Very good points.

For the most part, the bottom 10% in most liberal democracies are much better off than most people in most autocratic states.

Wealth inequality isn't great but the existence of wealthy people in successful countries helps fund service for the entire population. Yet I saw a poster the other day titled "class warfare" with a picture of graveyard saying that's where the "rich" will be buried. People don't understand at all how counties and economies work and how this system we live in works vs. the alternatives (I'm in Canada btw).

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TFYS 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Wealth inequality isn't great but the existence of wealthy people in successful countries helps fund service for the entire population.

I think it does the opposite. Those services were mostly built during the last century after the war when conditions were just right for people to get those policies implemented. Since then the wealthy have mostly been lobbying against those services, dodging taxes, spreading propaganda justifying the inequality, etc. Now we're seeing the results of this work by the wealthy.

I also think it's wrong to assume the wealthy are the creators of that wealth just because they have it. It can also be the result of using positions of power to get a larger share of a pie baked by a lot of people.

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YZF 5 days ago | parent [-]

This is factually not true. For example: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=111000...

The top 1% of highest income in Canada pays 21-22% of the taxes. Their share of the income is about 10%. So they "rich" are paying for services everyone else is getting.

The top 10% pay 54% (!) of the taxes. Their share of income is about 34%.

The top 0.1% pays about 8-9% of the taxes.

So in Canada the rich are absolutely paying for the services everyone else gets. That's before accounting for their indirect contributions to the economy by running businesses, employing people, taxes paid by companies, etc.

Maybe some random billionaire has some scheme that reduces their taxes. But most of the the rich pay way more taxes than others.

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TFYS 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I wouldn't call people working for a salary rich, which most of the people in those groups are. They pay plenty of taxes and many of them probably support funding public services as well. I meant the actually wealthy, who use their political power to reduce those services and the taxes they need to pay. They don't help fund them unless they are forced to, and currently they are not because the political power of their wealth has become larger than the political power of regular people.

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YZF 5 days ago | parent [-]

Most people in the top 0.1% are quite rich. There are quite a few CEOs and founders of large companies that are billionaires from income they got from those companies (and paid taxes on).

Maybe you need to give me more examples. Who are "actually wealthy" people in Canada who do not pay any taxes whatsoever and contribute nothing to the local economy/country? e.g. they avoid paying GST or HST, they avoid paying property taxes, they don't pay capital gains taxes?

I do agree that some rich people (and also not rich people) campaign for a smaller government and less taxes. I don't think that's an unreasonable position. There is a sweet spot for taxation and taxes in Canada are quite high. It's not a zero sum game (e.g. we have people leaving Canada to go to lower tax countries like the US).

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tossandthrow 5 days ago | parent [-]

There are many books on this, you can start by picking up eg. Marianna mazucato and rutger bregmann to get some contemporary views.

In unequal societies governance is controlled by less people and they tend to divert money into activities that increase their wealth instead of benefitting everyone - this has in particular happened in the west over the past 40 years.

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YZF 4 days ago | parent [-]

Show me the data.

Everything I see around me, in data and anecdotally, tells me that in my unequal society (Canada) everyone is doing better and governance is not controlled by rich people. The current government that won the elections would not be the preferred government of the ultra rich who want to make a little more money on the backs of everything else (which honestly is not a thing as far I can tell).

Marianna Mazucato's writings look interesting but I'd have to dig in more. Rutger Bregman seems like much less of an expert in the domain and I'm not sure his ideas vibe with me but might take a look.

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TFYS 4 days ago | parent [-]

Thomas Piketty has collected that data. He showed that the rate of return for capital is larger than the rate of growth, meaning capital owners are getting an ever increasing share of the economic output. Income inequality doesn't really account for this, look into wealth inequality. The wealthy are also good at hiding their wealth to avoid taxation and publicity, I'm not sure how much the studies consider that.

	▲	YZF 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		That is the wrong question to ask and. "The wealthy are hiding their wealth" sounds like a conspiracy theory. I think we have pretty good visibility into the really wealthy (e.g. we know pretty well who is on the short list of billionaires in Canada and more or less what they own). Banks report any movement of money >$10k, real estate is tracked, company ownership is tracked. That there is some large number of really wealthy people hiding in plain sight doesn't compute. We can't disprove the idea that some person living on the streets in East Vancouver is actually a billionaire hiding their wealth but even if so that percentage of those people in the total population isn't going to move the needle vs. all the known rich people who can't really "hide". If there are ways to legally not pay taxes then we'd hear about them and use them. Billionaires do have some options most of us can't pursue but I think the idea that the rich hide their wealth and don't pay taxes is mostly a myth. Prove me wrong... Here's some data to try and support my claim: https://www.statista.com/statistics/467384/percentage-of-pop... The % of the population in low income families has been declining. Here's a broader time horizon: https://www.statista.com/statistics/467276/number-of-persons... We'd need to plot that against income/wealth inequality but I expect that has increased over this period. This isn't consistent across Canada, for example in Alberta: https://www.statista.com/statistics/583120/low-income-popula... There's virtually no movement since 1976 (the percentage is somewhat lower today). I'm assuming the threshold for low income represents some more or less equal standard of living. We can look at some other metrics like life expectancy: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/can/can... This has consistently improved since the 1950's which doesn't seem to support the theory that the broad population is doing worse. If you think you have a better metric that shows that most people are worse off due to the increasing wealth/income gap then let's see it. Random by the way is that I just saw an article today about the wealth distribution in Canada and the data point there was that the top percentiles wealth has declined since 2019. Obviously the top 0.1%/1%/10% still own a lot of the total wealth (I think the figure was something like 56% of the wealth in the top 10%) but that's what you'd expect in a free capitalist system. ( I think the article was related to this report: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/13-605-x/2025001/article... ) Another random by the way observation is that I think the ability of some random person to get ahead is probably unprecedented. Never has knowledge been so accessible (Internet) and various means of production be so accessible and cheap (content creators, apps, prototyping equipment, etc.).

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bluecheese452 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So their after tax income is far higher than their share of the population? Give me 50% of a country’s income and I will be more than happy to pay 60% of the tax.

	▲	YZF 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Why should they pay for more than they get? Not fair. Start a successful business, take some chances, and maybe you'll pay more tax. Heck- many software engineers are likely in the top 10% in Canada.
	▲	naijaboiler 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Heck I will gladly pay 90%

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Jepacor 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The percentages really don't tell you that much. To illustrate with an extreme exemple, if the top 0.1% earns a million, and the government taxes a single dollar on them and nothing on anyone else, the top 0.1% would pay 100% of the taxes. But it obviously would not be enough to help people in need.

I don't know the particular situation for Canada, but I know that welfare benefits are getting worse in my country (France)

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ratelimitsteve 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

when you calculate their share of wealth you only include income. when you calculate their share of taxes do you only include income tax?

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tossandthrow 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Try for just one minute and don't think about this in terms of money, and you will see why your argument is completely failing.

It is clear that one rich person who leisurely spend their morning getting ready for a business meeting does not provide any care to any elderly.

Your comment is clear example of the type of misinformation that got us here.

In the end money is an institution. You can only get things done, I if someone are willing to take money for work. And that only works when there is a certain level og equality.

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skinnymuch 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Interesting how this is always about how liberal democracy (namely European supremacist nations like yours) who control the world as the global north and are the primary reasons for the “autocracy”

I don’t know where you can even think the bottom 10% of the west/liberal democracies are better than “most” in those other countries. That’s a wild thing to think. Seems like typical western centrism and chauvinism.

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YZF 5 days ago | parent [-]

Let's look at one example.

The average income in Egypt is ~$1900 USD a year (it's probably worse now but this is a number I've seen). Low income threshold in Canada is about $20k (EDIT: CAD) a year and that's about the bottom 10%.

So not sure what your point is re: wild thing to think. Do you think the average Egyptian is better off than the low 10% Canadian?

How is it that because liberal democracies "control the world" that Egypt is forced to be an autocracy? Do they have no agency? If Liberal democracies so control the world how come some countries have been able to do better (China e.g.)

	▲	noduerme 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		>> How is it that because liberal democracies "control the world" that Egypt is forced to be an autocracy? Do they have no agency? This is exactly how I would have responded to the above comment. I'd just add that there is tons of evidence for liberal democracies attempting to help or entice those countries to become less corrupt, more transparent and more democratic. Saying that countries that have been independent of colonial rule for a hundred years, which incidentally were mostly handed democratic systems, have become autocracies because of liberal democracies want them that way is sheer insanity. Your point about agency should be the standard rebuttal to all forms of third-worldism that attempt to blame homegrown problems on external actors. But having someone external to blame for homegrown repression isn't just post-hoc rationalization. It actually serves to reinforce the oppression in those states, both as a pressure-release valve for autocrats, and the failure to evaluate internal problems serves as an underlying reason why they have not successfully overthrown those regimes and transitioned to democracy. Mostly, though, that type of talk comes out of the mouths of Westerners who know nothing about the situation in, e.g. Egypt.

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tossandthrow 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

As sibling commentors say, this is just not true.

As a society we have a capacity to work, and we divide that work using money.

Your observation thst rich people pay for services is indicative of an oligarchy. When rich people pay, then it is not a plethora or small businesses, a democratic chooses government, or a consortium of investors bundling together to do something great.

You are literally pointing out the failure of the west.

	▲	YZF 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think so. This is the success of the west. It's the least worse of all the other alternatives. Which other option has worked out better for everyone? Oligarchy would be the rich controlling the countries in the west. Other than in people's imagination and conspiracies there is no evidence of that actually happening. Was Trump the favorite candidate of the rich in the US? I very much doubt it. Do the rich gain more influence with their money - sure. But not more influence then the rest of the population. The 99.9% have more influence than the 0.1% in aggregate. The west is the only place on this planet where the corrupt rich do not have absolute control (see Putin). Is it perfect, no? Is it better than those failed attempts to make everyone equal, strong yes. The top 0.1%, 1%, 10% are still a lot of people. This includes many successful small businesses, it includes large businesses, it includes many. Those people have varied opinions on how countries should be run, just like all of us. But they also have a vested interest in having a safe and free and well functioning society.