• 2 Posts
  • 44 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: August 9th, 2023
  • LemoineFairclough@sh.itjust.workstoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Why do some people defend the billionaires and capitalism?English
    6·
    1 month ago

    This might be relevant:

    https://youtu.be/J_fZ9o6P0-A?si=-fl7rLryYZBDVgTN&t=194

    Conditions here were deplorable by any objective measure. And if you’ll recall, one of the hallmarks of early Russian industrialization was: the workforce was often transient. People moved back and forth between their home villages and jobs in the cities, and this flux meant that the places people lived and where they ate and bathed and got medical attention were only ever temporary expedients. It was a bit like you were going off to some particularly crappy summer camp. It was only meant to be temporarily endured, not lived in full time, and so conditions just never got better. People were not just renting rooms; they were renting corners of rooms. You could rent not just a bed, but part of a bed. Sanitation was, of course, practically non-existent, and the food was disgusting. The work itself, meanwhile, was long and grueling. There were no safety standards in the factories. There were hardly any rights for anybody at all. And pay was literally inadequate. The ministry of finance itself surveyed conditions and concluded that a family of four needed about fifty rubles a month to purchase basic necessities (that is, food and shelter and heat) and then they found that 75% of the workers were making less than 30 rubles a month. The economic and moral math was just not adding up.

    https://youtu.be/J_fZ9o6P0-A?si=FtaiY47HVyXXBeAP&t=340

    The lower skilled, less educated, and still mentally “peasant” workers tended to remain culturally conservative. They were orthodox christian and believed strongly in the divine benevolence of the czar. And indeed one of the things reported by both social democrats and SRs back to their respective central committees was that they struggled to recruit among these workers because they were out there pitching “overthrowing the czar” and everyone was like “What? We… we love the czar, and he loves us too!”

    To them, the czar was not a villain, but a hero. Not the devil, but their savior. It understandably made recruiting for a political revolution to overthrow their “hero and savior” very difficult.

    https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/2020/02/1033-bloody-sunday.html

  • LemoineFairclough@sh.itjust.workstoOpen Source@lemmy.ml•Forgejo is now copyleft, just like GitEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    I think the tax system in the USA is designed to reward people who form corporations and then get people employed. People who are employed don’t have as much time to work on reforming institutions, so giving a tax break for employing people makes powerful people’s lives easier. In order to keep this process revenue neutral, earned income is taxed instead of taxing business as much. After extracting money from people’s labor (since labor is clearly necessary in order to create wealth), the remainder of budget needs is made up from whatever resources are easily available (which is currently the assets of rich people, since they have been given a lot of money to get people employed).

  • LemoineFairclough@sh.itjust.workstoOpen Source@lemmy.ml•Forgejo is now copyleft, just like GitEnglish
    12·
    3 months ago

    Wealth tax does not block economic growth, rather the opposite, because it forces wealth to be reinvested to not lose too much value.

    Do you have a source for this? I see that “wealth taxes have failed in Europe”, and it seems that places with a wealth tax were mostly in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264290303-4-en

    One example that caught my attention is Belgium, which introduced an “annual tax on securities accounts”, which suggests that they were taxing resources that were invested already.

    I can imagine that it’s possible for government spending to produce more economic growth than would have happened without taxation, but the entire point of money is to have a multitude of people working towards prosperity in ways that can’t be predicted by state authorities, so if there are more taxes it seems likely that economic growth will be reduced.

    Of course, an analysis would have to account for things like using resources from a wealth tax to make cheap/free healthcare available, which might then make people vastly more productive such that any negative effects of a wealth tax are neutralized. Also, providing an obviously higher quality of life might be worth some cost.

    You clearly need a lesson in proportional taxation if you think people would have their personal property appropriated.

    Is a car or shirt or house personal property? It seems things like that are seized in response to people not paying revenue services: https://home.treasury.gov/services/treasury-auctions https://www.treasury.gov/auctions/treasury/gp/index.html https://www.cwsmarketing.com/?p=36139 https://auctions.cwsmarketing.com/auctions/1-9DDP42/gp-dayton-nj-live-wsimulcast-august-21 https://auctions.cwsmarketing.com/lots/view/1-9DE12Y/wearing-apparel-riverside-ca

    I do see that items had bids much higher than I’d expect, and they were being auctioned at the same time watches and jewellery and electric motorcycles and trailers, so I suspect any clothing was “luxury” in some way, or the auction was for more clothing than is documented with pictures.

    I do not give a fuck about you placing your dignity in ownership of material assets, that is a you problem.

    I reference “dignity” because it’s part of “the unshakeable foundation of the Republic of Poland”, and thinking about dignity seems like a good way to tell if something is a bad idea, and I probably wouldn’t feel like I had more dignity than 1 month ago if I was having my car or house seized because I hadn’t paid as much taxes as a revenue service thought I should. I expect that you will have more trouble implementing policies you like if you express that you’re disregarding dignity.

    The top 10% pay less income taxes as a fraction of their income than the bottom 10%.

    I expect that this is true.

    Really, we should remove the capitalist class because they will fight back to the detriment of everyone else.

    I’m certainly for social change, and people with entrenched interests will probably try to hamper it. However, other people might not want to cooperate with you if you remind them of the Soviet Union, and I expect that saying “we should remove the capitalist class” will do that.

    I do not give a fuck about the IRS. I am not an American. My country actually has a wealth tax.

    If you don’t care about the IRS, why are you talking about a wealth tax using English? I suspect that that the majority of people who speak English as well as you do are U.S. citizens, so I’d assume you were interested in speaking to U.S. citizens. Are you trying to talk to people in Europe / worldwide in a common language?

    Who is the target audience for your messages? I’m interested in where/how you’re focusing your efforts.

    You are repeating misinformation and capitalist propaganda with little understanding of what you are saying. Have you even reflected on what “the economy” really is? If you are a trickle-down Reaganomics-follower, you might want to get your brain checked.

    What misinformation am I repeating? I wouldn’t have written a statement that I don’t think is true, so I suggest you point out anything you think is incorrect and explain your perspective, and maybe share a URL for some more interesting sources.

    Note: I originally pressed “Reply” too early by mistake, so I edited this text. Originally I had only written “Is a car or shirt or house personal property?” and one URL.

  • LemoineFairclough@sh.itjust.workstoOpen Source@lemmy.ml•Forgejo is now copyleft, just like GitEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    I would probably be most upset if a program had its license changed to be “permissive” like the Expat License. I might accept making a reasonable number of contracts to provide a “proprietary” license that doesn’t give any new person (or corporation) permission to distribute software, but a “permissive” license allows people to work against the Free Software Movement without any oversight.

    That being said, I don’t think I would be satisfied if a contract specified that “an OSI license” will be used: I would prefer for a specific license to be used rather than just one of a class of licenses. However, if an appropriate license is already being used, I wouldn’t have to sign anything to protect myself!

    In general, I’m probably against changing the license of any software: changing a license seems like a lot of work that can probably be better spent elsewhere, and I consider it to be unlikely that any GPL license will need to have a new version anytime soon (they might, and the v3 versions are clearly better to use than any preexisting version, but they might also change for the worse if the FSF changes for the worse), and the GNU AGPLv3 clearly reflects the present state of the art of licensing (so using any other license that is compatible with it would strike me as strange). If I actually had a reason to study any source code that wasn’t available with the GNU AGPLv3 or the GNU GPLv3, I would probably be better off studying the requirements of people who use that software and making my own version with a license I prefer: that way I’d provide more certainty that my changes are available with an appropriate license.

    Changing the license of existing projects is clearly useful sometimes, but adapting proprietary programs for use with more open systems hasn’t been very useful to me so far. For example, I use LibreOffice rather than trying to get Microsoft Word to work with my computer.

    There might be some people who argue that any influence of a GPL license will make their business model less profitable, but if that’s the case we’re already dealing with business, so I might as well receive my fair share of money and influence from the business (or withhold my participation entirely, if that would be less harmful).

    Just to be clear, I’d avoid studying source code only available with the GNU Lesser GPL unless things change.

    FYI, I’m discussing “studying” instead of “changing”, since avoiding even looking at source code of questionable provenance might help protect me from accusations of plagiarism. If someone exploits a computer system to copy source code without permission and shares it with me, and then I make a similar program, the copyright holders whose program I copied might have a justified reason to complain. However, there is less chance of that if I study people’s public messages or even compare the behavior of one program to another, and if I don’t study a program, I probably can’t change it either.

    I’ll note that, despite what I’ve written,

    • I don’t actually scrutinize licenses of repositories very much: if I come up with a useful patch, I’m inclined to share it even if it’s unclear what license will be used with it. However, I do scrutinize the license of programs I install (for example, I like that yast2 lets you see the license of packages before installing them), so I’m more likely to want to contribute to programs that are compatible with a GPL license.
    • I have submitted a patch with text like “By submitting this I give permission to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of this contribution to any person obtaining a copy of this software” that was provided as a template.
    • I wouldn’t complain much if someone got paid $1,000,000 to distribute some software with the Expat License, since I can’t fault them for taking care of themselves.

    FYI, “nominal consideration” is very likely sufficient to establish a contract (“contracts in the United States have sometimes have had one party pass nominal amounts of consideration, typically citing $1”), and a contract is probably hard to neutralize in general due to things like mutual drafting clauses and savings clauses.

  • LemoineFairclough@sh.itjust.workstoOpen Source@lemmy.ml•Forgejo is now copyleft, just like GitEnglish
    512·
    3 months ago

    Wealth Tax

    I am against any wealth tax. The revenue services for many governments are very focused on not blocking economic growth, and then periodically taking a reasonable amount of wealth.

    In the end, only wealth can be taxed (things that aren’t physical can’t be seized and auctioned). However, I don’t want to be forced to let someone into my house to calculate how much stuff I have.

    In general, I think it’s more reasonable to monitor wealth moving (and more so if wealth moves between people) rather than to force people to cooperate with monitoring wealth staying in the same place. I don’t want someone checking up on whether I own the same stock certificates or gold bars each year; that seems like an insult to my dignity.

    Enforcement Complications

    Distribution

    The top 10% as a whole pays 71.22%, while the bottom 50% of taxpayers account for only 2.89% of all income taxes.

    I don’t think that focusing on people who already pay a disproportionate amount of tax will be very helpful. Rapidly changing what is taxed (wealth vs income) would probably be harmful, as people will probably have trouble adapting to significantly different policies. For example, we’d probably hear about people who happen to have inherited expensive houses being unable to pay thousands of dollars for tax bills, after thinking that they wouldn’t be affected by policy changes.

    Avoidance

    If there was a wealth tax and I was rich enough to spend a lot of time managing my money, I would just create a “charitable organization” that I and my family completely control, then have it pay people to do things I would want them to do anyway, and maybe even try to let the charity pay a high wage to its managers (such that I could be a manager and get the charity to pay for my yearly living expenses, directly or indirectly). I also might be able to get away with using a trust or charitable remainder trust to avoid being affected by a wealth tax.

    I don’t know the degree to which tax exempt organizations affect my life, but I do know that trusts have a relevant affect on my life, since they are often used to own land, specifically by landlords of housing and by people who own land that is worth a lot of money. How they are dealt with would probably have to significantly change in order to accommodate a wealth tax.

    Inheritance Tax

    I’m not sure I’m against inheritance tax, but it might be an unnecessary complication. Treating inheritance like a gift from one person to another at the moment of their death might make things easier for everyone. The policies regarding gifts are relatively clear: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/gift-tax https://www.irs.gov/faqs/capital-gains-losses-and-sale-of-home/property-basis-sale-of-home-etc/property-basis-sale-of-home-etc

    However, having separate inheritance law might also make things less painful for some people. If my assets suddenly gained or lost a large amount of value just before I died, I wouldn’t want that to justify taking more wealth from my heirs. Having a special way to value assets gained due to someone dying might be more reasonable than treating each receipt as a gift.