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Comment on But how would they be able to live on that?

DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

How? Most people this rich have next to nothing in their bank accounts. The ridiculous numbers you see are not ban account balances or sports cars and yachts. Its primarily shares of the companies they manage. E.g. if you tax them conventionally, you force them to close the factories and everyone becomes poorer. If you just confiscate the company, now the government owns companies, and we saw how that goes plenty of times: USSR, North Korea, Cuba, …

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FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
…or you have the workers communally run the factory and elect the person to run it and if they don’t do a good job, they lose the position. Which seems like a pretty good incentive to succeed. In fact, “do this right or you’re fired” rarely seems to apply to the person at the top.

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- DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Lets pretend they would not become corrupt. What about unpopular decisions, such as layoffs? As much as people hate them, they are sometimes necessary to keep peoples work productive.
  
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  - FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Again, if they do a bad job, they can be taken out of office by the other workers. If they handle layoffs the right way, they won’t be taken out of office.
    
    Where does the corruption enter into it?
    
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    DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    First off, if you think people will vote for unpopular things because they are handled correctly and the right thing to do, you are not paying attention to any elections.
    
    Second of all, lets say I am elected to run this company. I have to options:
    
    Operate the company to the best of my abilities and in the best case scenario, I will get a relatively normal wage. More likely something out of my control will happen that I will be balmed for by the next guy who wants to run the company.
    
    I buy material and give way overpriced contracts to people who will give something of value to me. Of course vaguely enough that you can’t prove it in court. Then I just lose my job in a year or two, when people figure it out. Of course by then, I gained more in that year than I would gain in my entire life working honestly.
    
    What do you think the kind of people thick skinned enough to win a company election would do?
    
    And if your solution is to lower the burden of proof in court, who would take normal salaried job with high chance of being falsely imprisoned? Not the honest ones…
    
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    Chakravanti@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Where does the corruption enter into it?
    
    Money.
    
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- escaped_cruzader@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Guy want companies to become the government
  
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  - FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    No, guy wants companies to be owned and run by workers rather than just be wealth machines for the investor class.
    
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paulcdb@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Or you give the shares to people, but the company would still need to be managed by someone who no longer has a proportional incentive to make it succeed, causing the same result as if it was government run.

Would it? Give the shares to the workers and they have a huge incentive to run a company well. Right now a CEO’s only priority is to maximise shareholders return. A workers led company would maximise both shareholder return AND have an incentive and pride in doing a job properly instead of the low morale and poorly built crap we have today.

History has shown anytime control is in the hands of the few, it’s run into the ground in order to maximise the wealth for the few so giving control to the masses of workers in companies would lead to more compromises and might sound bad at first but would likely work better the more people required to make drastic changes.

And as said many times, no billionaire has ever ‘earned’ that. They’ve all gained it through exploitation and wage theft either directly or indirectly!

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- DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  So how do the workers run the company? A vote on every little decision? If not, you have to still have a CEO, for whom it is now far more profitable to make decisions that profit them rather than the company. And even if you vote on every decision, could most workers really understand what they are voting for.
  
  Also, what about layoffs? While everyone loves to hate layoffs, they are part of keeping peoples work productive. Are the workers going to vote/approve them?
  
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  - paulcdb@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    then that’s for the workers to decide on. If 51% of the workforce agrees, thats the decision! If that doesn’t ‘fit’ with the workers, make it 60% or 75%, or whatever number the majority agree on!
    
    It really isn’t that difficult. There are plenty of voting systems, the issue comes down to people and a change of thinking how companies are run.
    
    You can make any argument why it wouldn’t work when you don’t want something to work but given the current system is working soooo well… new ideas are better than no ideas! 😎
    
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    damnedfurry@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    then that’s for the workers to decide on. If 51% of the workforce agrees, thats the decision!
    
    But the vast majority of workers don’t have the slightest idea how to run a business effectively. A very large proportion of them mismanage their own finances, let alone a larger responsibility like that.
    
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    DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You say that ironically, but average people in developed nations have arguably better lifestyle and more resources than kings used to. And living standard in developing nations have been steadily improving. The system is incredibly flawed because the humans in it are incredibly flawed. Considering how flawed it is, it is working astonishingly well.
    
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  - Chakravanti@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    And even if you vote on every decision, could most workers really understand what they are voting for.
    
    Yeah because 32hrs would become 40 and we would discard another 8. 6hrsx4. When that happens we are no longer deprived of time edilucate and discuss the matter with the relevant folks.
    
    And even if you vote on every decision, could most workers really understand what they are voting for.
    
    Yes. Because of the above.
    
    Also, what about layoffs? While everyone loves to hate layoffs, they are part of keeping peoples work productive
    
    No. They aren’t. They actually doing the exact opposite. Your statement to contrary of the obvious is a sucker delusion. Stop consuming sugar to begin with and finish by stopping to listen to money.
    
    Are the workers going to vote/approve them?
    
    Yup. Your delusion is thinking that mass is any kind of importance. Its not when it is compared to life because shit might come from the magick of people but there will never be life as a part of them unless they were to begin with and in that case, you were never the creator. Workers MUST have the right to make decision where they work or the entire planet will die. No fucking exceptions with any financial delusions because ALL of it is doing and being exactly that.
    
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  - r9seng@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Bro what.
    
    Are you saying we need to lay off workers to scare the rest into line?
    
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    DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    No, I am saying that often, company may need to downsize to remain productive. For example, lets say we have a company that makes headphone jacks. For obvious reasons, they are no longer able to sell as many as they used to, but maybe half.
    
    The company now needs to layoff half the workers, or have to workers. Is the elected CEO going to promptly do it? Or will he delay it and causing both financial damage to the company and productivity damage to the economy?
    
    And also, do the fired employees still get to vote? Is just firing malcontents the tyrant CEOs weapon?
    
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- Crackhappy@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Winco
  
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somethingp@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I agree a wealth tax is difficult to implement, but that alone is not a reason to dismiss the idea. Also, for shares, you can always sell shares to pay the taxes that are due. The point of wealth tax is to wealth, not income. Much like a property tax.

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- Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Better than a wealth tax is a land value tax. Key properties are that it doesn’t cause capital flight (you can’t move land), it’s almost impossible to evade (you can’t hide land), it’s economically efficient (it literally doesn’t even harm the economy in the slightest to implement it), it can’t be passed on to tenants (both in economic theory and in observed practice), and it’s progressive.
  
  Plus, it incentives denser, transit-oriented city development and disincentivizes wastage of prime real estate (which contributes to the housing crisis). All in all, a terrific policy that people aren’t talking nearly enough about imo.
  
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  - somethingp@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    At least in the US, most people already pay local and state property taxes that are higher in high population density areas. The problem with this tax is that it still disproportionately affects middle class home owners instead of only affecting the billionaire class. Also, land is just 1 aspect of wealth. Most of the wealthy in the US don’t keep any significant part of their wealth in land.
    
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    damnedfurry@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Most of the wealthy in the US don’t keep any significant part of their wealth in land.
    
    This is really key. If it was 100 years ago, this would make more sense, but the vast majority of measured wealth created in the world today is in intangible assets, like stock prices.
    
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- DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Sell them to whom? You are taxing everyone.
  
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  - somethingp@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You make it sound like factories don’t actually net them profit LMAO. Even after paying taxes they’re still making money. If they weren’t, it would be a terrible business. Also what do you mean sell them to whom? Other billionaires that still exist even with a wealth tax, non billionaire investors, international investors. If they can’t find someone to sell their shares to, then clearly their shares are overvalued and that’ll take care of some of the problem in itself.
    
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    DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Once again, billionaires don’t have large sums of money in their banks. It is all invested. So if all of them in the country have no money and need to sell to pay these massive taxes, who are they selling to?
    
    And sorry to say this, but if you genuinely think selling a significant portion of a countries industry/businesses to foreign investors could be good for the people of the country, than I wasting my time here.
    
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- damnedfurry@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  I agree a wealth tax is difficult to implement, but that alone is not a reason to dismiss the idea.
  
  What about the fact that it’s been tried and failed a ton of times already in a bunch of countries? That’s a pretty good reason, I think.
  
  In the only countries that still have a ‘wealth tax’, the thresholds are so broad that they are primarily a burden of the middle and lower classes, making it effectively no different than a more conventional/mundane tax, versus what everyone talking about a “wealth tax” in these kinds of discussions invariably expects; namely, a tax that only/primarily targets the wealthiest.
  
  Before the income tax was implemented, there were promises it’d only be aimed at the rich, too.
  
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  - somethingp@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Youre right about income tax and to some degree income tax does primarily effect the wealthy except the brackets haven’t been updated to reflect inflation and the new ultra wealthy class appropriately. The other thing is, many of the wealthy don’t have incomes in the traditional sense, and it makes no sense to differentiate capital gains from regular income. The argument that you don’t want retirement investment income taxed as regular income tax is a little moot since that’s why we have tax advantaged retirement accounts. If those accounts aren’t enough for all retirement investments, maybe those limits need to be increased or the way the tax advantage works for them needs to be changed.
    
    Past failed attempts are also a good point, but to me they sound more like administrative failures rather than a failure of that type of policy. In the US we already have some wealth taxes on the value of homes and cars. Some of these failed European policies seemed to define wealth poorly and as a result either weren’t fully taxing wealth or spending more resources on administration than collections. But banks already do a great job of assessing an individual’s wealth. This is how the ultra rich are able to get huge lines of credit to play with rather than having to use their own capital directly. I don’t see how the government can’t use similar systems to calculate an individual’s total wealth. And the argument about the wealthy fleaing the country are also a little moot in the US. The wealthy in the US make money off of American tax dollars. Amazon/Bezos is rich because the US government started using AWS. Tesla is successful because the US uses their influence in South America to cost effectively obtain raw materials for batteries (not to mention those tax credits on EVs). There are all the military industrial companies, and the insurance companies. If the government had the backbone to say Americans who got wealthy using the American market have to pay taxes in America or they lose their right to sell to the American market (government or to the public), no one is going anywhere.
    
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Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Why should we have a stock market in the first place? Seems like all it does is act as a means for the rich to shuffle their wealth around, funnel it to the top and claim they have next to no liquidity.

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- DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  If you think that, you obviously don’t know what the stock market was created to do. Just google it. No point for me to write it here.
  
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  - Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Original intention isn’t relevant when the current purpose is to fuck over anybody who isn’t the rich.
    
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    DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    First of all, it matters if the stock market is fulfilling its original intention. Which it obviously is. Second of all, some of the biggest traders on the stock market are pension funds of common workers, appreciating their retirement money. Fuck over how exactly?
    
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Cowbee@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Production should be run by the workers via a democratically run and accountable worker-government.

The government owning companies is not a bad thing. The US Postal Service and Fire Department are state-run and operated, and are highly popular. Why do you think a profit-motive is necessary when it’s the source of enshittification?

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- DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  youtu.be/YmK24VAaZrg
  
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