Would you have voted Sanders? Nice man, at least the part I know...
An interesting thought, maybe a conspiracy theory
Re: An interesting thought, maybe a conspiracy theory
Thanks for this long text
Would you have voted Sanders? Nice man, at least the part I know...
Would you have voted Sanders? Nice man, at least the part I know...
Re: An interesting thought, maybe a conspiracy theory
Sanders is really a problem for me ... I don't know what to say
on one hand, he was probably the most honest of all the politicians, aside of Trump the outsider (who is a bad liar, so people see almost immediately when he says something, he isn't sure about). And Sanders has no record of dead bodies dropping around him, no fishy donors from the Middle East and Moscow ... actually, he was the only one who yelled at the bad rich persons and had really none of them in the donor list. So yes, quite above board.
On the other hand, he subscribed to economical ideas that, neither by all my mathematical knowledge nor by historical experience can even work. The idea of redistribution and basically people's economy is propagated under different names since millennia now and every time people actually tried, they got a decade long decline with dying empires in the end. So, he probably believes in what he said, but mathematics doesn't. Which would made it very hard for me to vote for him.
The other issues ... it depends. He would have maybe able to talk Europeans into taking on a bigger and more expensive role. I am not sure. But admittedly, he had this terrible liberal urge to be loved which makes them in case of a confrontation rather soft and we had enough soft.
on one hand, he was probably the most honest of all the politicians, aside of Trump the outsider (who is a bad liar, so people see almost immediately when he says something, he isn't sure about). And Sanders has no record of dead bodies dropping around him, no fishy donors from the Middle East and Moscow ... actually, he was the only one who yelled at the bad rich persons and had really none of them in the donor list. So yes, quite above board.
On the other hand, he subscribed to economical ideas that, neither by all my mathematical knowledge nor by historical experience can even work. The idea of redistribution and basically people's economy is propagated under different names since millennia now and every time people actually tried, they got a decade long decline with dying empires in the end. So, he probably believes in what he said, but mathematics doesn't. Which would made it very hard for me to vote for him.
The other issues ... it depends. He would have maybe able to talk Europeans into taking on a bigger and more expensive role. I am not sure. But admittedly, he had this terrible liberal urge to be loved which makes them in case of a confrontation rather soft and we had enough soft.
Free speech can never be achieved by dictatorial measures!
Re: An interesting thought, maybe a conspiracy theory
I guess with the economical POV, you are talking about redistributing money from the "rich" people to the "poor" people, which can be done in quite many ways. I myself for example find it a very good idea to introduce a inheritance tax or make this a bigger percentage. It's not really fair when people gain money just because of being a child of a rich person, neither it's fair when people are poor and more or less chanceless because they have the bad luck to be born in a poor family.
So what is actually wrong about this concept?
So what is actually wrong about this concept?
Re: An interesting thought, maybe a conspiracy theory
See, the mathematical error starts with the assumption. The buzzline is 1% of the population control 99% of the capital. That doesn't mean, they own it, it means they control it. So there are no fat wallets one can plunder. The liquid amount of capital is far less big. Most of this capital is in investments.
The second logical failure is the assumption, you can dissolve this assets. Because those assets are companies, plants, all kinds of stuff where people work. So either you have to invent a law ordered plan economy (we know how that worked) to keep people organized in work or you simply make all of them jobless.
And then, there are of course the favourite taxes all liberals want. VAT and inheritance taxes.Lets start with VAT. It brings a lot of money into a big governments treasure chest ... because it is a tax, that milks the poor. See, you pay VAT on everything you buy. But a rich person can only eat, so the part of a rich person's income he HAS to spend is a small percentage of his money. For a poor family it is different. They have to work even with the last cent. So effectively a VAT of 10% reduces the available money for a poor family by 10% while it hits a rich person probably with less of 0.01% ofhis available money. Still, VAT works of course for big governments because there are so many poor people to milk. It adds up.
Now even more dangerous is inheritance tax. It sounds so nice to liberal ears, take money from the rich after they die ... Here is the problem. Most of their money is in investments, assets. As sson, as your inheritance tax is higher than the liquidity you foce the heirs to dissovle assets. Sell a plant here, sell some stock shares there. And they have to sell often under price because the inheritance tax causes time pressure. So to make the offered assets more attractive to potential buyers, you have to streamline ... kill jobs.
Even worse, things go if we talk about big stock market share packets. Big sales press the price of the shares. This opens the entry of speculative buyers. Speculative buyers can make profit basically only either by splitting the bought trusts up or by streamlining them to the extreme.Means more job losses.
So, the most preferred taxes on the liberal menu are massive job killers. The price is so or so paid by the poor and the middle class. But it gets worse. To administer this kind of relaitve complex taxes, the government needs manpower. Complex taxes lead to a bloated IRS apparatus and bloated reporting duties. Means, on one hamd the government grows and needs more money, therefore has a need to increase taxes even more, on the other hand, enterprises are burdened with extra costs for the more complex reporting duties. Now, liberlas argue of course, the comapines will add those extra costs to the prices. But most companies can't, they have competition from other countries, smarter countries who didn't roll on the tax screw. Their prices are lower, their products are cheaper. Which means, only enterprises in a favourite competition situation can actually add those extra costs on the prices, the others die ... job killer.
Now, you have already produced a few million jobless people. You need to pay them some kind of benefits, you can't let them starve. Actually you have to pay them more ... the costs of living climbed due to your taxes. Som your already bloated government needs to raise the taxes again, bloat more because the fewer survivors of your tax policies are there to pay taxes, the more brutal you have to milk them.
So ... what you can very well imagine and the reality are two different thing. You are in Germany, maybe you remember when the old Thurn and Taxis died, like twenty years ago? Remember how this inheritance tax cost thousands of jobs at the enterprises, he had invested in? See, I remember also the years after. The Social-Democrats government ran exactly on that agenda, remember? 11,000 enterprise bankruptcies per month, that was a lot to take for a country the size of Germany. What was unemployment when they finally got rid of Schroeder? 12.5% or was it 12.8%? See, those ideas were all already tried with terrible results. Still they come again and again always from the same side simply because they are easy to sell to voters.
The second logical failure is the assumption, you can dissolve this assets. Because those assets are companies, plants, all kinds of stuff where people work. So either you have to invent a law ordered plan economy (we know how that worked) to keep people organized in work or you simply make all of them jobless.
And then, there are of course the favourite taxes all liberals want. VAT and inheritance taxes.Lets start with VAT. It brings a lot of money into a big governments treasure chest ... because it is a tax, that milks the poor. See, you pay VAT on everything you buy. But a rich person can only eat, so the part of a rich person's income he HAS to spend is a small percentage of his money. For a poor family it is different. They have to work even with the last cent. So effectively a VAT of 10% reduces the available money for a poor family by 10% while it hits a rich person probably with less of 0.01% ofhis available money. Still, VAT works of course for big governments because there are so many poor people to milk. It adds up.
Now even more dangerous is inheritance tax. It sounds so nice to liberal ears, take money from the rich after they die ... Here is the problem. Most of their money is in investments, assets. As sson, as your inheritance tax is higher than the liquidity you foce the heirs to dissovle assets. Sell a plant here, sell some stock shares there. And they have to sell often under price because the inheritance tax causes time pressure. So to make the offered assets more attractive to potential buyers, you have to streamline ... kill jobs.
Even worse, things go if we talk about big stock market share packets. Big sales press the price of the shares. This opens the entry of speculative buyers. Speculative buyers can make profit basically only either by splitting the bought trusts up or by streamlining them to the extreme.Means more job losses.
So, the most preferred taxes on the liberal menu are massive job killers. The price is so or so paid by the poor and the middle class. But it gets worse. To administer this kind of relaitve complex taxes, the government needs manpower. Complex taxes lead to a bloated IRS apparatus and bloated reporting duties. Means, on one hamd the government grows and needs more money, therefore has a need to increase taxes even more, on the other hand, enterprises are burdened with extra costs for the more complex reporting duties. Now, liberlas argue of course, the comapines will add those extra costs to the prices. But most companies can't, they have competition from other countries, smarter countries who didn't roll on the tax screw. Their prices are lower, their products are cheaper. Which means, only enterprises in a favourite competition situation can actually add those extra costs on the prices, the others die ... job killer.
Now, you have already produced a few million jobless people. You need to pay them some kind of benefits, you can't let them starve. Actually you have to pay them more ... the costs of living climbed due to your taxes. Som your already bloated government needs to raise the taxes again, bloat more because the fewer survivors of your tax policies are there to pay taxes, the more brutal you have to milk them.
So ... what you can very well imagine and the reality are two different thing. You are in Germany, maybe you remember when the old Thurn and Taxis died, like twenty years ago? Remember how this inheritance tax cost thousands of jobs at the enterprises, he had invested in? See, I remember also the years after. The Social-Democrats government ran exactly on that agenda, remember? 11,000 enterprise bankruptcies per month, that was a lot to take for a country the size of Germany. What was unemployment when they finally got rid of Schroeder? 12.5% or was it 12.8%? See, those ideas were all already tried with terrible results. Still they come again and again always from the same side simply because they are easy to sell to voters.
Free speech can never be achieved by dictatorial measures!
Re: An interesting thought, maybe a conspiracy theory
I see a lot of good points in Jwocky's latest post.
After all, we did choose capitalism, so then we have to accept how it works. Someone is going to own a factory and he is going to pull a good salary from it. Dissolving investments is not an option, because then you dissolve many peoples livelihoods. So what's left to dissolve are the liquid assets, say the private assets of the factory owner. Now, if we spread the liquid assets of all the rich over all humanity, what do we get? One euro per person maybe? I do not really care for that, so let them have fun with their money.
About taxes i think there is somewhere an equilibrium, where companies fare well (in the sense that their employees fare well), and the government can do its tasks well. Saying less taxes are always better, or more taxes are always better seems wrong to me.
I also find that complex taxes can be a big waste of resources. Why do we need to pay a civil servant a high salary for work that is not strictly necessary? Then the argument is often: Else we have more jobless people. Well, I'd much rather have those civil servants on standard social benefits, than on overpaid social benefits. Would that not also be more fair towards the other people on social benefits?
Kind regards, Vincent
After all, we did choose capitalism, so then we have to accept how it works. Someone is going to own a factory and he is going to pull a good salary from it. Dissolving investments is not an option, because then you dissolve many peoples livelihoods. So what's left to dissolve are the liquid assets, say the private assets of the factory owner. Now, if we spread the liquid assets of all the rich over all humanity, what do we get? One euro per person maybe? I do not really care for that, so let them have fun with their money.
About taxes i think there is somewhere an equilibrium, where companies fare well (in the sense that their employees fare well), and the government can do its tasks well. Saying less taxes are always better, or more taxes are always better seems wrong to me.
I also find that complex taxes can be a big waste of resources. Why do we need to pay a civil servant a high salary for work that is not strictly necessary? Then the argument is often: Else we have more jobless people. Well, I'd much rather have those civil servants on standard social benefits, than on overpaid social benefits. Would that not also be more fair towards the other people on social benefits?
Kind regards, Vincent
Re: An interesting thought, maybe a conspiracy theory
If you want to reduce the gap between at least the very very rich and the middle class and below then we needn't worry about a very rich person losing his livelihood. The very conceptual difference between labor and ownership makes that true. The factory owner can get a good salary by performing labor, but that is different from earning from his investment (owning the factory).
So, if we were to tax him far higher based on his total wealth then he'd obviously end up in a situation in which he'd have to pay using his salary to cover taxes on wealth, which is non-liquid, relatively speaking. If you're a capitalist you'll object to that of course, but the issue here then is that control of assets etc promotes wealth consolidation. So if we want less inequality we can reduce the consolidation of control. This would take care of that presumably. After all, a rich person doesn't suddenly magically end up with all this non-liquid wealth, and it's not all based on some undefined magical type of labor he performs, but instead based on his worth. Higher worth (more wealth) allows the person to acquire far more wealth. Higher salaries yield more wealth.
I have to agree with D-ECHO in this case. The very fundamental argument of many people is that capitalism is the system in which you get to keep at least part of what you produce. What you inherit you didn't produce, you just got it. So I'm fine taxing that heavily. I'm also fine taxing extreme wealth heavily, be it the result of high income or consolidated less-liquid wealth.
As for taxes I agree that it becomes somewhat difficult to hit a good level of taxation. I do however not like the concept of taxes being a waste of resources - and I understand btw that you didn't mean that as a blanket statement covering all situations. But basically I'd say that we can look at all flow of resources in both the government sector and the capitalist sector and see gross inefficiencies in both. We won't escape inefficiency or "waste of resources" by shifting it to the capitalist sector.
So, if we were to tax him far higher based on his total wealth then he'd obviously end up in a situation in which he'd have to pay using his salary to cover taxes on wealth, which is non-liquid, relatively speaking. If you're a capitalist you'll object to that of course, but the issue here then is that control of assets etc promotes wealth consolidation. So if we want less inequality we can reduce the consolidation of control. This would take care of that presumably. After all, a rich person doesn't suddenly magically end up with all this non-liquid wealth, and it's not all based on some undefined magical type of labor he performs, but instead based on his worth. Higher worth (more wealth) allows the person to acquire far more wealth. Higher salaries yield more wealth.
I have to agree with D-ECHO in this case. The very fundamental argument of many people is that capitalism is the system in which you get to keep at least part of what you produce. What you inherit you didn't produce, you just got it. So I'm fine taxing that heavily. I'm also fine taxing extreme wealth heavily, be it the result of high income or consolidated less-liquid wealth.
As for taxes I agree that it becomes somewhat difficult to hit a good level of taxation. I do however not like the concept of taxes being a waste of resources - and I understand btw that you didn't mean that as a blanket statement covering all situations. But basically I'd say that we can look at all flow of resources in both the government sector and the capitalist sector and see gross inefficiencies in both. We won't escape inefficiency or "waste of resources" by shifting it to the capitalist sector.
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Re: An interesting thought, maybe a conspiracy theory
You will not overcome inequality that way because all you do is actually making the poor poorer because their jobs go away. Some things sound nice in theory, but they will in reality only led to capital leaving your country. Aside of that, you have to reward ownership as well because ownership is what creates the jobs.
So, you hate wealth consolidation because you are a jealous guy who doesn't want to think how to earn more but just want to get other people's money. That is when you subscribe to such theories and feel no need to think them to the end. But the middle class and even more the poor don't rely on redistribution, they rely on chances to make their lives better. They need jobs. They don't need millions taken from some rich person (which will give each of them anyway only a few dollars and changes nothing). They need an income that pays the bills and allows for a reasonable standard of life.
Now, lets be honest, we will not get it with any century history book laws, we need to get there step by step, without the distraction of socialist dream world theories. This will be hard and sometimes unpopular work and thus it won't happen because there will be always someone who dangles the carrot of "I give you the rich people's money" in front of the gullibles and the gullibles will vote for him. That is how we got out $20 trillion debt and that is how Greece went down the gutter. So I am not very optimistic, the reasonable thing will ever happen, but we maybe get some terms in between in which we can work in peace on the real problem, that has to be good enough.
So, you hate wealth consolidation because you are a jealous guy who doesn't want to think how to earn more but just want to get other people's money. That is when you subscribe to such theories and feel no need to think them to the end. But the middle class and even more the poor don't rely on redistribution, they rely on chances to make their lives better. They need jobs. They don't need millions taken from some rich person (which will give each of them anyway only a few dollars and changes nothing). They need an income that pays the bills and allows for a reasonable standard of life.
Now, lets be honest, we will not get it with any century history book laws, we need to get there step by step, without the distraction of socialist dream world theories. This will be hard and sometimes unpopular work and thus it won't happen because there will be always someone who dangles the carrot of "I give you the rich people's money" in front of the gullibles and the gullibles will vote for him. That is how we got out $20 trillion debt and that is how Greece went down the gutter. So I am not very optimistic, the reasonable thing will ever happen, but we maybe get some terms in between in which we can work in peace on the real problem, that has to be good enough.
Free speech can never be achieved by dictatorial measures!
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