Never thought I’d reach this point, but after witnessing many years of reckless monetary and fiscal policy that have stolen purchasing power from the middle/working classes, and redistributed it to the top 1% via inflating asset prices, I’ve concluded that the only way to remedy this is through the kind of wealth redistribution favored by Warren and Sanders. The Federal Reserve, under the guise of economic stimulus, has flooded the banking system with free money. This money has found its way into stocks, real estate, artwork, and other assets held by the elite. This policy has resulted in erosion of savings, insurance policies, and other investments held by the bottom 80% of the population. Conservatives will argue that billionaires “earned” their fortunes…and that no one has a right to that money. I beg to differ. The wealth gap has exploded, and billionaires have been facilitated, by government and central bank policies. The playing field isn’t level…and that needs to be corrected. By any means necessary.
I hear ya, I’d just rather a different approach than through taxation. Something that leans more towards favoring unions and or labor laws. Of course the government wants you to believe higher taxation is the better solution because it is them getting the money and doing what they see fit. If you’re truly in favor of the middle/working class then you would want the money going directly to them, not the government.
Sad that this thread has only one response.
Rather than “wealth redistribution,” - maybe opportunity redistribution. Where worthless college students don’t get to get in just because their parents can bribe the president with a new wing of a building, etc.
Here is why the wealth gap will grow.
If I am worth a billion dollars today, I have the option to:
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do nothing, put my money in an index fund, and ten years from now, my wealth will have increased by one billion dollars (7% return, rule of 72)
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diversify into a variety of high and low risk investments (individual stocks, commodities, VC, PE), giving me the chance to grow that even more
I’ve worked my testicles off and increased my income quite a bit since graduating college 17 years ago. I travel all the time, work nights and weekends, yada yada (not complaining- I love my job).
Whereas the conservative person starting with a billion dollars 17 years ago would now be worth $3.5 billion, my net worth is, at best 1/3000th of that.
And that’s why the wealth gap won’t shrink. Capital returns once you hit a certain level just completely outperform labor returns. Jeff Bezos can do nothing beginning today and make 900 billion dollars to hit a trillion in about 33 years.
This is not an argument for a wealth tax, by the way. It’s just the inevitable future of wealth distribution in our current system.
There won’t be many responses for two reasons…first, it was reclassified from politics to the economy. Not as many people are in this section of the forums. Second, it strikes right at the heart of many conservatives argument against Sanders and Warren…that the wealthy “earned” their money and no one else has any claim to it. In actually, much of the wealth these people own is due to the Fed redistributing it from the middle/working classes to the top 1%. Even the Fed governors have admitted that their policies inflate asset bubbles and widen the already enormous wealth gap.
Bezos employs 566,000 people at Amazon, none of the people that work for him do they deduct a portion of my paycheck to pay for or increase my property taxes to pay for them.
Regardless of what people think you can’t tax their way out of this mess, spending is out of control. I am all about doing more to keep those jobs in America and preventing companies from bringing in people to work for lower wages on H1B visas but the answer isn’t to just run off the rich people who you better believe more than you think have the means and will leave before forking out billions in taxes a year.
How would giving money with the government as the “middle man” help anything? The government could use the money as they wish, and it wouldn’t necessarily go to the 99%. What should happen is charity programs, and giving money directly to those who need it without the government involved. Taxation, or most of taxation, is theft.
The government needs to do with what they have, and stop being corrupt. But there is so much corruption, I’m not sure if all of it can be cleared out. Block voting, party threatening an individual representative with demotion if they step out of line, all kinds of things. Slush funds. It’s all corrupt.
And 566,000 people at Amazon make Bezos his billions. Business is a two way street. This notion that jobs are a form of charity by billionaires is laughable. Yes, they own everything. It doesn’t make their labor intrinsically more valuable simply because they have ownership. It just simply means they have the power to control such valuations. And, since they mostly choose to devalue labor, and since labor does not have the power to fairly negotiate, you get calls for socialism.
Economic power in the last 5 decades has drastically shifted upwards, along with DECREASING tax rates on corporate and upper income earners. Such weighted distribution is eroding free labor markets, putting the power into the hands of the employer instead of a balance between the employer and employee. It’s why corporate profits hit records year after year while wages for the low and middle class remain stagnant decade after decade.
And yet, people for some reason still worship those 1% who choose to own and and control 50%+ of the wealth in this country, and those who have politicians and government in their back pocket, those same people who pushed “trickle down” decade after decade, have gotten tax cut after tax cut, yet grow their wealth exponentially while the other 90% get left behind.
But hey, that’s freedom. Freedom to get ■■■■■■ decade after decade until the rich can send the poor and middle class off to war to die when they start getting too loud.
that was fun
The real world is calling, please answer.
This a great thread. Lots of REALLY good posts in here by everybody. This is good stuff people.
But how do I know if a certain tax is theft, or not?
How do you determine that?
He does pay taxes if people want him to pay more jump on congress to simplify the tax code. Last year here in Seattle the city was going to try and put a head tax on Amazon and he threatened to move more jobs out of Seattle that was for 47 million dollars a year, do you think he would stay in the U.S. if they were going to take a couple of billion from him each year?
I am not so sure but I am pretty sure what would happen to property values as well as the revenue collected from property taxes if he did decide to leave.
This is precisely why it’s a danger to society to have wealth so monopolized where one person can bring down an entire city or shakedown other cities for subsidies and tax breaks.
That’s the point:
Monopolized wealth is a danger to socio economic stability due to skewed distributions of power.
The OP gets the causation right but the solution wrong.
There will ALWAYS be wealth inequity and in fact wealth inequity is a product of a healthy market.
EXAGGERATED wealth inequity is, as the OP stated, due to the constant creation of new money, which naturally flows to the top first.
However, the solution is NOT property confiscation. Wealth is property. Wealth confiscation is property confiscation.
The solution is not to have the constant reckless creation of new money in the first place.
The ideal solution is 100% reserve banking backed by commodity currency. This would ensure that any wealth inequity is the natural occurring wealth inequity of the market, which is healthy.
A lesser solution is free banking (uncoordinated fractional reserve). Of course, with fractional reserve involved there is the potential for banking panics. This would be mitigated, for the most part, by banning government paper money emissions and banning suspension of specie (or any other form) of redemption. Your still going to have the occasional failure but far less widespread or catastrophic in form.
Separately, we must consider that no person is entitled to anything. There is no entitlement to wealth in any form, housing, food, shelter, clothing, medical care, nothing.
There is a right to private property, including wealth.
The basic purpose of government taxation is to raise government revenue, nothing more. Unfortunately, taxation has been perverted into an instrument of whatever policy is favored at whatever moment in time.
I fiercely oppose any attempt at wealth redistribution.
ALL taxation is, by definition, theft. The government violently (on threat of imprisonment) appropriates you income or wealth from you. Society has collectively decided that we will tolerate this theft insofar as government provides a certain set of minimal services. But I believe there is a limit to the taxation that can be tolerated. When taxation for government revenue turns to taxation for wealth confiscation, that is over the line.
To be clear, I’m not in favor of “wealth redistribution” but i am in favor of higher upper marginal tax rates
But if there is consent, how is it theft? Isn’t “without consent” an element of conversion?
Theft is predicated on “ownership”. Ownership is a human construct. Societies and governments are what determine ownership via their constitutions or dictatorships. Taxation is only theft in the context of the laws of ownership. Otherwise, I’ll just claim whatever I want is mine because, hey, who decides but me?
What about the people who didn’t vote to raise taxes? Isn’t that not getting consent?
