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Yes I agree, but will you fix the root problem causing the inequality? I got the idea from Jeff Booth’s book. “The Price of Tomorrow”. In my opinion he is getting closer to the issue than anyone else I have read. Did this not all begin in Breton Woods? Would love to here what I am missing in my thinking. Thanks.
Yes I agree, but will you fix the root problem causing the inequality? I got the idea from Jeff Booth’s book. “The Price of Tomorrow”. In my opinion he is getting closer to the issue than anyone else I have read. Did this not all begin in Breton Woods? Would love to here what I am missing in my thinking. Thanks.
copying from another thread, but I think it's important to clarify - the goal isn't to end inequality, just to cap it.
There's basically a Goldilocks zone of "just the right amount of inequality" that we need to stay within.
Too little inequality is stifling - the cream can't rise to the top, so to speak.
Too much inequality is destabilizing - the "have-nots" will only tolerate falling so far behind the "haves" before they start warming up to the prospect of redistribution by force.
Yes. And that cap is somewhere between 10x and 100x, within each industry. No one is worth 1000x 10,000x 100,000x 1,000,000x 1,000,000,000x more than their staff.
Me, I rather lean to 10x richer being sufficient incentive to excellence.
Meh, I can see 100x just to run the company. It's insanely difficult to manage an organization of 40,000 people.
Then when you add in being the founder, like an Elon Musk or a Jeff Bezos, they also took the risk of putting up the money to start the company, hire employees, etc.
In addition to incentivizing excellence, it's also important to incentivize risk-taking. So between risk + excellence, I can see a good argument for 1000x
Well, somewhere between 10 and 1000 ;) That would still be a shitload more reasonable than the ridiculous situation we have now.
ALL monopolies must be broken up
ALL tax havens eliminated
END multinationals
RE-establish pre-Reagan/Thatcher taxation levels
You lost me on ending multinationals - there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a business operating in more than one country.
Multinationals escape all environmental and worker regulations. In fact, the only functional capitalism would be a capitalism without share holders, and without multi-national bank accounts. A company can SELL abroad, but a company should be bank and be taxed and hire all within a set geography, otherwise it's not capitalism but tycoonerism.
I don't think it makes sense to say a company can sell overseas, but not hire any employees overseas. Who is McDonalds supposed to get to flip the burgers in India, if all their employees have to reside in North America? Will Big Macs sold in India be cooked here, and then put on a ship to cross the ocean? Do the customers have to line up at the dock to pick up their orders in 5-7 weeks after ordering?
A softer touch can work on environmental & worker regulations; just tarriff any goods that are produced in exploitative regions. Eliminate the financial incentive, and the tycoonerism will die down.
As for multi-national bank accounts, just implement a GAAR tax based on revenue location. That way, a company that sells its product to Canadian customers can't claim to be a Swiss/Cayman corporation for tax purposes, because it won't do them any good.
As for shareholders, it's a necessary evil in order to promote investments/risk taking. Medieval societies tried to ban lending for similar reasons (Islamic countries still do), and it massively constrained innovation and job creation. That said, judges and legislators need to be more willing to pierce the corporate veil. The precedent exists; it's just not used widely enough.
To all the other stuff, meh.
I don't *need* progress. We have progressed too fast and in continuing to go that direction, we're ruining our quality of life on this planet.
In my lifetime the human population has doubled, nay, 2.5x more.
Meanwhile, the environment, air, water, are being destroyed, because the city folk no longer have any idea how nature is supposed to work.
Metro-Boulot-Dodo. City folk are entirely disconnected from any reality, and it's killing the planet.
But when humans disappear, no problem, then the animals, what few are left of em, will do great.
I think we need progress on renewable energy, which will cost money. It's asking a bit much to expect poor people globally to make do without electricity to save some rainforests they've never seen or even heard of.
People expect a certain level of technology in their lives, which means we need to innovate our way to providing it in a non-planet killing manner.
By sell abroad I mean a chair gets built, banked, taxed in one country and gets sold abroad as is.
As for McD, frankly, they only exist by the grace of the subsidised corn industry. They are a disgrace to capitalism and do not merit existence.
But to hypothetically answer:
Any McD abroad should be entirely staffed, banked, taxed, resourced, from their nation. Use of the name can incur a one time fee.
Globalisation is what makes capitalism horrifying.
Were capitalists beholden to the natural limits of their/our nation, it would be much more reasonable.
As it stands, there are TWO sets of rules:
Multinationals get to do whatever the fuck they want anywhere in the world, while the vast majority of people are stuck in countries we don't want to be living in.
So if it's no borders for corporations, then it has to be no borders for people.
I'd rather borders for both.
Just like in sex problems. All solved by applying same rules to both groups, except where necessary.
I think you mean overseas supply chains, rather than overseas sales. Yes, I take issue with that too.
But again, tarriffs can solve that and provide some much needed tax revenues. Oh, Apple wants to build iPhones in China and sell them in Vancouver? We'll allow it, but Apple has to pay an import duty that will cost more than they're saving by using sweatshops.
I'm an accountant, so this might be a biased opinion, but I believe that corporate behaviour should never be changed via law when a tax will accomplish the same objective.