personally i absolutely support billionaires if you remove the actual issues like them being able to lobby and remove legal forms of tax evasion so that the country is benefitted more, especially when they are creative(ish) like elon and do stuff actually beneficial to humanity like space programs (may be wrong but i believe hearing news abt him making that and running it), and honestly it would be great if more billionaires focused on space exploration as well as the governments, its just the next step in mankind tbh
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
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I just want to start off by saying that your opinion is valid and it's not even necessarily wrong. So don't listen to anybody trying to disparage you on this.
If we are to allow billionaires to exist, they should take considerably more responsibility for the power that they wield and they of course should be taxed fairly in accordance to their income.
Also, lobbying should just be downright illegal. Which it is borderline is anyway.
Agreed except the part about lobbying. The EFF and ACLU are lobbying groups, and I don't think you want to outlaw them. Heck, signing a petition is a form of lobbying.
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Call it crab bucket, but I would hate to work in a system where my labor value is capped by someone other than me, or the person I'm selling it to.
Edit love downvotes with no rebuttal. Any system where a laborer is told they cannot market services at a rate accepted by a client is an oppressive system.
You're never going to have to worry about it. If you won the lottery every week you wouldn't be close to what these people have.
Your labour value is already massively capped by the super rich. You earn a fraction of what you produce for others.
"these people" don't have what they have from wages. They have it from stock backed loans and similar.
Any legislation policing what someone in my job can earn is hurtful to the worker.
Why would you need to have total freedom there? There are plenty of rules and regulations in place for many things. If we as society can agree on a reasonable ceiling, why would that be an issue? What is your worry?
If there would be a cap on the hourly wage or total income the chances of you ever reaching it would be slim to none, and if you did.. congrats you won capitalism, be happy.
It feels similar to the "hate paying taxes" and "I'm self made". Paying taxes is a privilege, more is better, as it means you have more. Self made does not exist, more than half of everything anyone achieves is luck, starting with the birth lottery and going from there.
I think "freedom" resonates emotionally in different ways for different people. If you try to pass a law making it illegal to drink bleach, I will oppose that law. I certainly don't want to drink bleach, but right now I have the freedom to drink it and you would be trying to take away that freedom. It has value to me even though I intend never to exercise it.
Taxes, unlike drinking bleach, are a matter of trade-offs. I'm not categorically against them. However, I don't buy into the argument that I shouldn't oppose them as long as I will never have to pay them.
Well I guess I would say that if obscene wealth disparity is against public interest, which it is. We should curtail it. Personal freedoms that rub against public interests are always going to be a point of contention, that's why we would need good laws, not just willy nilly ones.
The big fish to catch is untaxed earnings of the hyper wealthy. Any attacks on the potential of labor is anti worker.
I agree that if there is anywhere to start it is taxing assets like stock portfolios and other vehicles the billionaire class uses to avoid taxation.
The whole trickle down economics did not work, it's time we start trying rising tide economics, as it lifts all boats.
But anti labor is a stretch depending on where you draw a line. There are amounts that cannot be explained by mere labor.
So some dude accused me of being a troll and I'm certainly not, and I'm certainly interested in this topic. I just care about taking actual actions to affect change.
I believe this would shield the hyper wealthy from further fairness, they would hide behind this.
I further believe this would be corrupted to manipulate true laborers by targeting different professions and tax classes after the fact.
So we have common ground on the fact the primary focus is the robber barons. Any changes should start with addressing the avenues only the robber barons have to avoid taxation and work their way down.
But slippery sloping the fact there are people out there with millions of dollars of "salary" is also nonsense. CEO's do not add that kind of value, there is a big network component at work.
Then there are several different scales for the first 100K of income to differentiate, but then above that it stops.. F- that.. if there is a top scale it should be at 99%. Just watch how quick there will be intermediate scales. But no one will be able to convince me that salaries above a certain amount can be defended. Where that amount is.. I don't know.. it can be high.. but a ceiling is easily defendable.
All systems are oppressive by that low bar definition ya numbnut.
Would it be unjust for me to make a law preventing you from accumulating so much gold/wealth in one place as to cause a black hole to form? Is that oppressive? Fuck off.
You shouldnt care about edge case scenarios where someone doesn't get to be more rich than they already are when we are talking about solutions to problems, affecting millions of people real people with real problems.
Name calling?
Edit on topic, wages are not how billionaires are made. Wages are the concern of the general public. They would be the group impacted.
You are distracting from the fact that the problem can be solved with easy fixes to the language instead of agreeing that rich people should have a limit on how severe wealth inequality is.
Numbnuts
Uncivil, I'm having actual discussion with others. Cya
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