this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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Taxation is not theft if the money is spent properly on services that benefit tax payers. Poor taxation policy is theft, since public service quality will diminish over time. Like what we are currently seeing with lack of investment in public services, combined with an asset owning class that doesn't pay tax on its passive wealth, using that wealth to purchase more assets, which drives up prices and shrinks the middle class. If these people had better critical thinking they would rebel against that instead.
With taxation, the individual limits themselves to poorer quality services that could be provided better by private industry. The gang requires you pay them extortion money and then they take that extortion money and fund their friends and cronies and you get poorer services as a result. Even regardless of that, your extortion that you pay also funds foreign wars. Maybe not quite so much in Australia, but especially here in the United States. Our extortion money goes to kill people that we have no reason to kill and no beef against.
Dude, the last 30 years in Australia have proved that private industry does not handle public services better than the government. Since you do not live in Australia, you cannot claim to be as informed on this as a local. I wish Americans would stop chiming in on the state of Australia as though they are experts. Your country has the worst healthcare system in the developed world.
Which is primarily the result of people being willing to pay way too much for those services. We have insurance here and since it comes out of our paychecks we don't really think about it. The way to prevent $500 bandages or $1,000 ambulance rides is to refuse to pay it.
Well, unless you're going to be thrown into jail for not paying a debt, you actually don't have to pay it. Especially if the costs are not disclosed beforehand and are exorbitant. Enough people do that and market forces will prevail.
Look, I'm not going to argue with you on this anymore since you seem to be fairly dead set on this idea of private industry and market forces being superior, which they are demonstrably not. The overarching point is that basic human needs like health care, aged care etc. should not have a profit incentive. The only way to remedy that is to invest properly in government services and also hold the political class to account when those services are not adequately delivered.
Yep, we are going to have to agree to disagree.
Man you just can't get any first sentences right can you. Wrong again here. Completely.
That could is doing some heavy lifting there.
Fair, government funded services tend to lead to monopoly such as one single trash service, etc which allows the favored to charge higher prices than would be tolerated normally. Lots of small companies competing for business keeps prices low for as long as possible and inflation is the main source of increases.
"government funded services tend to lead to monopoly" I don't think you understand the concept of monopoly lol. We are talking about a service provided by the government, not a privately owned service subsidized by the government.
Six of one-half a dozen of the other. I still only have one trash service, one power company, etc. etc. They look no different.
So advocate for better government services, taxing the ultra wealthy to pay for it, and recognising that private industry is incentivised towards benefiting shareholder profits instead of the public good. If we can drive down wealth inequality through fair taxation policy, everyone benefits and society becomes healthier and the economy becomes more dynamic. Winner winner chicken dinner.
Okay, fine. If you tax the ultra-wealthy at 100% for example, then they have no incentive to work and therefore will no longer be ultra-wealthy and that will pay for what maybe 1% of what's necessary to fund these services and now there are no more ultra-wealthy people so who are you going to tax? The middle class of course.
The key thing to recognise here is that we're not talking about high income earners. We're talking about people who are wealthy due to owning massive amounts of assets which generate passive wealth, and they acquire that wealth because they belong to wealthy families. They don't contribute to the dynamism of the economy. These people don't earn money from working, they suck up all the money from the productive workers. If you're grinding it out and earning 200K that's fine, more power to you. Those people aren't the people I'm talking about.
Right, but the government is a very wasteful spender. As an example, the US government spends the market cap of Apple Incorporated every 100 days. If Apple did that, they would not exist in 100 days. But the government continues to exist. I completely understand that once you obtain a certain amount of wealth, you really don't need any more. However, with that said, I think taxation is the wrong way to handle it and that using another service is the correct way to handle it.
The government spends money, and takes that money back through taxation. If the government spends money, incurs debt, and doesn't get the money back, it's due to a failure of taxation policy. Government money spent on services that are valuable to the public is not wasteful, which is the key point you are not understanding. They don't need to generate a profit, like Apple does. They need to ensure that the wealth flows through the appropriate channels, which they have neglected to do since the advent of neoliberal policies. The government has no imperative to further technological innovation, like Apple does. It's not their business. They are in the business of maintaining a basic quality of life for the population.
Okay, if the government is supposed to provide a basic quality of life, then they are failing at that job and need to be replaced.
Absolutely, and that sheds some light on the commonality between our countries, even if the politics are a bit different. Major parties have abandoned the working class. Which requires better political engagement so we can vote ourselves out of this situation to get a fair deal and avoid what looks like the inevitable rise of right wing populism, which won't help progress the situation at all.
Exactly, which also shows the differences because I very firmly believe that we cannot vote hard enough to escape this situation. I and many others have lost complete trust in our institutions and we act accordingly. Why vote when it does no good? In fact, if anything else, I would be willing to vote for shit policies in order to watch the train wreck happen faster in order to get to a better place faster.
I don't know how the USA can fix its shit political situation. You guys should have had a chance at voting in Bernie in 2016, but you didn't have the chance. Australia isn't as far down that path yet, but at least we have mandatory voting, so have a better chance at achieving a good result through political education, which will only occur through discussions with our social circles. I don't think accelerationist ideas will achieve a positive outcome though. It's first about imagining a better alternative, and being vocal about it. Every person who works for a living should have affordable housing and healthcare, for example, without incurring a 30 year debt or going bankrupt. It happened in the post WW2 era, it can happen again if enough people demand it.
I love how you dont even understand the concept of a line of credit and everything is a zero sum game. You have a very broken outlook on life. Very toxic mindset.
Credit and the I must have it now mentality is most of the problem with people today. You don't need credit when you actually have money.
The 'asset wealthy' being spoken of here use credit all the time as they arent in a liquid position to transact at that point, but provably do have the capital in assets to satisfy the transaction. And we all use credit, often in very reasonable situations.
For instance, a first home buyer borrowing when interest rates are low, locking in a low interest rate for a long period, can be very beneficial for the individual concerned, where house prices get higher for an extended period. Even if it does lead to some perceived realty market stickiness.
Widespread use of Credit is not the problem (in this regard), and in fact could be a sign of a more trusting global society beginning to establish itself.
Credit is also bot new. It is the OG, and has been with us since well before tokenised money. Read David Graeber's 'Debt'. And look up debt sticks, or the origin of the yin-yang symbol. The essence of David Graeber's argument is tokenised money, uniquely gold, is used when you transact with someone you are unable to trust, credit is used when you can trust.
It's of course more complicated now, the vendor is not so reliant on trusting the individual in front of them, and more reliant on the name on a bit of plastic in their pocket.
That's true. And by locking in a low interest rate on a home, for example, the buyer is basically shorting their fiat currency and saying that they believe it will be worth less in, say, 30 years than it currently is right now. And they would be right. Inflation is only going to get worse and worse as time goes on, and the government's financial situation gets more and more dire. And so they turn to the printing press, which then dilutes the value of the fiat currency that has already been issued, hurting the individual. So what an individual should do is take out a super low interest loan on something like a home and convert the majority of their money out of their government fiat currency and into something tangible such as gold or Monero where inflation won't ravage it away. Shorting government fiat currency is a great way to preserve your wealth.
Your first sentence is simply a lie.