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| ▲ | Yeul 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Curiously in the Netherlands poverty has gone down. But that's because the government has a pretty solid Robin Hood system going on: take from the rich give to the poor. The amount of wealth that is redistributed is frankly insane. | | |
| ▲ | okwhateverdude 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm generally in favor. My taxes provide an amazing experience here. I have never seen the abject poverty that I've seen in other places (such as the US) here in NL. Great infrastructure, labor laws, culture and arts, etc. I worry less about break-ins and theft. All-in-all, the least worst place to live, by far. | | |
| ▲ | quantified 3 days ago | parent [-] | | If we in the USA got our money's worth from taxes, we feel rich. But we truly don't. | | |
| ▲ | magentaworker 3 days ago | parent [-] | | You got it, that huge army is not free, that militarized police is not free, the CIA is not free, FBI, NSA, and all that huge security related organizations that nobody else in the world has except maybe Israel and not at the same scale. | | |
| ▲ | quantified 3 days ago | parent [-] | | That too. We need our security organizations, there are lots of unpatriotic profiteers in there, we could get a lot more value for our moeny on those. (Littoral battleships? F-35s? Let's just get actual spent-uranium-tipped unicorns.) The way we do infrastructure and social services leaves a lot of room for improvement. I'd pay 50% tax gladly if I got half my income in value back. | | |
| ▲ | SauciestGNU 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Hell looking at the state of international conflict today I can't even be that upset about defense spending on principle, it's just that what we spend on is stupid and immoral. Instead of domestic oppression and foreign genocide we could be helping Europe and Taiwan fend off threats from rival great powers. |
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| ▲ | exceptione 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The amount of wealth that is redistributed is frankly insane.
I would change that to: the amount of income tax quickly reaches idiotic heights.
Capital taxes are generally low, and income taxes are for the 95% losers.There is no plan to make the pie larger. The problem is the same as everywhere: a public brainwashed by neo-liberal nonsense voting against their own interests. Private gains and public losses. |
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| ▲ | nosianu 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > The error people make all the time is assuming these groups are static and always have the same people in them over time. Here is something I posted only a few days ago. It is Germany, but that point is certainly not much different from Anglo-Saxon countries. It is a podcast, and in German too, but it is high quality and on one of the best stations in Germany (Deutschlandfunk's culture channel -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandfunk) https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/eliten-seit-dem-kaiserr... > Despite political upheavals over the past 150 years, Germany's elites have remained the same. Sociologist Michael Hartmann criticizes the fact that only four percent of the population shapes the country. He calls for a quota of working-class children for executive boards. Yes individuals can rise and fall. For example, near the big turning points in German history the people in politics were renewed, after WWII people from the working class made it to the top posts. However, with increasing stability, over the last two decades even that group has become more and more of an insider club, and people from "lower classes" have a very low chance of rising to the tops. In the economy and when it comes to real wealth it is even worse. Connections and pre-existing wealth are a good predictor of where you will end up. You may have better luck with high-paying jobs, but they rarely lead to the top of the wealth pyramid and influence. | | |
| ▲ | throw0101d 3 days ago | parent [-] | | > Yes individuals can rise and fall. One of the critiques of meritocracy: > […] It’s wild that everyone is using “merit” and “meritocracy” as though it somehow avoids elitism, when in reality it’s a sneaky way to cement biases without the appearance of bias. Of course people should be judged on their skills and not their wealth. But, how’d they acquire those skills, and why would anyone assume the money didn’t help? Of course it’s a self-reinforcing system. […] * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44571491 From the Wikipedia § Criticisms page: > In his 2019 book The Meritocracy Trap, Daniel Markovits poses that meritocracy is responsible for the exacerbation of social stratification, to the detriment of much of the general population. He introduces the idea of "snowball inequality", a perpetually widening gap between elite workers and members of the middle class. While the elite obtain exclusive positions thanks to their wealth of demonstrated merit, they occupy jobs and oust middle class workers from the core of economic events. The elites use their high earnings to secure the best education for their own children, so that they may enter the world of work with a competitive advantage over those who did not have the same opportunities. Thus, the cycle continues with each generation. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Books > In his book The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?, the American political philosopher Michael Sandel argues that the meritocratic ideal has become a moral and political problem for contemporary Western societies. He contends that the meritocratic belief that personal success is solely based on individual merit and effort has led to a neglection of the common good, the erosion of solidarity, and the rise of inequality. Sandel's criticism concerns the widespread notion that those who achieve success deserve it because of their intelligence, talent and effort. Instead, he argues that this belief is flawed since it ignores the role of luck and external circumstances, such as social and external factors, which are beyond an individual's control.[91] * Ibid | | |
| ▲ | lotsofpulp 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I do not see how this is criticism. Everything in life involves hefty doses of luck. The alternative (i.e. without merit) seems obviously worse as it would be completely luck, no? The complaint seems to want to lower the ceiling rather than raise the floor. | | |
| ▲ | corimaith 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Not necessarily, patronage systems tend to result in more stable, albeit conservative turnover of leaders. | |
| ▲ | throw0101d 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Everything in life involves hefty doses of luck. The alternative (i.e. without merit) seems obviously worse as it would be completely luck, no? There is some level of luck / chance, but one can tilt the odds: more tutoring that allows for more practice to get better in the skill(s) that are 'merited', getting into schools with good alumni networks so one can 'luckily' bump into the right people with the resources you need. Initially good luck can breed good luck in the second iteration/generation. The meta-criticism (if you will) is that the initial batch of merited people can lock-in things for their (grand-)kids in future batches. There needs to be a way allow opportunities for future batches if their (grand-)parents from earlier batches were not 'merited' initially. Otherwise you basically get the ball rolling on an aristocracy. |
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| ▲ | viraptor 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The error people make all the time is assuming these groups are static and always have the same people in them over time. I believe people actually involved in being active against top percentiles understand the difference between ongoing millions of annual income and one off inheritance. Have you got a some reason to think otherwise? I mean it was "occupy wall street", not "occupy people visiting retirement homes". | | |
| ▲ | refurb 3 days ago | parent [-] | | That’s my point - the tax data says that people making millions each year are incredibly rare. Most people earning that kind of income get it in a once in a lifetime. | | |
| ▲ | viraptor 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Ok. And the criticism is not about them. | | |
| ▲ | refurb 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The criticism applies just as much to the bottom 0.1%. It’s not a static group. |
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| ▲ | redwood 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Income sure but wealth is what matters and the wealthiest make their money from capital gains, not income | |
| ▲ | mna_ 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Someone who inherits a couple million from a dead relative is not in the same league as Bezos who is rich enough to buy entire countries. Bezos is not coming down to the median any time soon. There are different leagues to this game. | |
| ▲ | rester324 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Sorry but I don't understand your comment. Are you sure you are responding to the right message? The OP specifically called out trickle-down economics. Which is a myth, a false belief that somehow not taxing rich companies and not redistributing a country's wealth through taxes and other means, companies will do the right thing eventually, and they will raise the wages instead by their own incentives. Which they never do, and only raise wages as a very last resort. They do instead coordinated wage suppression, lobbying governments to take away labor rights from the labor force, outsource their operations, set up new offshore offices to escape paying taxes, etc So what does your comment to do with that? I think your message doesn't address any of that | | |
| ▲ | refurb 3 days ago | parent [-] | | That’s not what “trickle down economics” is. It’s basically the Laffer curve which argues that tax receipts can actually go down with higher taxes rates as tax’s can discourage growth if high enough. Thus if you lower taxes, economics growth increases (overall tax receipts go up, not down). | | |
| ▲ | rester324 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't understand. Can you elaborate? The Laffer curve simply shows the relationship between taxation and government revenue. It has nothing to do with the policies and the economic theories. In fact, there are two points on both sides of the Laffer curve's maxima where tax revenues are the same in theory. That's just a simple didactical tool, nothing more. Saying that the Laffer curve is the trickle down economics is as bad as saying that visualizations of a binary tree are what we call algorithms and data structures. | | |
| ▲ | refurb 3 days ago | parent [-] | | The Laffer curve is the basis for what was called "trickle down economics". The Reagan administration argued the US was the right side of the curve, and that lowering taxes would result in economic growth ("a rising tide raises all boats"). Economic growth benefits every worker. | | |
| ▲ | rester324 3 days ago | parent [-] | | OK. Thank you for the explanation. But then again, I think you are confusig things. So I am not convinced at all. But at least now I understand where you are coming from. |
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| ▲ | mahogany 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > It’s basically the Laffer curve which argues that tax receipts can actually go down with higher taxes rates as tax’s can discourage growth if high enough. What you are describing is if we are on the right side of the curve. But is there any evidence that this is true? When I read Sowell, someone who I imagine would be a champion for this cause, he cites the 1920s as his evidence that trickle-down works which doesn’t inspire confidence. If there is no modern evidence, why are we even entertaining this theory today? | |
| ▲ | 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | amanaplanacanal 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I suspect when people think of evil rich people, they are thinking if wealth, not annual income. | |
| ▲ | quantified 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why pick the top and bottom 0.1%? The top 3% and the bottom 40 are probably a less frothy cohort. What cited data would yoh find for those? |
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