure but in US terms it'd be way more Warren than Sanders, and she is absolutely not a socialist from what I can see.
- methodover 7y agoYou’re totally right. I meant socialist in the same way that Bernie Sanders seems to use it, which I have trouble distinguishing from Warren’s states policies. (I do agree that the traditional definition of word applies to neither Warren’s or Sanders’ policies for the most part. Except for the health insurance industry, where the proposal is nationalization.) I should have said social democrat. Indeed, now that I think about it, few engineers would label themselves socialist. I don’t, though I am a Warren/Sanders supporter.
- wpasc 7y agoI'm sorry but this article is beyond stupid. It is a narrative in search of data. Opening line: >Silicon Valley software engineers seem more loyal to the left wing of the Democratic Party than to their own employers. Then proceeds to include no data that any donations are actually from software engineers. Then the actual amounts: >Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, who has called for breaking up Facebook, Amazon and Google, raised more than $173,000 from tech industry employees in the third quarter, according to Bloomberg News’s analysis of public data on political contributions from employees at 10 large tech companies. $173,000? Candidates raising money is usually discussed in terms of millions raised. so 173k? how is that newsworthy? that could be 173 ppl giving 1k.
- vuln 7y agoI find it weird that she picks and chooses. Limits the execs but takes money from the low level employees. https://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warren-limits-donations-from-some-bank-tech-execs-11571148004 https://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warren-limits-donatio...
- methodover 7y agoI see no contradiction there. She’s fighting against the influence wielded by those at the very top of the ladder.
- carapace 7y agoIn re: "Silicon Valley software engineers seem more loyal to the left wing of the Democratic Party than to their own employers." Specifically, loyalty to my "own employers." These are the folks ("dozens" of companies) who colluded to cheat their own developers of est. $8 billion dollars: https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most-celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages/ https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valle... https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/ https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage... - - - - FWIW, "anecdata": I worked at one of the FAANG companies for about two years, and, yeah, hell yeah, the one I worked at should be broken up IMO. An "exploded view" form would introduce buffers and breaks in very (IMO) appropriate places while still permitting the innovation and economic growth. Put another way, I don't think the economics of scale apply as cleanly to tech industry as they do to mass production. You want more communication rather than less, and that takes time/energy/attention.
- habosa 7y agoI work at Google and I'll be voting for Elizabeth Warren.
- throwGuardian 7y agoWhat are your thoughts on socialism/Democratic socialism, from Google's long term perspective?
- thundergolfer 7y agoWould you also vote for Bernie if he got the primary?
- habosa 7y agoYes, I'd never vote for Trump.
- KaoruAoiShiho 7y agoBreaking up big tech companies is undoubtedly good for the workers, create more competition in hiring. It would probably send money downwards and be a huge boon to innovation tbh.
- skybrian 7y agoWell, maybe. But on the other hand, the biggest tech companies seem to pay the most? Why is that?
- twobat 7y agoAt least in my region (Eastern Europe) the question is: why is it that the smaller companies can't pay a living wage?
- Viliam1234 7y agoI have a mathematical model that would explain this behavior, but I have no idea how much it corresponds to reality. Imagine that there is a psychological line that most bosses want to reach, for example "to become a millionaire". This desire is the same whether you live in a richer or poorer country, and whether you have twenty or two thousand employees. The word "millionaire" is simply a magical word which does not automatically adjust to e.g. "3.2-million-aire" just because you have more employees or live in a different country. Also, "millionaire" these days in Eastern Europe refers to million euro, just like in Western Europe, and not much different from million dollars in USA, i.e. it is country-independent. Now if we assume that the million is a fixed psychological goal, this is easier to reach in a large company than in a small one. If you have two thousand employees, you need to make 500 euro per employee. If you are okay with becoming a millionaire in five years, that's 100 euro per employee per year, which is barely noticable. But if you have twenty employees, during five years it makes 10 000 euro per employee per year. They are going to feel that. (Also, the higher the costs and average salaries in a country, the less the employees will feel those 100 or 10 000 euro per year.) According to this model, employees in small companies in Eastern Europe should be paid very little. But their bosses should still become rich.
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- throwGuardian 7y agoBig tech employees earn in the top 1%, but are devout socialists. They're actively working against the free market capitalist fundamentals that made them what they are. What do they think will happen to their incomes, and those of their companies if the AOCs of the world run amock on the economy?
- confidantlake 7y agoThe internet itself was in large part created by the us government.
- klaudius 7y agoInternet wasn't created by the government. Government simply stole from mostly wealthy people through taxation and paid researchers to develop basic technology. Also, the value of the internet is purely in the network effects. Internet is valuable because people use it and create stuff on top of it.
- hollerith 7y agoDownvoted for using words in a very idiosyncratic way that does not cast any additional light on the subject.
- throwGuardian 7y agoAgree. Hence, the government should acquire Google et al, fix salaries at government wages (1/5th of Googlers' 350K take home) and run these companies like the utilities they are. We need a socialist takeover, and deliver to googlers that sweet sweet Castroism that their Democratic socialist heroes recently ratified [1] [1]: https://www.dsausa.org/statements/statement-on-cuba/ https://www.dsausa.org/statements/statement-on-cuba/
- harimau777 7y agoAt least according to this: https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-income-puts-you-top-1-5-10/ https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-incom... Most tech workers in SF are probably in the top 10-5% range. Adjusting for cost of living means that they are probably more or less middle class.
- bryanlarsen 7y agoStandard Oil, Bell, etc. Anti-trust breakups have a history of being good for employees and share holders. I'm fairly confident the same would happen here.
- esotericn 7y agoThis is only surprising if you subscribe strictly to Sinclair's quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." In reality, many many people work at jobs that they don't believe in. I personally haven't been able to hack it - I'm too stubborn to keep my mouth shut at appropriate times. But ultimately, people can and will vote against "their own self interest". I vote for and fund environmental parties, despite that meaning I will personally lose out in a lot of ways, because it's the right thing to do. That's part of what being a mature adult is. Recognizing that it's not all about your personal status and/or livelihood.
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- xen2xen1 7y agoThe quote is highly contingent on one thing, that a man's salary is hard to replace. For most of humanity, it is. I'd wager if you work at a FANNG company you don't view it that way. Hard to get quite as much, maybe, but getting some making $250k to move to $200k a year is much, much different than someone moving from $45 a year to $30k a year, or $25k a year.
- esotericn 7y agoI don't think you can generalize that much. Personally none of that stuff mattered once I earned more than like, twice minimum wage. Nowhere near $200K. Maybe that's a US thing, since you guys have so much tied up in work (health insurance etc). I just think about having enough money to get by and help people around me, employment fits around that, not the other way around. Sure, people who are actually earning biscuits as a wage are basically slaves. So it goes. FWIW I don't work in adtech, I think it's bollocks and that everyone doing it should stop.
- pmoriarty 7y ago"FWIW I don't work in adtech, I think it's bollocks and that everyone doing it should stop." We should try to follow the money from adtech to those who are providing their life blood: companies buying advertising (which is nearly all companies). As long as there is a demand for advertising, some people will work at adtech companies and others who service that need. That's not to say that anyone who cares about privacy and is against manipulating others through advertising shouldn't be discouraged from working at adtech companies: they absolutely should. But the situation is similar to people working as part of drug cartels: they are meeting a demand, and no amount of finger wagging at them is going to change most of their minds. For serious change to happen we have to find and address the root issues, which are really on the demand side rather than (ultimately) at the supply side.
- jedberg 7y agoI’m not very surprised. I’m a big fan of Warren but not a big fan of her break-up-tech policy. But I realize that her heart is in the right place and I think what she says will benefit the country. So I’m willing to accept what might be a bad idea (breaking up tech) for the good ideas that come with it.
- recursivecaveat 7y agoPretty telling that the idea of voting against one's own financial self-interest, even as a single part of a large platform, is a wild idea to these business journalists.
- WMCRUN15 7y agoIt actually can be self-interested. If you work for AWS, why would you want to be inside of Amazon, who you subsidize with your bsuiness’s profits? A lot of the subsidiaries would be massive companies in their own.
- lonelappde 7y agoAWS only exists because Amazon retail financed it and provided a use-case to motivate the design.
- methodover 7y agoHow is it voting against their self interest?
- Tagbert 7y agothe article is using a single, narrow definition of self-interest: income. that is one interest that we can pursue but we can also have value interests that are sometimes in conflict with each other.
- isoprophlex 7y agoYes, and no. Megacorps are many smaller entities, sometimes at war with eachother. Maybe it makes sense to vote for breaking up the mothership if that means your product stays alive. See: the retardedly long list of things Google killed...
- adrr 7y agoHaving a few large companies that have colluded to keep salaries down by having no poaching agreements doesn’t seem it’s good for tech workers. Having a bunch of companies and a competitive labor market is much better for tech workers.
- hogFeast 7y agoTurkeys voting for Christmas. If you break up the large companies, this system will collapse. The reason why Facebook and Google are allowed to light massive stacks of shareholder cash on fire (in pay and acquisitions) is because they have a monopoly which churns off cash, and are protected by supervoting shares. Very good for investors though. They can buy the monopoly and sell all the OSS/moonshot bullshit.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoWhat a surprise. I'd love to be a billionaire, but I like Sanders opinions about whether they should exist. I'd love to be worth enough for it to hurt me, but I like Warren's wealth tax idea. I'd love to pay lower taxes, or less progressive taxes, but I'm happy to support those less fortunate. As a matter of fact, I'm not even a single-issue voter! Perhaps most controversially, I think altruism is good for society. Shocking, I know. What a crazy idea, voting against your own interest. gasp!
- mc32 7y ago>”What a crazy idea, voting against your own interest. gasp!” I know you mean it differently but people in the middle class get accused of voting against their interests and it’s said as something negative in their political choices.
- ajross 7y agoOnly in the same sense that's happening here, though. I assume you're talking about takes like "Why don't working class white voters vote for democrats?", which isn't fundamentally any different as I see it. It's a legitimate question, and the answers (in both cases) tell us things about how politics work in a way that simple analysis doesn't. And FWIW: as far as tone, this one seems more "accusatory" to me. There's a clear hypocrisy angle being teased in that headline, where the lefty takes tend to be more about exasperation on the part of the author.
- rayiner 7y agoThe tone is accusatory because usually there is a classist dimension to the question. Why does a high income tech worker vote Democrat when that would cause her own taxes to go up? The question implies noble intent on the part of the tech worked: because it’s better for society as a whole. We don’t extend that charitable interpretation to the blue collar worker in Iowa. Why do they vote Republican even though Democrats are promising them government benefits? We don’t charitably assume it’s because they believe it’s better for the country in the long run. We assume it’s because they’re easily manipulated or too dumb to understand what’s in their own interest.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y agoI wonder what the support is after Warren revealed her tax plans? I would think that increasing the capital gains taxes and requiring taxes on stock appreciation regardless of they are sold would affect Silicon Valley workers who often have a large part of their competition as stocks/equity.
- WalterBright 7y agoI'd expect to see a lot of foreign investors pull their money out of the US and invest elsewhere.
- mcv 7y agoFor that reason, big Wallstreet banks have threatened not to support Warren if she becomes the Democratic candidate. But apparently plenty of employees of those Wallstreet banks do support her for exactly that reason: they know better than anyone that the situation at the top of their employer is unhealthy.
- radicalbyte 7y agoAre "we" backing these candidates because of their social policies, or because they're going to be the best leaders at this critical point in the fight against the climate collapse? As a group tech workers are highly educated in the STEM fields. We understand the science and accept the conclusions. So we know what we need to do. That and Warren in particular is positioned as being so fantastically competent that it's very easy to see our group getting behind her.
- gtfratteus 7y agoTech workers aren't socially intelligent. This has been known for a long time. Being able to detect when politicians are lying to you takes a social intelligence that most tech workers just don't have.
- jdjdjjsjs 7y agoSmaller tech companies will almost certainly be better for workers. More competitive companies mean more demand for workers and higher salaries for workers. More competition also likely means more innovation and better prices and more choices for customers. The only people possibly losing out even slightly are the preexisting owners.
- robomartin 7y agoThe only reason anyone in the US supports these people is because they have never lived in the socialist big government utopia these politicians champion. In fact, not even the politicians themselves have lived in the society they propose! How is that for a brilliant starting point. Ask anyone who has experienced these ideas in the flesh and you’ll find someone absolutely perplexed that US voters don’t laugh these people out of office. As the saying goes: In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. All US voters really know about these ideas are the promises and a distorted theory and history that conveniently leaves out the horror, the reality, of these ideas. They have been implemented time and time again in various forms across continents and time. And they have laid to waste everything they touch. You’d think people would have learned better by now. Sadly, that required an educational system rooted in fair historical exposure rather than one that pushes a single ideology at every level. This ignorance of history leads to repeating mistakes. Here is the other fact that absolutely floors me: Nobody can name a single nation —not one— which, after adopting these policies, has elevated itself to a level even remotely resembling the success and accomplishments that can be attributed to free market capitalism. Sure, capitalism isn’t perfect, nothing ever will be, yet it has elevated more people out of poverty, cured more disease and improved the lives of more people than anything else in recorded history. The allure of these twisted ideas comes at the intersection of a badly educated public and the promise of solving all problems by taking from those who have more. Easy proposition. Reality is that it never solves anything and often creates more problems. The $15/hr minimum wage “solution” is one of the best modern examples of this effects. The other element naive supporters miss is that the politicians proposing these ideas never live the reality they want you to live. They never live it before or after they are elected. See if you can name even a single politician who has, anywhere in the world and across modern history. That should tell you something.
- dlp211 7y agoNow name the Democrats trying to replace capitalism...I'll wait.
- rayiner 7y ago57% of them: https://news.gallup.com/poll/240725/democrats-positive-socialism-capitalism.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/240725/democrats-positive-socia... All of the major candidates have endorsed the Green New Deal, which espouses a massive economic program where the "public receives" "ownership stakes." It also calls for a WWII-level economic mobilization premised on wide-scale central planning.
- cyclecount 7y agoI work at Google and I’m voting for Bernie Sanders
- cableshaft 7y agoI'm not entirely convinced breaking up Big Tech will be a net benefit, in fact that position weakened my support for Warren. But then again, I also don't work for a FAANG (I do work for a big corporation, and they don't need broken up, they're imploding just fine on their own), so I wouldn't be included in that statistic anyway.
- kmlx 7y agobreaking up big tech (sanders, warren): - US short sellers dream: will truly and finally cripple the US and its dominant IT companies; long overdue as US is at most a medium level country - huge rise in Chinese IT companies; left without competitors assume the Chinese giants will simply control everything and everyone; a new era of Chinese world dominance begins
- bobbytherobot 7y agoA decade of working in Bay Area tech meant watching kids of rich parents get rich off dubious business plans by creating a startup in San Francisco while their parents buy them a house, pay their expenses and tap into their networks for seed funding all the while the company loses money for over a decade while they become millionaires from selling shares during rounds of fundraising. Then I go for the big guy where they are profitable, but then we are chasing the quarterly earning report because we are scared of what Jim Cramer will say about us instead of the everyday impact on the people who use our products. Yeah, I'm disillusioned with it all. I just want to practice my craft to build useful software for people and live a nice life.
- Gibbon1 7y ago> we are scared of what Jim Cramer will say about us instead of the everyday impact on the people who use our products Reminds me of a thing I read by someone that worked Broadway for at that time 40 years. He said the best thing for Broadway would be to take the NYT art critics out for a ride in the country. Because no one was making plays for the regulars or the tourists, they were making plays for the critics. Same complaints have been made about the wine industry.
- chipotle_coyote 7y agoIt's a great anecdote, but it's hard for me to read that and not immediately think "then explain Andrew Lloyd Webber, please."
- Gibbon1 7y agoGuy made a comment about that, said they've been running cats for the last 1 years because they are afraid to try anything new. If they put on a new play and the critics don't give it a top rating no one comes and they lose money.
- Gibbon1 7y agoOpps meant 12 years. Currently Cats has been running for 38 years.
- debatem1 7y agoI'm a tech worker and I'll be voting Warren. Technology really does have the power to change the world and the lives of the people in it profoundly. It is important to recognize that some of those changes are areas of public interest, public concern, and even public policy. The government will-- and rightly should-- demand that such changes be shaped not to cause unnecessary harm.
- golemiprague 7y agoThey vote as they always voted, to the extreme left, nothing changed. It's not like people in facebook or google supported republicans ever. They supported Sanders when he praised Hugo Chaves and they will support Warren when she praise breaking their own companies, exactly like they broke Venezuela. Let's face it, had Hillary won nobody would have heard anything about those "problems" with big tech companies, they would be praised for being on the right side of history all along.
- alfalfasprout 7y agoOne thing I've definitely noticed is the culture of fear in tech about not appearing "progressive enough". Given that tech workers, especially in the bay area tend to come from fairly privileged backgrounds with relative financial stability and also live in safer areas they tend to underestimate the importance of reducing crime and maintaining a strong economy. This definitely provides a "psychological safety net" that tends to push a lot of these people to vote for more radical leftist candidates that may be directly against their self (and future children's) interests.
- chipotle_coyote 7y agoOr alternatively, they believe that it's in the collective best interest of the country and future generations to elect candidates who are proposing stronger regulation to address income equality, rather than candidates who propose that income equality either doesn't exist, doesn't matter, or will sort itself out without regulation. Your phrasing suggests that you think someone like me who believes in the strong regulation approach is just "virtue signaling," but I would suggest that it's because I've looked back at the US in the last century and couldn't help but observe that there's a strong and consistent correlation between market regulation and the economic success of the lower-to-middle class. Income inequality dropped dramatically with the New Deal, the notional "American Dream" largely came about in the post-WWII economy -- and the move toward radical deregulation and trickle-down economics in the 1980s coincides with a sharp rise in income inequality, a concentration of wealth at the highest ends, and dramatic fraying of safety nets for the lowest ends. It is not unreasonable to look at all that and say, "Hey, maybe there was something to that whole 'market regulation' thing after all."
- kingbirdy 7y agoWhy do you think trust-busting precludes reducing crime and maintaining a strong economy?
- perl4ever 7y agoYour stereotype seems directly opposite to the one of tech workers being right-leaning libertarians. If people opposite to you on the political spectrum hate them for opposite reasons, maybe people just envy the money and influence they have and everything else is an excuse.
- habosa 7y agoI don't get why this is so shocking. The future of the company I work at is not the most important political issue to me. I don't want to have a good job in a bad country. I'll happily vote for Elizabeth Warren and if she does break up the company I work at I'll deal with that when it happens.
- opportune 7y agoThere’s nothing wrong with voting against your own (direct) interest. In fact what goes against your direct interest can be more than made up for indirectly by making a fairer or generally better society. Obvious example: green energy, generally speaking, is less economically efficient than fossil fuels (yes, it’s getting better everyday, that’s not the point). We are probably all going to be slightly worse off economically while we transition to green energy. But that doesn’t mean the transition is not worth doing to avoid all the long lasting, externalized negative side effects of fossil fuels.
- marcoseliziario 7y agoMonopolies are also bad for labor, last time I've checked.
- Reedx 7y agoIt is odd that so many otherwise tech savvy people are supportive of 20th century solutions to 21st century problems (to borrow Andrew Yang's phrase). People don't want to use the 4th best search engine or twitter or airbnb. We all know this. These kind of things are naturally winner take all and will pop up elsewhere on the global stage if we push them down here. Instead, apply a VAT. This would be a productive and holistic solution to a 21st century problem.
- dmode 7y agoHonestly, in a way, it is almost two sides of the same coin. Warren knows that breaking up a company will not pass muster through Congress, and we will settle on a compromise which is a VAT. On the other hand, if you start with a VAT, the compromise will be nothing
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- lawrenceyan 7y agoI prefer Andrew Yang's method of adding on a general value added tax in addition to providing a basic income. This ensures a distribution of wealth that guarantees a minimum base while not discouraging people from aiming higher by forcing a cap on income.
- mcv 7y agoI support basic income, but I'm not a big fan of value added tax. It's a corporate tax that ends up being paid by consumers. Investments and buying abroad is often except, so it ends up as a somewhat regressive tax.
- lawrenceyan 7y agoSo something in the vein of an increased capital gains tax?
- WalterBright 7y agoKeep in mind that the top 1% pay 37% of the Federal income tax receipts. If their wealth was removed, who else would pay that amount?