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> The key here is ownership of things that facilitate the production of goods and services. I think this is so vague as to be useless. Does ownership of cash n

• mothballed 10mo ago
  It's wild seeing you alternate between having no idea what productive capital is and singling out what you find to be the single weakest isolated sentence and then going completely off of that and then pretending not to understand. You believe you know exactly what it is, based on your confidence with which you assert your position on 'taxing' these assets. I am not going to entertain this feigned ignorance further by entertaining the false equivalence between a pile of cash or a gold watch sitting somewhere and something like a computer actively crunching the most efficient shipping routes. If you own stocks instead of a personal residence because of its superior productive capability that return you a profit, you already understand this intuitively, in fact I think you understand it more or less completely. I am also free to leave Iran to not be executed for being an apostate, that doesn't mean it's not a punishment, it just means if you never do the thing under the conditions of punishment you won't get punished for it. Many here explicitly acknowledge this tax is punitive -- they argue the price of living and rent/homes is too high in CA and it'd be better off if many of those who 'gentrify' go elsewhere so the prices will come down. I believe your position is an informed one. You are pretending like mine is not. Indeed, I think we both have informed opinions, yours is one intended to drive out productive assets from your state and mine is one intended to bring productive assets to my state. I believe with fewer productive assets our labor becomes less and less competitive; there's no shortage of places on earth with lots of (relatively destitute) smart educated people who can work efficiently -- a golden thing about California is they also have the tools and assets to produce even larger returns on that labor. In the end the billionaires won't notice the missing 5% in terms of feeling a change in their quality of life, I would agree with you there. But the poor and middle class likely will notice themselves getting poorer after taxing the productive capital of billionaires, and watching some of the life blood from which they make their living float away.
  • lapcat 10mo ago
    > If you own stocks instead of a house because of its superior productive capability that return you a profit, you already understand this intuitively, in fact I think you understand it more or less completely. If you define the productivity of an asset as the ability to return a profit to the owner of the asset, then yes, I understand that aspect more or less completely. However, when you talk about "ownership of things that facilitate the production of goods and services," this seems to be a quite different distinction. As far as I can tell, you appear to be positing that we have the ultra-wealthy to thank rather than the masses of workers and consumers for whatever prosperity we may have, which I don't agree with. > Many here explicitly acknowledge this tax is punitive -- they argue the price of living and rent/homes is too high in CA and it'd be better off if many of those who 'gentrify' go elsewhere so the prices will come down. I think the policy is intended to raise money from billionaires, not to drive all the billionaires away. It's crucial to note that not all billionaires are threatening to leave, only the billionaires who don't appear to give a crap about their community. As you say, "the billionaires won't notice the missing 5% in terms of feeling a change in their quality of life", so why would they leave their homes unless they cared little for their communitity, valuing only the maximization of their own wealth? The point is that the people who benefit most from society should contribute back the most, to make it better for everyone. But some ultra-greedy individuals want to have everything, giving nothing back, and I think both Khanna and I feel that it would be no great loss for these antisocial individuals to leave the community. > I believe your position is an informed one. You are pretending like mine is not. Not at all. I believe that our difference is ideological rather than informational. > Indeed, I think we both have informed opinions, yours is one intended to drive out productive assets from your state and mine is one intended to bring productive assets to my state. To clarify, I don't live in California. But I don't want Peter Thiel to move to my state either. I would actually favor a system in which the tax rates are uniform, so the ultra-wealthy could not "shop around" for the best rates. In theory, capitalism is supposed to entail capitalists competing against each other to attract consumers, but instead it has become a perversion of that ideal, where governments compete against each other to attract capitalists. Consider how these same billionaires threatening to leave are also threatening to primary Representative Khanna. Our election campaigns are privately funded, which means that for those who can afford it, our government and its policies are for sale. (As far as I'm aware, no candidate has declared the intention to challenge Khanna. Rather, it seems that the billionaires intend to "recruit," i.e., fund, a candidate who will be a paid lackey for them.) > But the poor and middle class likely will notice themselves getting poorer after taxing the productive capital of billionaires I disagree. I doubt that we'll get anywhere by arguing the point, because this a longstanding ideological controversy that has already been argued ad nauseam, but perhaps my own position would make more sense in light of this belief of mine.