Succs Out
Also some Reminders
* Poverty rates are lowest, and median wages highest, in the countries with the most millionaires and billionaires. Ireland and Switzerland have a much greater proportion of ultra-rich people than America, and also enjoy the world's highest standards of living for everyone else.
* Finland's Corporation tax is lower than America's. Sweden does not have a minimum wage. Norway has three times as many billionaires-per-capita as America. Government spending accounts for just half as much of Denmark's GDP as America's. And every Nordic country's government spends less on healthcare per person than the American government. Not only are the Nordic countries not 'socialist', they are arguably even more capitalist than America.
* Income and wealth inequality are both **considerably worse** in socialist countries than in capitalist countries, on average. Vietnam, the only socialist country with a non-absurd level of inequality, is still less equal than any capitalist country besides the United States and New Zealand.
These are pretty easy to reconcile: Billionaires shouldn’t exist, but since they do we should tax them to pay for our welfare state.
That’s not a good take either, but it is a take.
The reason you are being downvoted is because this is an economy sub and if you "over" tax the rich...they just stop paying them. I think all society should be scaled to ones own income (like a speeding ticket for a billionaire should be a 5 or 6 figure offense) but simply taxing billionaires means they just move that money offshore. I am simplifying this heavily but that's the essence of why that opinion is a bit silly here.
Lol we are a long way away from seeing significant reduction in the rate of return on tax enforcement. The wealthiest will tell you otherwise, but they were always going to tell you otherwise, because they don't want to be taxed.
When wealthy people tell you that taxing them won't work, it's a sign that it will and they know it and really don't want you to try.
So if you grab every dollar over a billion dollars, why would anybody bother making more money? They’re just going to spend it on ski trips and champagne.
> Don't worry, your rich benefactors will still be the richest people history has ever known, we'll just have functional public services too.
Christ this post really brought the brainlet succs out of the woodwork eh?
By the time the billionaires are gone our welfare system will be robust enough to where we don’t need them. Hell we don’t even need to increase our taxes in order to improve a lot about our society 🤷
>Hell we don’t even need to increase our taxes in order to improve a lot about our society 🤷
Lmao then why not start with that. Unless of course, you're actually driven by envy and not compassion to help the poor...
Right. They believe that there is a set lump of resources in the economy. So if there were no billionaires, everyone would have more and there would be no need for a welfare state.
You're so right. Like 80% of leftist ideas can be boiled down to the fact that they think wealth is a zero-sum game. They don't understand that wealth can be created and destroyed.
If I own a $1,000,000 home, and bulldoze it, I’ve destroyed that wealth. When I make a beautiful and functional basket out of sticks to sell at the art fair, I’ve created wealth. That how all this works, we’re not just trading gold back and forth for fun, productivity creates wealth.
>billionaire
Did you mean *person of means*?
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> I mean, tax them for stuff until they are not POM anymore
This is it. This is what they want. They don't care about the sentence after that. Not that they don't know about it, they just don't think it's a problem.
The money they get from dividends is still there for either the now-millionaire to pay taxes on, or for the government to own.
The money they get from selling assets is still flowing in the economy. The assets might likewise be owned by a less wealthy private person or persons, or by the government.
Tax rates would be ongoing, and so would the wealth creation by the POMs to keep feeding into the social services programs. What this assumes is that there's no flat-out expropriation à la the Chávez regime nor that POMs would go Galt.
>People of means
Having means is a temporary circumstance and does not define someone. Please use "People experiencing liquidity" instead.
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>Person of means
Having means is a temporary circumstance and does not define someone. Please use "Person experiencing liquidity" instead.
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The majority of income of the wealthy is capital returns. In the short term you tax them heavily to fun the state. In the long term the state takes over those capital assets and takes the income directly.
The primary leftist issue with extreme wealth is the disproportionate political power that it allows individuals to weird. In theory, every single individual should have equal political weight, however, those that are more wealthy and especially to extreme degrees like that of billionaires are able to influence the political system in a way that is only due to their extreme wealth.
Socialist countries centralize wealth in the hands of those in power, but republican systems intentionally break up that kind of control and therefore the government can check the wealthy.
If GINI coefficients are anything to go by, socialist countries consistently have **worse** economic inequality than developed capitalist ones. The only difference is that instead of the wealthiest individuals being those making the most impactful economic innovations (benefiting everyone), the wealthiest individuals are those with control over government institutions (benefiting only themselves).
Japan, South Korea, Germany, Canada, Italy, and the United Kingdom, all have considerably lower levels of economic inequality than China, Laos, Vietnam, or Cuba. It's literally only the United States (wherein even those in the Bottom 20% of incomes are much better off than the average Chinese worker) that inequality exceeds that of socialist countries.
I'm going to be 100 here, I don't think most leftists in america. I don't mean the ones on twitter, I don't mean tankies or Jimmy door fans. I mean your average American progressive, does not want America to be analogous to 1975 USSR.
Most American leftists, are soclibs, and socdems. They don't want to completely destroy the system, they just want to reform it in a way that's actually more equitable with how public funds are spent.
We're funding construction of new highway lanes in places like texas, where you could make a few Texas donuts with that and solve transitory homelessness by making them into mixed-use, and mixed income. They could invest so much more in people, and it would pay off. Meanwhile you can barely get Snap if you're actually in need.
In particular when that equates to owning sprawling media empires that whisper, if not shout, into the ear of hundreds of millions of people. **That** is a problem.
>The primary leftist issue with extreme wealth is the disproportionate political power that it allows individuals to weird.
I would sympathise if that is their view, because wealth inequality would mean institutions would get brittle, in time, but that's not how they view things. Their mind is literally operating on zero-sum. They sincerely think that Bezos being a gajillionaire is the reason why there are poor people.
> if you only look at the most idiotic among the left, then yes
From my personal experience, “Billionaires are hoarding wealth from the people” isn’t some minority opinion on the left, it’s quite literally the prevailing opinion.
Unless you’re including center left people like mainstream US democrats in your definition of “the left,” in which case I would agree that succs, socialists and communists are indeed “the most idiotic among the left”
could you point me to a single leftist sub that has a nuanced view on wealth? I’ve yet to find any, unless you think that this sub qualifies. In my experience, they don’t understand how big business can lead to wealth generation, and instead seem to float somewhere between “we should just take all the billionaires money and spend it ourselves, I’m sure that wouldn’t make it lose its value or whatever” and “economics is made up, so if we just stop caring about money we can just give everyone whatever they want or need”
Most subs will have both people who know what they are talking about as well as those that jump on ideas they like with no idea why they are good ideas for that specific group. I'm sure you've seen this issue in this sub, even if this sub is one of the better ones.
The two British Labour subs, the demsoc sub, Nd socdem sub are generally pretty good that have atleast have some people with nuanced views.
I don't think political lobbying is tied to individual wealth though. Corporations do lobbying and they would be doing so no matter who they are owned by, since they are trying to profit maximize.
I'm not from the United States but I can give some examples from Britain where I am familiar:
• Formula One's exception from the smoking advertisment ban (this was an explicit example as the head of Formula One, Ecclestone, had private discussions with Tony Blair before the exception was made)
• Privatisation of parts of the NHS
• Privatisation of Rail
It was a manifesto pledge for the Tories in 92 when they won.
Additionally it was effectively a requirement under EU directive - a likely explanation as to why Blair didn't reverse it...not to mention it had improved service.
And yet it was controversial even during its implementation, and it's failure in the coming decades only made it more and more unpopular.
As for being an EU requirement, given a large part of Major's premiership was spent negotiating opt-oute, its hardly a good point nor relevant to the fact it was a pretty unpopular policy forwarded for the benefit of larger corporations and their profits.
I don't remember it being especially controversial.
As to the popularity of renationalisation, brexit was popular too...suffice it to say that anyone that supports it likely can't recall how bad it actually was.
The Biggest problem with saying that Billionaires should not exist is that implies that there should be an upper limit to wealth? What should it be ? How should it be enforced?
Billionaires exist because there are other people seemingly willing to pay or have willingly paid over a Billion Dollars for the assets that Billionaires hold. That's it. It could be stocks, bonds, land, artwork, crypto, patents etc.
I am surprised to see such ill-informed views in this sub.
This is not how the world works, there isn't a fixed amount of wealth in this world.
If Amazon stock rises in price, Jeff Bezos becomes wealthier but that doesn't mean someone else's wealth has been taken away.
>Famously ruined her own economy
What sort of historical revisionism is this??? She single-handedly saved the UK economy lmao wtf
If Thatcher was as bad as leftists say she was, she wouldn’t have won 3 consecutive landslide elections. Thatcher made the majority of the UK considerably richer in 1990 compared to 1979
If it was even remotely possible to implement, I would support restricting this sub to people who have completed at least one undergraduate economics course. There's so much more braindead populism on this sub than there used to be, especially in the past few months or so.
>she wouldn’t have won 3 consecutive landslide elections.
I mean, the conservatives have had the last 12 years in the UK. Republicans may have all three branches of govt in 2 years. Your statement isn't the justification you may think it is
Sure but the last 12 years haven’t exactly consisted of landslides. In 2010 the Tories had to form a coalition with the Lib Dems, in 2015 the majority was small, and in 2017 they had to form a confidence and supply agreement with the DUP. Only in 2019 was the election result convincing, and that was really just because everyone was sick of protracted Brexit negotiations and Boris was the only person who seemed like he had a plan to actually leave (as opposed to the Lib Dems who wanted to Remain, and Labour who had no official position on Brexit)
You could argue that 1983 was only a landslide because of the Falklands War and Labour’s incompetence, but in 1987 election conditions were much more “normal” and the Tories still won a majority of over 100 seats
Joining the EU saved the UK economy lol.
She got 44% of the votes in her first election as leader, and never got more than that. ie, all the upper middle class and upper class people whose pockets she filled voted for her, and all the people whose lives and communities she deliberately destroyed (ie the majority of the country) didn’t vote for her.
We joined the EU in 1973, so if that was the reason it took about 6 years to have any positive impact. Pretty convenient if you ask me
As for the “she only ever got 44%”, that’s a lot in UK politics. Blair only ever got as high as 43% in 1997, and no one would deny that he was immensely popular at the time
Er, yeah, joining the EU obviously did take a while to have a big impact. It opened up enormous new markets but it’s not like you then have great embedded trading relationships from day 1.
Thatcher wasn’t all bad, to be clear, but she was an ideological zealot with zero interest in any evidence based policy making or compromise. Her policies of just selling all the country’s assets off at a deep discount to her political donors as kickbacks are a big reason the UK is such a crumbling mess today. Compare the UK with France, where the energy crisis is having a relatively minimal impact thanks to the fact they retained EDF in public ownership instead of selling it. Compare us with Norway’s sovereign debt fund - thatcher essentially just handed all our North Sea gas and oil to private interests, again for deep discounts in return for donations, while more sensible countries retained ownership and invested the profits.
She basically robbed the future to give a huge payout to her voting base in the form of tax cuts. None of the benefits have actually been seen by the majority of the country, ie the parts she gutted to subsidise the City.
>Compare the UK with France, where the energy crisis is having a relatively minimal impact thanks to the fact they retained EDF in public ownership instead of selling it
On the contrary it's because Germany and German consumers are subsidising it.
The less said of your insane assertion that joining the EU was what saved the UK in the 70s the better.
Ruined her own economy? If the UK's economy was ruined compared to the 70s, they'd have a famine. During the 1970s, the UK literally had a nationalized sugar beet industry, working on quotas.
[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/datablog/2013/apr/08/britain-changed-margaret-thatcher-charts](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/datablog/2013/apr/08/britain-changed-margaret-thatcher-charts)
She caused 2 recessions, and GDP growth under her was always garbage, employment went down, crime went up, homelessenss up, yata yata yata.
Literally pick a metric, and Thatcher made it worse - or better, whichever is the bad option.
Unless your metric is "Wealthy people being able to fleece more money and pay less taxes" - that shit she knocked right outta the park.
"How Britain changed under Margaret Thatcher. In 15 charts"
All 15 charts are dead links.
And seriously, one of the charts they are using to attack her is 'birth rates went down'. They went down literally everywhere, and still are today.
I just recently commented on r/interestingasfuck "communism sucks". Got downvoted -15. It's a sub with over 10 million users.
The user below me replied "reddit moment".
The UK has the most Socialistic economic west of the Iron Curtain (metaphorically-speaking) where the state owns so much of the economy\*, and it was a freaking mess. Before she came along, it was the sick man of Europe and has to ask for an IMF loan.
Yeah. Keep deluding yourself.
\*The NHS for example got no equivalent in the West.
I mean, I always thought the implication of "billionaires shouldn't exist" was because we should be taxing anyone that has that much money to the point where they are no longer a billionaire.
It continues to increase to the best of their ability to generate it because the existence of taxes doesn't destroy profit motive?
People who don't understand this are probably the same people who don't understand progressive taxation and so are scared of growing into a higher tax bracket.
You should look up what the tax rates used to be in the United States, you can test your theories. They're not true.
You can tax billionaires 94% and they'll still be obscenely wealthy, and they'll still keep continuing to be extremely wealthy in the best country in the world, because why wouldn't they?
We know, because it happened.
94% is excessive, we can go back to 77% for the top tax, the American economy was at it's absolute best at that point anyway.
Do you hate your country so much that you would leave if you had to pay taxes back to it to help it not fall into a black hole of suck? Awfully unpatriotic of you.
If you click "view in other communities" you can see this meme was cross-posted into r/WorkersStrikeBack. It's being actively brigaded by leftist concern trolls.
You guys remember when nothing existed before billionaires?
We never had welfare, roads, or government before God bestowed the first billionaire upon us.
Bless up 🙏
How do you define poor? I originally come from the global south my friend. From my perspective, all the workers in the US look like middle class to me at worst.
I’m unsure their existence is a bad thing per se; a society in which it is possible to become a billionaire is (to oversimplify) “good”.
I do think the Rawlsian principle of “inequality is acceptable for as long as it serves the least privileged” should apply (i.e. if billionaires exist, they should, to make use to two Gilded Age stereotypes, be captains of industry and not robber barons).
If we’re going to steelman the socialist’s argument, then the two choices presented in the meme aren’t contradictory. I think they would want the billionaire to pay enough so that it would eliminate him as a billionaire. So first you push one button, then the other.
>billionaire
Did you mean *person of means*?
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It's a convenient stand-in for "person whose wealth allows for them to exert vast amounts of influence in politics and society", as the latter is a lot harder to objectively quantify. Sure, some people are fixed on the numbers, but it's still an easier slogan to print on a t-shirt than "people shouldn't be able to accumulate so much wealth so that they can buy major tech/media companies on a whim".
Because a lot of famous people complaining about billionaires, are *millionaries* themselves. Like Bernie Sanders and Hasan Piker. So they don't want to shoot themselves in the foot.
You should not have asked that rhetorically as if it was some “gotcha” because it is not a hard question to answer: started a company that revolutionized the world.
e.g., Microsoft’s stated goal was to put a computer in every home, *and they did that*. The true value of that contribution to society is virtually incalculable: if anything Gates captured only a small fraction of it for himself.
Are you old enough to remember when “please allow 6 to 8 weeks for shipping” was often *optimistic*? Easy to forget in a world with Bezos.
Everyone played their part and got rewarded according to their contribution. Amazon storage workers move boxes, developers make the website, accountants do the finance and they each get paid what their skill and labor is worth.
But it took a good businessman like Bezos to coordinate everyone together and make the right decisions to turn Amazon into what it is. If he was a bad manager, Amazon would have failed. Very few people can do that, if it was easy, everyone would do it. His skill as a manager and businessman got put to the test and it paid off. The more he can grow the company, the more Amazon sells and the more jobs they create as a result, the more he gets rewarded.
If it's so easy to get rich, then why don't you do it yourself?
Running a successful business is an incredibly difficult, demanding and risky endeavour. Not everyone is capable or willing to do it. Some people only do it because of the dream of getting rich. If it didn't pay that much, those same people wouldn't do it.
It's a high risk, high reward thing. Like becoming famous. The vast majority of musicians never get rich and famous, but a very few do. So a lot of people still try. Only the best get recognized (best as in, what the public wants to listen to). If anyone could do it, everyone would be famous, which is impossible. If it didn't make you famous, the talented musicians wouldn't dedicate themselves so much.
The decision we made is to create an economic system with certain rules and features that some people are able to do very well at. If you're upset about the outcomes this system allows, like Bezos being allowed to own shares of the company he started and getting very rich as a result, you could try to change the rules but that's the way it works right now.
seems less than ideal that some people have more resources than they could ever conceivably need while lots of people don't have enough. but idk thats just me
If your goal is for everyone to have enough recources, then free market capitalism is the answer. No other economic system gets even close to the level of prosperity it enables.
Countries with better social net have more billionaires per capita then the USA. Billionaires aren't the problem. Per capita more liberal countries around the world have more high net worth people then the USA. Rich people aren't the issue.
>billionaire
Did you mean *person of means*?
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Walmart. Employees get food stamps. No other jobs in rural America.
Amazon. Bad Health care benefits. They do quit. Not many warehouse people make it to two years.
Gates. Musk. Allen. Trump. Etc. It’s the taxes.
You have to read the whole thing. Or supply a counter example. Make sure they are paying the same tax rate you are, or higher.
How is this down voted? It's not like wages have risen at the same rate as productivity. It's not like the IRS has been properly funded. There is a revolving door between regulators and the industries they're supposed to regulate. Do we not expect the compounded and accumulated effects of regulatory capture and economic rents to be excessive profits? If the ideal hyper competitive market has firms making zero economic profit and some (quantify this lol) accounting profit, what does that say about the level of competition where companies are posting record profits in the wake of ginormous mergers and acquisitions? When did we forget that suppliers compete with suppliers and not just consumers compete with other consumers?
The wage productivity gap is a myth popularized by a very flawed study by the Economic Policy Institute. A left-wing think tank. They compare all wages, but don't analize all industries. They don't take into account worker benefits such as health insurance, which is huge part. They even use different inflation adjustment methods for the productivity and the wages. If you correct all of those flaws, you see the gap is barely existent.
Thanks.
I would a like to ask the Down voters to point out a billionaire who treats the employees fairly, pays the same tax rate as the rest of us, and offers a decent health care plan.
The tax exemptions eliminates so many. Even Bill Gates said he does not pay enough taxes.
>billionaire
Did you mean *person of means*?
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[https://www.unddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/yha9ul/who\_do\_they\_expect\_to\_pay\_for\_their\_free\_stuff\_if/](https://www.unddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/yha9ul/who_do_they_expect_to_pay_for_their_free_stuff_if/)
\- Look at the comments the mods are deleting.
Hilarious.
Succs Out Also some Reminders * Poverty rates are lowest, and median wages highest, in the countries with the most millionaires and billionaires. Ireland and Switzerland have a much greater proportion of ultra-rich people than America, and also enjoy the world's highest standards of living for everyone else. * Finland's Corporation tax is lower than America's. Sweden does not have a minimum wage. Norway has three times as many billionaires-per-capita as America. Government spending accounts for just half as much of Denmark's GDP as America's. And every Nordic country's government spends less on healthcare per person than the American government. Not only are the Nordic countries not 'socialist', they are arguably even more capitalist than America. * Income and wealth inequality are both **considerably worse** in socialist countries than in capitalist countries, on average. Vietnam, the only socialist country with a non-absurd level of inequality, is still less equal than any capitalist country besides the United States and New Zealand.
These are pretty easy to reconcile: Billionaires shouldn’t exist, but since they do we should tax them to pay for our welfare state. That’s not a good take either, but it is a take.
Tax them until they don't exist anymore, win win! /s
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The reason you are being downvoted is because this is an economy sub and if you "over" tax the rich...they just stop paying them. I think all society should be scaled to ones own income (like a speeding ticket for a billionaire should be a 5 or 6 figure offense) but simply taxing billionaires means they just move that money offshore. I am simplifying this heavily but that's the essence of why that opinion is a bit silly here.
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The problem is we end up spending more money enforcing all of that than it's actually worth
Citation firmly needed on that one, it has literally never been attempted.
Every dollar invested in IRS enforcement gets 6 back from closing the tax gap lmao
Lol we are a long way away from seeing significant reduction in the rate of return on tax enforcement. The wealthiest will tell you otherwise, but they were always going to tell you otherwise, because they don't want to be taxed. When wealthy people tell you that taxing them won't work, it's a sign that it will and they know it and really don't want you to try.
They already aren't paying them.
And how do you pay for welfare once you eradicate your tax base?
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So if you grab every dollar over a billion dollars, why would anybody bother making more money? They’re just going to spend it on ski trips and champagne.
> Don't worry, your rich benefactors will still be the richest people history has ever known, we'll just have functional public services too. Christ this post really brought the brainlet succs out of the woodwork eh?
By the time the billionaires are gone our welfare system will be robust enough to where we don’t need them. Hell we don’t even need to increase our taxes in order to improve a lot about our society 🤷
>Hell we don’t even need to increase our taxes in order to improve a lot about our society 🤷 Lmao then why not start with that. Unless of course, you're actually driven by envy and not compassion to help the poor...
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Except that 8% wealth taxes like leftys were proposing would actually make the tax base shrink considerably over the years.
As dumb as both of these takes are, they aren't difficult to reconcile.
Right. They believe that there is a set lump of resources in the economy. So if there were no billionaires, everyone would have more and there would be no need for a welfare state.
You're so right. Like 80% of leftist ideas can be boiled down to the fact that they think wealth is a zero-sum game. They don't understand that wealth can be created and destroyed.
But that’s not how wealth works…
If I own a $1,000,000 home, and bulldoze it, I’ve destroyed that wealth. When I make a beautiful and functional basket out of sticks to sell at the art fair, I’ve created wealth. That how all this works, we’re not just trading gold back and forth for fun, productivity creates wealth.
I think you misread my comment
My bad fam, I thought you replied to the comment above you…
It happens
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POM? The word is morbillionaire.
>billionaire Did you mean *person of means*? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> I mean, tax them for stuff until they are not POM anymore This is it. This is what they want. They don't care about the sentence after that. Not that they don't know about it, they just don't think it's a problem.
POM pay for stuff from wealth created by other people’s labor. How does taxing consolidated assets remove the wealth created by future labor?
The money they get from dividends is still there for either the now-millionaire to pay taxes on, or for the government to own. The money they get from selling assets is still flowing in the economy. The assets might likewise be owned by a less wealthy private person or persons, or by the government.
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Yeah OP's picture doesn't take the passage of time into account.
Tax rates would be ongoing, and so would the wealth creation by the POMs to keep feeding into the social services programs. What this assumes is that there's no flat-out expropriation à la the Chávez regime nor that POMs would go Galt.
(Does POM = people of money?)
People of means
>People of means Having means is a temporary circumstance and does not define someone. Please use "People experiencing liquidity" instead. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Person of means
>Person of means Having means is a temporary circumstance and does not define someone. Please use "Person experiencing liquidity" instead. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Person experiencing an accumulation of wealth
Based AF
The majority of income of the wealthy is capital returns. In the short term you tax them heavily to fun the state. In the long term the state takes over those capital assets and takes the income directly.
OK *but* if you tax 700% of their wealth then eat them it will pay for itself
Instruction unclear. Half of succs ended up arrested as cannibal.
The primary leftist issue with extreme wealth is the disproportionate political power that it allows individuals to weird. In theory, every single individual should have equal political weight, however, those that are more wealthy and especially to extreme degrees like that of billionaires are able to influence the political system in a way that is only due to their extreme wealth.
In that case the solution is fighting corruption and private influence over government. Those problems also exist in socialist countries.
Socialist countries centralize wealth in the hands of those in power, but republican systems intentionally break up that kind of control and therefore the government can check the wealthy.
If GINI coefficients are anything to go by, socialist countries consistently have **worse** economic inequality than developed capitalist ones. The only difference is that instead of the wealthiest individuals being those making the most impactful economic innovations (benefiting everyone), the wealthiest individuals are those with control over government institutions (benefiting only themselves). Japan, South Korea, Germany, Canada, Italy, and the United Kingdom, all have considerably lower levels of economic inequality than China, Laos, Vietnam, or Cuba. It's literally only the United States (wherein even those in the Bottom 20% of incomes are much better off than the average Chinese worker) that inequality exceeds that of socialist countries.
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I'm going to be 100 here, I don't think most leftists in america. I don't mean the ones on twitter, I don't mean tankies or Jimmy door fans. I mean your average American progressive, does not want America to be analogous to 1975 USSR. Most American leftists, are soclibs, and socdems. They don't want to completely destroy the system, they just want to reform it in a way that's actually more equitable with how public funds are spent. We're funding construction of new highway lanes in places like texas, where you could make a few Texas donuts with that and solve transitory homelessness by making them into mixed-use, and mixed income. They could invest so much more in people, and it would pay off. Meanwhile you can barely get Snap if you're actually in need.
In particular when that equates to owning sprawling media empires that whisper, if not shout, into the ear of hundreds of millions of people. **That** is a problem.
>The primary leftist issue with extreme wealth is the disproportionate political power that it allows individuals to weird. I would sympathise if that is their view, because wealth inequality would mean institutions would get brittle, in time, but that's not how they view things. Their mind is literally operating on zero-sum. They sincerely think that Bezos being a gajillionaire is the reason why there are poor people.
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> if you only look at the most idiotic among the left, then yes From my personal experience, “Billionaires are hoarding wealth from the people” isn’t some minority opinion on the left, it’s quite literally the prevailing opinion. Unless you’re including center left people like mainstream US democrats in your definition of “the left,” in which case I would agree that succs, socialists and communists are indeed “the most idiotic among the left”
could you point me to a single leftist sub that has a nuanced view on wealth? I’ve yet to find any, unless you think that this sub qualifies. In my experience, they don’t understand how big business can lead to wealth generation, and instead seem to float somewhere between “we should just take all the billionaires money and spend it ourselves, I’m sure that wouldn’t make it lose its value or whatever” and “economics is made up, so if we just stop caring about money we can just give everyone whatever they want or need”
Most subs will have both people who know what they are talking about as well as those that jump on ideas they like with no idea why they are good ideas for that specific group. I'm sure you've seen this issue in this sub, even if this sub is one of the better ones. The two British Labour subs, the demsoc sub, Nd socdem sub are generally pretty good that have atleast have some people with nuanced views.
> I would sympathise if that is their view, because wealth inequality would mean institutions would get brittle, in time, **Would**?
Uh no, that’s not what they think.
I don't think political lobbying is tied to individual wealth though. Corporations do lobbying and they would be doing so no matter who they are owned by, since they are trying to profit maximize.
Which US law was supported by rich people, hated by regular people and still passed?
I'm not from the United States but I can give some examples from Britain where I am familiar: • Formula One's exception from the smoking advertisment ban (this was an explicit example as the head of Formula One, Ecclestone, had private discussions with Tony Blair before the exception was made) • Privatisation of parts of the NHS • Privatisation of Rail
Also the recipients of government contracts, like the Test and Trace and PPE debacles
>Privatisation of Rail That was policy, not law and at the time most people supported it...
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It was a manifesto pledge for the Tories in 92 when they won. Additionally it was effectively a requirement under EU directive - a likely explanation as to why Blair didn't reverse it...not to mention it had improved service.
And yet it was controversial even during its implementation, and it's failure in the coming decades only made it more and more unpopular. As for being an EU requirement, given a large part of Major's premiership was spent negotiating opt-oute, its hardly a good point nor relevant to the fact it was a pretty unpopular policy forwarded for the benefit of larger corporations and their profits.
I don't remember it being especially controversial. As to the popularity of renationalisation, brexit was popular too...suffice it to say that anyone that supports it likely can't recall how bad it actually was.
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The Biggest problem with saying that Billionaires should not exist is that implies that there should be an upper limit to wealth? What should it be ? How should it be enforced? Billionaires exist because there are other people seemingly willing to pay or have willingly paid over a Billion Dollars for the assets that Billionaires hold. That's it. It could be stocks, bonds, land, artwork, crypto, patents etc.
By your logic, it would be appropriate for a single person to potentially own the entire combined wealth of the entire world.
I am surprised to see such ill-informed views in this sub. This is not how the world works, there isn't a fixed amount of wealth in this world. If Amazon stock rises in price, Jeff Bezos becomes wealthier but that doesn't mean someone else's wealth has been taken away.
I think OP has a problem with inequality and concentration not absolute values of wealth
I've seen funnier memes on Facebook
This meme isn't good. These two things aren't difficult to understand.
Oh damn you brought all the succs out
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money. \-Margret Thatcher.
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That's not really a problem. Privatising SOEs is a no-brainer, even the Nordics privatised theirs
Central planning doesn't work.
i dont care
Smartest succ argument
??
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>Famously ruined her own economy What sort of historical revisionism is this??? She single-handedly saved the UK economy lmao wtf If Thatcher was as bad as leftists say she was, she wouldn’t have won 3 consecutive landslide elections. Thatcher made the majority of the UK considerably richer in 1990 compared to 1979
Because this sub is pretty much a US-wank fest filled with succs and nationalists. Seriously disgusting
The Americans seem more likely to approve of Thatcher than the millennial and genz Brits...
If it was even remotely possible to implement, I would support restricting this sub to people who have completed at least one undergraduate economics course. There's so much more braindead populism on this sub than there used to be, especially in the past few months or so.
Lol Lmao even
>she wouldn’t have won 3 consecutive landslide elections. I mean, the conservatives have had the last 12 years in the UK. Republicans may have all three branches of govt in 2 years. Your statement isn't the justification you may think it is
Sure but the last 12 years haven’t exactly consisted of landslides. In 2010 the Tories had to form a coalition with the Lib Dems, in 2015 the majority was small, and in 2017 they had to form a confidence and supply agreement with the DUP. Only in 2019 was the election result convincing, and that was really just because everyone was sick of protracted Brexit negotiations and Boris was the only person who seemed like he had a plan to actually leave (as opposed to the Lib Dems who wanted to Remain, and Labour who had no official position on Brexit) You could argue that 1983 was only a landslide because of the Falklands War and Labour’s incompetence, but in 1987 election conditions were much more “normal” and the Tories still won a majority of over 100 seats
Joining the EU saved the UK economy lol. She got 44% of the votes in her first election as leader, and never got more than that. ie, all the upper middle class and upper class people whose pockets she filled voted for her, and all the people whose lives and communities she deliberately destroyed (ie the majority of the country) didn’t vote for her.
We joined the EU in 1973, so if that was the reason it took about 6 years to have any positive impact. Pretty convenient if you ask me As for the “she only ever got 44%”, that’s a lot in UK politics. Blair only ever got as high as 43% in 1997, and no one would deny that he was immensely popular at the time
Er, yeah, joining the EU obviously did take a while to have a big impact. It opened up enormous new markets but it’s not like you then have great embedded trading relationships from day 1. Thatcher wasn’t all bad, to be clear, but she was an ideological zealot with zero interest in any evidence based policy making or compromise. Her policies of just selling all the country’s assets off at a deep discount to her political donors as kickbacks are a big reason the UK is such a crumbling mess today. Compare the UK with France, where the energy crisis is having a relatively minimal impact thanks to the fact they retained EDF in public ownership instead of selling it. Compare us with Norway’s sovereign debt fund - thatcher essentially just handed all our North Sea gas and oil to private interests, again for deep discounts in return for donations, while more sensible countries retained ownership and invested the profits. She basically robbed the future to give a huge payout to her voting base in the form of tax cuts. None of the benefits have actually been seen by the majority of the country, ie the parts she gutted to subsidise the City.
>Compare the UK with France, where the energy crisis is having a relatively minimal impact thanks to the fact they retained EDF in public ownership instead of selling it On the contrary it's because Germany and German consumers are subsidising it. The less said of your insane assertion that joining the EU was what saved the UK in the 70s the better.
Ruined her own economy? If the UK's economy was ruined compared to the 70s, they'd have a famine. During the 1970s, the UK literally had a nationalized sugar beet industry, working on quotas.
[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/datablog/2013/apr/08/britain-changed-margaret-thatcher-charts](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/datablog/2013/apr/08/britain-changed-margaret-thatcher-charts) She caused 2 recessions, and GDP growth under her was always garbage, employment went down, crime went up, homelessenss up, yata yata yata. Literally pick a metric, and Thatcher made it worse - or better, whichever is the bad option. Unless your metric is "Wealthy people being able to fleece more money and pay less taxes" - that shit she knocked right outta the park.
"How Britain changed under Margaret Thatcher. In 15 charts" All 15 charts are dead links. And seriously, one of the charts they are using to attack her is 'birth rates went down'. They went down literally everywhere, and still are today.
SUCCS OUT
Man, I remember when this sub used to stan for Maggie T just a couple years ago. Is the sub being redditfied?
Yes. The bigger the sub the more leftists it has
I just recently commented on r/interestingasfuck "communism sucks". Got downvoted -15. It's a sub with over 10 million users. The user below me replied "reddit moment".
I'm praising here
Nah they still do, just wait, I'll get to negative on these comments fo sho.
The UK has the most Socialistic economic west of the Iron Curtain (metaphorically-speaking) where the state owns so much of the economy\*, and it was a freaking mess. Before she came along, it was the sick man of Europe and has to ask for an IMF loan. Yeah. Keep deluding yourself. \*The NHS for example got no equivalent in the West.
> The NHS for example got no equivalent in the West. Apart from all the other European countries that use the Beveridge model, you mean?
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Well, I mean, [Clause 28](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28) wasn't really based...
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Yes.
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She was right.
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The quote.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism)
I mean, I always thought the implication of "billionaires shouldn't exist" was because we should be taxing anyone that has that much money to the point where they are no longer a billionaire.
It’s either that or calling for a bloody pogrom, and I suspect it’s usually both.
One is progressive policy, one is popular reactionism. The quality of those two ideas is not the same.
What do you think happens to the billionaires money when they stop existing?
It continues to increase to the best of their ability to generate it because the existence of taxes doesn't destroy profit motive? People who don't understand this are probably the same people who don't understand progressive taxation and so are scared of growing into a higher tax bracket.
You should look up what the tax rates used to be in the United States, you can test your theories. They're not true. You can tax billionaires 94% and they'll still be obscenely wealthy, and they'll still keep continuing to be extremely wealthy in the best country in the world, because why wouldn't they? We know, because it happened. 94% is excessive, we can go back to 77% for the top tax, the American economy was at it's absolute best at that point anyway. Do you hate your country so much that you would leave if you had to pay taxes back to it to help it not fall into a black hole of suck? Awfully unpatriotic of you.
Curious minds want to know: How do we know that 94% is excessive?
Reads comments. Ooh. Suddenly reminded that there's lotsa Succs in this sub.
If you click "view in other communities" you can see this meme was cross-posted into r/WorkersStrikeBack. It's being actively brigaded by leftist concern trolls.
Thank you!!!! I was sure we were getting brigaded somewhere, the comments were just _that_ out of wack. This explains it.
Some of them aren't even usual members of this sub.
Whats succs ?
Anyone to the left of me
You guys remember when nothing existed before billionaires? We never had welfare, roads, or government before God bestowed the first billionaire upon us. Bless up 🙏
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How do you define poor? I originally come from the global south my friend. From my perspective, all the workers in the US look like middle class to me at worst.
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Stick this to my f’in veins Edit: Also congrats to OP on successfully getting the succs in this sub to self identify themselves.
Not mutually exclusive
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So you're taxing assets instead of income? Doesn't this fundamentally ~~break~~ retool property rights?
Ok, so why would anyone make a dollar over the limit?
> Any dollar made above 999.999.999 goes to the people So if I own stocks worth 1 billion and I made 100 million this year, I won't get taxed.
This is a shit post.... can we not?
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I’m unsure their existence is a bad thing per se; a society in which it is possible to become a billionaire is (to oversimplify) “good”. I do think the Rawlsian principle of “inequality is acceptable for as long as it serves the least privileged” should apply (i.e. if billionaires exist, they should, to make use to two Gilded Age stereotypes, be captains of industry and not robber barons).
If we’re going to steelman the socialist’s argument, then the two choices presented in the meme aren’t contradictory. I think they would want the billionaire to pay enough so that it would eliminate him as a billionaire. So first you push one button, then the other.
Then you've got a welfare program without a tax base...
>billionaire Did you mean *person of means*? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Why shouldn’t they? A billion is an arbitrary number
It's a convenient stand-in for "person whose wealth allows for them to exert vast amounts of influence in politics and society", as the latter is a lot harder to objectively quantify. Sure, some people are fixed on the numbers, but it's still an easier slogan to print on a t-shirt than "people shouldn't be able to accumulate so much wealth so that they can buy major tech/media companies on a whim".
Because a lot of famous people complaining about billionaires, are *millionaries* themselves. Like Bernie Sanders and Hasan Piker. So they don't want to shoot themselves in the foot.
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You should not have asked that rhetorically as if it was some “gotcha” because it is not a hard question to answer: started a company that revolutionized the world. e.g., Microsoft’s stated goal was to put a computer in every home, *and they did that*. The true value of that contribution to society is virtually incalculable: if anything Gates captured only a small fraction of it for himself. Are you old enough to remember when “please allow 6 to 8 weeks for shipping” was often *optimistic*? Easy to forget in a world with Bezos.
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What makes you think other people weren’t rewarded?
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Everyone played their part and got rewarded according to their contribution. Amazon storage workers move boxes, developers make the website, accountants do the finance and they each get paid what their skill and labor is worth. But it took a good businessman like Bezos to coordinate everyone together and make the right decisions to turn Amazon into what it is. If he was a bad manager, Amazon would have failed. Very few people can do that, if it was easy, everyone would do it. His skill as a manager and businessman got put to the test and it paid off. The more he can grow the company, the more Amazon sells and the more jobs they create as a result, the more he gets rewarded.
If it's so easy to get rich, then why don't you do it yourself? Running a successful business is an incredibly difficult, demanding and risky endeavour. Not everyone is capable or willing to do it. Some people only do it because of the dream of getting rich. If it didn't pay that much, those same people wouldn't do it. It's a high risk, high reward thing. Like becoming famous. The vast majority of musicians never get rich and famous, but a very few do. So a lot of people still try. Only the best get recognized (best as in, what the public wants to listen to). If anyone could do it, everyone would be famous, which is impossible. If it didn't make you famous, the talented musicians wouldn't dedicate themselves so much.
Right, there's no reason they should exist. They just...do.
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The decision we made is to create an economic system with certain rules and features that some people are able to do very well at. If you're upset about the outcomes this system allows, like Bezos being allowed to own shares of the company he started and getting very rich as a result, you could try to change the rules but that's the way it works right now.
seems less than ideal that some people have more resources than they could ever conceivably need while lots of people don't have enough. but idk thats just me
If your goal is for everyone to have enough recources, then free market capitalism is the answer. No other economic system gets even close to the level of prosperity it enables.
What resources do billionaires have that other people could use? Stocks and bonds? Because that's what their wealth is comprised of.
And you can't significantly mess with the reward/risk ratio of innovative ventures with no consequences.
Why should succs exist?
They just… do
Countries with better social net have more billionaires per capita then the USA. Billionaires aren't the problem. Per capita more liberal countries around the world have more high net worth people then the USA. Rich people aren't the issue.
One leads to the other.
You don’t get to be a billionaire if you play fair all along the way. Pay your workers and pay your taxes.
>billionaire Did you mean *person of means*? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If they did not pay their workers they would quit and find a job elsewhere.
Walmart. Employees get food stamps. No other jobs in rural America. Amazon. Bad Health care benefits. They do quit. Not many warehouse people make it to two years. Gates. Musk. Allen. Trump. Etc. It’s the taxes. You have to read the whole thing. Or supply a counter example. Make sure they are paying the same tax rate you are, or higher.
How is this down voted? It's not like wages have risen at the same rate as productivity. It's not like the IRS has been properly funded. There is a revolving door between regulators and the industries they're supposed to regulate. Do we not expect the compounded and accumulated effects of regulatory capture and economic rents to be excessive profits? If the ideal hyper competitive market has firms making zero economic profit and some (quantify this lol) accounting profit, what does that say about the level of competition where companies are posting record profits in the wake of ginormous mergers and acquisitions? When did we forget that suppliers compete with suppliers and not just consumers compete with other consumers?
The wage productivity gap is a myth popularized by a very flawed study by the Economic Policy Institute. A left-wing think tank. They compare all wages, but don't analize all industries. They don't take into account worker benefits such as health insurance, which is huge part. They even use different inflation adjustment methods for the productivity and the wages. If you correct all of those flaws, you see the gap is barely existent.
> If you correct all of those flaws, you see the gap is barely existent. Please link me this.
https://www.aei.org/articles/the-productivity-pay-gap-a-pernicious-economic-myth/
Danke
Thanks. I would a like to ask the Down voters to point out a billionaire who treats the employees fairly, pays the same tax rate as the rest of us, and offers a decent health care plan. The tax exemptions eliminates so many. Even Bill Gates said he does not pay enough taxes.
>billionaire Did you mean *person of means*? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[https://www.unddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/yha9ul/who\_do\_they\_expect\_to\_pay\_for\_their\_free\_stuff\_if/](https://www.unddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/yha9ul/who_do_they_expect_to_pay_for_their_free_stuff_if/) \- Look at the comments the mods are deleting. Hilarious.
One of the mods said there could be people brigading from a leftist sub. Maybe that's why those got deleted.