Compared to 37 today : Mirror

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

There were very few people this applied to.

The real reason is the corporate tax rate. It was 52%. Today it’s 21%, and it’s effectively close to zero for many corporations with the tax loopholes used to avoid taxation. Shell corporations, deferring taxes, what have you.

So the US has lost more than 50% of the corporate taxes collected since the ‘50s.

E: the decline in tax % is pretty closely followed by the dramatic rise in CEO compensation.

The wealth being funneled to the top by cutting corporate tax got us the billionaire oligarchs we’re dealing with today.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

We are long overdue for a hard reset. We need a new government with a modern democracy, then the assets of the top 0.1% need to be nationalized. Let them keep enough wealth to still be in the top 10%, but hit them hard and fast. Also, we should do what china does and to end offshoring by forcing companies to sell 20% of their company to the US government if they want access to our markets. Next, we need tax breaks for companies who spend more money compensating their workers than giving money to the parasitic shareholders.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Let them keep enough wealth to still be in the top 10%, but hit them hard and fast.

That's fine for the ones who cooperate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Seeing the numbers laid out, even though I already knew it was bad, is profoundly depressing.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The wealth was also built on the back of exploited Afro Americans. Remember that even Brown happened in the middle of the fifties.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Yes but that was when manufacturing was 33% of the workforce.

Today it’s only 8%. Machinery and robots do the labor and generate extreme wealth in tech and other spaces.

So theoretically you would not REQUIRE the same degrees of exploitation to achieve a middle class similar to that time period.

The win of factory and laborers work is unionization. Tech means decentralized workforce and less likelihood to trust your peers and unionize which was one of the largest wins of the 50s. When you are rubbing elbows with your coworkers - and are geographically living through similar cost of living as your colleagues - you are more likely to strike or require the same or similar types of improvements at the same moments.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

What people in the US are failing to understand is that there are still good manufacturing jobs in the US today. Pharmaceuticals, aerospace, biotech, etc. They’re just on the higher end and require some type of technical or bachelors degree. Although, with the current regime and how they want to run (or not run) education, makes it seem like they want to bring us back to a developing country status where labor standards are low and manufacturing jobs are “low skilled.”

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Yeah totally agree - which should make workers movements that prioritize wins for all American workers the goal. Child care / education systems that work / health care coverage that works - helps the 8% rugged manufacturing as well as like 50% of the active work force. Vs. bringing back high labor work / low skill - which if we pull it off would mean I what? 2-4% expansion of those industries? So…. 12% of the workforce would be prioritized? (as they expand those sectors).

Internal manufacturing to secure specific interests makes sense. (Medical supplies like during COVID or reduction of reliance from certain super powers sure.

But the current admin is at odds with financing sectors or even stimulating or supporting sectors with policy (it’s actively cutting and damaging policy in them) while also slamming tariffs across the very same sectors.

So it makes no sense. But that’s what I figured going into all this. We are reducing class mobility, while reducing health and safety, with every policy and cut. While increasing the debt simultaneously. It’s wild.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Anyone with a billion dollars should be taxed at 110%

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago (4 children)

I hate that people will argue that highly taxing billionaires is disciplining success. Really? In what way? At what point is the success of their brand, product, or company no longer really theirs? When you're a megacorp with hundreds of thousands of employees what about the success they are producing? It's preposterous to keep holding these oligarchs up on a pedestal and continuing to pretend that they add any real benefit to anything other than the optics their PR people invent for them.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago

Also, define success. Please, seriously, just do.

Billionaires have failed as humans. They are complete failures. Zero respect for them or their means of money grabbing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Agreed. Also, billionaires like Musk would still be able to skirt around those taxes by sharing his wealth with his 50 children and baby mamas so it wouldn't even hurt him, it would just limit how much power a single person could have.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Entertainment IP creators like Taylor Swift and JK Rowling is mainly down to their success.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah, but I would say that is the outlier not the norm. Though, I'm arguing success not talent. At what point has your talent gotten you x amount of fame and fortune and at what point do you not 100% own that success? In both cases, Taylor and JK have an entire crew around them. Makeup Artists, PR people, media personalities, photographers, managers, band members, roadies, and so on and so forth. At what point is a CEO or even a self starter not really 100% owning what the company, product, or persona is? At what point is it down to thousands if not millions of people holding you up? I just think it is something that no economy has ever really determined. It takes a village whether it is fans, consumers, family, friends, coworkers, associates or whatever to build something that can be considered great. I just feel like there's a point where a person really needs to step away and say that it is no longer just MINE anymore, but I'm not greedy either.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

At what point is it down to thousands if not millions of people holding you up?

I agree with your broader point. For example, Warren Buffet has not done $150bn of work.

Swift and Rowling do have support to make their pie grow much larger than 1bn, but I chose those billionaires because without their contribution there would be no pie at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Imagine if the doctor who invented the vaccine for polio demanded a billion dollars. Everyone would be rightfully disgusted even though it was one of the most valuable contributions to humanity of all time. The polio vaccine has saved our country trillions.

Now why is a singer entitled to billions if a vaccine scientists aren't? No one needs or deserves billions. No one.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Not here to argue comparative renumeration.

My point is that there are some individuals are directly worth +1bn. 10 million people paid much more than $100 to see Swift's last tour. That's objective fact, not subjective opinion.

I would certainly join 1bn other people to give the polio vaccine inventor $1.

[+] [email protected] -10 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I never understood what you guys mean when you say they should be taxed more. Like.. they are taxed for their income under the same laws you are?

Billionaires are not literally sitting atop a pile of a billion dollars in cash. Their "wealth" is unrealised, which means it's the net worth of assets that they haven't cashed in. In most cases they can't cash in their wealth in even if they wanted. How will you tax them on money they just don't have?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Tax them on loans against those assets. If they can spend it, it's fucking income. Enough bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Fair enough.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Regardless of their wealth being in M1, M2, or M3, it is wealth taken off the backs of the working class and given to the hands of a few people. Taxing it is the most conservative approach to giving it back to the people who actually created that wealth; it's a solution that works within the existing political system.

Money itself is an abstraction for wealth. Sometimes, it can be a useful one. But take the abstraction away and think about the stuff it actually represents. Taxing that "unrealized wealth" may reduce GDP in a technical sense, but GDP is an abstraction built on an abstraction. Constantly rising GDP is not a good end goal in itself. Ensuring that everyone has their basic needs met is a much better one.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Lots of big words but nothing of value. Answer the question buddy, how will you tax people on money they don't have?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

They will sell it.

That's why I say it's going to cause a drop in GDP, but that's only a problem if you hold tightly to the abstraction.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It won't be just a "drop in GDP". It will be investments falling apart, industries closing down, credit getting scarce, unemployment, misery, destitution and death.

Money is a very real driver of the world. It is also the realest manifestation of wealth. Only a fool would call it an abstraction.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

What else would it be but an abstraction? As I said, it's sometimes a useful one, but it's an abstraction. It's not dirt or concrete or computer chips or food.

Maybe we shouldn't build a whole society around an abstraction like that?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

I feel you, and that's a problem because if you want to tax a billionaires "unrealized" profits, you probably also have to tax some poor shmuck's unrealized 401k profits when they have like 100k stashed away. I'd be cool with higher consumption/sales taxes for ultra rich person items: third or fourth homes, property in the "x" percentile of value above the average, luxury items like yachts or Ferraris. Theres a whole world of solutions, if only we could get the the politicians to enact them.

Or hell, just make them sell their stocks and pay tax on unrealized profits for anyone above like "x" millions. They'll be fine at the end of the day, and it'll dilute their corporate ownership once the company gets too big anyways.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I have a significant 401k savings. If it means building a society that takes care of people's needs better--including my own when I'm too old to work--then I'm totally fine throwing that away. Edit: to add, it gets me to where I wanted to be with a 401k, but by a different route that works for more people.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Are luxury items not already taxed more? AFAIK they are in most countries.

Or hell, just make them sell their stocks and pay tax for unrealized profits for anyone above like “x” millions.

That will tank the share market, close down industries and cause even more unemployment and widespread misery.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

bUt ThE jOb CrEaToRs

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Honestly, if they are, then I'm. It rich enough to have heard about it--in the US at least.

How would making a CEO sell their stock crash market prices? If anything, it would just moderate values slightly by increasing supply. Who says this stock market system is the right system anyways? If dethroning assholes like Musk crashes the system, then we need to modify our system.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Investors put money on ventures and industries precisely to build wealth. If they are to be forced to divest at any point, they won't be interested in investing at all. Credit will dry up, overall liquidity will fall. Recession.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Or maybe they'll just have to invest in a diverse group of assets like how mutual funds are already setup?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Or in their own workforce or making their products cheaper for consumers? The money doesn't just exist in a stock market/tax vacuum.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Anyone that thinks these fascists running the country want to go back to the 1950s hasn’t been paying attention. They want to go back to 1850s, when women and minorities were second class citizens or not citizens at all and white Anglo Saxon Christian men ran everything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

They want to go back to a past that doesn't exist except in their minds.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Ronald Reagon and his trickle-down economics.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Yes, but don't forget that liberals had many many chances to undo the damage Republicans did but they never would. Why? Because liberals are capitalists and capitalist politicians ultimately serve the capital class first and foremost

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

And the 50s were a horrible time for women!!

/r/50501 Mirror