5 ms·

Following the logic of this post, you can't redistribute wealth, only money. ” The People” don't want to own companies, they want enough money to feed their fam

by hooande 13y ago

Following the logic of this post, you can't redistribute wealth, only money. ” The People” don't want to own companies, they want enough money to feed their families. The problem isn't that Bill Gates has a lot of money, it's that wealth is a system of exponential growth. It is somewhat unfair that his money allows him to make more money at such an outsized rate. Taxes are a way to put wealth on an logarithmic scale instead of an exponential one. We don't want to forcibly take money from rich people, we want to make it harder for them to make more of it. The point of the post its that wealth is related to having something that can be traded for value. Higher taxes (potentially to support a Basic Income) would leave the rich with their ”wealth” while taking only money from them, hopefully leveling the playing field for everyone else.

ajcarpy2005 13y ago
Both wealth and money (as defined in the article) can be distributed. What good is money if a person doesn't have a "wealth of knowledge" in order to make good choices with that money? Wealth === value, truly useful, Money === Exchangeable notes or coins or electronic funds which individuals may use to meet an agreed upon metric of value in a trade
dbla 13y ago
I'm not sure I would say that "The People" don't want to own companies. This report from Give Directly suggests that giving money directly to the poor resulted in a "+116% percent increase in monthly household investment in land, farm inputs, livestock, housing and household durables..." http://www.givedirectly.org/pdf/2012AnnualReport.pdf http://www.givedirectly.org/pdf/2012AnnualReport.pdf These purchases are money generating assets. I think you touch on an important point though. It's much easier for a random individual to turn money into a money generating asset than it is for them to take a random money generating asset (MSFT stock) and turn it into cash. Ownership of a money generating asset requires domain knowledge, whereas you can choose to spend money where you already have domain knowledge.
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
> ” The People” don't want to own companies, they want enough money to feed their families. Actually, no. They want to feed their families, period. Dumping a lot of money on people's hand to buy food doesn't necessarily solve the issue because spending = inflation.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > spending = inflation. Spending does not equal inflation. Increased money available to the consumers who have non-zero demand for a set of goods can reasonably be expected, under most circumstances, to increase the market clearing unit price for the goods -- but with most reasonable sets of assumptions the relative increase in unit price will be less than the relative increase in available funds to consumers, and redistributing money from one group of people to another will increase the latter groups purchasing power, decrease the former groups purchasing power, and increase the number of units sold of goods and services which the latter group has a greater marginal propensity to purchase than the former.
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    > Spending does not equal inflation. It does when it's a nanny state telling people to spend. First, taxation is not redistribution of wealth. In practice, it's always a lot heavier on the middle class than on the elite, the later have better means to avoid taxation. Second, this money is never just handed over to the poor. Here in Brazil, for instance, it's used to back credit programs by state-owned banks, and interest rates are high. If you want to see the result of this politic in practice instead of theory, just fly down here. The poor are buying more and drowning more in debt because wages still don't follow prices, and still have poor access to education and health. Heavy taxation and 7% "official" anual inflation rate (the real one is double that) erodes away the middle-class purchasing power. All that while banks break anual profit records. Then the president makes an announcement claiming there aren't poor people in Brazil anymore. Mission accomplished right? They successfully moved the population from unskilled poor people to unskilled indebted people. Screw that.
    - 13y ago

by hooande 13y ago

ajcarpy2005 13y ago

Both wealth and money (as defined in the article) can be distributed. What good is money if a person doesn't have a "wealth of knowledge" in order to make good choices with that money? Wealth === value, truly useful, Money === Exchangeable notes or coins or electronic funds which individuals may use to meet an agreed upon metric of value in a trade

dbla 13y ago

I'm not sure I would say that "The People" don't want to own companies. This report from Give Directly suggests that giving money directly to the poor resulted in a "+116% percent increase in monthly household investment in land, farm inputs, livestock, housing and household durables..." http://www.givedirectly.org/pdf/2012AnnualReport.pdf http://www.givedirectly.org/pdf/2012AnnualReport.pdf These purchases are money generating assets. I think you touch on an important point though. It's much easier for a random individual to turn money into a money generating asset than it is for them to take a random money generating asset (MSFT stock) and turn it into cash. Ownership of a money generating asset requires domain knowledge, whereas you can choose to spend money where you already have domain knowledge.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

> ” The People” don't want to own companies, they want enough money to feed their families. Actually, no. They want to feed their families, period. Dumping a lot of money on people's hand to buy food doesn't necessarily solve the issue because spending = inflation.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> spending = inflation. Spending does not equal inflation. Increased money available to the consumers who have non-zero demand for a set of goods can reasonably be expected, under most circumstances, to increase the market clearing unit price for the goods -- but with most reasonable sets of assumptions the relative increase in unit price will be less than the relative increase in available funds to consumers, and redistributing money from one group of people to another will increase the latter groups purchasing power, decrease the former groups purchasing power, and increase the number of units sold of goods and services which the latter group has a greater marginal propensity to purchase than the former.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  > Spending does not equal inflation. It does when it's a nanny state telling people to spend. First, taxation is not redistribution of wealth. In practice, it's always a lot heavier on the middle class than on the elite, the later have better means to avoid taxation. Second, this money is never just handed over to the poor. Here in Brazil, for instance, it's used to back credit programs by state-owned banks, and interest rates are high. If you want to see the result of this politic in practice instead of theory, just fly down here. The poor are buying more and drowning more in debt because wages still don't follow prices, and still have poor access to education and health. Heavy taxation and 7% "official" anual inflation rate (the real one is double that) erodes away the middle-class purchasing power. All that while banks break anual profit records. Then the president makes an announcement claiming there aren't poor people in Brazil anymore. Mission accomplished right? They successfully moved the population from unskilled poor people to unskilled indebted people. Screw that.
  - 13y ago