this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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Can we stop pretending billionaires are like Scrooge McDuck?
They don't have money, they have assets. You can take those, but dafuq you wanna do with it? Let the state run the companies? Have you seen any state-ran stuff? Idk, if I want amazon state run.
Anyone with a billion in assets also has enough access to cash to buy mansions and planes and stuff. They just have tricks to hide it as something other than personal income.
It's hard to say what the best solution to this is, because you're absolutely right, many billionaires don't spend "money" - they leverage their assets to get stuff. If they need to liquidate anything, someone that monitors some portfolio at some wealth management firm will do that with a few clicks and some signatures.
Perhaps the best option is regulation of a banks ability to finance against leveraged assets above a certain threshold? I'd also be for a cap on CEO salaries and bonuses, perhaps with both shareholder and employee approval needed to execute executive bonuses. I imagine that alone would mean most CEO's would lose a fuck-ton of money.
I'd love for a wealth tax to be viable, but it would require balls of steel from the president, and a central tax authority that won't be coerced into accepting loopholes. Even then, it would be hilariously easy to get around by moving wealth elsewhere.
I don't think salary caps are necessary. Just having steeper tax brackets will eventually lead to a soft cap, while not feeling like a punishment. Maybe even a simple function instead of brackets, its more dynamic and easier to calculate.
Wealth tax is kinda weird, since first someone needs to estimate the wealth, which is not easy. Then the amount to be paid probably needs to be cash, since 20% of e.g. a house is pretty useless. But actually liquefying enough wealth can have wild effects. For example Tesla stock plummeted for a while due to elon needing twitter-money.
In a sense it could prevent companies from growing. If I own a company imma make sure it stays below the threshold, since I don't want to sell my shares and loose voting-rights.
Or if you look at countries trying to seize Russian oligarchs' property: A lot failed, due to no one knowing who actually was the owner.
Yes, run the companies democratically instead of individually.
The post office and fire department are great.
The post office has problems largely because of a decades-long campaign by one of our two major political parties to neuter it completely for the benefit of private shipping companies. And the funny part is, for all their efforts, it's still pretty damn good at its core mission.
What's the issue with fire departments? They're pretty great.
I wasn't complaining about them, I was being genuine. I agree with what you're saying, and am pointing out that a democratically accountable government run Amazon would indeed be better than its current iteration.
Ah, OK. Sorry for reading sarcasm in where none was intended.
Seems like every time people bring up the postal service, it's to shit on them, and I'm just here like, they're pretty fucking rad all things considered.
Yep, I agree! They are a great example of a publicly funded service that largely provides good jobs and good results, even with under-funding.
My local postal service is the best
Fire departments aren't a great example because their bound to municipalities and I'm pretty sure the IAFF is the firefighter mafia.
There actually was a fire department run like a corporation once. It was run exactly like you figured it would be.
There are exceptions, of course, but America is a bourgeois dictatorship. Some form of democratic organization would not face the same issues.
so you're saying they're billionaires, but ackshually they're cash poor? They have that much in assets specifically because they can't be taxed on it. they funnel all their income through LLCs and corporations so that they can write off their expenses on their tax returns as corporate expenses.
Tax them on their income, then tax them on their assets. It's not unprecedented, they tax our real properties based on value, why not tax the super rich based on their assets as well?
Apparently Warner Brother's (and other's of the same) can produce and shelve a movie, and use it as a tax write-off. So if my taxes can prop up an industry that has the ability to "conveniently" shelve their works, while recouping a bad investment...why aren't their shelved movies "public domain"? We kinda paid for them the moment they became a write-off
If I paint on canvas, and decide to never even try and earn income from it; do I get to recoup my losses in supplies? Or does the "standard deductible" override my loss, and the tax-burden falls back (again) on the working class? Or I'm dumb and don't understand taxes, so please enlighten me
Nah son, I agree with you. We gotta simplify the tax code and get rid of tax write-offs. Business should be taxed on gross income, not net income.
~pssst, worker run co-ops~
Nah, fuck that.
I don't want my salary dependent on how we are doing on a monthly basis.
If I create my own company, sure. But I can kinda control it.
If there are a thousand other people voting for dumb stuff and I loose a third of my income, I'm gonna loose it.
Also if we are doing equal splits, college is actually useless. Why would I waste my time becoming an engineer, if I could have earned the same money the whole time instead. Even worse with american college, where you not just loose all the salary from not working but also like 10-20,000 in tuition.
Worker coops aren't perfect, but they are more stable and provide better jobs than Capitalist businesses. You're essentially saying you want to live in a dictatorship at work because having a voice is too complicated, and pretend the dictator isn't going to make terrible decisions.
Additionally, you seem to believe you would make less money in a worker co-op, despite the fact that in a Capitalist business, you must give up a larger portion of that which you create to the owner, who holds all the power.
Well, that's what unions and regulations are for. Plus if they piss me off, I can just leave and work somewhere else.
Unions and Regulations are a force against the dictatorial control of Capitalists, but do not make the playing field equal. Capitalists still retain ownership, and thus power.
Leaving one dictator for another dictator willing to employ you is not freedom enough to justify the existence of the dictator.
At the end of the day I'm selling labor and if they're an asshole I'm not selling. They don't control me or my life.
There is an argument for "unskilled" labor, tho. If you don't have enough leverage, to get a good job, making the one you have better with democracy might work. You just also take on more risk by sharing ownership.
You're selling your labor power for less than it is worth, even the nicest Capitalist steals from you and leaves you with no control over at least 40 hours per week.
All labor is labor, skilled labor is just compressed unskilled labor represented by the training required to recreate it expressed over the expected working lifetime of a worker.
Who said anything about equal splits?
There are a number of worker owned co-ops out there, and precisely none of them are run like you describe.
Did some research (read the wiki).
Seems like working at a co-op sacrifices wage stability and maybe wage amount in favor of job-security.
It solves some issues, but gives way to new ones.
While the jobs seem to be more secure, they also grow slower, so hire less.
This suggests to me, that the workload can also vary with the wage.
Overall I wouldn't like it. I like planning my stuff. If once in a blue moon I get layed off, I can make new plans. But adjusting ervery month sounds exhausting.