4 ms·

The idea that the archetypical businessman in this story is ultimately necessary to provide for government spending is a pretty unique take.

nickpp 3y ago
There was a statistic saying that top 10% of income earners pay something like 80% of all income taxes (not exact numbers but you get the gist).
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  Which is a reflection of an intensely unequal distribution of income. In a society where few people earned more than Nx the lowest (pick your own N), this distribution of tax origin would look very different. Think of it a different way: suppose a government explicitly targets being able to spend 23% of GDP on government (i.e. publically) chosen goals. How does it collect 23% of GDP? Well, if everyone earned precisely the same, it would collect it equally from each person. On the other hand, if one person earned 99% of GDP and everyone else combined collectively earned the remaining 1%, then obviously the super rich person will be be paying almost all of the tax revenue themselves. The current situation in the US is obviously not this extreme, but the thought experiment shows why it works the way it does. Also important is the concept of marginal utility of income, which describes how each additional currency-unit of income becomes less and less significant as your total income grows. In short, 10%-pay-80% reflects the other decisions that have been made about how the US economy works (or doesn't work), and don't have much to do with taxation in general, or the provision of public services.
  - throwawaysalome 3y ago
    You managed to burn another 212 words that added nothing to the statistic you were replying to.
  - nickpp 3y ago
    > Which is a reflection of an intensely unequal distribution of income. Which is a reflection of an intensely unequal distribution of productivity and value creation. I've also lived under communism, where they ignored this uneven contribution and tried to squash the incomes uniformly. The result was quite predictable: we were equally starving, of course. Except the nomenklatura, but that's another story.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      > Which is a reflection of an intensely unequal distribution of productivity and value creation. Well, I can't disagree with that claim. But it's not really all that interesting, in and of itself. The question is: to what extent, and with sort of multiples, should differences in wealth/income reflect the distribution of productivity/value creation? There are a wide range of answers to that question, all the way from pure commune-style uniformity to contemporary US "capitalism". The only thing that is abundantly clear is that neither of these extremes work all that well for the majority of the people who live under them.
      - nickpp 3y ago
        The only one who can answer that question is the free market. And while not satisfying for everybody, it certainly is the best answer we found so far while trying various forms of organisations with this humankind of ours. The best answer in that not only was the only one that got us fed unlike the alternatives that only brought suffering, death and starvation but also got us such an amazing wealth that we have the luxury to sit and debate such issues from opposite corners of the earth, in real time, on magic devices connected to the freaking cloud. As an Eastern European, I lived through the transition from the horrors of communism to the benefits of capitalism and while it wasn't easy I am a living testament to the immense success story this change brought to these lands. And you can also plainly see the reverse transformation from wealth to misery brought by switching away from free markets in countries such as Argentina or Venezuela.
        PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
smsm42 3y ago
No, it's actually not unique at all. If you look at the history of any civilization - in its broadest sense, as the change of human society from hunter-gatherer tribes to fixed settlements to development of cities to the modern urbanized society - you'll see that "archetypical businessman" existed pretty much since forever. In fact, if you remember the story of Abraham - the one from the Bible, the first Jew - his father was a businessman, namely the idol trader. There was no word "businessman" back then, but the concept of trade - which necessitates the surplus (you need something to trade) and follows from it (you need to do something with that surplus) existed in the history of every civilization and is widely covered in virtually every historical work, of course. If anything, the idea that we could ignore all the civilization history and go back to hunter-gatherer subsistence model is something that would be "a pretty unique take". It sounds good when we're sitting in our comfortable chairs, with bellies well filled and our other needs taken care of, and wax fashionably nostalgic about "simpler times". But somehow most people moved away from this paradise as soon as they were able to. I wonder why?
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  David Graeber and David Wengrow would like a word with you regarding your simplistic, monotonic version of human history. "The Dawn of Everything" covers, with multiple redundant stories, why this concept of "the way human civilizations evolved" is wrong. That doesn't mean that none of them did, but absilutely not all of them. It certainly wasn't a straight path from hunter-gatherer to <what came next> more or less anywhere in the world.
  - smsm42 3y ago
    I never claimed it was a straight uniform path. I only claimed whatever path there was, the concept of production surplus likely played a role, and the concept of trade too - and the tradesmen, aka "businessmen" - were somewhere nearby to facilitate it.
- isleyaardvark 3y ago
  Generally they were moved way from this paradise by force, according to virtually every historical work.

nickpp 3y ago

There was a statistic saying that top 10% of income earners pay something like 80% of all income taxes (not exact numbers but you get the gist).

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
Which is a reflection of an intensely unequal distribution of income. In a society where few people earned more than Nx the lowest (pick your own N), this distribution of tax origin would look very different. Think of it a different way: suppose a government explicitly targets being able to spend 23% of GDP on government (i.e. publically) chosen goals. How does it collect 23% of GDP? Well, if everyone earned precisely the same, it would collect it equally from each person. On the other hand, if one person earned 99% of GDP and everyone else combined collectively earned the remaining 1%, then obviously the super rich person will be be paying almost all of the tax revenue themselves. The current situation in the US is obviously not this extreme, but the thought experiment shows why it works the way it does. Also important is the concept of marginal utility of income, which describes how each additional currency-unit of income becomes less and less significant as your total income grows. In short, 10%-pay-80% reflects the other decisions that have been made about how the US economy works (or doesn't work), and don't have much to do with taxation in general, or the provision of public services.
- throwawaysalome 3y ago
  You managed to burn another 212 words that added nothing to the statistic you were replying to.
- nickpp 3y ago
  > Which is a reflection of an intensely unequal distribution of income. Which is a reflection of an intensely unequal distribution of productivity and value creation. I've also lived under communism, where they ignored this uneven contribution and tried to squash the incomes uniformly. The result was quite predictable: we were equally starving, of course. Except the nomenklatura, but that's another story.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    > Which is a reflection of an intensely unequal distribution of productivity and value creation. Well, I can't disagree with that claim. But it's not really all that interesting, in and of itself. The question is: to what extent, and with sort of multiples, should differences in wealth/income reflect the distribution of productivity/value creation? There are a wide range of answers to that question, all the way from pure commune-style uniformity to contemporary US "capitalism". The only thing that is abundantly clear is that neither of these extremes work all that well for the majority of the people who live under them.
    - nickpp 3y ago
      The only one who can answer that question is the free market. And while not satisfying for everybody, it certainly is the best answer we found so far while trying various forms of organisations with this humankind of ours. The best answer in that not only was the only one that got us fed unlike the alternatives that only brought suffering, death and starvation but also got us such an amazing wealth that we have the luxury to sit and debate such issues from opposite corners of the earth, in real time, on magic devices connected to the freaking cloud. As an Eastern European, I lived through the transition from the horrors of communism to the benefits of capitalism and while it wasn't easy I am a living testament to the immense success story this change brought to these lands. And you can also plainly see the reverse transformation from wealth to misery brought by switching away from free markets in countries such as Argentina or Venezuela.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

smsm42 3y ago

No, it's actually not unique at all. If you look at the history of any civilization - in its broadest sense, as the change of human society from hunter-gatherer tribes to fixed settlements to development of cities to the modern urbanized society - you'll see that "archetypical businessman" existed pretty much since forever. In fact, if you remember the story of Abraham - the one from the Bible, the first Jew - his father was a businessman, namely the idol trader. There was no word "businessman" back then, but the concept of trade - which necessitates the surplus (you need something to trade) and follows from it (you need to do something with that surplus) existed in the history of every civilization and is widely covered in virtually every historical work, of course. If anything, the idea that we could ignore all the civilization history and go back to hunter-gatherer subsistence model is something that would be "a pretty unique take". It sounds good when we're sitting in our comfortable chairs, with bellies well filled and our other needs taken care of, and wax fashionably nostalgic about "simpler times". But somehow most people moved away from this paradise as soon as they were able to. I wonder why?

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
David Graeber and David Wengrow would like a word with you regarding your simplistic, monotonic version of human history. "The Dawn of Everything" covers, with multiple redundant stories, why this concept of "the way human civilizations evolved" is wrong. That doesn't mean that none of them did, but absilutely not all of them. It certainly wasn't a straight path from hunter-gatherer to <what came next> more or less anywhere in the world.
- smsm42 3y ago
  I never claimed it was a straight uniform path. I only claimed whatever path there was, the concept of production surplus likely played a role, and the concept of trade too - and the tradesmen, aka "businessmen" - were somewhere nearby to facilitate it.
isleyaardvark 3y ago
Generally they were moved way from this paradise by force, according to virtually every historical work.