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that electorate doesnt exist in two party system.
by trgn 7mo ago
that electorate doesnt exist in two party system.
- mattmaroon 7mo agoIt can.
- trgn 7mo agohow so? Alupis explains the mechanism why not. In two party system, new electives are incentivized to achieve their program. Reducing spending hinders that, and loss of those voters who care about that betrayal doesn't really matter because they're a tiny group anyway, and realistically, where are they going to go, the other party? They have the same incentive, just for different program. That's the cycle.
- mattmaroon 7mo agoSure but the bigger debt gets, and the more negative impact it has on the population, the bigger that group gets. It’s not big enough yet but that doesn't mean it can’t be. We’ve seen such tipping points with other issues.
- trgn 7mo agoi like your optimism!
- mattmaroon 7mo agoOh I didn't say I was optimistic, just that it is possible. And it is inevitable but probably won't happen until much too late.
- Alupis 7mo agoAgreed, unfortunately. The amount of people that actually care about the national debt is near zero in reality, despite many stating otherwise. When their party of choice comes into power, it's always "spend, spend, spend" - how else do you do all the things you want to do while in power? Then the table turns and they pretend to care while the other party takes a turn. Round and round we go, deeper and deeper in debt, spending like a there's no tomorrow.
- mothballed 7mo agoThis is only possible because the taxation is obfuscated through debt or inflation, both of which effectively are a tax but a less obvious one allowing duping of the populace. We don't need a new party necessarily, just a constitutional amendment that the government can only spend money from direct tax proceeds, with no pre-emptive withholding.
- kevmo 7mo agoThat's basically Bernie Sanders modus operandus. Burlington was running budget surpluses when he was in charge. It's not hard, you just have to make rich people pay taxes. This is an enormously popular idea.
- cogman10 7mo agoEnormously popular for the electorate, not so much for the people that count, donors.
- dijit 7mo agoEnormously popular doesn’t mean right. You should tax behaviours you want to disincentivise. Taxing smoking, cars and sugar are great (but not always popular) ideas. Taxing second homes, property ownership for companies, foreign owned property, and so on is much more important than taxing unrealised wealth, inheritance or capital gains and income. Wealthy people find loopholes, and so you end up taxing the middle class and limiting social mobility with those initiatives. We should figure out what they do with their wealth that makes it worthwhile amassing so much, then tax that. EDIT: sorry, I should have echo’d the chamber instead of thinking about a situation critically.
- throwawaysleep 7mo agoI think we should want to disincentivize any person from having too much power and wealth is power.
- SimianSci 7mo agoI want to disincentivise people with wealth using it to corrupt systems of power into doing what they want. > Wealthy people find loopholes, and so you end up taxing the middle class and limiting social mobility with those initiatives. Sounds like we should get rid of these wealthy people then...
- dijit 7mo agoLet me know when you find a way that makes sense. I’m a socialist, but I have a brain. Anything you can think of to make wealthy people cease to exist is easily bypassed, so the best way is to find ways to tax behaviour instead. The point of money is how you use it, if you have a 50,000x tax on super yacts and private aircraft, then the ultra rich are forced to pay your tax or try skirting around it by using smaller boats or coalescing their private jets into a private airline. But if you tax stocks, then people will invest in other ways. If you tax individuals owning large property then they’ll move their property ownership into a company, if you tax inheritance then they’ll put the money into a fund instead which has debts that will be written off in time. All kinds of fancy tricky accounting. The other solution is to tax everyone on unrealised gains, which makes every home owner (including pensioners) suddenly liable for huge ongoing bills. Elon himself for example is pretty cash poor, but owns a lot of stock in a “high value” company meaning his wealth on paper is pretty extreme. He takes on debt (which has no income tax) and then pays it off with stocks, where it also avoids being taxed as its never realised. I think its a harder problem than you give it credit.
- lo_zamoyski 7mo agoCorrection: one party with two factions.
- gorgoiler 7mo agoWell said. It’s the game theoretic outcome of a system where vote splitting gives the other team a default win. Single choice voting sucks.