'The Second Gilded Age Is Upon Us' (theguardian.com) 509
Robotron23 writes: Wealth inequality is at its highest since the turn of the 20th century -- the so-called 'Gilded Age' -- as the proportion of capital held by the world's 1,542 dollar billionaires swells further. The report, commissioned by the Swiss banking giant UBS and UK accounting company PwC, discusses the impacts of technology and globalization on the situation, and arrives weeks after the IMF recommended that the world's richest pay higher taxes to ease the disparity of wealth.
viva le monde! (Score:2)
it can only end well.
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It's ended well every other time, right?
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in the usa you get better doctors in lock up then on the street + room and board.
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Sharpening my knives here
nearly time to eat!
Guillotine time. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Guillotine time. (Score:5, Insightful)
The uber-rich really are selfish and shortsighted. Selfish I understand, but the shortsightedness is ridiculous. No matter how nice the masses have it (and at least where I live, you have to be pretty poor before you're not 'rich' in a global or historical context), when a relatively small number of people have so much wealth they can buy and sell the rest of us without a care in the world... the masses will eventually revolt.
And it's so stupid, because the uber-rich are wealthy on the backs of a society that runs on the poor, managed by the middle class. They wouldn't be rich at all without everyone else doing their part. And they are so rich it's nearly impossible for them to lose enough to become one of the commoners again no matter how badly they screw up.
Unless you believe they were born better than you by divine blessing, you have to see how ridiculous the current wealth disparity and distribution is.
The problem with trying to fix it is that much of their wealth is liquid, transferable, and fairly easy to disguise; unless we can get every nation in the world to tighten their taxation laws at the same time and in the same way, whoever acts first simply sees wealth hidden a little more carefully, or watches it bleed away to somewhere with more favorable regulation.
Re:Guillotine time. (Score:5, Interesting)
The uber-rich really are selfish and shortsighted. Selfish I understand, but the shortsightedness is ridiculous. No matter how nice the masses have it (and at least where I live, you have to be pretty poor before you're not 'rich' in a global or historical context), when a relatively small number of people have so much wealth they can buy and sell the rest of us without a care in the world... the masses will eventually revolt.
Sorry, but I don't think history supports that claim. The peasants didn't revolt because their lords and kings were rich and powerful, almost every revolt came when there was a crisis that drove the lowest in society to desperation. The French revolution? Oppression + food shortage. The Russian revolution? Tired of war + food shortage. Even the fall of the Soviet Union was mostly because the stores were empty and the rubles almost worthless. That Roman that coined the term "bread and circus" was mostly spot on, as long as you got food stamps and TV most people are placated.
Take a look at all the people who quite willingly vote for a "strong leader" because they don't really care about freedom or civil rights, they want a strong economy and order. As long as they can make some money (bread) and spend that money (circus) without too much interference they're happy to be a cog in the machinery. Take a look at China, I know everybody here wants to remind about Tiananmen Square but it's 25+ years ago and in a booming economy the masses just aren't remotely unhappy enough to support a revolution. Venezuela, maybe. But it's increasingly rare.
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Money is a measure of wealth, but not a comprehensive one. Wealth is a measure of power, and a pretty damn good one in most cases, especially in the West.
If you force the wealthy to hide their money, they'll do so. They'll have 'nothing' but still live like kings because they have power. It'll just be off the books, that's all. There will be a little more secret politics and a little less numbers in a bank computer (because numbers on little pieces of paper don't represent a significant fraction of weal
Re:Guillotine time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Guillotines serve no purpose. If you look at what happened in France, you just got a different type of tyrant, a far more dangerous one running the country. Same happened in Russia.
Chopping off a nasty head doesn't mean you'll get a nice new one. We do need change but it shouldn't come with a sharp blade.
Re:Guillotine time. (Score:5, Insightful)
The French Revolution was far from perfect, just like the English Civil War, but it definitely changed things for better. Democracy doesn't just spring forth fully formed, it takes a long time to get right and guillotines are just the first step.
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The French Revolution was far from perfect, just like the English Civil War, but it definitely changed things for better. Democracy doesn't just spring forth fully formed, it takes a long time to get right and guillotines are just the first step.
I have to disagree here. The American revolution was carried out primarily by practical, science-minded thinkers who just wanted their interests represented. The French revolution was carried out by romantic philosophers who turned on each other and executed the rich, the poor, and anybody who dared to question their flawless ideology. We ought to look to Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. for inspiration on reforming unjust political systems without substituting a more unjust one. When you introduce mob exe
Re:Guillotine time. (Score:4, Interesting)
France was a fairly dominant force in science prior to the revolution. However, the revolutionaries disbanded the Royal Academy of Sciences, executed at least 6 scientists, indirectly caused the death of another 4, and general created an anti-intellectual atmosphere that praised lofty-minded but vapid philosophers and shunned empiricism.
Look at pre-revolution science - the scene is dominated by French names, Ampere, Legendre, Laplace, Lagrange, Fourier, Poisson, Lamarcke. The French revolution was decidedly authoritarian, militaristic, nationalistic, and fairly indiscriminate in its violence. If, instead, France had followed a more peaceful trajectory and rebelled against the government by instituting a more just replacement, many, many lives would have been saved, their intellectual dominance might have been preserved, and France might be a much more powerful nation today.
I fully believe that inequality is a problem, and it needs to be addressed, but many solutions are worse than the original problem. Guillotines and lynchings don't have to be part of the equation, and all historical evidence suggests that peaceful revolutions are far more likely to result in actual improvement.
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Well, a survey of history will reveal that revolutions do not make things better for the average person, they just make the average person feel better about things. (At least according to the person whose name I can't remember.)
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We do need change but it shouldn't come with a sharp blade.
No, definitely not; the only way we're going to bring about change is with compassionate, nonviolent patience... fortunately, there are free speech zones within which we can apply these strategies...
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I posit it's parasitic, not trying to kill the masses. The rich understand this!
Keep the masses alive juuuuuuust enough to get by, and miserable enough to keep working hard, pissed about whatever DemoPublican is on the TV, or cultural or moral issue has been put out there. keep them quiet with sports and media.
Meanwhile, the dollars keep floooowing in.
The only way to stop them is similar to what was in The Greening of America and the Luddites: Stop working for the machine and it grinds to a halt. Problem is
Re:Guillotine time. (Score:5, Interesting)
They will never release control with out a fight.
What do you base that on?
The comparison with the Gilded Age is apt, I think. The Gilded Age was the culmination of the weath concentration effect of the Industrial Revolution. Large changes in technology create massive increases in productivity, and when that happens most of the benefit accrues to those in the best position to grab it, which is the founders of the companies enabled by the new technologies and the existing owners of capital. This is what we saw in the 19th century and into the early 20th, and it's what we're seeing in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
But, guillotines weren't needed to end the Gilded Age, and I see no reason why you think they're necessary to end the new gilded age. Market forces have done the job in the the past and (with two caveats, which I'll get into below), I see no reason to think they won't do so again.
What happens is that as the new technologies and new production methods get established, they become commoditized. When that happens, consolidation reverses and competition builds. Competition among equals drives tight profit margins and pushes wages up, since the competitors are using similar processes and workers have portable skills that can move between them (individual bargaining). In addition, as job roles become more well-defined, collective bargaining makes more and more sense.
The two caveats are both ways in which this time may truly be different. The first is the way that automation, especially strong AI, when it is finally achieved, has the potential to eliminate not just some jobs, but nearly all of them. In theory, there's nothing that humans can do that robots cannot except, perhaps, be human. So it's possible in the most extreme outcome (well, the *most* extreme outcome involves the robots getting rid of the humans, but we'll ignore that one) the only jobs left are service jobs, because people like to be served by people. Less extreme outcomes could still see us in a post-scarcity world where very few people are needed to work.
IMO, the effects of that caveat do not require guillotines. It will become obvious that there is both a huge surplus of labor and a surplus of production, and the answer will be to tax the owners of the automated production systems to fund a generous basic income -- and then figure out how human society adapts to a life of nearly 100% leisure. As long as the voters are in control that's what will happen. And voters are in control. All of the lobbying in the world is useless in the face of sufficiently-focused voters, and massive unemployment and underemployment will motivate the voters.
The other caveat is that several of the new Internet Age wealth concentration machines (including the one that pays my bills) seem to benefit enormously from network effects. For example, it's very difficult for multiple players to compete in the social media space, because everyone wants to be where all of their friends are. We have some fragmentation in that space, but it's fragmentation more than competition, because the "competitors" are all occupying different niches. There's some room for competition in search engines, ad networks, mobile operating systems, etc., but there's also a strong tendency towards consolidation that I don't think we've seen before. Online retail seems powerfully biased towards a single competitor model.
My opinion is that this second caveat also does not require guillotines. I think there are enough different areas, and I think enough consumers are sufficiently uncomfortable with doing everything with one company that enough diversity will be driven, and enough competition will exist. If necessary, we may need to enact legislation to impose some limits that consumers don't impose through market means. Time will tell.
Bottom line; I see no compelling reason to believe that this time is different in any way that requires violence.
Re:Guillotine time. (Score:4, Informative)
But, guillotines weren't needed to end the Gilded Age, and I see no reason why you think they're necessary to end the new gilded age. Market forces have done the job in the the past
Market forces did not end the Gilded Age, it was ended by two world wars and significant inflation (in part for countries to pay of debts from the wars). These were major shocks to accrued wealth globally, breaking apart, or inflating away the value of, most family fortunes. Sure there were no Guillotines, but I don't think we want to go through the disasters of the 10's , 30's and 40's again just to get some wealth distribution back.
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Since it's THEIR money, why shouldn't they be able to do whatever the !@$ they want to do with it? I purposefully "accumulate" money (investing as much as I can in 401k for example), rather than spending it pointlessly. (if only I had billions!)
(BTW, I'm a huge fan of Musk too.)
Re:Guillotine time. (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone is involved in job creation. If I steal a car tonight I'm contributing towards a lot of jobs in a lot of diferent industries -- criminal justice, law, insurance, auto repair/manufacture.
It's a pointless phrase invented to make the ulta-rich feel better about themselves.
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Said with the compassion of Darwin. If you're not the fittest, you don't even deserve to survive?
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In the areas of the world where corruption runs rampant and citizens are enslaved by the wealthy elite in power
In the regions like that which are nominally democratic, it seems like it's on the citizenry to take back control, primarily by demanding that corruption be punished and individual rights be maintained. In non-democratic regions, well, revolution just might be the only option. If so, though, the revolutionaries should be very sure that they know what the replacement is going to look like and how it's going to avoid the earlier problems before they begin. There's a long history of revolutions replacing a sys
more unions are needed!! (Score:5, Funny)
more unions are needed!!
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more unions are needed!!
I'd rather have more onions. I love onions.
Trump and the riots are symptoms (Score:2, Interesting)
Trump and his proclamation that he's for the working person and the riots - whatever they are: Atnifa, BLM or whatever are just symptoms of the social unrest that occurs when inequality gets too large.
That's all. The platitudes of "work harder", "take risks" or "don't major in Russian Medieval Literature" does shit for for the poor bastard who majored in Computer Science at State and the best he sees at the job fairs is jobs that require you to ask, "Have you tried turning it off and then on?"
When folks w
Higher taxes go where? (Score:2)
To paying down massive government debts or hand outs to the poor?
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Infrastructure, affordable healthcare, not collecting income tax from people who earn less than even the average income, etc.
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Infrastructure, affordable healthcare, not collecting income tax from people who earn less than even the average income, etc.
If only that where true...
Eventually, if we don't do something about this by either growing the economy or cutting spending, all those taxes you collect will not buy enough ink and paper to print the money you will need to pay interest on the debt...
When that happens, what's going to be the plight of the poor?
One man's handouts (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides, study after study shows that unless you're willing to do some really nasty shit (death squads and the like) then taking care of your working class saves more money. Crime rates drop when people have heath care. Productivity goes up when folks aren't living paycheck to paycheck. And it takes desperation to put a man like Mao or Stalin in power, so it even stabilizes your politics and prevents out of control government oppression.
Of course, if you're actually OK with all that oppression so long as it doesn't happen to you and yours then that's another matter all together. What was that old line? "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law". But you'd never actually come out and admit that, would you?
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But even if you're at the "bottom", you're probably spending money at Starbucks or something like that. Instead, invest that in your 401k or even CDs or dividend paying stocks FOR A LONG TIME.. and you will have more money than you had beforehand.
Re:One man's handouts (Score:5, Informative)
Maths are fun (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, taking inflation into account that's like $25k. Congrats, you strugged through 45 years of labor without sugar and caffeine (no cheating and buying cheaper coffee or it drops to $15k - 20k) and you can pay for one night at the ER after Medicare goes away.
fyi, the guy that invented the 401k said himself it's not meant for retirement. It was meant for the well to do (think $300k/yr minimum) to shore up their savings. It's a smokescreen the wealthy elites use to make us ignore the growing insecurity in life. That way they can blame the working class for not saving enough, kinda just like you did. Congrats, you fell for it.
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Re:Higher taxes go where? (Score:4, Informative)
Debts: Yes, the rich have the ear of congress and certainly played a role in oil related debacles like Iraq, and Revenge of Iraq. As such the rich should help foot the bill better for the overseas adventures they helped instigate and profited from. Much of the debt is due to tax cuts that mostly went to the rich in the past, so maybe it is time for the chickens to come home to roost.
Hand outs to poor: If you mean decent funding for public schools, fixing roads and bridges, having good job retraining and income replacement to those who lost jobs to off shoring, then yes. We need much more money spent to keep our nation and its workforce maintained. I would like to see the rich who can most afford to pay higher taxes and whose businesses benefit from well trained job applicants help foot that bill.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Mainly Asia (Score:2)
Modern wealth is an illusion (Score:4, Interesting)
Citation needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Gates didn't work his way up from nothing. Donald Trump never really went broke. Only the poor and working class have to worry about collapsing into poverty. The elites take care of their own. I sure wish the rest of us yahoos did.
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None of them (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you actually this naive or do you work for them shit posting to shut down progress?
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Just because there are numbers in a computer doesn't mean that those numbers translate into material wealth. Remember Elizabeth Holmes? Her net worth went from $4 billion to zero in a blink of an eye. Was her wealth ever real in a material sense? Are any of those net worth numbers actually real?
A simple question with a very complex answer.
At the root of it, wealth is having something other people desire. Elizabeth Holmes supposedly had technology that many other people wanted. It turns out, she was lying. Therefore, the demand for her "product" disappeared.
People's desires change over time in an unpredictable fashion. That's why it's a good idea to diversify your wealth. [wikipedia.org] You avoid getting burned by what's trendy.
still shrinks middle class (Score:2, Interesting)
Cato institute (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't inequality about someone not having enough? (Score:2)
What about just ensuring that people get their fair share [johnmoserfoncongress.com]?
A fair wage, fair hours, and a fair share. Once again, we must offer the American people a new deal [johnmoserforcongress.com]; Hell, it's about time!
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Welp my fault for clicking through the preview. People really must get their fair share [johnmoserforcongress.com], though.
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Because "fair" is a politician's weasel word that cannot be given a proper definition that even a majority can agree to on a universal basis?
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electing a congress critter won't give anyone a "fair share" of anything nor a "fair" wage
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Socialism doesn't work. History proves this.
So western/northern Europe, Canada, and and similar countries are all hell holes?
I'll try to remember that next time I go see a doctor of my own choice without paying a rediculous co-pay, or take a drink of water from my tap where it comes out clean and pure, rather than brown sludge.
Wealth vs. Income (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem that so many of these initiatives have, when it comes down to IMPLEMENTATION, is that governments have a major problem with "wealth" as distinct from "income". Because wealth can be hidden, obfuscated and invested in so many ways, most give up trying to tax it by traditional means. So they focus on Income.
And there's a HUGE problem there, because income != wealth. At least, again, the way most governments choose to define "income".
I'm a small business owner, and when I get my K-1 every year, it never ceases to amaze me about the spread between how much money I'm being taxed on, versus how much money I took home. Technically, if I were to somehow, magically, close up the company without any spin-down expenses or other costs, I could capture that money and be "rich". But, in reality, the amount of money sitting in the company for expenses, payroll, etc... that is "mine", but I will never see, touch or capitalize on, is significant. So every time you talk about taxing the "rich", you're taxing guys like me who run mid-sized businesses, and are personally allocated a share of the company's earnings, THAT WE HAVE NEVER TAKEN HOME, AND NEVER WILL.
Tax policy is a steaming pile of dung. I'm all for taxing the truly rich... likely because I pay more taxes than most of them already!! But you need to be very careful about how to define "rich", because more often than not, these "tax 'em all and let god sort 'em out later" plans end up netting and hurting small- and mid-sized business owners more than it does the truly-Wealthy.
My $0.02...
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But why are the numbers so different? That's a serious question.
Can't you take deductions for the company's expenses over the year? Don't you only pay taxes on profits?
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What taxes are you paying on money written down as expenses? If things you might buy are dual-use (cars, computers, etc) why arenâ(TM)t you buying them through your company and making them company assets that are written off?
Youâ(TM)re paying taxes on your net revenue, not gross. If youâ(TM)re not taking advantages of tax breaks and write-offs, which exist specifically to ease tax burdens on small businesses, youâ(TM)re just screwing yourself.
Unless youâ(TM)re no longer actually a s
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Though I run a *tiny* business, so am not really in the same boat exactly, I understand what you mean, however there is a *very* simple solution: set a high tax rate on *actual individual income* above $500,000 or so -- since there's literally no one that needs more than that to live on, and it's above that level where the obscene levels of wealth concentration are happening. Then give the (actual) small businesses a break.
If a business grosses 5M, but the owner(s) only pay themselves $250k after payroll, e
Re:Wealth vs. Income (Score:4, Insightful)
more often than not, these "tax 'em all and let god sort 'em out later" plans end up netting and hurting small- and mid-sized business owners more than it does the truly-Wealthy.
Good news! There is absolutely no sign of "tax'em all" in Trump's current tax plan. The truly wealthy and large corporations will enjoy huge tax cuts (quite probably at your expense), but it definitely isn't anything that could reasonably be described as taxing everyone.
Wealth inequality is not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wealth inequality is not a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Capital is not cash money (Score:2)
It's paper wealth. If your capital pays dividends or other income you're OK. If not, you're at risk of having it decline in value.
is the world full of idiots or what? (Score:3)
The REAL issue is that when you have enough money, legally avoiding taxes that would otherwise need to be paid is both easy AND financially worthwhile.
As governments have RECENTLY realized in the circle of International Megacorps.
The Appallingly Rich do NOT need more taxes , they do NOT need higher taxes, they just need less "get out paying taxes" opportunities.
http://www.azquotes.com/author/2136-Warren_Buffett/tag/taxes
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks.
We need to stop thinking of money as wealth (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the problem. We're living in a system where the rich are just playing a game trying to score the most points, while people are dying because they don't have enough points to get life-saving health care. The points that belong to the richest players could easily rectify the fundamental stresses of the lower classes.
Money is not sacred. It's an artificial construct created to facilitate trade and distribution of goods. Taxation is not theft. It is not even about funding the government. It is about destroying money (not destroying wealth, but destroying currency). If we think of money as points and economics as a game, the whole purpose of taxation is to remove points from problematic areas (players who abuse massive collections of points to the detriment of other players) or to dis-incentivize antisocial behaviors that can be used to generate extra points (like using taxation to discourage polluters). You also need to destroy points to balance out the many points in the system where points are being created from nothing - otherwise the value of a point will plummet and you get crazy inflation that causes undesirable imbalances in the system.
So here's the thing: Americans believe in meritocracy, or at least claim they do. We ought to have a society that allows successful players to be rewarded for their contribution, and that still allows unsuccessful players to have their fundamental needs met, even if at a reduced capacity. It's pretty simple to see that you rectify this imbalance by removing points where you don't really need them (from people that already have more than they can ever use) and adding points where they can do the most good.
Let's get rid of this ridiculous concept that money is the most sacred thing in life, and get back to things that actually matter: liberty, for starters. Our broken economy is needlessly depriving people from their fundamental right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have the resources as a society for all people to have access to decent health care and education, and only a rigid ideological attachment to an arbitrary government construct is keeping us from correcting the system.
Re:We need to stop thinking of money as wealth (Score:4, Insightful)
Only when taxes are used for the intended purpose for taxes to begin with (to fund the needs as outlined in the Constitution, for US taxes) are they not equivalent to theft by threat of force.
No. You can't decide that taxation is theft when it is for something you agree with, and that it isn't theft when it is for something you don't. Taxation is the price you pay to own property, buy goods, and earn an income in a specific society. If you don't want to pay taxes, don't engage in those things. Do your business with bitcoin. Go live somewhere else. You can't call a road toll theft if you are choosing to drive on that road and the toll is public knowledge. Even if the toll you pay is used for purposes you don't agree with.
Deciding who needs points and who doesn't is what results in theft by taxation. It is class envy that propels this "you don't need your money" attitude.
No, it doesn't. The attitude isn't "you don't need your money". The attitude is "let's use our elected representatives to create an economic policy that is optimal". Our system is allowing people to die because they don't have money, while other people are using excess money to plate their bathrooms in gold, and in some cases our current tax policy is making the poor families pay MORE taxes as a percentage of their income. This is stupid, wrong, and makes the whole country poorer.
The concept you are trying to get rid of is rewarding those who take risks and creating the concept that we reward existence.
Not true. In fact, I explicitly said that we should create our policy to enable meritocracy to the greatest extent possible. Every indicator we have suggests that wealth inequality rewards those who have money, and punishes those who don't. If you believe in rewarding the hard workers and the risk takers, you should oppose severe wealth inequality.
We've had "universal education" for a very long time. I doubt you will find anyone still alive who wasn't a participant, unless it was voluntary.
People don't have equal access to education. If you disagree, then let's pick the school your kids attend by random lottery.
As for health care, hospitals routinely deal with the uninsured when they walk in the door.
Medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy. Emergency rooms only take care of urgent needs. There are people dying of treatable cancer because they would rather not burden their families with the lifetime of debt.
By the way, when was the last time you donated to any of the charity health care organizations? Just asking.
It's not much, but I donate $50 a month to Living Goods, which is a charity that creates child health care networks by providing the education and raw materials for women to start basic health care businesses in developing nations. I really believe in their work, because they are saving kid's lives, educating people, and improving the local economies where they are involved, and have third-party random trials to prove their effectiveness.
Yeah, that constitutional republic thing is getting so long in the tooth, we need something better.
No, I like the structure of the government for the most part, but I think it's doing a piss-poor job of executing on the regulation of commerce, of which currency control and tax policy are absolutely a part. This is largely because the financial sectors have gotten sophisticated enough to figure out how to influence the democratic process to their own ends, bending regulation in their favor and gaming the system. We need people to take the problem seriously or it will just get worse and worse.
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The purpose of the tax is critical in determining if it is a valid tax, and if it is invalid then it is theft.
Circular argument, unsupported claims, and word games. You are stating these things as though they are self-evident, but giving no support for the statements at all. What does "valid" mean? Who gets to decide? One fundamental principle of the U.S. government is that taxation is legitimate only if it is enacted via democratically elected representatives. Every tax law that exists has been put in place via those representatives. The policies have been tested exhaustively via the judicial system. So taxes are
Germany - Just before the Rise of Nazi power (Score:3)
This is what happened in Germany just before the Nazis rose to power - massive wealth inequality.
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I don't have to, I've got gold. I can wipe my ass with that.
Re:Inequality is meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism is the best system we have for efficiently managing resources, but it is not perfect. It has a natural tendency to accumulate wealth at the top. If left unchecked all of the wealth gets trapped at the top and the whole system collapses. This is why you need the counterbalance of a government taking money from the top to inject it on the bottom.
If you have ever played Monopoly you can see this in action. The victory condition for Monopoly is one player controlling all of the money and properties, but this also represents a complete collapse of the game's economy. No more commerce will happen, the money instantly becomes useless paper. One much reviled but popular house rule in Monopoly is to put all fees in the Free Parking space and award those fees to anybody who lands there. This is a very crude form of wealth redistribution, and what does it do? It redistributes wealth to the players, causing games to go on for much longer than normal. In the real world we want the economy to keep working forever, we need to redistribute the wealth.
Re:Inequality is meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Inequality is meaningless (Score:4, Interesting)
There seems to be this notion that capitalism and socialism are binary concepts, and that socialism and communism are the same. The truth is, they are on a spectrum, with capitalism and communism at the extremes. Somewhere along the spectrum is likely the optimum solution. Where productivity is high, and inequality is low. Everyone is too focused on the advantages and disadvantages of the extremes to explore the area in between.
Well, to be fair, Americans are thoroughly propagandized to think that Capitalism is some natural force like electromagnetism. They also think it's inseparable from democracy. We're voting with our dollars, right? Basically, we are so bamboozled we can't see straight.
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The primary form of wealth distribution for centuries has been at death - especially preventing all the wealth from being handed down to one inheritor, who can then continue to grow his share. It's not obvious that taking wealth from the living is required to prevent excessive concentration of wealth (a few like Bill/Bezos/Buffet are still small in the scheme of things).
It's also important not to confuse redistribution of wealth with redistribution of income. The two problems may be related, but their sol
Capitalism and Resources (Score:2)
I'd certainly agree that capitalism is not perfect, but I think it is just a little bit of a stretch to claim that it is the best system for efficiently managing resources. [ At least, I suspect that we may be disagreeing over which *types* of resources]. For example, given natural resources, such as fish stocks, or minerals, or timber, pure capitalism has - as demonstrated - resulted in uncontrolled exploit
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So if you think that if you just work hard you too can become a millionaire/billionaire you are wrong, you will actually have more chance winning the lottery.
" Of the eight countries studied—Canada, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, the UK and the US, the US had both the highest economic inequality and lowest economic mobility. In this and other studies, in fact, the USA has very low mobility at the lowest rungs
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Health, welfare, education, life expectancy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, democracy, corruption, law and order, capitalism, environmentalism, social mobility, etc etc etc the US does not do that well in.
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That's funny. I know people in Canada and Germany that would like to take advantages of the things I can in the US. I wouldn't mind diversifying into those countries myself but find that it's entirely unfeasible.
This sounds like the sort of "study" that ends up directly contradicting the personal first hand experiences of people with actual experience.
There will always be individuals with contradictory experiences to the average. That's why studies like this take a large sample to even things up.
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Which is exactly the argument of the Far Left. Since currencies are no longer pegged to any commodity, why not just drop piles of cash on people in the lower economic strata?
You will say, "but that will cause inflation". But if currencies aren't tied to "some commodity", why does inflation matter? And we come back to the simple fact that fiat currency, like most financial mechanisms, are ultimately designed to h
Re:Inequality is meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
This statement is only true if by "many places around the world" you mean those few remaining primitive tribes in a south american jungle or chunk of rock in the south pacific.
Re: Inequality is meaningless (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Inequality is meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
That America is continuing to prop up the rest of the socialist world by continuing to be the only country besides Japan which has people that actually do something?
Interesting claim, I'd love to see the stats that support it. Don't worry I have them here: https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/g... [oecd.org] Spoiler: USA is near the bottom of the OECD in similar pattern to health, education, corruption, quality of life etc etc. Sorry to burst your bubble dude, the USA has money, but most of that is held by only handful of your citizens. For the rest, you are effectively a third world country on pretty much all metrics.
Re:Inequality is meaningless (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm fairly certain a USian living under a bridge in a cardboard box would much prefer to be a billionaire from one of the many countries available in the areas you listed.
Re: Inequality is meaningless (Score:2)
Some, particularly professionals who study these populations, would say that their mental health-and lack of useful memtal health treatment-precludes their availiythemselves of other support services.
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Re:Inequality is meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
Irrelevant. GP's assertion was comparing the poorest yanks to the richest Venezuelans, and there's literally no contest there.
99% of people living under a bridge are there because they refuse to avail themselves of available services
Source?
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Re:Inequality is meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
how rich other people are is un important.
Well, unless they have so much wealth that they can distort markets - particularly the housing market - or have disproportionate influence in politics.
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how rich other people are is un important.
Well, unless they have so much wealth that they can distort markets - particularly the housing market - or have disproportionate influence in politics.
How do they distort the housing market? They don't want to live in my neighborhood so my home's value isn't directly affected by them.
OR... Are you claiming that they snap up housing as investments, forcing prices up? Is that it? Because if it is, you just proved why you want a lot of rich people buying stuff that the poorer folks like you produce...
Re:Inequality is meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
in our country alone the poorest of the poor are still better off than the rich in many places around the world.
The median net worth of the bottom quintile of American households is about -$6000 [census.gov]. That means they have less than nothing. Everything is borrowed. So what do you consider the poor and what do you consider rich elsewhere? What do you know about the homeless? What do you know about alcohol and drug addicts? What do you know about prison inmates working for next to nothing?
Get out of here with your "poor people should stop being so uppity and be thankful for what they have" garbage. The poorest of the poor ain't got shit.
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The bottom quintile benefit from a myriad of government programs.
They aren't living in mud huts eating bugs.
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The homeless don't have mud huts or the means to move somewhere where mud is abundant.
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There are not economic solutions to mental problems.
There is less mental illness in primitive societies. [madinamerica.com] Living here literally helps you go crazy.
But yes, there are economic solutions. Homeless are on the street because they can't get their medicines (either because of practical/money problems or their own mental state), and it's a self-repeating cycle. Residential institutions for the mentally ill are still needed today, but most have closed due to modern medicines and lack of funding - despite there still being a need. The economic solution would give
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There are not economic solutions to mental problems.
Um what?
Mental health is guess what... a health issue. This can be largely addressed with decent healthcare funded by...money!
It is exactly why countries with socialised healthcare have much lower rates of homelessness. Where I live, a lot of these people get help (including somewhere to live). That is an economic solution.
Re:Inequality is meaningless (Score:4, Insightful)
Excuse me, but I know people who've done that for years, come back to the U.S. and been horrified at how terrible the quality of life here is in comparison (even holding a job, etc) They'd actually much rather be back in those mud huts. Mud huts and bugs aren't that bad. Different than the xenophobic ideas we're brainwashed to believe? Yes. A bit hard to live, and poor? Yes. However, the quality of life isn't de facto awful and can be quite relaxing and enlightening.
Re:Inequality is meaningless (Score:4, Insightful)
The bottom quintile benefit from a myriad of government programs. They aren't living in mud huts eating bugs.
Nobody claimed that the poor in the United States have it worse off than the poor everywhere else. The game of Who's Poorest is one without winners and that's not what we're playing here. The claim was that the "poorest of the poor" here are better off than the rich elsewhere. So name one country where wealthy people live in mud huts eating bugs because that's all they can afford. Name one country where those in the top quintile can't afford a car...or socks. Name one where the rich have to sleep outside and get harassed by police on the regular. Name one country where the rich must depend on handouts simply to stay alive.
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The bottom quintile benefit from a myriad of government programs.
Lol! Like what? You pretty much have to be disabled, or a woman with children, to get any help at all. And the assistance you receive is a pittance, an amount no one can live on. And even then, you’re cut off pretty quickly, and expected to work. You ought to look up the requirements for "welfare" sometime. Welfare, as people still think of it, has been dead for twenty-five years now. Yet, I hear idiots complaining about how “illegals” are getting welfare, when citizens can’t even ge
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There are people who grow up in places with completely underfunded schools and have the additional issues of dealing with institutional bias bc of your morphology - dark skin, female, disabled, etc - and live in places which are economically distressed bc the corporate entity that used to provide the jobs offshored to $elsewhere, then it's damned hard to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps.
Until we realize that we need to educate and enable every brain in this country and work together to leverage our capac
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Like what, specifically? At least in my line of work, I'm shocked at how little regulations there are.
Re:The begged question... (Score:4, Insightful)
As you concentrate more and more wealth at the top, the money is drained from the poor and middle class. The problem is that the poor and middle class are the drivers of the economy. Trickle down economics is a big lie the Cato Institute made up to hide the fact that they're just giving billionaires huge handouts. The economy is largely driven by demand, not supply. As you squeeze the majority of the population demand drops. The drop in demand slows the economy, further reducing demand. In the long run your economy collapses.
Increasing supply only helps when the economy was supply constrained, and that is typically not the case in a well functioning economy and definitely not the case in one where the capital is too heavily concentrated up top.
An economy where everybody was equal would be the most efficient, but that's kind of like saying that an airline that didn't have to worry about wind resistance would be the cheapest to fly on. True, but academic. The goal is then to reduce inequality down to reasonable levels to avoid choking the economy to death.