2020 US Election

imagine, if you will, a world where we are all caze

  On 12/14/2019 at 3:11 AM, Salvatorin said:

imagine, if you will, a world where we are all caze

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  On 12/14/2019 at 3:10 AM, Zeffolia said:

haha holy fuck wealth is not productive, workers are, wealth is literally nothing more at this point than 1s and 0s

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wealth is productive when it pays for workers wages, you friccin moron.

https://archive.intereconomics.eu/year/2012/2/the-financial-transaction-tax-boon-or-bane/

You don't have to build anything to get wealthy. One of the problems is that people figured out it's easier to get rich by being a parasite and liquidating society into your bank account while you galavant around the globe doing blow with the heiress to a plutonium empire on a private jet with it's own jacuzzi full of midgets and panda bears  

  On 12/14/2019 at 3:13 AM, caze said:

wealth is productive when it pays for workers wages, you friccin moron.

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Care to trace out the chain of causality a bit deeper than that, maybe spend more than ten seconds on your reply?  What work is money doing?

  On 12/14/2019 at 5:31 AM, Candiru said:

You don't have to build anything to get wealthy.

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I heard someone say that the ideal corporate tax scheme would be based on what is produced.  Companies that actually manufacture tangible goods and services would be taxed much less than those that make money just by moving money around or collecting interest etc.

Nice in principle but too difficult to successfully implement without loopholes.  Not to mention that it could never possible be implemented considering how much power the financial lobby holds.

financial transaction tax, wealth tax, carbon tax, universal basic services (free at the point of service), the gradual de-moneyization and de-commodification of our social infrastructure, our public commons, our society's physical constituencies, worker control of the means of production and of their own workplace, democratically based on a true meritocracy, gift economy where each gives as much as they can and gets in return what they need, and luxuries are a part of that once we reach sufficient post-scarcity but more importantly a decreasing of appetite for "things" which were never needed for tens of thousands of years, for billions of years.  It's time to crawl out of our shell of capitalism, this system we lug around with us everywhere like a snail shell.

  On 12/15/2019 at 1:27 PM, randomsummer said:

I heard someone say that the ideal corporate tax scheme would be based on what is produced.  Companies that actually manufacture tangible goods and services would be taxed much less than those that make money just by moving money around or collecting interest etc.

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would be great. won't happen, at least not in America. i'd say outlaw making over like 10% (spitballing) profit on any money movement or interest at all, but that would absolutely wreck the American economy of course and therefore it's a pipe dream.

  On 12/15/2019 at 1:37 PM, darreichungsform said:

Did I mention that I like a financial transaction tax?

It's what the US needs for obvious reasons.

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yup. 

  On 12/15/2019 at 2:48 PM, auxien said:

yup. 

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Oh yeah?

  On 12/15/2019 at 3:22 PM, darreichungsform said:

Oh yeah?

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mmhmm

  On 12/13/2019 at 6:08 AM, Candiru said:

Bernie will lose like Corbyn if he’s the nominee.

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no!!!

  On 12/14/2019 at 2:59 AM, caze said:

Edit: timed out on editing, yo @Joyrex increase the amount of time we have to edit a post.

"(in terms of transmission, substations, infrastructure)" is supposed to be  "(in terms of transmission, substations, national interconnects)"

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Yo, @caze - join your fellow WATMMers and support the site via a subscription

  On 12/14/2019 at 3:11 AM, Salvatorin said:

imagine, if you will, a world where we are all caze

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this would be a good sig.

 u caze 

oh there's another debate tonight apparently

edit: shit's getting pretty fired up tho

  On 12/20/2019 at 2:01 AM, auxien said:

oh there's another debate tonight apparently

 

edit: shit's getting pretty fired up tho

 

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Whoever's working the board has a pretty light hand on the fader whenever there's applause for Bernie.  You can literally hear them just bringing up one of the room mics quickly and then pulling it back down after a second or two.

And for some reason they're pushing it way up for Klobuchar, who hasn't got a hint of a chance. 

Not talking about the amount of applause, it's the volume of the applause, how long it's up, ad how many of the room mics are even brought up at all.  It's really obvious, even for political theater like this.

  On 12/20/2019 at 3:25 AM, TubularCorporation said:

Whoever's working the board has a pretty light hand on the fader whenever there's applause for Bernie.  You can literally hear them just bringing up one of the room mics quickly and then pulling it back down after a second or two.

 

And for some reason they're pushing it way up for Klobuchar, who hasn't got a hint of a chance. 

 

Not talking about the amount of applause, it's the volume of the applause, how long it's up, ad how many of the room mics are even brought up at all.  It's really obvious, even for political theater like this.

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It's critical for them, each millimeter of soundboard manipulation they engage in pushes the election in the corporate shill direction they want at a percentage of 0.00345129% which is worth approximately $546,564,254,765,234 in present and future corporate tax deductions and worker surplus value extraction potentials, they can't fuck this shit up and leave the soundboard alone it might help the filthy poor people

Also I haven't been very engaged for the last month or so, I didn't know that Warren pivoted from more healthcare to more selfies.

someone needs to wake joe up and tell him it's time to go on the offense

  On 12/14/2019 at 6:13 AM, Zeffolia said:

Care to trace out the chain of causality a bit deeper than that, maybe spend more than ten seconds on your reply?  What work is money doing?

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workers do the work, but workers are paid with money, which they use to live. if that money isn't invested then they don't have jobs. wealth generates more wealth via growth, which creates jobs. surplus wealth is invested back into the economy, if we tax that wealth out of existence then there will be less economic growth and more poverty and a lower standard of living for everyone.

  On 1/3/2020 at 7:54 PM, caze said:

workers do the work, but workers are paid with money, which they use to live. if that money isn't invested then they don't have jobs. wealth generates more wealth via growth, which creates jobs. surplus wealth is invested back into the economy, if we tax that wealth out of existence then there will be less economic growth and more poverty and a lower standard of living for everyone.

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this runs into a wall though as the jobs disappear and get taken over by automation.. also, most people aren't saying to tax wealth out of existence just to tax it fairly. the tax break given recently is a perfect example of how the idea you outline breaks down. the give back of cash to corporations did nothing for everyone else. they used it to buy back stock which only helps other investors. this trickle down economics is bullshit.  ATT&T is laying off people even after getting their big tax break and the last thing the people getting laid off get to do is train their foreign replacements. 

so, there's a lot of complexity and no simple model is going to account for everything.. but.. upping the top tax rate isn't going to tax wealth out of existence. that's an absurd idea. 

  On 1/3/2020 at 8:06 PM, ignatius said:

this runs into a wall though as the jobs disappear and get taken over by automation

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it's highly speculative that automation will make jobs disappear, technological progress has always led to more jobs being created, not less. if there is an impact it would likely be a short term one, and solving such a problem doesn't require a wealth tax (e.g. Yang's UBI funded largely by VAT and redirecting other social services money).

  On 1/3/2020 at 8:06 PM, ignatius said:

also, most people aren't saying to tax wealth out of existence just to tax it fairly.

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even a modest wealth tax (e.g. 2-3%) would have a damaging effect on the functioning of the economy. it's bad for very practical reasons, there are much more sensible ways of increasing tax revenue.

  On 1/3/2020 at 8:06 PM, ignatius said:

the tax break given recently is a perfect example of how the idea you outline breaks down. the give back of cash to corporations did nothing for everyone else. they used it to buy back stock which only helps other investors. this trickle down economics is bullshit.  ATT&T is laying off people even after getting their big tax break and the last thing the people getting laid off get to do is train their foreign replacements. 

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corporation tax cuts largely benefit small to medium businesses, which employ the vast majority of Americans (and it's the same in all free market countries), they did not use savings to buy back stock (as they're not on the stock market), they use it to pay wages and to grow their business. to prevent larger companies like AT&T from taking advantage of these things you could just make corporation tax progressive (and remove loopholes that allow large corporations to get around paying most of it). none of this has anything to do with what I was talking about re a wealth tax though. and none of this has anything to do with 'trickle down economics' either (which isn't really a thing), we're just talking about the basic functioning of the economy.

  On 1/3/2020 at 8:06 PM, ignatius said:

upping the top tax rate isn't going to tax wealth out of existence. that's an absurd idea. 

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I mean there are people in this very thread talking about taxing all wealth out of existence. you are correct, it is an absurd idea. but even Warren/Bernie's more modest proposals are dumb.

financial transaction tax:
- reduce high-frequency trading
- make investments into real economy more worthwhile and therefore create more jobs
- finance social politics

  On 1/3/2020 at 9:07 PM, darreichungsform said:

financial transaction tax:
- reduce high-frequency trading
- make investments into real economy more worthwhile and therefore create more jobs
- finance social politics

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sounds great! won’t ever happen!