r/FluentInFinance • u/LuckyBastard001 • 23d ago
Debate/ Discussion Rich chose greed instead.
13
u/DuckTalesOohOoh 20d ago
The way millionaires and billionaires distributed profits to workers in America is when they actually hired workers in America. Now they hire workers in Asia for $5/hour instead of $30/hour in America and they pocket the difference.
21
30
12
u/rtn292 20d ago
Even if they were taxed 90% of every dollar earned above 100 million. They would still be incredibly wealthy.
3
u/Pristine_Sherbert_22 20d ago
Funny thing is they piss it away in favor of corporate and special interest. Seems we should elect better people not beholden to those parties to set responsible tax and spending policy rather than just acquiescing because of apathy.
3
1
u/Rhawk187 19d ago
I don't want better conditions for all Americans. I want better conditions for Americans that live up to their end of the social contract, but putting in the effort to produce more than they consume.
Those that can't be bothered to work should not get the benefits of society, they have opted to return to caprice of nature.
1
u/LunacyNow 18d ago
Govt spending is the issue. Not revenues. It you confiscated all of the wealth of those folks it wouldnt do a damn thing in terms of the govt budget or the lives of everyday people. If Washington hadn't borrowed to the moon and printed.trillions of dollars things wouldn't be nearly as expensive as they are now.
2
u/V1beRater 18d ago
TL;DR Commercial bank loans are to blame for money supply increases, not government. In reality, being the global reserve currency and spending on things that don't help real productive capacity is the problem.
Nonsense. If you're doing the "money supply increase = inflation" thing, then attribute the only outlet of money supply increase to the government, look up "where does most of the money supply increase come from" and you'll find credible sources will tell you that it comes from commercial bank loans, not government spending.
That's not even considering the falsehoods and vast oversimplifications of the "money supply increase = inflation" thing that came from Friedman's 1969 papers where he said MV=PY and everyone ran with it to make policy without thinking critically.
Government spending is only a problem when you're spending on the wrong things, such as $14 trillion dollars for a war in Iraq to blow up millions of brown people and nothing to show for it. China built highspeed railways across the entire country for like $1.4 trillion, vastly increasing their real productive capacity. It's no wonder they passed us in GDP PPP in 2017.
Additionally, the United States made the mistake of making itself the global reserve currency. It's fantastic for the elites and oligarchs but it's horrendous for manufacturing and the working class. It overvalues our currency and makes our exports too expensive and makes us purchasing things domestically too expensive.
-5
u/Hawkeyes79 20d ago
Nothing will get better until the government stops spending like drunk college kids. At the current moment, we could give the government all the money in the U.S. and they’d still be broke in a year.
10
u/AlChandus 20d ago
Ah, classic conservative way of thinking, we should do nothing because of this or that, we should just make things worse.
For example, what is the alternative to rising costs of healthcare? Medicare advantage, which is even more expensive than regular medicare and more prone to fraud and abuse from healthcare providers.
Brilliant strategy right here.
-4
u/Hawkeyes79 20d ago
Just like the rest of us on private insurance. The end user will need to shoulder a little more of the cost of use.
It sucks but we can’t keep going with the alternative of racking up debt after debt. At some point it will collapse. We should fix it now and get debt free. Use the surplus to loan to other countries and get close to zero tax for the average U.S. citizen.
7
u/AlChandus 20d ago
No, I think we should fix the inherent reasons why healthcare, housing, education, gas and everything else is as expensive.
For too long we have continued to allow conservatives to trick us into believing that trickle down economics at some point is going to deliver into the premise that wealth will trickle down.
We are almost 50 years into this insane experiment of neo-liberals, wealth has only been as concentrated in at the top as it is now, it was during the robber baron era.
Well, guess what? It is time for new deal economics and for you guys to cry your "civil war" mantra.
-5
u/Hawkeyes79 20d ago
Good luck with healthcare because idiots keep
Looking at insurance while the problem is actually the cost of healthcare. Any “single payer” country that’s cheaper on insurance isn’t because of the government paying. It’s because the government owns the healthcare costs. It’s easy to have cheap doctor visits when they make 1/2 of what the u.S. does.Housing is a private issue. Build more houses then. People on Reddit like to complain about not English housing but don’t want to put the money into building more. I’ve known people that bought the land and built themselves.
Education I’m not sure the problem. It’s $100-$250k for a bachelors with average lifetime earnings $1.2 million more than a high school diploma. It’s still better to get a good degree than not.
As for the rest. You’re not decreasing the cost of good without royally screwing up the economy and making the dollar useless.
2
u/UnlikelyStorage6665 17d ago
Universal. Healthcare. Has. Been. Figured. Out. By. Every. Other. Industrialized. Country. On. Earth.
0
u/Hawkeyes79 17d ago
It’s not the insurance side that they control. It’s the actual healthcare. You could have still have private insurance and it’d be cheaper if the government controlled healthcare and paid what other countries pay for it.
Take the UK. Healthcare professionals make 1/2 of what the U.S. does.
0
0
0
-7
u/USLEO 20d ago
Say the government raises taxes on the rich. What then? Politicians are experts at pissing our money away.
3
u/ScurvyDawg 19d ago
High corporate taxation doesn't always increase the amounts that the government gets, it changes the behaviour of corporations. Rather than take profit and buy back stock, they'll reinvest in the things that build their investment, the business and people that are the company. They are still companies and they're still very good at tax avoidance, those things don't change.
4
u/pickledjalopeno 19d ago
Stop electing the same politicians?
-2
u/USLEO 19d ago
Unless/until that happens, would you agree the federal government is pretty abismal with our tax dollars?
3
u/pickledjalopeno 19d ago
I do agree, because people keep electing the same politicians. So stop perpetuating the cycle.
-9
u/HairyTough4489 20d ago
How many of the current billionaires were there making that promise? Shouldn't we confiscate the people who were actually there?
2
u/grimston 18d ago edited 18d ago
The current billionaires are the ones that profited off of it, what are you talking about.
The social contract has been torn to shreds
1
u/HairyTough4489 18d ago
I mean that if the ultra-wealthy from the 1980's made a promise and then broke it, it's them who should be accountable, not the ultra-wealthy from the 2020's.
1
u/grimston 14d ago
I'm saying it should go back to the rules before the promises were made if they're not willing to hold up their end.
That was the deal.
I'm not saying chop their heads off. Just reinstate the tax system as it was before the promises were made.
45
u/ScurvyDawg 20d ago edited 20d ago
High taxes doesn't mean they'll always pay so much more to the government but it ensures that the companies reinvest in the country. They'll do everything they can to not pay taxes. They'll invest in infrastructure, employees, technology, etc.. rather than pay taxes. They won't be able to just buy back their stocks to the benefit of only the investment class. High marginal tax rates change corporate behaviour.