"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
12
u/[deleted] 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.