Principle of communicating vessels applied to direct and indirect tax distribution.
Some of us have always been paying attention, and it was just that nobody gave a damn what we think, or ever bothered to listen to us about all ‘the gremlins on the wings’ or the ‘snakes’ in the cockpit.
And while a consistent failure to edit/spellcheck before submitting anything that’s going to be read by the masses is a personal pet peeve of my own, I’m not unrealistic enough to believe that better grammatical/compositional efforts and higher standards of writing would have somehow ‘saved us’ from the dire straits we’re currently stuck in…
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A working class individual often pays a larger percentage of their income than the wealthy… and that has a larger impact on their quality of life.
The rich should pay their fair share for the system to disproportionately benefits them.
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It is complex, which is why you might want to study up on concepts like the Gini Coefficient (re: inequality), Progressive vs. Regressive Taxation (re: tax brackets and marginal tax rates), and Modern Monetary Theory (re: different approaches to government spending vis-a-vis taxes).
Once you educate yourself on these issues, you’ll discover that this has nothing to do with people on BB blaming their own misfortunes on others (no matter how greedy those others are). Most critics of billionaires here manage to live very comfortable lives with a tiny fraction of that wealth and feel no personal misfortune or jealousy, but at the same time understand that many in American society have a different experience.
Also, I’d recommend staying away from Social Darwinism; it never leads to a good place.
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No, I did not see what you did there.
Can you please elaborate ?
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It’s not the “promise”, but it is the history. America was deliberately designed as a white supremacist plutocracy; the “liberty for all” gloss was never anything other than spin.
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In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.
James Madison, Statement (1787-06-26) as quoted in Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787 by Robert Yates
Or see here:
QUESTION: Do you see much evidence of a revolutionary spirit in the America of the 1990s?
CHOMSKY: You didn’t find evidence of it in the America of the 1790s. The Revolutionary War was an important event. But it was in the first place, to a significant extent, a civil war, as most revolutionary wars are. And it was a war of independence, as opposed to a revolution against the social structure. The social structure didn’t really change significantly. There were problems right after the war was done. For example, Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion and so on were challenging the social structure, and there were efforts on the part of radical farmers to take seriously the meaning of the words in the revolutionary pamphlets, but that was pretty well quieted down.
If you go back to the record of the Constitutional Convention, which took place in 1787, almost immediately after the end of the war, you see that they are already moving in another direction. James Madison – who was the main framer, and one of the Founding Fathers who was most libertarian – makes it very clear that the new constitutional system must be designed so as to ensure that the government will, in his words, “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority” and bar the way to anything like agrarian reform. The determination was made that America could not allow functioning democracy, since people would use their political power to attack the wealth of the minority of the opulent. Therefore, Madison argues, the country should be placed in the hands of the wealthier set of men, as he put it.
QUESTION: Isn’t that erection of barriers to democracy woven through the entire history of the United States?
CHOMSKY: It goes back to the writing of the Constitution. They were pretty explicit. Madison saw a “danger” in democracy that was quite real and he responded to it. In fact, the“problem” was noticed a long time earlier. It’s clear in Aristotle’s “Politics,” the sort of founding book of political theory – which is a very careful and thoughtful analysis of the notion of democracy. Aristotle recognizes that, for him, that democracy had to be a welfare state; it had to use public revenues to ensure lasting prosperity for all and to ensure equality. That goes right through the Enlightenment. Madison recognized that, if the overwhelming majority is poor, and if the democracy is a functioning one, then they’ll use their electoral power to serve their own interest rather than the common good of all. Aristotle’s solution was, “OK, eliminate poverty.” Madison faced the same problem but his solution was the opposite: “Eliminate democracy.”
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We should think always on the long run. I will give you a real example.
My wife’s Swedich cousin got on their SAT a score that would allow her to go to medical school, something that she wanted. She did not go for it, instead she opened a hot-dog stand, because her earnings after taxes as a medical doctor would be quite similar as she has today, with far less work and responsability.
Quality of life can be quite an abstract definition.
We have a tendency of seeing just the good side of life of someone that is said to have money, but not the dark side of it: long hours, sleepless nights, market risks,health risks.
If she chose running a hot dog stand over being a physician, she cared about money more than she did about the medical vocation. Which is a good outcome, because a person who thinks that way is not someone you want as your doctor (given her attitude I’d be worried about eating at her hot dog stand, too, but that’s another issue).
Also, your wife’s Swedish cousin may be a bit confused. The SAT is for admission to an undergraduate programme in North America. The med school entrance exam is the MCAT. Furthermore, some of Sweden’s best medical schools offer free tuition, which is a good deal compared to the debt incurred when going to med school in the U.S.
Once one is a billionaire (or, indeed, once one is an Ultra High Net Worth Individual), one does not have to worry much about the dark side if one doesn’t want to.
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Sorry, but it is not a Mittelstand or a self-made person view or of running business.
What isn’t? I’m asking as a (roughly) middle-class person who’s founded and run and sold some businesses over the years.
If you have $30-million in net worth (this excludes primary residence) you’re grossing an average $1.2-million/annum ($756k after taxes) without lifting a finger and also maintaining or increasing your principal. Your money is in most cases being managed by a professional, your time is yours to do with what you wish, you’re not up at night worrying about paying the mortgage or the bills, your platinum health insurance package is paid for, your day-to-day stress is near zero, and you can afford healthy food and gym time.
That’s not to say that all or most UHNWIs are retired and choosing to live that lifestyle, just pointing out that it is an option and putting things into perspective. Putting things into further perspective, for a billionaire multiply those numbers above by 34.
Going in the other direction, a single person can enjoy a very comfortable middle-class life in a nice neighbourhood in the U.S.'s most expensive cities on $150k/annum gross income (13% of the gross income of our retired UHNWI above, with a lot more hours of work).
By 2030, with wealth concentration trends continuing, the global top 1% (that’s people with a net worth of $10-million+) are projected to own 2/3s of all wealth on the planet. That’s 66% of the wealth for 1% of the population, with the remaining 34% split up (but by no means spread evenly) amongst the other 99%. That’s an unsustainable situation, whether one is a socialist who wants to replace the system or a capitalist who wants to save the system from its own worst excesses.
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The very EXISTENCE of a tiny minority of individuals who control such a huge and ever-growing proportion of the world’s wealth and resources is an inherently bad thing for a democratic society. Regardless of who you choose to blame it’s a completely untenable situation.
It’s clear we didn’t get here through any kind of merit-based system, unless you somehow believe the richest people of 2019 are many times smarter and harder working than their peers of a generation ago.
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I don’t think thats really the trouble. I think the trouble is, these same temporarily embarrased millionaires assume that none of their eventual wealth will carry with it any actual responsibility with its privilege.
It doesnt seem to occur to anyone that the more money they have, the harder it will be to avoid hurting someone.
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Is jose a Facebook/Google/Apple AI bot boingboing billboard response experiment? LOL
Am I A Facebook/Google/Apple AI bot boingboing billboard response experiment? FAKE NEWS. SAAAAD. I’m out. Enjoy the Super Bowl.
We certainly wouldn’t want to end up like Sweden.
What a terrible place to live, everybody says there’s no doctors and no health care there.
So, because we can see how terrified rich people are about losing any of their money, that’s how we know that having lots of money is awful.
Another great argument.
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And even in the rare cases when a rich person pays a larger percentage than the average working class person, the taxes are more of a burden on the lower income individual. They’re more likely to be close to a danger point in their financial life.
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Clear as mud.
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I wish we could stigmatize them. Let’s make wealth-hoarding shameful and pathological. At least as much as other kinds of hoarding supposedly is.
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IKR give poors a hard time for collecting trash but what the hell else am I supposed to collect at this income bracket, and ain’t success all about havin the biggest pile? Well, off for now to go look for new garbage, you know what they say!!!
I don’t like hijacking metaphors. This is why:
In reading these responses it strikes me than many here benefitted from an education that challenged them to think, to search for answers that weren’t packaged like interesting detergent pods that might be fun to consume. Education has been stolen both for profit and for the ability to manipulate the detergent consumers. Civics classes, do they exist in any reasonable form, are our young taught any skills regarding critical thinking? The opioid addition of concern for me is the mind numbing educational system and it’s companion drug the media. Many of us are sustained by McDumbass syrup than softens our recognition human decency, empathy or compassion. I do not fit into the class of people that believe we should revive our bullshit myths of good old days education. I do believe we need to demand education for our young with in the potentially life/earth saving information we have. I also am really bored stiff with old people and their finely honed wisdom of the ages. And while I carry the color I am goddamn sick of old white males making the decisions that affect our ever increasing population of people different than ourselves. I guess I haven’t given up on politics because every once in a while bright brash bold people display the kind of courage that could move us to being better primates. Sadly an industry of old white assholes kicks into gear to destroy these new and needed leader through any mean available. Many of us are content to cluck tongues and say shit like they are naïve to suggest such common sense. Maybe some of us believe we are really the people with the answers…perhaps some of us are answer people. And perhaps some of us can serve best as the common man in the trenches unwilling to allow cosmetic covered swine to destroy what we should have. We need some generals/leaders but more than anything we need troops with the guts to recognize and fight the greed dominated pigs who throw us slop and trust us to swallow it.
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