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I am fairly sure inequality is more extreme than that (top 10% hold 70%) at the moment, and it was less bad in the second half of the 20th century. The top US m

• kansface 4y ago
  No one actually paid those rates, so it goes. The narrative is that part of lowering the rates was closing the loop holes...
• Aarostotle 4y ago
  We live in the most equal time in human history. The actual standard of living of the average person in most developed countries rivals that of royal families from just a couple of centuries ago. Don't confuse monetary inequality with wealth inequality. Measure by the standard of living, not monetary units. What are the actual differences between the life of the average American worker and Jeff Bezos? It's not that big. Jeff Bezos has the ability to buy luxuries most of us could never dream of, sure, but what about the essentials? Nearly everyone can get fresh, nutritious meat, as well as fruits and vegetables. High quality milk and dairy products. Frozen goods. Bacterial epidemics are unheard of. Our recent viral pandemic increased annual deaths by about 10-15% over baseline — compare this to epidemics which used to wipe out entire populations. Life expectancy for all people, regardless of class, ranges between 2-3x human life expectancy in a state of nature (roughly 30 years). You can travel hundreds of miles in a day for only a few hours of labor worth of money. You can cross continents or oceans with a few day's of labor worth of money. Sure, Bezos can have a fancier car with someone driving or his own jet with a pilot flying, but at the end of the day, you can both take off from LAX and land at JFK 6 hours later. You're both going to eat 2,000 calories of nutritious food. You both have running water. And, you're sitting here, both able to communicate with everyone in the world instantly. Let's not buy into the political propaganda about inequality, the reality of the situation is right in front of our eyes.
  • FabHK 4y ago
    > We live in the most equal time in human history. [...] Measure by the standard of living, not monetary units. Well, then, surely it doesn't matter if we tax away 90% of Bezo's wealth, right? His living standard will be same.
    • Aarostotle 4y ago
      It's not ours to take. Where did it come from? Bezos produced it at Amazon. He has a moral right to keep it. Beyond that, though, you can only tax away 90% of billionaires' wealth once. That whole game depends on them continuing to produce the same amount of wealth, even though they won't receive any of the returns. (Remember also that most of these people reinvest the majority of this money into their ventures, meaning that taking these dollars will have a compounding negative effect on future productivity.) Look at history. Your superficially benevolent idea has been tried, it always results in mass hunger and death. Why would they keep taking on so much responsibility? To raise your standard of living? Why should they care about you? Any of those guys are capable of becoming a surf bum, living on $30k a year, but instead, they build massive companies that deliver incredible value to the rest of us — they get their money because we pay them for that value. Would you rather incentivize Elon Musk to keep working on Tesla or would you prefer him to retire?
      • FabHK 4y ago
        > It's not ours to take. Where did it come from? Bezos produced it at Amazon. He has a moral right to keep it. So you are advocating 0% taxes? That argument (of type Econ 101/Ayn Rand) is misguided, because the world is not as envisaged by Econ 101 (or Ayn Rand, who famously enjoyed Social Security and Medicare). Counter arguments: 1. Society has made available the gift of the limited liability company, to encourage risk taking and entrepreneurship. 2. Society has made available streets, canalisation, schools, defence, police, fire fighters, certain forms of insurance, etc., for a simple reason: market failures. Those goods would be provided in insufficient (suboptimal) number by the free market due to: strong positive externalities, non-excludability, adverse selection, and many other reasons. For those (and many other reasons) government does have the right to taxation. The question then is the optimal level. > Your superficially benevolent idea has been tried, it always results in mass hunger and death. Yeah, the poor Northern Europeans, starving to death... Somewhat higher income, capital gains, estate, and maybe even wealth taxes won't result in mass starvation. > they get their money because we pay them for that value. Again, a neat Econ 101 idea that fails to take into account reality. "salary = marginal product" is only true under entirely idealised assumptions of perfect competition [1], in particular no economies of scale and no network effects. That is most definitely not the case for today's tech companies, which quite obviously have monopolistic tendencies, thus extraction of monopoly profit (rent) which accrues, guess to whom, the boss. And, for what it's worth, if Elon becomes a surf bum, or twitters full time, we'll still get great electric vehicles, maybe a tad later. [1] Here's a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition#Idealizing_conditions_of_perfect_competition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition#Idealizing...