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People should realise that they will be the ones paying for it. Prices will increase a lot. People need to be aware of that. Personally I'm okay with that trade

by azan_ 5mo ago

People should realise that they will be the ones paying for it. Prices will increase a lot. People need to be aware of that. Personally I'm okay with that trade-off. Also corporations - when checks and balances work properly, which is frequently not the case unfortunately - are great and net benefit for humanity.

nonfamous 5mo ago
>> Prices will increase a lot. Citation needed. Very little of what we buy today as a consumer are commodities whose price is determined primarily by the cost of production — and even then labor costs are rarely the most significant cost. Most things we buy are priced according to what the consumer is willing to pay for it, and the balance sheet of the companies that sell most of the things we buy show there’s a lot of wiggle room there.
- azan_ 5mo ago
  > Citation needed. Very little of what we buy today as a consumer are commodities whose price is determined primarily by the cost of production — and even then labor costs are rarely the most significant cost. Services and goods where lots of human labor is required get much more expensive with larger cost of labor. E.g. fast-food, food delivery. And there's nothing wrong with that of course - I'd rather pay 2x more for delivery than have people working on wages that are not enough to even feed them.
  - paulryanrogers 5mo ago
    If labor costs are so high and such a large portion of production then how can companies afford to funnel so much money to executives? Hundreds and even thousands of times more than their cheapest workers? Often to the tune of millions and now billions? Surely there is more slack in the system than the Epstein class wants to openly admit.
    - azan_ 5mo ago
      If you don't want discussion to turn into cesspool, I suggest not using terms like "Epstein class".
runtime_terror 5mo ago
I wonder what would happen to costs if we had a 90%+ tax rate on the ultra wealthy... maybe if all these record profits were instead funneled back into society everyone would be better off AND prices would drop... a system like this would be good for society it seems... we should come up with a good name for that system, tho...
- azan_ 5mo ago
  I think its pretty naive to thing that it'd work this way. It's really bad idea. If someone has company that debuts on stock market, and stock price increases let's say 100x times, who is he funneling the funds from? I'd say it's not funneling but creation of wealth, economy is not zero-sum game.
  - thfuran 5mo ago
    If someone has a company doing an IPO, it’s extremely unlikely that the company was so small that one person did all the work. Why is it a given that one person should retain nearly all of the proceeds of the sale? To answer your question, that person is funneling funds from investors who are expecting returns derived from the labor provided by the undercompensated employees.
    - azan_ 5mo ago
      Ok, let's follow that logic. If IPO makes CEO much, much richer but generally also makes company and workers better off (but to smaller degree), does IPO make workers more undercompensated? Nobody lost anything for the CEO to gain. Also is "funneling" (that's an interesting choice of word) investors money into company stock a bad thing? Why would it be? I'd say it's a very, very good thing and it's in almost always 100% voluntary to buy stocks.
      - Marsymars 5mo ago
        Presumably there's some level of progressive taxation where the top rate is between 0% and 100% that most helps the median person. The problem is that people with power are largely incentivized to push this rate lower than the optimal-for-the-median-person rate in order to benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
FridgeSeal 5mo ago
Prices are already obscene, and we’re all being ripped off. I’d much rather pay the prices corrected-for-supporting-livelihoods, than the artificially inflated prices used to line the pockets of the rich.
- azan_ 5mo ago
  > I’d much rather pay the prices corrected-for-supporting-livelihoods, than the artificially inflated prices used to line the pockets of the rich. But unless you do central planning (which doesn't work) you can't really separate these two, can you?

by azan_ 5mo ago

nonfamous 5mo ago

>> Prices will increase a lot. Citation needed. Very little of what we buy today as a consumer are commodities whose price is determined primarily by the cost of production — and even then labor costs are rarely the most significant cost. Most things we buy are priced according to what the consumer is willing to pay for it, and the balance sheet of the companies that sell most of the things we buy show there’s a lot of wiggle room there.

azan_ 5mo ago
> Citation needed. Very little of what we buy today as a consumer are commodities whose price is determined primarily by the cost of production — and even then labor costs are rarely the most significant cost. Services and goods where lots of human labor is required get much more expensive with larger cost of labor. E.g. fast-food, food delivery. And there's nothing wrong with that of course - I'd rather pay 2x more for delivery than have people working on wages that are not enough to even feed them.
- paulryanrogers 5mo ago
  If labor costs are so high and such a large portion of production then how can companies afford to funnel so much money to executives? Hundreds and even thousands of times more than their cheapest workers? Often to the tune of millions and now billions? Surely there is more slack in the system than the Epstein class wants to openly admit.
  - azan_ 5mo ago
    If you don't want discussion to turn into cesspool, I suggest not using terms like "Epstein class".

runtime_terror 5mo ago

I wonder what would happen to costs if we had a 90%+ tax rate on the ultra wealthy... maybe if all these record profits were instead funneled back into society everyone would be better off AND prices would drop... a system like this would be good for society it seems... we should come up with a good name for that system, tho...

azan_ 5mo ago
I think its pretty naive to thing that it'd work this way. It's really bad idea. If someone has company that debuts on stock market, and stock price increases let's say 100x times, who is he funneling the funds from? I'd say it's not funneling but creation of wealth, economy is not zero-sum game.
- thfuran 5mo ago
  If someone has a company doing an IPO, it’s extremely unlikely that the company was so small that one person did all the work. Why is it a given that one person should retain nearly all of the proceeds of the sale? To answer your question, that person is funneling funds from investors who are expecting returns derived from the labor provided by the undercompensated employees.
  - azan_ 5mo ago
    Ok, let's follow that logic. If IPO makes CEO much, much richer but generally also makes company and workers better off (but to smaller degree), does IPO make workers more undercompensated? Nobody lost anything for the CEO to gain. Also is "funneling" (that's an interesting choice of word) investors money into company stock a bad thing? Why would it be? I'd say it's a very, very good thing and it's in almost always 100% voluntary to buy stocks.
    - Marsymars 5mo ago
      Presumably there's some level of progressive taxation where the top rate is between 0% and 100% that most helps the median person. The problem is that people with power are largely incentivized to push this rate lower than the optimal-for-the-median-person rate in order to benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

FridgeSeal 5mo ago

Prices are already obscene, and we’re all being ripped off. I’d much rather pay the prices corrected-for-supporting-livelihoods, than the artificially inflated prices used to line the pockets of the rich.

azan_ 5mo ago
> I’d much rather pay the prices corrected-for-supporting-livelihoods, than the artificially inflated prices used to line the pockets of the rich. But unless you do central planning (which doesn't work) you can't really separate these two, can you?