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I feel like you and GP are both right. A ton of high school graduates can't do basic math (which also explains their economic illiteracy, like believing that j

by xp84 1y ago

I feel like you and GP are both right. A ton of high school graduates can't do basic math (which also explains their economic illiteracy, like believing that just taxing billionaires more would fix everything[1]). And also at the same time, we demand college degrees for white-collar jobs that anyone who completed the alleged requirements to graduate high school could totally do. I think this stems from an outdated belief that college is difficult and challenging, and therefore getting through it proves you're exceptionally clever. A notion that has been a joke for at least 15 years if not 20. So everything is fake. The diplomas are fake, the degrees are fake, and the job requirements are fake. All of it is being used to come up with legal and justifiable ways to pick the people with sufficient brain cells to be entrusted with job responsibilities. [1] Most college graduates would likely get this question orders of magnitude wrong: If you could split the full net worth of the top 10 billionaires equally among every man, woman, and child in America how big would each one's check be? Correct answer: Just over $6,000. (Of course, we'll ignore how to deal with the market crash caused by forcing the sudden liquidation of their 2 trillion dollars in assets.)

greesil 1y ago
Does going to college and learning say, compilers or differential equations not have value? Your employer won't teach you. Please don't tell me the heat equation is fake.
- BobaFloutist 1y ago
  I think they're saying that learning compilers, differential equations, or the heat equation aren't actually that relevant for getting a mid-level procurement job or becoming the manager of a hotel.
  - greesil 1y ago
    I mean that's what a reasonable person might write but that's not what the parent comment actually wrote.
dv_dt 1y ago
Imagine trying to advance that the proposition of taxing billionaires is negatable on basic math. That's a critical thinking error, probably compounded by a lack of education in humanities and civilization not a basic math problem.
- xp84 1y ago
  Tax them, don't tax them, I don't care. But you can't argue with the math that a one-time $6k or even $12k per person will not pay for the welfare state the DNC keeps promising us. Please, prove me wrong, show me the math of how you're going to take the billionaires' money (even discounting the fact it'll destroy every retirement account when that market shock happens) and pay for free college for all, double pay for teachers, triple the minimum wage, give free houses to everyone who can't afford them now. The point isn't whether they should pay a higher tax rate (probably they should!) -- it's whether it would be massively transformative to our society if/when we enacted that. I argue it is not. Pretending it is, is the Marxist fringe's version of the welfare queen or the illegal immigrant murderer that the right-wing people try to bamboozle their base with. We could eliminate all welfare fraud and all immigrant criminals by magic and it wouldn't make our society wildly better. It would be a small improvement.
  - parpfish 1y ago
    taxing billionaires isn't just about redistributing their money. it's about changing the objective functions that motivate the ultrawealthy. when they see diminishing returns for increasing their net worth, they might think "hey, maybe instead of using my immense resources to further enrich myself i should do... anything else"
    - xp84 1y ago
      All right, but since I’ve pointed out that it won’t solve any of the main structural issues in our economy to even fully eliminate the billionaire class, what’s the purpose to society of coercing them to stop acquiring money? Just envy?
  - 1y ago
casey2 1y ago
100K per family by my math. Don't know why you believe that only the top 10 billionaires have too much personal wealth. Why does society need to create a increasingly out of touch class of people that think they are morally justified in telling people how to live their lives. The simple fact is that if the government didn't give these people billions in subsidies we would never have to hear them bloviate, Musk, Farely, all these rich A-Holes keeping America stuck in the local minima of car ownership would be utterly irrelevant.
- xp84 1y ago
  > Why does society need to create an increasingly out of touch class of people that think they are morally justified in telling people how to live their lives. Is that a… libertarian argument for wealth confiscation? Why does government need to take a bunch of people’s money for no reason other than “because I’m mad you have more money than me”? Or I suppose the motivation you described is actually that we don’t like how influential successful people are. So, should everyone whose opinion we don’t like be treated this way? There are rich and poor in every society and always have been - it’s not a government failing to have income inequality. In extreme socialist regimes, the government officials themselves are always the ultra-wealthy - because they make the rules on who gets to keep their money and their choice is “Me.”
analognoise 1y ago
Taxing the living shit out of billionaires won’t fix everything, but it’s absolutely the first thing we should do.

by xp84 1y ago

greesil 1y ago

Does going to college and learning say, compilers or differential equations not have value? Your employer won't teach you. Please don't tell me the heat equation is fake.

BobaFloutist 1y ago
I think they're saying that learning compilers, differential equations, or the heat equation aren't actually that relevant for getting a mid-level procurement job or becoming the manager of a hotel.
- greesil 1y ago
  I mean that's what a reasonable person might write but that's not what the parent comment actually wrote.

dv_dt 1y ago

Imagine trying to advance that the proposition of taxing billionaires is negatable on basic math. That's a critical thinking error, probably compounded by a lack of education in humanities and civilization not a basic math problem.

xp84 1y ago
Tax them, don't tax them, I don't care. But you can't argue with the math that a one-time $6k or even $12k per person will not pay for the welfare state the DNC keeps promising us. Please, prove me wrong, show me the math of how you're going to take the billionaires' money (even discounting the fact it'll destroy every retirement account when that market shock happens) and pay for free college for all, double pay for teachers, triple the minimum wage, give free houses to everyone who can't afford them now. The point isn't whether they should pay a higher tax rate (probably they should!) -- it's whether it would be massively transformative to our society if/when we enacted that. I argue it is not. Pretending it is, is the Marxist fringe's version of the welfare queen or the illegal immigrant murderer that the right-wing people try to bamboozle their base with. We could eliminate all welfare fraud and all immigrant criminals by magic and it wouldn't make our society wildly better. It would be a small improvement.
- parpfish 1y ago
  taxing billionaires isn't just about redistributing their money. it's about changing the objective functions that motivate the ultrawealthy. when they see diminishing returns for increasing their net worth, they might think "hey, maybe instead of using my immense resources to further enrich myself i should do... anything else"
  - xp84 1y ago
    All right, but since I’ve pointed out that it won’t solve any of the main structural issues in our economy to even fully eliminate the billionaire class, what’s the purpose to society of coercing them to stop acquiring money? Just envy?
- 1y ago

casey2 1y ago

100K per family by my math. Don't know why you believe that only the top 10 billionaires have too much personal wealth. Why does society need to create a increasingly out of touch class of people that think they are morally justified in telling people how to live their lives. The simple fact is that if the government didn't give these people billions in subsidies we would never have to hear them bloviate, Musk, Farely, all these rich A-Holes keeping America stuck in the local minima of car ownership would be utterly irrelevant.

xp84 1y ago
> Why does society need to create an increasingly out of touch class of people that think they are morally justified in telling people how to live their lives. Is that a… libertarian argument for wealth confiscation? Why does government need to take a bunch of people’s money for no reason other than “because I’m mad you have more money than me”? Or I suppose the motivation you described is actually that we don’t like how influential successful people are. So, should everyone whose opinion we don’t like be treated this way? There are rich and poor in every society and always have been - it’s not a government failing to have income inequality. In extreme socialist regimes, the government officials themselves are always the ultra-wealthy - because they make the rules on who gets to keep their money and their choice is “Me.”

analognoise 1y ago

Taxing the living shit out of billionaires won’t fix everything, but it’s absolutely the first thing we should do.