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Where would new money even go in a system with both fiat currency and wealth caps? Do you have to constantly increase the wealth caps with inflation? How do you

by pharke 5y ago

Where would new money even go in a system with both fiat currency and wealth caps? Do you have to constantly increase the wealth caps with inflation? How do you perfectly manage that rate? As we can see governments are not capable of doing that now. Do you cap the profits of businesses as well and if so why do they continue to innovate or expand once they've reached the same level as all of their competitors? You're really just proposing a centrally planned economy where all wages and prices will be set by the government, that never works and never will work since no small group of people will ever be able to plan the lives of a much larger group without producing a lot of misery. Not to mention all the usual human failings and corruption that creep into every system over time.

dbingham 5y ago
All of those questions have pretty straight forward answers. But your first question has really just floored me. Really? If money can't go into the pockets of the very wealthy it has nowhere else to go? The money would spread out through out the rest of the economy. We don't have a scarcity problem right now, we have a distribution problem. We have plenty of resources to go around, but we have a problem where a very few people are hoarding the vast majority of those resources. So a wealth and income cap is designed to stop that hoarding and force a wider distribution of those resources. As for the rest of your questions. > Do you have to constantly increase the wealth caps with inflation? Yep. Just as we really should be (but aren't) linking minimum wage to inflation currently. And linking our progressive income tax brackets to inflation. And linking our property taxes to inflation. > How do you perfectly manage that rate? You don't have to. We don't manage it it now in all of our existing taxation systems (both wealth based and income based). We only have to do good enough to keep inflation broadly in check. > Do you cap the profits of businesses as well and if so why do they continue to innovate or expand once they've reached the same level as all of their competitors? No. These are individual income and wealth caps. Business profits are business profits. The idea is that if individuals are limited in how much they can take out of the business, the businesses profits will be more widely distributed among those who contributed to the business. And the business will have less incentive to price gouge. > You're really just proposing a centrally planned economy where all wages and prices will be set by the government No I am not. I'm not proposing anything much different than we have now. We have a minimum wage, we're adding a UBI to put a floor under people. We already have a wealth tax for the 90% of people who's wealth is entirely in their real property (their houses), we just leave the 10% of people who's wealth is primarily stocks, commodities or other assets out of it. We already have a progressive income tax, and we've had a progressive income tax that got very close to 100% above a certain level in the past (in the 50s in the US it was ~90% above ~$4 million). The only thing new I'm proposing is putting a hard cap on overall wealth.
- pharke 5y ago
  I think the first question is a very valid one. You say that newly created money will simply go to people who aren't at the wealth cap but my question is how exactly would that happen? I don't see a direct connection between the creation of new money and the supposedly underpaid people you think should be the recipients. You seem to think the only thing standing in the way is so called wealth hoarding, fine lets eliminate that with a wealth cap but then what? Give me a few extra steps here so it make sense.

by pharke 5y ago

dbingham 5y ago

All of those questions have pretty straight forward answers. But your first question has really just floored me. Really? If money can't go into the pockets of the very wealthy it has nowhere else to go? The money would spread out through out the rest of the economy. We don't have a scarcity problem right now, we have a distribution problem. We have plenty of resources to go around, but we have a problem where a very few people are hoarding the vast majority of those resources. So a wealth and income cap is designed to stop that hoarding and force a wider distribution of those resources. As for the rest of your questions. > Do you have to constantly increase the wealth caps with inflation? Yep. Just as we really should be (but aren't) linking minimum wage to inflation currently. And linking our progressive income tax brackets to inflation. And linking our property taxes to inflation. > How do you perfectly manage that rate? You don't have to. We don't manage it it now in all of our existing taxation systems (both wealth based and income based). We only have to do good enough to keep inflation broadly in check. > Do you cap the profits of businesses as well and if so why do they continue to innovate or expand once they've reached the same level as all of their competitors? No. These are individual income and wealth caps. Business profits are business profits. The idea is that if individuals are limited in how much they can take out of the business, the businesses profits will be more widely distributed among those who contributed to the business. And the business will have less incentive to price gouge. > You're really just proposing a centrally planned economy where all wages and prices will be set by the government No I am not. I'm not proposing anything much different than we have now. We have a minimum wage, we're adding a UBI to put a floor under people. We already have a wealth tax for the 90% of people who's wealth is entirely in their real property (their houses), we just leave the 10% of people who's wealth is primarily stocks, commodities or other assets out of it. We already have a progressive income tax, and we've had a progressive income tax that got very close to 100% above a certain level in the past (in the 50s in the US it was ~90% above ~$4 million). The only thing new I'm proposing is putting a hard cap on overall wealth.

pharke 5y ago
I think the first question is a very valid one. You say that newly created money will simply go to people who aren't at the wealth cap but my question is how exactly would that happen? I don't see a direct connection between the creation of new money and the supposedly underpaid people you think should be the recipients. You seem to think the only thing standing in the way is so called wealth hoarding, fine lets eliminate that with a wealth cap but then what? Give me a few extra steps here so it make sense.