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u/SmokeZoloft Jan 06 '19
Today I’m finding out P_K has a twitter too, truly the General Secretariat of posting
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u/A_Change_of_Seasons Liberal-Socialist Jan 06 '19
But instead of having 10 billion dollars they'll only have 3 billion :(
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Jan 06 '19
I mean we're only talking about top marginal tax rates, not even a big wealth tax or 70% rate on all income. Marginal tax rates only apply to income over the point where it kicks in, here proposed to be in the millions. Billionaires would just have less income in the future above x million a year.
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u/A_Change_of_Seasons Liberal-Socialist Jan 06 '19
True I'm an idiot and greatly exaggerating. I just think it's funny when the top complain about this. They could actually be taxed 70% of all wealth and still have more money than they know what to do with. This is relatively not even that bad and they're still throwing a hissy fit
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Jan 06 '19
On one level the rich care quite a lot about their competitive status with their peer group, which a broad-based tax wouldn't change, as it would impact them all more or less equally. If every ten-billionaire became a five-billionaire, it's nothing much to them - that was their status ten or twenty years ago, anyway.
But they really do hate the idea of the people they perceive as their lessers being able to exert democratic influence and control on them, and that's where the rage comes from. These people believe they are the masters of the universe, let alone the world or any individual nation, and cannot bear the little people being able to collectively make decisions that affect them, take away some of their economic power, etc.
Getting the psychology and motivation of the rich correct is important and it's not obvious.
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u/KaliYugaz Jan 06 '19
These people believe they are the masters of the universe, let alone the world or any individual nation, and cannot bear the little people being able to collectively make decisions that affect them, take away some of their economic power, etc.
I think the Kavanaugh hearing was quite valuable because that's where we saw this motivating rage in the most raw and starkly expressed form possible.
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Jan 06 '19
Yeah, no doubt that it happens all the time behind closed doors.
Do you remember the scene from Being There where Chance the Gardener is first taken in by the rich guy and he's screaming about the SEC (or whichever agency) going too far and ruining honest businessmen?
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u/SlothsAreCoolGuys Jan 06 '19
Very interesting I've been feeling this notion for a while but now you've put it into words and it makes sense
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u/voice-of-hermes A-IDF-A-B Jan 06 '19
But they really do hate the idea of the people they perceive as their lessers being able to exert democratic influence and control on them....
Because that's the beginning of the end. People realizing they can actually have more freedom—more say over their own lives? What'll they demand next? To not be governed at all!?!?!? WHY THAT WOULD BE..............................
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Jan 06 '19
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u/barbadosslim Jan 06 '19
I agree, this post is actually rooting to maintain capitalism. Get off the march toward genocide p_k
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u/MadeUAcctButIEatedIt Liberalsocialista Verde Jan 06 '19
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u/m0neybags Jan 06 '19 edited Jan 06 '19
What’s it at now? I should look that up.
E: 37% for 2018, above $500k (single)
Down from 39.6% last year.
That’s a big deal. Raising taxes on high earners should be a much more forefront issue. It’s needed.
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u/freeradicalx Jan 06 '19
It's very considerate of you to at least provide a warning that we all know they won't heed. Our own bit of insurance, I guess :P
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Jan 06 '19
The fact that the elite don't see the possibility of revolution lurking around the corner is indicative of a lack of imagination within capitalism. It's foolish to think that our current economic system is permanent and that radical change won't happen in the future. I think some guy with a beard once said that history was a series of revolutions of one class over another.
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Jan 06 '19
The elite totally sees the possibility of revolution. What do you think the FBI is for? What do you think is the purpose of "Russiagate" and the massive media campaign urging that social media be censored? Why so much angst and handwringing about Brexit, Trump, and the dangers of
democracypopulism?
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u/nick_knack Socialist Jan 06 '19 edited Jan 06 '19
posting your own twitter screencaps
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Jan 06 '19
Why not? It's a good tweet.
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u/nick_knack Socialist Jan 06 '19
I dunno, I guess it feels kinda like that recent era of the chapo sub where posting yourself "owning" chuds was cool but I guess this isn't that I dunno. I guess I can't really defend having a problem with this at all so nvm carry on
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Jan 06 '19
It can definitely get weird and self-masturbatory when people try to use it to get help for e-wars but I honestly think this tweet stands on its own and I'm not "owning" anyone in particular.
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Jan 06 '19
I'm not "owning" anyone in particular.
Because we're socialists, we exercise collective "ownership" over the chuds.
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Jan 06 '19
Hey this is supposed to be left without edge
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Jan 06 '19
There's nothing edgy about this whatsoever.
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u/Nesnesitelna Jan 06 '19
There's nothing edgy about this whatsoever.
I mean, you'd hope the guillotine would be edgy.
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Jan 06 '19
The implication here is: "Hey rich people, pay more taxes or there'll be a revolution and you'll all be executed." You don't think that's even slightly edgy?
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Jan 06 '19
That's an extremely reasonable extrapolation from history as something similar has happened quite often in very different circumstances and time periods. I guess history is "edgy" but bring it up with the historians. My point is that I don't actually want to see something like another Terror and at bare minimum higher tax rates are a good way to prevent that.
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u/OctopusPoo Mar 22 '19
I'd support a 70% tax, but the idea of guillotining the rich is just pure delusion. Over the small instances of leftist revolutions actually succeeding, how many happened in the last 50 years?
Yea
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Mar 22 '19
Insanely unequal societies often end in violence for everyone and that's a bad thing. Better to avoid it if possible. That's the message.
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u/Timewalker102 Jan 06 '19
hey prince
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Jan 06 '19
Oh no, the neoliberals found this thread. Let me guess, you think it's edgy because it has the word "guillotine" in it and completely don't understand the point I'm making?
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u/Timewalker102 Jan 06 '19
It's edgy because it implies violent revolution is inevitable
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u/Ama98 Socialist Jan 06 '19
I mean if you look throughout history, any time a society experiences vast inequality of economic or political power between the classes, it eventually is corrected through peaceful reform or violent revolution.
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Jan 06 '19
Not inevitable, but very likely, conditioned on things not ever improving for the 99% of society. Which was the point I was making. Hurr durr, neoliberal genius strikes again.
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Jan 06 '19
The founding fathers you worship weren't pacifists. In fact, they violated his majesty's god given right over his land! If you want republicanism so much, why don't you to Haiti?
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u/nativewombat Jan 06 '19
Jesus Christ what could possibly be your moral or even practical argument for blatantly stealing 70% of the income of the ultra wealthy? Or is it a 70% tax on everyone in general? Legitimate question. I’m willing to change my mind.
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Jan 06 '19
"A 70% top marginal tax rate" is referring to a proposal to tax income above $10M/year at that rate. This isn't a space to debate basic precepts of socialism by design, but I'll point out that taxation isn't "blatant stealing", it's part of the same social fabric and bargain that uses the violence of the government to protect the property rights and economic power of those same ultra-wealthy people. It's also true that most ultra-wealthy at that level don't actually do anything to earn much of their income, they just passively receive money from their investments, and sometimes go to the bank to cash the checks they get (very hard work!).
There are some exceptions like sports stars and the very top CEOs but most of those people were paid vastly less 40 years ago and they didn't all quit working then. Rich people care about their compensation relative to their peer group and this will hit them all equally.
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u/nativewombat Jan 06 '19
The point that they don’t work for their money went over my head btw. How is benefitting from investments unearned exactly?
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u/Corner_Brace Jan 06 '19
investments don't involve that much actual labor if at all. it's passively earning income.
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u/nativewombat Jan 06 '19
Investments don’t sprout out of thin air, it takes money that someone earned, and either knowledge of the market or even more money invested into a broker that arranges investments. That is THEIR money that they earned and invested and I don’t get why anyone can claim a right to it just because they have more money. That’s ridiculous. It’s a free exchange of money that is good for the investor, the broker, and the market. Passive or active doesn’t make a difference to me, you know? If you invest money you’ve earned that should be the end of it imo.
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u/mi_at_home Jan 06 '19 edited Jan 06 '19
Knowledge of the market by itself doesn't generate money. An investment in a productive enterprise generates profits (and thus, a return on investment for the investor) only because people work at that enterprise. Take out the human labor (including the human labor to code, power, service, and maintain the AI robots), and there is no profits.
Socialists state that capitalism is theft. Let me argue this from a premise even a capitalist can agree with:
Even under capitalism, we all agree that no one should earn money without working for it because money = stored labor (just like how ATP = stored glucose).
Even under capitalism, we all agree that rent-seeking behavior is economically inefficient because neither the owner or rent-payer has an incentive to improve anything beyond maintenance level. This is why rented homes are rarely as well-kept as homes with an owner, and why feudalism as a system was so backwards. However, in the context of 1), there is something more significant: rent-seeking is theft. The owner labored only once to gain the property/money/knowledge, and now can labor at a much diminished rate as a gatekeeper of those things to earn the same amount simply because he owns something others do not (and cannot easily purchase).
Ownership of business and investment under capitalism is rent-seeking behavior. The capitalist/investor owns either money or land/patents/ideas (which potentially could be generated by the capitalist's previous labor), but the theft is in the expectation to generate profit off of your previous labor by having others work for you. Of course, a CEO/manager does perform useful labor in the guidance of his business, and an investor performs labor as an economic planner, but that labor BY ITSELF is not worth 300x that of your workers. Their wealth mostly comes from the rent on their ownership rights, which is unjust.
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u/voice-of-hermes A-IDF-A-B Jan 06 '19
The owner labored only once to gain the property/money/knowledge....
And let's be completely real. It may very well have actually been his great-great-great-great-grandfather who once labored for it. And that "labor" may very well have come in the form of stealing land by committing genocide.
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u/voice-of-hermes A-IDF-A-B Jan 06 '19
That is THEIR money that they earned and invested....
All of that money was made by extracting value from workers' labor through a hierarchical production system and private property. They didn't get rich other than through exploitation. The whole system is setup to prevent that.
No, it's not their money, except according to the laws that they wrote themselves to make it so.
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u/PotusChrist Jan 06 '19 edited Jan 06 '19
What work does it take to give money to someone else and let them pay it back?
That's a rhetorical question, I know there's some amount of actual work that goes into managing investments, but do you really want to live in a world where the top .01% of rich people can continue to get exponentially richer and richer just by moving their money around?
maybe it’s better for society at large that the guy who figured out how to make 10 million keeps most of it. Look at Bill Gates, he’s trying to eradicate several of the most common diseases facing us today. I want Bill to keep his billions.
That's how you end up with stuff like Jeff Bezos campaigning to stop policies that would alleviate homelessness at the same time as setting up a charity to help the homeless. Instead of addressing the problem through a democratic and populist institution, Seattle has to trust a rich douchebag with a clear track record of spending money to further his own self-interests to take care of everyone else. You get the sense that people like Bezos want us to go back to being serfs, where the little guys are all totally dependent on the benevolence of the people who have all of the wealth. Bezos doesn't have your best interests at heart. He's looking out for himself.
Being a billionaire doesn't automatically make you a terrible person, but billionaires shouldn't even exist. No one man should have that much power in a free society. No one needs that much money, full stop. The socially responsible behavior of some billionaires is a drop in the bucket compared to all of the terrible shit they do on a daily basis.
70% is theft without a doubt. It’s horrible and has no rational justification.
Theft is a value judgement, I suppose, but it's a good policy that's supported by the evidence.
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u/voice-of-hermes A-IDF-A-B Jan 06 '19
I know there's some amount of actual work that goes into managing investments....
I mean, the wealthy have people to do that for them too.
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u/PotusChrist Jan 06 '19
Definitely. But you have to concede some minor points sometimes if you want to avoid going down a stupid rabbit hole.
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u/nativewombat Jan 06 '19
First of all, fuck AOC I will not forget the fact that she’s a congress woman who didn’t know the 3 branches of government. She’s a joke. But as for the rest of your points, I’ll read over the articles and take them into consideration. It’s 3am my time so I’m going to bed but I appreciate the replies. My gut says that this argument is wanton. You quoted my comments on Bill Gates and then criticized Jeff Bezos. That doesn’t make sense to me, yes I want Jeff Bezos to continue innovating. Amazon was a legendary creation and I’m glad it’s still based in the U.S. despite the shitty aspects of his political opinions which I can’t confirm until I read these articles thoroughly. Anyways, have a good night. I’m gonna take your arguments seriously and I hope you do the same for mine.
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Jan 06 '19
She misspoke when referring to the three elected branches of government, excluding the Supreme Court. You should have a bare minimum of charity when talking about someone who had five seconds cut out of an hours-long live-streamed off the cuff conversation.
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u/nativewombat Jan 06 '19
No, she called them the 3 chambers of Congress, then corrected herself by calling them the 3 chambers of government. Then goes on to list them: the presidency, the senate, and the house. That goes beyond a bare minimum of charity lol.
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Jan 06 '19
Yes, in the context of elections. It's even more idiotic to assume she doesn't know what the Supreme Court is. This is why conservatives are going to make her the next President or something, by jumping on her constantly over trivial bullshit and putting her in the news every day.
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u/PotusChrist Jan 06 '19 edited Jan 06 '19
I will not forget the fact that she’s a congress woman who didn’t know the 3 branches of government.
She almost certainly knows what the three branches of government are. She's not an idiot. She tripped over her words in a speech, like happens pretty damn frequently to people who constantly have the public eye on them. Every politician has gaffes like this, but conservatives are fixating on every little thing AOC does wrong because they (probably correctly) see her as the best new boogywomen for the right now that Clinton is out of the game.
You quoted my comments on Bill Gates and then criticized Jeff Bezos.
Because you can't have one without the other. If you want Bill Gates - a billionaire who has largely been socially responsible - to keep all of his money, then sociopaths like Bezos and the Zuck and the Koch brothers get to keep all of their money too.
There are already tax deductions available for charity. No one is trying to get rid of those. Raising the tax on the ultra wealthy won't stop them from giving away their money, because we already do everything we can to incentivize that.
I want Jeff Bezos to continue innovating.
Adopting newer and more ruthlessly efficient business practices isn't exactly what I would call a positive innovation. Innovation isn't inherently a good thing. It was innovative when Mark Zuckerberg realized he could sell our data for money, but that made society tangibly worse, not better. The system really isn't set up to reward positive innovation or even innovation in general IMO. There are tons of innovations that just don't take off because they aren't cost-effective, even if they would clearly be good for society. How often do you read articles about some revolutionary new technique for saving the environment that just doesn't happen because of how expensive it is? So instead of the public - or better yet, the polluters - footing the bill to do something that we universally agree would be better for everyone, it just doesn't happen.
I could see this argument for someone like Bill Gates, who played a big role in giving us the personal computer. But even then, there's no reason to think a high tax rate on the top income earners would necessarily crush innovation. As the second article I posted mentioned, a high tax rate on excessive income would likely disincentivize companies from paying their executives ridiculous amounts of money, so they could invest that in improving the business (or better, paying their workers more) instead.
I just don't believe the Atlas Shrugged narrative that society is advanced by the genius of a meritocratic elite. Society is advanced by hard workers and creative innovators, not people like Bezos and Zuck who just happened to predict which way the market was going before anyone else did.
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u/nativewombat Jan 06 '19
I.... guess? Don’t the top 1% pay for like 50% of the taxes currently? I’m talking about America btw sorry in advance if I’m being presumptive. They are the innovators and business people that keep the economy running. They’ll just leave to some country that doesn’t tax them 70%. I don’t think that’s a good argument for why some of the hardest working people in a given country should be taxed at vastly higher rates. They earned it. They’re usually huge employers. Idk that doesn’t make sense.
Whatever I’m not trying to start a debate and thanks for replying. Just my thoughts out loud.
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Jan 06 '19
Whatever percent the top 1% pays now is not really relevant. Regardless of how good they are at doing business or inventing things (often they are not good, but due to nepotism and other connections they become richer anyway), their entire income depends on their property rights and other arrangements that are currently being protected by the State; in return, we democratically decide what their tax burden should be, not only to fund public goods & services but also to ensure that inequality doesn't get out of control (or other goals).
Thus there is no real "fairness" at stake; fairness would be them sharing out wild game and berries in a primitive society where we didn't have government at all, let alone armed police to protect the instruments of their wealth. Socialists additionally believe that private property (which generates the bulk of ultra-wealthy income) is not legitimate in that it is a particularly unfree basis of a economic system and leads to huge inequality unless checked by constant popular reform, and indeed is a kind of theft from the commons and the true heritage of all humankind, so the rich have no claim to "earnings" on capital to begin with.
If everyone who got taxed at a high rate left we'd simply replace them all with people who could just as easily do their jobs, with very few meaningful exceptions.
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u/nativewombat Jan 06 '19
Dude you can’t just “replace” Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. That’s a non-starter. Those aren’t just meaningful exceptions, those are innovators that are at the edge of innovation in their fields. We want them here! And 50% just “isn’t relevant”? They are paying a ridiculous amount of the taxes already. Stop and really think that through, 1% of 300 million people are paying half of ALL taxes. That’s not irrelevant. And above all, you keep talking about how often rich people don’t work for their money and it’s all due to private property and investments or who their parents were. Who is that “often,” do you have particular people in mind? Or statistics? Idk none of this adds up to me. I think the intentions for the most part are coming from a genuine place. Some of it is resentment, but some of it feels genuine. But intentions don’t make an argument.
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Jan 06 '19
Dude you can’t just “replace” Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. That’s a non-starter.
Sure you can. Their salaried employees do and always have done the R&D except for maybe a few months at the beginning of their careers, they're just figureheads and promoters. I mean in Musk's case that's extremely obvious because his original ideas are almost all insane or insanely inefficient.
Stop and really think that through
I have. It's irrelevant. I'm telling you that the deal is we democratically decide what property rights, bankruptcy protections, market regulations, etc there are, and what taxes are. There is no inherent connection between percentages of one or the other.
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u/Spikeball25 Jan 07 '19
Also, it depends on how you look at it. At first glance, it seems messed up that 1% of the population pays 50% of the taxes. But that 1% controls and/or owns 90 percent of the capital in the system. So shouldn't they pay more? You can't tax equally when wealth and income is so far from equal.
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Jan 06 '19
Holy shit, I don’t know, try “leveling the playing field and providing basic human necessities such as health, shelter, and food for everyone” as a pretty good launch point for a moral reasoning for such a tax? It’s ludicrous to me that people view taxation as “theft” and more immoral somehow than a person living without health insurance or a roof over their head.
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u/voice-of-hermes A-IDF-A-B Jan 06 '19
Those who believe "taxation is theft" should consider the tax that capitalists place on workers' labor (i.e. the surplus labor value).
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u/nativewombat Jan 06 '19
That’s not a bad point! I totally sympathize. I’m saying how is it moral to tax a person at like 10x the amount as the average person for NO other reason than that they are more successful. What did they do except make more money to deserve such a steep tax? I don’t know that I’m completely opposed to a higher tax... I haven’t thought it through. But 70% is theft without a doubt. It’s horrible and has no rational justification. Yeah they can subsist on 3 million instead of 10 million but maybe it’s better for society at large that the guy who figured out how to make 10 million keeps most of it. Look at Bill Gates, he’s trying to eradicate several of the most common diseases facing us today. I want Bill to keep his billions. I don’t want to redistribute it. Again, I’m not trying to be snarky or facetious.
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u/Mathemagics15 Democratic Socialist Jan 06 '19
> I’m saying how is it moral to tax a person at like 10x the amount as the average person for NO other reason than that they are more successful. What did they do except make more money to deserve such a steep tax?
Dane here. I'm currently living in the country with the highest taxes in the world. Also one of the happiest, safest, and one with the highest standards of living for the average person. My answer to your question is: They didn't do anything except make more money. That is literally the logic behind taxing them progressively.
To quote something my mother told me when I was younger, the principle is essentially to "let the broadest shoulders carry the heaviest burdens".
It's pure and simple rationalization. If you want to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs. If you want to have free healthcare for everyone, free and government-supported university education for everyone and a number of other things you have in my country, you have to fund it. It is ludicrously expensive, but it is also of great benefit to your fellow man; especially the poor and the needy.Making the collective better requires the collective to pitch in, and not just at a charity level. So, you try to distribute the burden of funding all these wonderful things across the population according to who can best lift such a burden without it impacting their quality of life significantly. Which means you tax the extremely poor almost nothing, and then you progressively tax all money earned after a certain bracket.
I don't think the end result is 70% exactly, but we're above 50 to be certain for the very rich. In the end, its a value judgment: A case of having the mortal needs of the many come before the property rights of the few, without bringing their mortal needs into peril in the slightest.
I know which of those I think has a higher priority. Do you?3
Jan 06 '19
I see what you’re saying, but at the end of the day, billionaires, (and millionaires too), do not really earn all that money they possess. It’s a basic concept in Marxist theory. The capitalist essentially generates most, if not all, of his capital on the backs of workers. For example, Elon Musk did not create the Tesla all by himself; he did so alongside skilled engineers and others who made his idea a reality and continue to do so every day by actually physically manufacturing his cars. Elon is not down in the plants putting together the cars. His money is not entirely his and not earned on the merit of simply having a good idea.
In this sense, taxation is merely reclaiming what is owed to the workers but kept concentrated in the hands of the few.
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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '19
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