Trickle down never worked, this is end game capitalism, something else needs to be added to this mix to fix this mess.
Capitalism naturally ends up in this position. That’s why it’s so hard to “fix” – to those at the top, nothing is wrong.
Exactly, capitalism is economic perpetual motion, you can’t have exponential growth in a finite system.
I might be wrong, but I think you mean infinite growth in a finite system.
You can have exponential growth in a finite system can’t you? As exponential is just that it gets faster and faster compared to linearly increasing variables.
I guess at some point growth has to stop being exponential in a finite system, but the same can be argued for linear growth I think.
Exactly. Capitalism is, ultimately, a variant of the Pirate Game, which has some spectacularly unintuitive results.
But those regulations are constantly labeled as “anticapitalist” – because they are.
Why is it so wrong to poke at the inner workings of capitalism? Why must it be infallible?
Trickle down didn’t work in the 1980’s or anytime after that.
Trickle down did work in the 1940’s, 1950’s, and most of the 1960’s, it just wasn’t called “trickle down” at that time.
The difference was a punitively high tax rate that nobody actually paid, because they found better ways to spend their excess revenue than simply giving it to Uncle Sam.
It turns out that when the richest among us are forced to spend instead of lend, the rest of us finally start to earn fair wages.
Well, that’s not really “trickle down” as championed by Reagan, that’s more “use it or lose it”. He wanted to reduce those crazy high tax rates to give the rich the choice of whether to keep the money for later or to spend it now, with “trickle down” being the phrase to tell people that it’s fine, it’ll make it’s way out to everyone else… eventually?
People of color were certainly repressed during this time frame, but not because of punitive tax rates on the highest incomes.
I can’t think of any mechanism wherein people of color in the 1940s through the mid 1960s would have been better off if rich people were taxed lower. So, I would have to disagree with your assessment: The confiscatory top-tier tax rate did, indeed, benefit people of color, just not nearly enough to offset the harms of legislated segregation and institutional racism.
something else needs to be added to this mix to fix this mess
Could Universal Basic Income play a role in this?
Band aid solution. The system remains unchanged. The billionaires still make their profits off of the backs of you and me.
UBI wouldn’t aim to get rid of billionaires since they would also receive payments. But it would help get rid of poverty, no?
There was a “this day in history” tidbit a day or two because it was the anniversary of the last guillotine execution.
Well there was this guy called Karl Marx, who tried to suggest solutions to the problems of capitalism.
…but I hear he’s not trending these days. Wrong kind of people liked his stuff.
Actually socialism is more popular now than ever. Enough that mainstream media constantly writes scare articles about how socialist the young generations are.
“Socialism” in the form of government regulations and healthcare is popular. Not so much Marxism or proleterian revolution
Socialism isn’t, but “SociALiSm” is.
Taxing people and providing social services is not Socialism. It’s capitalism and good governance.
This is where it’s time to revisit why and how the economy fared so well in the USA when high top marginal tax rates incentivized top earners (and business owners) to spend on things that got them something when the alternative was paying 90% on money above the line to be in that bracket.
When that money was spent on higher wages or hiring more people or funding pensions or on research & development, the result was growth and a prosperous middle class. The super-wealthy were still super-wealthy, the major difference was that high top marginal tax rates created incentives for them to spend their money in ways that actually did trickle down
surges
Forgive me if I wait for changes before believing anything is happening. Shit surged a long time ago.
Covid facilitated the greatest transfer of wealth from the masses to the few in human history.
Let’s set aside all moral debates about freedom, punishing prosperity, blah blah blah.
There is one very simple and practical reason to tax the rich:
because that’s where all the money is
74% of it, in fact, concentrated into the hands of the wealthiest 10% of Americans.
If we don’t tax the rich, they will only continue to get richer while everybody else gets poorer and the economy continues to fall apart as we print more and more money to keep everybody paid and it all gets vacuumed up to the top.
Conversely there is one simple reason why politicians who hope to get re-elected will never tax the rich.
Because that is where all the money is
Get the special interests and money out of politics and we may have a chance of taxing them.
And the people who don’t have any money keep voting for the people who are the worst about this
We’re seeing so many economic problems being caused too much wealth being concentrated. Supply side economics was a stupid idea from the outset, but now we’re in the supply side economics endgame.
The wealthy are using that wealth to make products no one needs while people are struggling to afford the things they actually do need. $3500 for Apple goggles? We don’t need that and couldn’t afford it if we did. How about yet another streaming service? Don’t need it, can’t afford it. Maybe some VR goggles the you can use to go into a virtual world where you’re a legless cartoon character? We’ll rename the company after this new product, that’ll get people to buy it for sure!
Well shit, it seems the wealthy have so much money, they don’t have anywhere to put it. Doesn’t seem like enough people are buying the products they develop with that wealth, so what can they invest that money in? I know, maybe they should put it into real estate! Great, now ordinary people can’t afford a place to live. Yay, supply side economics is working great!
Isn’t the usefulness of ventures rewarded or not by the efficient market? I really like VR. An emerging market like that is bound to have some design dead ends and wasted money.
