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Trump and almost all of Congress doesn't want to touch the entitlements. Bush Jr tried to reform social security and got trounced for it. Since then no one ser

by kyrra 2y ago

Trump and almost all of Congress doesn't want to touch the entitlements. Bush Jr tried to reform social security and got trounced for it. Since then no one seriously tries to change it because the other side will beat you over the head with it, even if they are half truths. Voters like to vote themselves "free" things, even if it might destroy the economy.

whimsicalism 2y ago
i will vote for whichever party reforms entitlements and raises taxes, especially less distortionary taxes like on inheritance, property, and consumption.
- UltraSane 2y ago
  the estate tax should be 100% of anything over $20 million. If property taxes on homes and land are legal then they should also apply to anyone who ones more than $20 million in shares of public companies.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
    who manages businesses that are owned by sole owners that pass away? Who controls Stripe if the Collison brothers perish in a car crash ? What do you think happens with the customer base, during that transition, exactly ? What happens to the jobs lost? If i work all my life to give my kids a better future, who's to say that I can't do that ?
    - UltraSane 2y ago
      "Who controls Stripe if the Collison brothers perish in a car crash ? " Employees. "who manages businesses that are owned by sole owners that pass away?" Whoever they hire. "If i work all my life to give my kids a better future, who's to say that I can't do that ?" $20 million is plenty. Taxing someone AFTER they die is the fairest possible time to do so. Insisting you should have control of your assets even after you are dead is pretty absurd when you really think about it. EDIT: Honestly the minimum could be $100 million or even $1 billion. The goal is to prevent a permanent class of overlords from growing.
      - TeaBrain 2y ago
        >"Who controls Stripe if the Collison brothers perish in a car crash ? " >Employees. The controlling interest in a company is determined by shares owned. This reads like you're suggesting that the revenue from inheritance taxes should be given in the form of shares to the employees of whichever company the deceased had ownership of.
        UltraSane 2y ago
        "the revenue from inheritance taxes should be given in the form of shares to the employees of whichever company the deceased had ownership of." This is actually a really good idea!
      - IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
        I actually think we are talking about different things. I don't dispute that you are coming from a sincere POV, but my point is that you haven't thought about the 2nd order consequences. Liquidations are always messy, and usually wipe out value, and result in real losses of jobs and of customers. Have you thought about what happens when a trained operator is moved aside, by a vote of activist staff, to a charlatan (AKA "politician")? Or, what about the tax consequences to the employees who get the awards ? What cash do they use to pay for the award ? Now employees are forced to sell to have liquidity. Who buys from them? A vicious CEO partnered with a vulture PE? Or maybe a competitor sitting on a pile of cash, with the well connected CEO's hidden knowledge about a founder competitor's health issues, and eagerly anticipating a monopoly upon death? There's a million ways this goes literal off the rails. No company, no jobs, complete wealth destruction. There is another name for this action, when done without "regulation" support: its called confiscation or nationalization, and its usually done by despots or tyranical govts without respect to human flourising. That tells you all you need to know about this sort of tax. An immoral action that is not illegal, its still immoral. The road to serfdom is paved with good intentions.
    - stubish 2y ago
      Whoever purchases the business at auction. Transition? Businesses already need to cope without a CEO for periods, such as injury. Might even go smoother if the executor gets to appoint an acting manager and is able to authorize the CFO to keep paying wages and bills. Work all your life to give yourself and your kids excessive power over me? I didn't agree to that. Society gets to decide what the social contract is, and a lot of us are not happy that excessive wealth/power is able to be accumulated, negatively affecting our lives. Why are we forced to also accumulate unnecessary wealth in order to defend ourselves? Perhaps a better reward for success is leisure and stress free living and providing an opportunity for another to also succeed and flourish.
  - pembrook 2y ago
    Yes, let’s further remove everyone from nature’s only real instinct for selflessness (familial bonds) so we can all become disembodied laborers for our true family: the central planner class in Washington. I’m sure creating a strong disincentive to value creation won’t affect the economy in any way. Europe is doing so great with their much higher taxes, just look at Norway. By wealth tax hammering their entrepreneurial class the’ve encouraged them to leave so they can fully focus their economy on becoming a natural resource extracting petro-state. A real progressive utopia. It’s not like we’d be creating a crazy strong incentive for the state to literally kill certain people to stay solvent. Ok, low key maybe we would be…but the Bolsheviks did such a fantastic job with all the private assets they seized. There’s no possible way this can’t result in a utopian, prosperous, fair society. It works beautifully every time it is tried. Great idea comrade.
    - ikrenji 2y ago
      how are you personally benefiting from the billionaires billions? trickle down is a fairy tale ~ always was.
    - UltraSane 2y ago
      $20 million of completely unearned money is plenty for children to inherit.
      - pembrook 2y ago
        Yes, it makes perfect sense. Don't address any of the counterpoints I raised, ignore the implementation details, and just keep repeating that. It sounds like a really great idea. Artificially creating fairness by eliminating success has no downsides, especially in a competitive anarchic global system. It's gonna feel so good to not have those evil entrepreneurs trying to create too much value in the world to enrich their families. Fairness should be the ultimate end goal for everything, not overall prosperity. Because nature is 100% fair, this totally aligns with reality. History has shown these systems work every time.
        UltraSane 2y ago
aishdbxjdns 2y ago
This has been a known pattern for millennia. Democracy as it is today in the US suffers from the same ills Plato discussed. It is not a good nor sustainable system. It is not the system the founding fathers put in place. That none of our rulers question it nor propose alternatives is very telling about who runs our society and what their end goals are. The only reason society appears to be improving (and it is on the whole) is due to our incredible technological advancement. That being said, we should be living in a utopia by now if our rulers weren’t parasites.

by kyrra 2y ago

whimsicalism 2y ago

i will vote for whichever party reforms entitlements and raises taxes, especially less distortionary taxes like on inheritance, property, and consumption.

UltraSane 2y ago
the estate tax should be 100% of anything over $20 million. If property taxes on homes and land are legal then they should also apply to anyone who ones more than $20 million in shares of public companies.
- IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
  who manages businesses that are owned by sole owners that pass away? Who controls Stripe if the Collison brothers perish in a car crash ? What do you think happens with the customer base, during that transition, exactly ? What happens to the jobs lost? If i work all my life to give my kids a better future, who's to say that I can't do that ?
  - UltraSane 2y ago
    "Who controls Stripe if the Collison brothers perish in a car crash ? " Employees. "who manages businesses that are owned by sole owners that pass away?" Whoever they hire. "If i work all my life to give my kids a better future, who's to say that I can't do that ?" $20 million is plenty. Taxing someone AFTER they die is the fairest possible time to do so. Insisting you should have control of your assets even after you are dead is pretty absurd when you really think about it. EDIT: Honestly the minimum could be $100 million or even $1 billion. The goal is to prevent a permanent class of overlords from growing.
    - TeaBrain 2y ago
      >"Who controls Stripe if the Collison brothers perish in a car crash ? " >Employees. The controlling interest in a company is determined by shares owned. This reads like you're suggesting that the revenue from inheritance taxes should be given in the form of shares to the employees of whichever company the deceased had ownership of.
      - UltraSane 2y ago
        "the revenue from inheritance taxes should be given in the form of shares to the employees of whichever company the deceased had ownership of." This is actually a really good idea!
    - IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
      I actually think we are talking about different things. I don't dispute that you are coming from a sincere POV, but my point is that you haven't thought about the 2nd order consequences. Liquidations are always messy, and usually wipe out value, and result in real losses of jobs and of customers. Have you thought about what happens when a trained operator is moved aside, by a vote of activist staff, to a charlatan (AKA "politician")? Or, what about the tax consequences to the employees who get the awards ? What cash do they use to pay for the award ? Now employees are forced to sell to have liquidity. Who buys from them? A vicious CEO partnered with a vulture PE? Or maybe a competitor sitting on a pile of cash, with the well connected CEO's hidden knowledge about a founder competitor's health issues, and eagerly anticipating a monopoly upon death? There's a million ways this goes literal off the rails. No company, no jobs, complete wealth destruction. There is another name for this action, when done without "regulation" support: its called confiscation or nationalization, and its usually done by despots or tyranical govts without respect to human flourising. That tells you all you need to know about this sort of tax. An immoral action that is not illegal, its still immoral. The road to serfdom is paved with good intentions.
  - stubish 2y ago
    Whoever purchases the business at auction. Transition? Businesses already need to cope without a CEO for periods, such as injury. Might even go smoother if the executor gets to appoint an acting manager and is able to authorize the CFO to keep paying wages and bills. Work all your life to give yourself and your kids excessive power over me? I didn't agree to that. Society gets to decide what the social contract is, and a lot of us are not happy that excessive wealth/power is able to be accumulated, negatively affecting our lives. Why are we forced to also accumulate unnecessary wealth in order to defend ourselves? Perhaps a better reward for success is leisure and stress free living and providing an opportunity for another to also succeed and flourish.
- pembrook 2y ago
  Yes, let’s further remove everyone from nature’s only real instinct for selflessness (familial bonds) so we can all become disembodied laborers for our true family: the central planner class in Washington. I’m sure creating a strong disincentive to value creation won’t affect the economy in any way. Europe is doing so great with their much higher taxes, just look at Norway. By wealth tax hammering their entrepreneurial class the’ve encouraged them to leave so they can fully focus their economy on becoming a natural resource extracting petro-state. A real progressive utopia. It’s not like we’d be creating a crazy strong incentive for the state to literally kill certain people to stay solvent. Ok, low key maybe we would be…but the Bolsheviks did such a fantastic job with all the private assets they seized. There’s no possible way this can’t result in a utopian, prosperous, fair society. It works beautifully every time it is tried. Great idea comrade.
  - ikrenji 2y ago
    how are you personally benefiting from the billionaires billions? trickle down is a fairy tale ~ always was.
  - UltraSane 2y ago
    $20 million of completely unearned money is plenty for children to inherit.
    - pembrook 2y ago
      Yes, it makes perfect sense. Don't address any of the counterpoints I raised, ignore the implementation details, and just keep repeating that. It sounds like a really great idea. Artificially creating fairness by eliminating success has no downsides, especially in a competitive anarchic global system. It's gonna feel so good to not have those evil entrepreneurs trying to create too much value in the world to enrich their families. Fairness should be the ultimate end goal for everything, not overall prosperity. Because nature is 100% fair, this totally aligns with reality. History has shown these systems work every time.
      - UltraSane 2y ago

aishdbxjdns 2y ago

This has been a known pattern for millennia. Democracy as it is today in the US suffers from the same ills Plato discussed. It is not a good nor sustainable system. It is not the system the founding fathers put in place. That none of our rulers question it nor propose alternatives is very telling about who runs our society and what their end goals are. The only reason society appears to be improving (and it is on the whole) is due to our incredible technological advancement. That being said, we should be living in a utopia by now if our rulers weren’t parasites.