Wealth acquisition and distribution?

[Mock Turtle]

Often gnawing at the back of my mind, especially when seeing the taxes avoided by the wealthy, what are your thoughts on this issue?

‘No one should have more than €10m’: the author of Limitarianism on why the super-rich need to level down radically

Prof Ingrid Robeyns has spent a decade studying wealth and ethics and says that limits are essential if we want to eradicate poverty and protect social cohesion and the planet

www.theguardian.com

The book came out in the Netherlands in November. And, of course, the reactions have been polarised. A lot of people say: ‘I’ve been thinking this all my life.’ And then there are those who just freak out and tell me: ‘This is crazy!’ And I can understand that if you have been raised in this neoliberal capitalist paradigm, which I think almost everybody now has, it is an essence of that ideology that there should be no limit to rewards.” Her book – one of those where you might find yourself, as I did, underlining a sentence or three on every page, and adding exclamation points in the margin – unpicks all aspects of that fallacy: the idea that any discussion of a limit to wealth must be born out of envy, for example; or that most seductive of all myths, that people somehow deserve the wealth (or poverty) of their lives – that multimillions are made mostly by hard work and talent, not by luck and vast inequalities of opportunity.

This is a philosophy that appeals to me more than most, and which mostly has done all my life, given that apart from the iniquities of vast wealth differences, unearned power often comes with such wealth as well as the greater chance to escape justice or wield such power for dubious purposes, and of course the notion that some should be rewarded exponentially more than others - because they own or control a business - is just ludicrous, and why I would like to see more public ownership - certainly of essential services. But no doubt many will disagree.

“Basically what I want to do with this book is to say, yes, we all accept that as a societal goal we want to try to eradicate poverty,” Robeyns says. “Good. But actually, let’s also look at the other side. The fact is, we should and must minimise the number of super-rich people and the amount of wealth concentration because of all these bad effects…” Her book explores the negative consequences not only on social cohesion and democracy, but on productivity, on mental and physical health and on climate change. Put bluntly, the concentration of wealth in a few hands “is setting the world on fire”, and “there is so much more that we could do with the money”. The principal reason that so little attention is paid to the potential benefits of the kind of limits to wealth that Robeyns argues for is, she says, precisely because the beneficiaries of this system continue to be “extremely smart in framing that set of policies as non-ideological” – not least through the media organisations they purchase. A sky’s-the-limit philosophy of wealth – for oligarchs and sheikhs and footballers and tech bros and hedge funders and the lawyers and bankers who support them – has come to be thought of as a “normal” consequence of free markets. Despite the fact that “trickle down” economics has long been discredited as an idea, we apparently remain in thrall to the mythology of “wealth creators” and all their zeroes. But of course, as Robeyns argues, those cascading riches are just a political choice like any other; we regulate markets in different ways all the time. “I think,” she says, “if citizens were to understand that better – that we really can choose between many different options of economic system – then we can start a proper debate.”

Got my vote.

Critics of Robeyn’s ideas tend to fall into two camps; she is either naive or a communist (or both). She insists she is neither and counters these arguments by making the case that placing an upper limit on earnings and wealth is not only ethical but also rational. In this argument she can not only cite the likes of Thomas Piketty, author of the bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century, as a fellow traveller, but also philosophers of democracy going back to Plato (the latter argued that no cohesive society could ever be created if the richest citizens earned more than four times the wages of the poorest; last year, Jeff Bezos earned the average wage of one of his Amazon employees every nine seconds).

I think I have this book - Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty - but as usual, economics books are about as much top of my reading list as religious and political ones are.

Any interested in economics/politics and/or philosophy want to chime in?

 

[Revoltingest]

Limiting the free & legal activity of others
won't generate a rising tide for all boats.
Or for any boats.
That professor suffers from ivory tower
isolation, & the politics of envy.

 

[Secret Chief]

Often gnawing at the back of my mind, especially when seeing the taxes avoided by the wealthy, what are your thoughts on this issue?

‘No one should have more than €10m’: the author of Limitarianism on why the super-rich need to level down radically

Prof Ingrid Robeyns has spent a decade studying wealth and ethics and says that limits are essential if we want to eradicate poverty and protect social cohesion and the planet

www.theguardian.com

This is a philosophy that appeals to me more than most, and which mostly has done all my life, given that apart from the iniquities of vast wealth differences, unearned power often comes with such wealth as well as the greater chance to escape justice or wield such power for dubious purposes, and of course the notion that some should be rewarded exponentially more than others - because they own or control a business - is just ludicrous, and why I would like to see more public ownership - certainly of essential services. But no doubt many will disagree.



Got my vote.



I think I have this book - Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty - but as usual, economics books are about as much top of my reading list as religious and political ones are.

Any interested in economics/politics and/or philosophy want to chime in?

I tried to read the article but it contained an image of a ***** so had to stop.

Seems a totally reasonable idea to me. Why does anyone need £11 million? They don't. It's obscene and unwarranted. The global disparity between the 1% and the 99% is truly disgusting.

 

[Revoltingest]

I tried to read the article but it contained an image of a ***** so had to stop.

Seems a totally reasonable idea to me. Why does anyone need £11 million? They don't. It's obscene and unwarranted. The global disparity between the 1% and the 99% is truly disgusting.

Why should anyone want sex more than once a week?
Or use a sexual position that you find "obscene"?
No one needs obscene images & text that are typically
found in Florida's encyclopedias.
The list of things people can do that someone can find
unnecessary & obscene goes on & on.

To have government prohibit behavior that harms
no one under the ultimate threat of violence against
them is pretty nasty authoritarianism.

 

[Secret Chief]

Why should anyone want sex more than once a week?
Or use a sexual position that you find "obscene"?
The list of things people can do that we find
unnecessary goes on & on.

To have government prohibit behavior that harms
no one under the ultimate threat of violence against
them is pretty nasty authoritarianism.

Libertarian fails to agree with socialist. No-one shocked.

 

[Revoltingest]

Libertarian fails to agree with socialist. No-one shocked.

Aye, liberty is either desired or loathed.
Tis a fundamental difference in how we
want humanity to exist.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Why should anyone want sex more than once a week?
Or use a sexual position that you find "obscene"?
No one needs obscene images & text that are typically
found in Florida's encyclopedias.
The list of things people can do that someone can find
unnecessary & obscene goes on & on.

To have government prohibit behavior that harms
no one under the ultimate threat of violence against
them is pretty nasty authoritarianism.

Excessive wealth disparity is harmful to the wellbeing of populations in general, and constitutes a significant threat to social cohesion. There have been plenty of studies on this, you can easily research it.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Aye, liberty is either desired or loathed.
Tis a fundamental difference in how we
want humanity to exist.

And if anyone threatens my liberty, I'll blow their head off from behind my barbed wire enclosed parapet. It's the American way.

 

[Revoltingest]

Excessive wealth disparity is harmful to the wellbeing of populations in general, and constitutes a significant threat to social cohesion. There have been plenty of studies on this, you can easily research it.

I can easily research it?
If it's so easy, perhaps you could do it to support your claim.

 

[Revoltingest]

And if anyone threatens my liberty, I'll blow their head off from behind my barbed wire enclosed parapet. It's the American way.

It's your way.
I know no one like you IRL.

 

[RestlessSoul]

It's your way.
I know no one like you IRL.

You've said before that you keep weapons in your home because you don't trust your fellow Americans, and you don't trust your police or government to protect you. That doesn't sound like liberty to me, but each to their own.

 

[Revoltingest]

You've said before that you keep weapons in your home because you don't trust your fellow Americans, and you don't trust your police or government to protect you. That doesn't sound like liberty to me, but each to their own.

Try to find a post where I said that.
(You'll fail.)
And calm down.
Such histrionics aren't conducive to discussion.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Try to find a post where I said that.
(You'll fail.)
And calm down.
Such histrionics aren't conducive to discussion.

Ah, the old "I see no ships" defence.

You don't keep weapons in your home for the purpose of self defence then? I must have misunderstood.

 

[Secret Chief]

Excessive wealth disparity is harmful to the wellbeing of populations in general, and constitutes a significant threat to social cohesion. There have been plenty of studies on this, you can easily research it.

Yes but what's that got to do with sex positions?

 

[Revoltingest]

Ah, the old "I see no ships" defence.

You made an unsupported claim.
You want me to search for support.
It doesn't work that way.

You don't keep weapons in your home for the purpose of self defence then? I must have misunderstood.

You've mis-characterized my views & practices
in order to create an ad hominem straw man.
Let's not derail this thread with such polemics.

 

[Revoltingest]

Yes but what's that got to do with sex positions?

If you want to ban one thing (wealth) because it's
"obscene", then this would apply to other things
that people view as such (deviant sex).

 

[Secret Chief]

If you want to ban one thing (wealth) because it's
"obscene", then this would apply to other things
that people view as such (deviant sex).

Brilliant.

 

[Revoltingest]

Brilliant.

If you want to limit the wealth of others for
a reason other than finding it "obscene",
then feel free to make an argument that
your policy would benefit society.

 

[wellwisher]

I tried to read the article but it contained an image of a ***** so had to stop.

Seems a totally reasonable idea to me. Why does anyone need £11 million? They don't. It's obscene and unwarranted. The global disparity between the 1% and the 99% is truly disgusting.

The problem, especially in the US, is say we tax a rich person, for income redistribution, the interest on the national debt means this tax money will give a minus (-) rate of return of about -10%, before it does anything. Some of that money has to play down previous debt. If the same money was placed under a mattress, you could do 10% better. Why take money from rich if we then need to give it to the stupid and corrupt, before they distribute it? How can we first cut out the middlemen?

I don't think those who want more, for nothing, care if there is a finders fee. Even if only 10% of the original tax trickles down, this is better than nothing, right? That is not the point of this exercise; even poor man's effortless greed needs to be more efficient. Sticking it to the rich guy so you get more is still greed.

If the rich was to keep their own earned money, they will invest it to make more money. This increases the GNP, which when is then reinvested to creates jobs for more tax revenue. You give it to government, tax revenue spikes, once, but decreases after they eat the seed potato. Government does not invest and return a positive rate of return.

After Trump gave the tax cut to the people in 2017, the Government revenue increased, since the same money goes further in the economy, than in it does due to the waste and interest on debt created by Government. The Democrats blame the tax cut for debt but we do not have a revenue problem, but a spending problem. By the end of Trump term, tax revenues were at an all time high, due to the 12-15% margin of positive interest compared to Government having the money; negative interest on debt.

The best work around is to simplify the tax code and remove all tax deductions, down to a handful, such as mortgages. This makes the rich unable to avoid paying taxes. Congress is the problem, in the sense they OK the complex tax code, and add news things to get donations from the rich, in exchange for deductions. This is actually a type of money laundering, since it lowers tax revenues for a donation. The politicians get a commission/donation. They then pretend they are appalled, when their donors appear not to pay much taxes. It is a two face liar game designed to put the blame on someone else to cover up the tax money laundering.

By getting rid of deductions and loopholes, we get rid of the shadiest stealing in Government, since that option will be too tight to hide. That works better with a huge convoluted tax code. Fewer targeted deductions means more tax revenue and the rich pay much closer to their assigned tax rates. But Government needs to also live within its means; cut spending, or else it will still be a drag on the economy, so that their minus factor, added to the positive revenue gain, will still add to less than it appears.

 

[Quintessence]

I think Jesus more or less had it right:

Jesus’ attitude to money and wealth - The role and nature of Christian discipleship - CCEA - GCSE Religious Studies Revision - CCEA - BBC Bitesize

Revision notes on CCEA GCSE Religious Studies - the role and nature of Christian discipleship according to Matthew.

www.bbc.co.uk