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wish the EU was half as focused on promoting economic growth as they are on taking things from people
by dappermanneke 3y ago
wish the EU was half as focused on promoting economic growth as they are on taking things from people
- ImPleadThe5th 3y agoTaxation is not "taking things from people". Everyone benefits from the public services Taxes fund, even the super wealthy.
- f233f2 3y agoIf we are to tax people because they benefit from public services, then poor people should be taxed more than rich people since they benefit from those services more.
- badcppdev 3y agoNo rich people benefit more. They rely on the rule of law in a nation state to protect their assets and provide a supply of goods and services. And they don't pay much for it (in percentage terms definitely).
- f233f2 3y agoPoor people cause much, much, much more work to law enforcement and the judicial system than rich people.
- ubercow13 3y agoThat too is benefitting rich people more than poor.
- f233f2 3y agoRich people can hire private security. Poor people can't. In terms of raw numbers, law enforcement's job is to protect poor people from other poor people.
- tgaj 3y agoYeah, because white collar crimes do not exist and do not cost billions of dolars. Sorry for being sarcastic but seriously...
- wasmitnetzen 3y agoYou can easily be poor without a working government, being rich without a working police and judicial system is much harder.
- michpoch 3y ago> They rely on the rule of law in a nation state to protect their assets and provide a supply of goods and services. Which as a result let their companies prosper and that benefits the employees. > And they don't pay much for it Not true > (in percentage terms definitely). Why would it matter?
- badcppdev 3y ago"Why would it matter?". There are many historical and current day examples of the problems in societies with very high wealth inequality. I don't want to live in a dystopia with _untouchable_ hyper wealth individuals so I believe that governments should make it very hard to stay a billionaire and virtually impossible for people to inherit that level of generational wealth from their family. I am very keen for levels of taxation (and the closing of all the loopholes) that would force billionaires to liquidate significant percentages of their assets to pay taxes as I think it will encourage them to work a bit harder. After all if they managed to become a billionaire once they must be very clever, right?
- michpoch 3y ago> I am very keen for levels of taxation (and the closing of all the loopholes) that would force billionaires to liquidate significant percentages of their assets to pay taxes as I think it will encourage them to work a bit harder. After all if they managed to become a billionaire once they must be very clever, right? Even almost all their "assets" are stocks in the companies they created? Would the idea be that the founders of these companies should lose control over them?
- badcppdev 3y agoThey would only lose control if they were incompetent and it was just luck that put them in control in the first place. The suggested wealth tax is 2%. I have no concerns that a billionaire capable of creating a multi billion dollar business would have any issues raising $20 million per year to sort out their tax bill. Are there any billionaires you're worried about in particular?
- kleene_op 3y agoRich people benefit from all the poor people benefiting from public services. No Uber drivers without public roads.
- altacc 3y agoNo, governments are not piggy banks, you don't get out what you put in. People pay taxes for the general betterment of the country and everyone benefits from a stable country with a healthy population, which are things you can't really place a monetary value on.
- inglor_cz 3y ago"Everyone benefits from the public services Taxes fund, even the super wealthy." That is somewhat debatable. Not all taxes go to universally popular public services. Special interest lobbies are strong everywhere, so you always end up funding a bunch of rent seekers. This is the eternal problem of the public purse, not that different between modern democracies and eunuchs of the Ming dynasty: someone's else's money gets stolen a lot.
- dappermanneke 3y agoI live in one of the most highly taxed countries on planet earth and what my taxes mostly do is go from my pocket to either an unsustainable pay-as-you-go defined benefit pensions regime that nobody wants to reform into a market based defined contribution regime since that would make apparent the underlying weakness of our economy or the money goes to structurally poor regions where it disappears forever because nobody wants to take hard measures to reform governance in those regions. sorry to break your bubble but high taxation is not inherently good or bad, depends wholly on the governance, and the governance tends to the bad
- badcppdev 3y agoPlease name the country? It makes the discussion impossible when you vaguely complain about something with no links or ability for anyone to respond.
- anonzzzies 3y agoGoing by the username, Belgium? Edit: note that many countries would fit the description; at least I know the Flemish are complaining their taxes burning up for nothing in Wallonia and Madrid/Barcelona complaining their taxes disappearing for nothing in Andalusia etc, West Germany in East Germany, but I guess every country has this issue at least at some level.
- galbar 3y agoWhen I read their comment, I immediately thought of Spain. But they may have meant a different country.
- dappermanneke 3y agoI’m sorry I don’t want to dox myself nor spend my time arguing with people who just googled “how does X country benefits system work” on HN I think you can easily see from the replies to my comment however that this sentiment is widely shared across europe, which is indeed reflective of the fact that our economic malaise and lack of policy to address it is an EU wide phenomenon
- okokwhatever 3y agoI don't know where do you life but believe me if I tell you that your statement does not work if you're out of the US and EU.
- archi42 3y agos/even the super wealthy/especially the super wealthy/ The wealth of the wealthy depend a lot on the infrastructure build from tax money. E.g. they don't build nation-scale road networks, but would make much less profit if these were absent.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> Taxation is not "taking things from people". Everyone benefits from the public services Taxes fund, even the super wealthy. Of course it's taking things from people. You might say that it's worth it, but that's nothing to do with the mechanism. Having worked with the public sector a bit, it's incredible how much money is constantly wasted. You see public services and think all the money is spent efficiently on them, when it's just constantly spent on everything. £20k meetings to decide whether or not to spend £10k. Making sure your budget is always fully spent so you can get the same next year, even if you don't need it now and won't need it next year. Every day in every department in every government, multiple people's whole lifetime of taxation is wasted. The mentality is totally different when your customers go to jail for not paying you.
- tgaj 3y agoOh man, you should see how much money is wasted in private corporations. How many start-ups take millions of dollars and deliver nothing. There always be some percentage of money lost, like there always be bugs in our software.
- xyzzy123 3y agoThere's a big difference though; startups are fueled by private money, from people who knew the risks. Public sector waste comes out of all our pockets and could have been allocated to welfare, teacher salaries or infrastructure.
- robertlagrant 3y agoOr it could've just not come out of our pockets.
- robertlagrant 3y agoThey are spending their own money. They aren't wasting other people's hard-earned money. VCs and other funders know the risks and take them anyway. That's why upping taxation to those who take big risks and they pay off is bad - they'll just stop taking risks and things will stop improving.
- dijit 3y agoYou might not have meant it this way, but such phrasing is a dogwhistle for fervent capitalists. Usually the saying is: "If the damned government would just get out of the way and we had unfettered capitalism we would have enormous growth". The issue with Capitalism (as many economists will tell you) is that it causes monopolies, in fact the game monopoly was designed to teach exactly this. Growth is not by-in-itself a good thing for most people, it typically is because wealth generally gets distributed a bit; however countries like the UK (which is a rich country by most metrics) has a lower QoL for a common person than Estonia does despite Estonia only having a fraction of GDP per capita relative to the UK. Wealth naturally centralises in a closed capitalist system; regulation is the only force that stymies that. If wealth is too concentrated then growth is meaningless to the majority.
- rahen 3y agoIsn't the government also a monopoly? Can you really get rid of it and its corruption by just voting? What about state monopolies when they become inefficient and debt ridden, and can just _forbid_ competition? No private monopoly is forever, whether it's the Hudson's Bay Company, the East India Company, GM, Kodak, IBM, you name it. All those empires fell because eventually there will be more innovative offers from lighters, more agile competitors. Government monopolies are much harder to get rid of.
- dijit 3y agoGovernments are designed primarily to serve it's citizens and not the needs of shareholders or profit. They are designed additionally to prevent externalising of costs to some third party. IE; forced servitude or significant harm to the population while chasing profit. Your same statements could be reflected inward of course: British empire, the several thousand peaceful transfers of power that come and go without fanfare and of course very violent revolutions that pass with very significant fanfare and attention. A seated government, especially a democratically elected one should be capable of serving the needs of people, however governments are made of people and the smaller the government is the easier it is to buy it off. - The smaller the government, the easier the corruption. (which is why "small government" capitalists always end up embroiled in corruption scandals eventually). A good example of this is denoted "the keys to power" in the easy to understand video essay by CGP Grey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
- badcppdev 3y agoThe EU population pays a lot for national defence and safeguarding of 'things'. Imagine Switzerland bordered Russia... would they spend more or less on national defence? Does that mean that the EU is subsidising the defence budget of the country with the highest average wealth?
- dappermanneke 3y agoactually european defence spending is frankly laughable compared to the USA which provides most of our security guarantees
- badcppdev 3y agoSo American tax payers are subsidising your security costs? NATO has benefits and costs. Some of the costs are financial and some are political. All of that has to be figured in when you are talking about how the super-rich benefit greatly from the current situation and do not pay proportionally
- dappermanneke 3y agouhm yes american tax payers absolutely do subsidise european security? this isn’t a new fact for you surely? one of the bigger reasons for this is that europe simply doesn’t have the economy to maintain anything even close to american spending levels. but even as a percentage of gdp most european countries are simply behind
- badcppdev 3y agoWe are talking about taxing the super rich in the EU to pay for a service (defence) that is currently paid by other people. I agree with you that the economies of most EU countries cannot sustain US military spending levels. My theory is that since the rich people in those EU countries are amassing wealth at a faster level than the economy is growing then we should use some of that growing wealth to ensure that the economy (and country) are properly defended. Also use the funds for education and infrastructure.
- drcongo 3y agoInfinite economic growth is meaningless.
- dappermanneke 3y agothis slogan is meaningless. economic growth is pretty meaningful and material for me - it means a possibility of retirement for me, a world with jobs, comfort and prosperity for my children. there are plenty of countries on this earth that will let you in to experience their lack of economic growth if you want to see what the alternative is like
- bluescrn 3y agoIt used to seem obvious that infinite economic growth on a finite planet was impossible. But after watching the money-printing and inflation of the last few years, maybe the numbers really can keep on rising forever even if meaningful economic activity doesn't increase.
- dappermanneke 3y agohttps://ourworldindata.org/co2-gdp-decoupling https://ourworldindata.org/co2-gdp-decoupling