sliding scale, there's no reason for anyone to inherit billions of dollars
Wealth & Income Inequality
- Thread starter Eboue
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Most inheritance tax I have seen doesn't kick in until after a million USD at least. I think anyone should be okay with the head start of inheriting at least a million USD and paying taxes over that myself. Afterall, that first million is always the hardest.
Still there are three forms (with slight variations), from possibly infinite ones. We should not cease to try to get a better system just because this one doesn't absolutely sucks compared to the other two.
Better distribution makes sense, but like I already pointed out, Sweden had someone worth over 50 billion.
As for healthcare, I totally agree that USA is very backwards compared to most of the wordl.
Well, if the father owns 100b, then I would argue that the son/daughter inheriting 50b isn't that bad. There are still 50b which are put into the economy which before were hoarded from a single person.
Of course, I think that there is no need for anyone to own 100b in the first place, and there should be laws which make it practically impossible.
1 billion is too much for anyone to inherit
I need to read up to answer that, perhaps another time.
There are trust funds, so it's almost impossible apply too much inheritance tax.
I would say that 1b is probably too much for anyone to own. But if that is allowed, then also inheriting it should be allowed. Lets say 50% in inheritance tax after some threshold, it is still an extreme quantity of money that the state gets from individuals and can invest in healthcare, education, infrastructure etc.
this is a conscious choice the government has made because it's bought and owned by the people you love so much
I'll leave this thread with this...
So basically you're economically right-wing then.
Right wing with vague overtures towards minorities without supporting any policies to materially change their lives
No wonder he loves Hillary
No wonder he loves Hillary
I wish we had a Linux engineer on here, or anyone who has authored innovative open source tech solutions, to shit on this myth that innovation only comes from a profit-based motive. Laughable, and perpetuated by ignorance.
And although @Eboue says some crazy things, he's right about billionaires having their wealth at the expense of many workers. No one can really say they've truly earned a billion dollars. And just because they acquire it through legal ways doesn't make it right. Consider what used to be legal in modern human history: slavery, racism, ownership over wives, sex with minors, murder without trial, rape, child labor, child abuse, etc. You get the picture.
And although @Eboue says some crazy things, he's right about billionaires having their wealth at the expense of many workers. No one can really say they've truly earned a billion dollars. And just because they acquire it through legal ways doesn't make it right. Consider what used to be legal in modern human history: slavery, racism, ownership over wives, sex with minors, murder without trial, rape, child labor, child abuse, etc. You get the picture.
but how can the wealthy steal from workers?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
For as much as you'll typically see a lot of big private companies celebrated as being at the forefront of innovation, a surprising amount probably received government subsidies of some sort to help them in doing vital work.
And even going further back than that, you could argue that this all starts at education. Even if profit's the primary motive, the government still needs to invest in people at a young age to ensure the innovators of the future etc are being brought up in the right social conditions to be in a position where they can actually go on to innovate.
Even if you take the profit motive away, people wouldn’t just sit on their ass.
Instead of the inordinate resources spent on building a slimmer handheld device, we could be fixing climate change or launching a human colony in space. Imagine that.
If profits are shared, people won’t have to work for more than 4 hours a day on average while having a decent quality of life. The time freed up could be spent on so many things that would better our future as a species, but hey, let’s force a young kid to flip burgers 10 hours a day to pay for night classes just so one day he can get a job that enables him to get a house after 30 mortgage-paying years.
The system is immoral.
Pretty much this. The only interesting conversation is asking what should replace it instead and well that's a tricky one.
for starters, we should start using the same living wage and currency worldwide. End the stock market too.
Yes. World government. I'm all for that.
I, For One, welcome our new Overlord Jeff Bezos.
And so is my President (another billionaire):
Look at the cocksuckers how they laugh...
This is a very important point. There has been a lot research in behavioral and neuro economics on how precisely profit motives affect decision making and under what conditions. Innovation usually doesn't fall into the category that is benefited from profit motive: effort dependent tasks. Innovation is usually a task that depends on intrinsic motivation.
This is one article that tries to summarize the overall points:
https://authors.library.caltech.edu/22080/1/wp1059[1].pdfColin Camerer (Cal Tech) & Robin Hogarth (Univ. of Chicago) said:
This is very important because there are many experimental economics studies that support this conclusion. Overall innovation is not cognitively boosted by the profit motive. In fact it shows the opposite. Intrinsic motivation is far more important to true innovation than profit motive. A very fun anecdotal account that supports this is Kary Mullis' book Dancing Naked in the Minefield where he recounts how he serendipitously discovered the Polymerase Chain Reaction entirely from intrinsic motivation.
This is very important because @Cal? was repeating old neo-classical myths/assumptions that were never empirically proven. They have now been debunked by experiments in actual decision making.
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The most amazing thing in these debates and elections is the amount of people defending a system and policies that never in a million years actually benefit them.
Its because they aren't voting on their economic self-interest but what they think is their moral compass
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/05/02/berkeley-author-george-lakoff-says-dont-underestimate-trump
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/09/16/why-are-so-many-people-about-to-vote-against-their-interests/
Its also because a large swath of the electorate don't vote on policy, but on emotion. The Cambridge Analytica guys realized this and used it to their advantage.
5:40 to 7:00
When I was in college we did a work on that. We had some policies detailed in form of news articles and watched the variation in approval/disapproval depending on people knowing which political party was proposing it.
The person would read the article and fill a quick survey. Then we would reveal which party proposed it and have a break for lunch. We would tell people to think about it a bit more during the break and a few hours later they would take the survey again.
Many young people changed their opinion after knowing the proposal came from the christian-right and people in general changed their position after knowing the proposal came from far-left parties.
Definitely. Emotion, morality and framing all tie together and its what the DNC elites have stubbornly ignored for over a decade. Some people have been trying to tell them for a long time and the powers that be in the donkey party just haven't listened to reason. Instead preferring to lose a lot more than they should have lost.
I'd love to see the hard data on that experiment. I'd guess it was very revealing and interesting to read through that. I think everyone should take classes that show experiments like that as it really enlightens us as students to how we as humans make choices.
Yeah talking about it now, I'd like to read it again. Unfortunately this was 15 years ago, I have no idea where that stuff is anymore.
I wasn't really into politics back then as I am now or I would've enjoyed it a lot more. But I remember me and my classmates being amazed by some 180 degree opinion changes in some people. "That proposal sounds amazing, it would really improve the country. What? The communists proposed it? I wouldn't vote for it, I don't want to turn our country into North Korea".
No one ever said innovation ONLY comes from profit motives, talk about barking up the wrong tree.
Communism has been proven not to work, if you can do nothing and have the same living standard as someone working their ass off, that's even more immoral.
End the stock market?
As mentioned above, communism doesn't work. Is there a better distribution of wealth? Definitely, but even somewhere that taxes as high as Sweden had someone worth 50B.
This is why its impossible to take your CE posts seriously.
You keep repeating this outdated, strawman dogma as if people think there are only two possible ways to organize economic systems in the world - Soviet communism or unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism.
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Give black people & native Americans reparations, take away colonial tax & pay a fair price for African resources & trade in order to stop the mass devaluing of African currency.
I have absolutely no problem if someone manages to get rich in an ethical way. But if you underpay workers and treat them like shit, then why should I respect you? This is the problem right here, government regulations are wayyy too influenced by lobbying and what they do is increase the barriers to entry and create favorable conditions for the major corporations.
We have people on this very thread advocating the execution of innocent citizens are daring to get rich, others suggesting that wealth should be capped at a certain amount.
I have neither advocated complete free market (in fact have mentioned that laws are important to ensure wealth distribution), nor have I ever suggested human innovation is ONLY down to profit motives.
Yet somehow I’m the one being extremist?
Communism doesn’t work is a reply to the suggestion that people don’t need incentives to perform. That is exactly what happened in the failed USSR.
We have people on this very thread advocating the execution of innocent citizens are daring to get rich, others suggesting that wealth should be capped at a certain amount.
I have neither advocated complete free market (in fact have mentioned that laws are important to ensure wealth distribution), nor have I ever suggested human innovation is ONLY down to profit motives.
Yet somehow I’m the one being extremist?
Communism doesn’t work is a reply to the suggestion that people don’t need incentives to perform. That is exactly what happened in the failed USSR.
You sound like a market extremist because everything you are posting is the exact same arguments that people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity hype up. Your arguments are literally the same as Trump's supporters. I asked you to explain how your views differ from people like Hayek and von Misses and you said you needed to read more. You aren't even recognizing and acknowledging all the counter arguments multiple posters have presented. If you can't answer the questions asked of you, then go do your reading before posting.
Your responses to all those posts you quoted lacked an understanding of the points people were making and sounded like Trump supporter level strawman mockery and condescension trying to keep repeating this "communism" bullshit when that is not at all what anyone is saying.
Extremes are never good, be it socialist or capitalist. You have to take these things in moderation and judge cases pragmatically. I personally lean more to socialism, but complete equality is nonsense. We are not created equal, we do not perform equal, therefor we are not rewarded equally. Ofcourse you have to protect the weak, but not as far as to take away everything from their successful counterparts. Life is not completely fair and there is no way to make it so.
Solely based on the first page. Wealth concentration is a good thing when it comes to the ability to invest and afford to lose money while researching/discovering, the problem with wealth concentration is when it's used as a tool for wealth creation through finance for the sake of earning dividends and then spending it on yachts that you put in Monaco and never use.
You are going to side with @Eboue and his execute the rich side?
Do explain how giving no incentive for people to work/innovate isn’t like communism?
The counter arguments being people shouldn’t be allowed to get ultra rich? I just cannot agree with that. As pointed out many times, even if you tax at a higher rate like Sweden, people still get ultra rich.