2020 US Election

[caze]

1 minute ago, Stickfigger said:

Socialism is just wealth generating destroying system for people who suck at capitalism 

FTFY

[dingformung]

7 minutes ago, auxien said:

sounds great! won’t ever happen!

almost happened already

[goDel]

1 hour ago, 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.

sounds like the stereotypical argument for trickle down economy. please tell me you're not a believer of the trickle down fantasy.

[ignatius]

trickle down is bullshit. it has never worked. 

also, saying a 2-3% tax on wealth would have bad effects on the economy is nuts. even just putting the tax bracket back to what it was in 70s would straighten out some shit. that plus some regulations on the financial industry would smooth out the boom/bust cycles in the economy which typically lead to bailouts paid for by average people. 

economic growth is not the only consideration. 

[auxien]

32 minutes ago, darreichungsform said:

almost happened already

in America? when?

[dingformung]

2 minutes ago, auxien said:

in America? when?

No, in Europe during the financial crisis. But as people like Sanders are oriented towards European social democracy and want to contain the financial economy it isn't irrelevant to mention here. And unless you think that it's impossible that more left leaning democrats could become president it isn't extremely unlikely that such a model would gain acceptance and eventually comes out on top.

You are right that it seems rather unlikely right now but it's definitely not impossible. Remember that a lot of what seemed utopian a couple of decades ago is now reality

[caze]

21 minutes ago, goDel said:

sounds like the stereotypical argument for trickle down economy. please tell me you're not a believer of the trickle down fantasy.

you don't seem to know what "trickle down" actually is. 

6 minutes ago, ignatius said:

trickle down is bullshit. it has never worked. 

I'm guessing you don't either.

It is the idea that reducing the taxes on the wealthy will increase their spending which will trickle down into the general economy. It's related to a similar, but different idea, called supply side economics (something which was actually implemented by Reagan), which is that lowering taxes across the board will increase economic activity. These are two different things, and there is evidence to back up the latter, though it was the lower taxes on low and medium income earners which had the greatest impact, lowering taxes on the wealthy had minimal effect. "Trickle down" is similar to "neoliberalism" when employed by critics of capitalism, not an actual thing that really exists, but more of a dishonest/ignorant rhetorical maneuver.

I haven't been talking about lowering taxes on the wealthy at all, just not taxing their economically productive wealth (have at it with the non productive assets, like land, though), and in fact I'm fine with increasing their taxes, just do it in ways which don't cause more problems than they attempt to fix.

26 minutes ago, ignatius said:

also, saying a 2-3% tax on wealth would have bad effects on the economy is nuts.

it's not nuts, I've explained why it's a bad idea and you've not bothered to engage with those arguments.

Quote

even just putting the tax bracket back to what it was in 70s would straighten out some shit. that plus some regulations on the financial industry would smooth out the boom/bust cycles in the economy which typically lead to bailouts paid for by average people. 

this has noting to do with a wealth tax obviously, it's a different discussion. increased financial regulations aren't a good idea either though, the problem isn't avoiding economic cycles, it's about being robust in the face of failure - this involves not bailing out companies when they fail. over-regulation just leads to corruption and stagnation, and the US actually has more financial regulations than most capitalist countries, it's pretty low down on many metrics for judging economic liberty (compared to most European countries). the US could do with significant reform of it's regulations, this would mean adding newer simpler ones, but also getting rid of most of the existing ones too.

[dingformung]

13 minutes ago, caze said:

it [is] the lower taxes on low and medium income earners which has the greatest impact, lowering taxes on the wealthy has minimal effects

Sounds good to me. Relieve the middle class and lower class instead of the upper class.

Edited January 3, 2020 by darreichungsform

[Nebraska]

nice TLDR summation of what's happening betwix .us and .ir

 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2020 by Nebraska

[dingformung]

1 minute ago, Nebraska said:

 

It's important to type that out in pink letters, yeah. But are you a news reporter or some shit? You always just post things other people posted already. It basically reflects how a lot of our news outlets work: They copy & past shit without adding any new insight. But in comparison to you they don't even mention their source.

[may be rude]

warren sounding presidential in her new years boston speech

 

[auxien]

1 hour ago, auxien said:

in America? when?

 

1 hour ago, darreichungsform said:

No, in Europe

not talking about Europe, talking about America my dude. everything is about America. nothing else matters. get with the program.    

[dingformung]

4 minutes ago, auxien said:

 

not talking about Europe, talking about America my dude. everything is about America. nothing else matters. get with the program.    

I'm way too drunk not to answer you. All I want to say is hell yeah 

[ignatius]

2 hours ago, caze said:

you don't seem to know what "trickle down" actually is. 

I'm guessing you don't either.

It is the idea that reducing the taxes on the wealthy will increase their spending which will trickle down into the general economy. It's related to a similar, but different idea, called supply side economics (something which was actually implemented by Reagan), which is that lowering taxes across the board will increase economic activity. These are two different things, and there is evidence to back up the latter, though it was the lower taxes on low and medium income earners which had the greatest impact, lowering taxes on the wealthy had minimal effect. "Trickle down" is similar to "neoliberalism" when employed by critics of capitalism, not an actual thing that really exists, but more of a dishonest/ignorant rhetorical maneuver.

I haven't been talking about lowering taxes on the wealthy at all, just not taxing their economically productive wealth (have at it with the non productive assets, like land, though), and in fact I'm fine with increasing their taxes, just do it in ways which don't cause more problems than they attempt to fix.

it's not nuts, I've explained why it's a bad idea and you've not bothered to engage with those arguments.

this has noting to do with a wealth tax obviously, it's a different discussion. increased financial regulations aren't a good idea either though, the problem isn't avoiding economic cycles, it's about being robust in the face of failure - this involves not bailing out companies when they fail. over-regulation just leads to corruption and stagnation, and the US actually has more financial regulations than most capitalist countries, it's pretty low down on many metrics for judging economic liberty (compared to most European countries). the US could do with significant reform of it's regulations, this would mean adding newer simpler ones, but also getting rid of most of the existing ones too.

yep. i'm nearly 50 and never had a job. i survive by trickle down economics. the super wealthy making it rain.

anyway, the only point i want to make is things have swung pretty far.. tilted so much towards extreme income inequality that balancing the scales will take a "big" change... and people will go nuts on the right even though the proposal (if it gets that far) will only end up being a watered down version of a wealth tax and won't even return the previous tax brackets of just a decade or more ago.  income inequality will get worse. automation will disrupt things for a while or longer blah blah.. 

re: regulations.. yeah.. not enforced often, they don't have teeth, they're often easily circumvented... and i agree... a bunch of them are probably dumb. previous rules on banks seemed to help. 

i agree about being robust in the face of failure. when one bank can be tied to all through different financial sectors it becomes complicated to let it fail. so, regulations that address those issues would be good.. breaking up the banks into their respective sectors would make for a more robust economy.

as for trickle down.. i think most praise of it at this point is just spin. as is with a lot of data indicators can be picked out to suit any argument. the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. 

[zlemflolia]

6 hours ago, 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.

The means of production generates an a more powerful means of production over time through using that means of production to produce more commodities which are used to build other aspects of the means of production.  In other words, factories build stuff that helps workers live their lives or materials to build other factories, and the entire means of production increases exponentially as the capabilities of industry increase

None of this has anything to do with "wealth" i.e. money, especially virtual money which exists only as bytes in some bank hard drives.  The current method we use to control the means of production is capitalism, and capital gives people power to direct the means of production towards activities which may or may not enhance the means of production's ability to both serve people and enhance itself.  But that capital does not by itself do anything, it's just the sociological abstraction we use to control the means of production, based on how rich you are.

Thus we can still function completely without money if we were to awaken the class consciousness of workers and hold back the bourgeoisie's interference with the activities of industry.  That is, awaken the class consciousness of workers that they do not have to be controlled by the capital of the bourgeoisie, yet they still have to work and what they are doing is required, but they can start doing it differently, at their own freedom, by freeing themselves from the chains imposed by the current mode of production: capitalism

[zlemflolia]

How can anyone find themselves on an abstract hungarian recycled computer chip music forum and yet spout pro-capitalist propaganda

[Hugh Mughnus]

Never go full potato.

[Salvatorin]

5 minutes ago, Zeffolia said:

How can anyone find themselves on an abstract hungarian recycled computer chip music forum and yet spout pro-capitalist propaganda

On 12/13/2019 at 6:11 PM, Salvatorin said:

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

 

[zlemflolia]

6 hours ago, caze said:

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).

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.

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.

  

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.

It's not speculation.  It's no surprise automation hasn't made tons of jobs disappear yet, it's hard to do, but we should be doing it as much as we can.  The ultimate contradiction of capitalism is that automation, or in other words the removal of the requirement of work, is seen as a problem.  It's a blessing, and our goal.  Yet under capitalism it's a bad thing for the mass of workers.  Thus capitalism is paradoxical and must end.

A modest wealth tax would have damaging effects on the economy because of the behavior of the capitalists being taxed, not because of the wealth tax itself.  Literally all of this is because of the behavior of capitalists acting in their own interests

Wealth isn't real and fuck corporations, dismantle all of them and put them into the hands of the workers.  We don't need fucking bosses, they are just mouthpieces for capitalists who act against our interests.  Half the industries in the world are detrimental to humanity and the Earth anyway

[zlemflolia]

this is now an anti-fascism thread

 

[ignatius]

the big obvious automation job suck will be vehicles. long haul trucking is already being tried w/self driving and companies doing it are making money doing on ramp to off ramp hauling. it's not that far off where majority of trucking will be driverless vehicles. the most popular job in something like 45 states is truck driver. 

anything that requires comparing lot's of data.. from radiologists to accounting and all kinds of shit is going to be hammered by automaiton once the deep learning algorithms get trained. that AI doc on frontline that i posted and mentioned has some good examples of where the hits will come first. real disruption then change and perhaps some new jobs monitoring systems and doing data collection/input but overall a net loss and jobs that don't come back. 

so, if we get a candidate and congress who can level the field a bit and get back some tax dollars and present a massive green new deal type plan then we'll have some job growth while all this other shit takes shape.

but whatevers... we're all fucking spectators to history until we start throwing molotov cocktails or whatever. even then it's just up our own ass floating through space making as much sense as this shitpost i'm typing right now. 

china is headlong into technological fascism 

 

 

[goDel]

Caze, thanks for summarizing the wiki page. You might want to reread your post before you tell others they dont seem to understand the concept of trickle down economics. If you initially meant something else, I'd argue your post was poorly worded. Because even with you extra explanation it still reads like a trickle down fantasy.

couple of short remarks:

- you ignore the impact of the investments of government on the economy. Mariana Mazzucato wrote some great books about this. If you're a fan of wiki:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State

- your argument on overregulation is one dimensional in the sense that it presumes that it is about more regulation and more rules. That's mostly a strawman. When it comes to regulations, most of the political discussions are about better regulation. Or better rules if you will. This could mean both more and less rules.  Few politicians, no matter their color, argue for more rules for the sake of having more rules. Or rather, any politician would argue for less rules, and or simpler rules if that was an easily obtainable option.

When it comes to the US, but to an extent also to the EU as a whole, this discussion is poorly covered in public. Making it look like the "more regulations" thing you're talking about. This is not just to blame on the media, btw. As the (opposing) politicians, who directly feed the media with stories, use this to skew the public discussions. It's skewed because just talking about more regulations is easy. As you can skip the explanation part and directly send a message to the reptilian brain of the general population. Creating fear about more rules and over regulation. Without any explanation, this immediately increases opposition to any regulation. No matter the actual story behind it.

In short: it's of little use to talk about regulations in these simplified terms. It only resembles this reptilian brain level discussion and basically gets you nowhere other than to make some trivial point that too much or too little regulation is bad. We all knew that already. Nothing new. 

8 hours ago, caze said:

you don't seem to know what "trickle down" actually is. 

I'm guessing you don't either.

It is the idea that reducing the taxes on the wealthy will increase their spending which will trickle down into the general economy. It's related to a similar, but different idea, called supply side economics (something which was actually implemented by Reagan), which is that lowering taxes across the board will increase economic activity. These are two different things, and there is evidence to back up the latter, though it was the lower taxes on low and medium income earners which had the greatest impact, lowering taxes on the wealthy had minimal effect. "Trickle down" is similar to "neoliberalism" when employed by critics of capitalism, not an actual thing that really exists, but more of a dishonest/ignorant rhetorical maneuver.

I haven't been talking about lowering taxes on the wealthy at all, just not taxing their economically productive wealth (have at it with the non productive assets, like land, though), and in fact I'm fine with increasing their taxes, just do it in ways which don't cause more problems than they attempt to fix.

it's not nuts, I've explained why it's a bad idea and you've not bothered to engage with those arguments.

this has noting to do with a wealth tax obviously, it's a different discussion. increased financial regulations aren't a good idea either though, the problem isn't avoiding economic cycles, it's about being robust in the face of failure - this involves not bailing out companies when they fail. over-regulation just leads to corruption and stagnation, and the US actually has more financial regulations than most capitalist countries, it's pretty low down on many metrics for judging economic liberty (compared to most European countries). the US could do with significant reform of it's regulations, this would mean adding newer simpler ones, but also getting rid of most of the existing ones too.

 

[dingformung]

12 hours ago, caze said:

it's highly speculative that automation will make jobs disappear, technological progress has always led to more jobs being created, not less.

The difference to previous industrial revolutions is that no new markets are opened, or at least only to a small extent, but mainly that existing markets are made more efficient. Dull, algorithmic work is automated where it is financially worthwhile. This mainly affects middle class jobs. Asparagus cutters will continue to exist for a long time because they only receive starvation wages and it would be too expensive to replace them with machines.
So there will be mainly social jobs and hard underpaid physical work. There will also be a few big data analysts, extremely good programmers (the mediocre ones can be replaced by AIs that can program) and virtual reality designers, but very few.

The answer to the arising problems and mass unemployment is a universal basic income. It doesn't matter if you like this idea.
 

[zlemflolia]

Daily reminder that Joe Biden is mentally sick

 

20 hours ago, darreichungsform said:

The difference to previous industrial revolutions is that no new markets are opened, or at least only to a small extent, but mainly that existing markets are made more efficient. Dull, algorithmic work is automated where it is financially worthwhile. This mainly affects middle class jobs. Asparagus cutters will continue to exist for a long time because they only receive starvation wages and it would be too expensive to replace them with machines.
So there will be mainly social jobs and hard underpaid physical work. There will also be a few big data analysts, extremely good programmers (the mediocre ones can be replaced by AIs that can program) and virtual reality designers, but very few.

The answer to the arising problems and mass unemployment is a universal basic income. It doesn't matter if you like this idea.
 

I don't know, capitalists will still exploit the proletarian laborer even if they get UBI.  I think instead of UBI we need universal basic services

[dingformung]

^We need both and I was not describing some sort of dream scenario which I think would be best. I think a UBI inevitably must come to tackle mass unemployment. As usual politics will react too slowly and we will experience some economic and societal crisis before such measures will be taken.