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fair share?
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this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Lefty Memes
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
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No you can't tax wealth, it does not make any fucking sense. If I own a peice of land that, for some wild reason, is valued 1 billion, why the fuck would I pay taxes on 1 billion ??? especially if I just work at the starbuck for minimum wage. Like, it's only gonna make the wealthy even wealthier. Only rich people are gonna be able to pay taxes on nice things.
What do make sense is to pay taxes when I'm gonna sell that land 1 billion. That is sound. You pay tax on income, not on wealth. Maybe pay taxes on transactions.
If you wanna tax the rich, start by reforming how capital gains are taxed.
Funny that you should pick land, considering that property tax exists and is based on a valuation of your land. There's a very simple solution if you can't afford the tax on your wealth, which is to sell that wealth. If you can't afford the tax then you can't afford the wealth.
Then take a company that is highly valued ? You understand the point and won't engage with it. That is funny.
To expand on that, you should also pay tax on unrealized gains used as collateral for a loan.
And as soon as that happens, those companies will start generating massive profits and paying their pittance (still in the billions btw) to other countries. It will also destroy the American job market and leave millions of people destitute.
As much as it sucks, these billion (now trillion) dollar companies produce the lion’s share of America’s wealth. If they take their profits elsewhere, you can say ‘goodbye’ to the world order that the US is almost solely propping up.
I'm fairly sure in some way that's what most of this sub should want explicitly, but while you imagine that necessarily as a slide backwards, I'm fairly convinced if the US ever gets to a wealth Tax their world order is already collapsing, and we are collectively transitioning to a better one. A world order based on actual global democratic decisions, instead of US Neo-imperialist domination perhaps.
You assume that most of these companies wouldn't just move to a single destination that wouldn't do the same shit that America did, which is to cater to rich people so that they can generate massive wealth for themselves and the governments of that nation. Unless the entire population of the world decides on a system that's not like this one, it won't happen; period. It'll just shift elsewhere.
And no matter how bad America is, I can imagine worse alternatives (hint: China)
...are you fucking serious right now? Do you really think that offshoring your manufacturing means 'moving out of America', or that it's done to 'avoid paying taxes'? Do you not understand that the vast majority of a company's value isn't created in the sweatshops where laborers are paid nickels and dimes, but in the boardrooms of megacorps where marketing departments put thousand-dollar labels on smartphones that cost a hundred dollars to make?
Wow, rock solid argument. 'Yeah, idc if the US economy loses literal trillions if companies like MS and Apple move out! Who cares right?!'
Seriously, thanks for reminding me that, while things are already pretty fucking bleak, we're still not living in the worst-case scenario.
Better that than someone with no substantial argument to make. Maybe take some time to actually learn about how our economy functions? From books I mean, not YouTube videos
Complaining about capitalism isn't an argument.
How much of it? The world's largest and most famous billionaires don't even make up a rounding error in the world's economy (hell, most countries blow Musk's entire fortune annually on the dumbest conceivable shit), nor is their money 'removed' from it. Hell, the richest people in the world have the vast majority of their wealth tied up in their own company's stocks, which by definition is money that's playing an active role in the economy.
Like seriously dude, there's good reasons to hate billionaires and the current state of the global economy, but at least come up with valid arguments and criticisms that can convince people; otherwise, you're just blowing hot air that only serves to paint legitimate critics as crazy people.
Yes how about trying to imagine better alternatives instead of assuming everything impossible then.
If the US led world order collapses that might be bad temporarily for US residents and it would be a great win for almost everyone else, almost by necessity. Again many winners few losers, much like the wealth tax. And not everyone needs to actually take up a better system, this is completely true in our current system already.
That's such a narrow take. It won't just be 'bad temporarily for US citizens' if the only country that's a counter to China ceases to be a pre-eminent world player.
You know the world has other places than China and the US right. And that the us can still be a very powerful country without being the current hegemon. Certainly a welath tax wouldn't achieve such impressive collapse in less than a few decades. The only real problem with a complete downfall of us hegemony might actually be the Taiwan situation.
But literally all of africa and south America would be in a much better situation if the US wouldn't continue to have the power to protect some of its more historic foreign assets large parts of SEA and the middle east would also have much to celebrate.
You seem strangely scared of china while having little empathy towards anyone that might be suffering under US aligned rule. My take isn't narrow but your view of the world might be. If you are at least from the US I might understand somewhat, if not then yikes.
Oh shit, now I get it. Sorry, didn't know you were a tankie.
This system is propped up by UK and led US world order, so the US prevents other countries from feeling the benefit of their resources and labour, it's a really common complaint.
It also prevents proper tracing of the Stagering 1.8 trillion dollars in annual revenue of organised crime, and guess what most of the welath doesn't end up back in south America or SEA ...
All the nation states are garbage the US is currently the worst just simply because it is the most powerful and protects it's interests, naturally the second most powerful one seems threatening, but it's mostly a paper tiger, and yes it's still worse than anything but the us because it's the second most powerful and so on and so on...
I don't particularly care which modern empire is still raping Africa(...), I'm mostly just saying throw the greatest rapist out first and then continue until they are all gone.
Telling the world opposition against US ideals is a universally bad take is like telling Ukrainians that defending their country is a bad take.
China US and Russia can all be imperialistic assholes in different ways and relying on one for protection against another isn't actually a particularly good deal for any third party.
But the simple fact that I don't like US superiority gets you to label me tankie, it's simply a little bit of a US centric take.
So what's your solution to all this? Because if the US is down, you know China will emerge as the next hegemon and they're magnitudes worse.
I just fundamentally don't believe there needs to be a Hegemon and also don't agree that china will necessarily be able/willing to actually assume that role. There is at best circumstantial evidence for that scenario. Especially because the US doesn't cease to exist and is likely able to oppose china when it matters. Why is there no future where the power distribution is more diffuse, where there are other significant players, where decision making in the context of the world is actually made through good dialogue, or god forbid super national democratic institutions.
Where is the evidence for china becoming a Hegemon being the only possible conclusion of the US not being one. I fundamentally don't see it except the few times a year where i stumble over a piece written by the US military industrial complex.
Please don't tell me you actually believe any of that. How does a company like Apple, which essentially vacuums up consumer money around the globe, converts it into American profit, and then directly injects it into the American economy through high-value employment in software/marketing/sales etc to pump up the values of American stock exchanges through its stock valuation (stocks that, btw, make up the bulk of 401k's of American citizens) not generate wealth for the US? Do you not know how this whole chain works?
Also, these companies do pay billions in taxes annually. Sure, they use loopholes to not pay their fair share, but they do pay taxes that they otherwise wouldn't need to pay if they weren't operating within America.
Yeah, either lick boots or keep hoping for the downfall of America! No middle ground here, no sir!