Why would a wealth tax not fix this?
tomiant@piefed.social 2 days ago
They are the symptoms, not the disease. Capitalism will always create them on a long enough timeline. It is streamlined feudalism.
If you have any type of head start under capitalism, for any reason, regardless if everyone profits, those who initially profited a little more will profit exponentially more at an exponential rate as time goes by.
The claim is that under capitalism, everybody is better off. But if they earn 1.1 times as much as you do, as the years turn into decades into centuries, you will have earned a fraction of what they did. That difference matters a lot, especially at scale.
If I get $1 and you get $100, that’s a big difference between us, but not life changing for either.
If I get $1000 and you get $100000, that is a massive difference between us, trivial for me, definitely significant for you.
If I have $100000 and you have $10000000, we might as well live on different planets.
Capitalism doesn’t take this into consideration. Sorry for the somewhat juvenile example, I’m very tired, and am going to have another drink now.
HaiZhung@feddit.org 2 days ago
tomiant@piefed.social 2 days ago
Because if wealth is power, then wealth will not want to pay taxes, so it would wield its wealth as a weapon so as to assure that it wouldn’t. See? Taxes are laws. Capital is above the law. Can the law be enforced? If so, then yes, it would fix this. Unfortunately, a legal and democratic system cannot withstand the force of capital- which, incidentally, is also an agreement. It’s only as long as we play the game and let us be duped by it that this goes on, that’s why the power remains with the people. If we withdraw, it all collapses.
True human unity and cooperation transcends all arbitrary systems of government, democratic or other.
HaiZhung@feddit.org 2 days ago
I think we are on the same page, to be honest.
My point is: the power should be with the people, as you said. Capital creates power. So let’s use a wealth tax to distribute it back to the people (and improve their living standards, drastically, while we are at it).
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Your example isn’t bad. You could go further. 1,000,000 vs 1,000,000,000. Massive difference.
The problem is when we live in a world when we have millions of people with less than $1,000, and others have more than $300,000,000,000.
tomiant@piefed.social 2 days ago
Here’s another problematic aspect of the same-
In 1913 there were 435 representatives in Congress. The population of the United States was ~97 million. In 2026 there are still 435 representatives. The population is about ~335 million. In 1913 each representative spoke for roughly 223,000 people. In 2026 each representative speaks for roughly 770,000 people.
In 1789 there were 65 representatives, and about 4 million people, speaking for ~60,500 people each.