The whole premise of this article if false. Poverty doesn't produce crime, crime produces poverty. Thomas Sowell discussed this in detail. He destroys commie drivel wherever it rears its ugly head.
Took a while but we finally have an insane Fox News old-timer complaining that taxing the mega rich is "commie drivel". Tell us about Saint Reagan who defeated communism and how your dad was a manly man who pulled himself up by the bootstraps without the help of Big Gubmint.
Liu, I've read a number of your posts here and your message is always the same: sarcasm, denigration, name calling...and damned little of substance. Please upgrade your posts to contribute to the article's message. Agree, disagree...but provide substance to the discussion.
I'm not going to divert brain power to writing a lengthy reasoned response to some geriatric whose brain ossified decades ago and whose only contribution is some reductive cliche we've all heard about ninety billion times. There are multiple online cesspools where types like that can go to circle jerk. The most efficient response to that sort of "drivel" is just to dunk on them so they slink away. It's a waste of time arguing in good faith. Just put them out to pasture.
I'll give Liu some credit; she does seem to respond to substance with substance.
Hackneyed right-wing talking points, on the other hand, she definitely replies to in a denigrating manner. John Stamp implying Tara's interview with Collins is "commie drivel" is setting the bar fairly low.
Agree on the "commie drivel" crack. Perhaps some of these folks can try an upgraded and more respectful post. This topic is certainly worthy of thought.
Well, I can take a stab at upgrading. John Stamp missed the point of the article, which isn't that "poverty produces crime" (lack of decent-paying jobs creates both poverty and crime, but that's a separate issue).
The point of the article is that runaway wealth inequality starts to look pretty dystopian and oligarchic pretty quickly. There were a few decades from the 50s through the 70s where inequality was being successfully mitigated, but now inequality is regressing back to the bad old days of feudalism and mass exploitation that made Karl Marx look at society and say "we have to be able to do better than THIS".
Conservatives love to harp on what Marx got wrong (and he got a LOT wrong), but they don't like talking about the kind of society he was living in (newly capitalist and MASSIVELY inequitable), and why it led him to think capitalism was unsalvageable.
Useful comment. You and I could have some interesting discussions, Miles. And that is what I hope for here at Tara's site. Economically and politically, Tara is quite dissimilar to by business-ownership background and political inclinations. But she does aspire, I think, to providing context for debate.
Youth is another word for inexperience. I believed a lot of leftist junk when I was young. I had time to get wise. Unfortunately for you, by the time you realize you supported the ideology that destroyed your future it will be too late. You'll have a permanent jackboot on your neck.
Haha. Jackboot on my neck, that's a classic. You're a dime a dozen, you tried and failed. Step aside and stop ruining society even more than you have gramps.
I'll agree that poverty in Detroit alone isn't because of income inequality - there are other complex factors in play - some politically incorrect. But dynastic wealth, and the increased concentration of resources in the hands of a fewer families isn't good. The capital becomes less dynamic in this situation - which hurts society. And as many of the children/grandchildren in these dynastic families are not as talented or as bright as their forefathers (regression towards mean phenomenon) - power starts going into the hands of more mediocre people. This winner take all economy is also disturbing. One chinese-canadian started an online crypto company about FOUR years ago - and is now worth about 100 Billion USD. How is that normal or good? https://www.9news.com.au/world/changpeng-cz-zhao-crypto-ceo-becomes-one-of-the-worlds-richest-billionaires/5a25a649-1220-4ea8-9526-7ac55bd9dc86
I am a conservative, but I have no membership in any political party.
I became a conservative after some decades of passing through socialist political life, but became concerned along that way that socialism was no answer to solving the ills of our societies and economies because, among other things, it did not change human nature and had too much prior baggage.
I found that socialism, at least in Canada and other places I knew, also subsumed within its zeitgiest or the thinking patterns of its adherents, an admiration of "experts" (like Fauci, for example), such as well-educated and trained specialists in sciences and pseudo-sciences (such as psychology, sociology, etc.) whose opinions, ideas and proposed policies were sacrosanct and so far above the 'ignorance' of the "masses" that deviation from that collection of opinions, ideas and policies was not only heretical, but not to be tolerated and allowed. Democracy, free speech, freedom of thought, etc. were not cherished or valued.
Socialism merely substituted another way to govern the means of production and the redistribution of money and wealth that was as corrupt and flawed as the system dominated by the owners of the vast wealth derived from the benefits inheritance, or of monoploy capitalism as described in this interview.
Once the so-called workers became the wielders of power, they became as corrupt, autocratic, fascistic and arrogant, tribalistic and intolerant of ideas, and the people that held those ideas, that did not accord with their own ideological predelictions or dogmas, as today's Wokeists or as the aristocracies and the dominant religious powers of past centuries, such as the RC Church.
What disturbs me about Mr. Collins exposition is to be found in this statement: "If you don’t have broad worker ownership or a real stakeholder society where others share, then you do have to redistribute." If I have ever heard such an idea once, I have heard it hundreds of times.
As well, as I've read, real, competitive capitalism, might be tolerable, but who is to decide and judge what is or is not "competitive capitalism". It cannot be the politicians and their hand-servants in the bureaucracies, for their record heretofore is not envious or admirable. So what are we really talking about?
I wonder if you have abandoned the dogmas and thinking patterns you learned in your earlier years. I certainly have. I do not know you Ms. Henley, so I cannot be certain of that.
All -ism systems are corrupt because they exclude competition and opposition in their hard core form. Communism and Socialism are just as bad as Wokism, Fascism and Capitalism when pushed to the extreme. Competition, Freedom of thought and expression, and Civil Liberties for all should be celebrated and promoted.
You lost me at "I am a conservative". Do you really think the words "conservative" & "liberal" still define 2 homogeneous groups? Do you wear dull-colored clothing?
"Once the so-called workers became the wielders of power, they became as corrupt, autocratic, fascistic and arrogant, tribalistic and intolerant of ideas"
I would say it's more pseudo-workers than actual workers.
Most revolutions and political upheaval in history has been the battle of the 2% vs. the 1%. The Bolsheviks were all pretty well off, especially by Russian standards, but they didn't have the kind of fuck-you wealth the Tsar had. So they just "self-identified" as the representatives of the proletariat, and seized power for themselves. The actual proles didn't see any benefit; they just saw one cartel of exploiters swapped out for another.
Moderately rich people always resent insanely rich people (case in point: bougie progressives hating on Trump). Sometimes, some good can come of this; Magna Carta was a reform pushed by the general nobility (earls, dukes, etc.) to rein in the power of the King over their lives, and that concept of power limitations eventually trickled down and benefited the rest of society.
More often than not though, socialism is just a power-play by those ALMOST at the top of society, that benefits nobody outside of their own caste (in this case, the Professional-Managerial Class).
Yes, you are correct. The Senior Managerial Class largely abandoned us during the Pandemic by hyping the Covid "cases" as opposed to deaths in the main stream media. Many large law firms have also taken retainers from the Trudeau government to litigate against us with respect to Charter Rights/Bill of Rights... and forced vaccination. Turkey and Israel are now on to fourth and fifth doses to update their "passports". Good legal help is needed.
Via "The Scroll", published daily for free by Tablet Magazine(which you should check out as it may arguably be one of the very best magazines today)....this excerpt from the link below:
"There’s a bipartisan effort by members of Congress to get rich by trading stocks while in office, often in sectors directly affected by pending legislation. In 2021, 105 sitting members of Congress conducted more than 3,500 stock transactions worth an estimated $290 million, according to a report compiled by the website Unusual Whales, which tracks high-volume transactions in the financial markets. Last month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the practice, telling reporters, “We’re a free market economy,” and saying that federal lawmakers “should be able to participate in that.” Pelosi’s statement followed a report from the publication Insider that found 52 lawmakers and 182 senior congressional staffers had violated the Obama-era STOCK Act designed to prevent insider trading and conflicts of interest......"
Getting a bit nervous. I thought this platform was going to be balanced and look especially at the sudden political emergence of critical theory and its various manifestations including cancel culture and wokeism. I know it’s early days, but this is beginning to feel like just another left-leaning echo chamber.
If it helps, I've heard Jordan Peterson make the same argument on Joe Rogan's podcast; that too much inequality destabilizes society and encourages "nothing-to-lose" revolutionaries.
Thanks for that, Mike’s. I think JP does does a great job of trying to strike a balance view on the issue of inequality. Aiming for equality of outcome is obviously nonsense. But he recognizes that excessive inequality is destabilizing and potentially destructive.
We all know that we presently have a serious income inequality issue. This is obviously simplistic, but the mantra on the left seems to be “tax the rich”. That may well be the solution to the problem, but I doubt it.
It would be great to hear about other potential solutions (or mix of solutions) to the problem. Can we learn anything from the 1950s and 1960s when income inequality was at it’s lowest?
Well, tax rates WERE much higher post-WWII; they only started getting cut way back down in the Reagan era, and never went back up to those levels.
Tax the rich is a big part of it, but also, college has been sold as a false panacea to poverty. Young people take out massive loans to get degrees that don't really improve their job prospects, so they're stuck trying to pay them off while working at Starbucks.
Trades have been stigmatized as "low-class" jobs, even though a journeyman certificate is a far better career booster than a gender studies degree.
"Tax the rich, get the poor into trades" would do a great job of solving inequality. Then layer in repatriating supply chains back away from overseas sweatshops, and we'd be in good shape.
Thomas Piketty explained and documented in his 2014 book, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," how and why capitalism inexorably produces increasingly extreme inequality of wealth unless it is regulated and taxed or periodically disrupted by destructive wars and/or revolutions. (We now know that pandemics seem to have the opposite effects.) It seems to me that we may soon be testing the upper limit on wealth inequality. It may be that limiting factor will turn out to be resulting war or revolution. We'd be wiser if we tried some regulation and taxation before we get to that point, but it seems that the greater the inequality, the less chance we will have to try those methods.
Do you actually think people don't understand that basic concept? Do you think some get the warm & fuzzies because Peterson said it. Just listen to your specious choice of words "TOO MUCH inequality". Gee, is TOO MUCH of anything a good thing? Let's ask Mae West?
"Do you actually think people don't understand that basic concept?"
Yes, they're called libertarians.
"Do you think some get the warm & fuzzies because Peterson said it."
Yes, they're the people complaining that Tara's substack is a woke echo chamber. If Trump says 2+2=4, they'll believe it, but if Biden says 2+2=4, they'll say it's a liberal hoax.
So, you'll just pass on the specious use of the modifier "TOO MUCH". Typical of you. Words are a toy. They mean nothing. Slip one here. Slip one there. Yawn.
I know exactly what it means. You specialize in it. But, good job changing the subject away from your meaningless choice of words and jumping to pretending to have a unique grasp of the language. Laughable.
I don't see this as a left leaning echo chamber. Having opposing views is great. In reading the comments below, I find a very lively conversation with views from all across the spectrum which is great to see. Not very many places where well stated views are being shared.
Hi James. I was thinking more of the content itself: Tara’s guests and their views. I’m hoping that we will see a mix of interviewees with different perspectives and focus more on the complex and dangerous phenomenon of politicization of Critical Theory, which was how this new platform was presented.
I can pretty much guarantee Tara won't be drinking the MAGA Koolaid anytime in the next 30 days, so no need to check back. Maybe you could check in on what the term "cognitive dissonance" means instead; you tend to just throw buzzwords around in a context that makes it clear you don't actually understand what they mean.
That doesn't matter because these right wingers have been propagandized to for years that the left is basically a bunch of communists who want to destroy America and woke, critical theory, socialist, etc. are all the same thing. They're all commies who want to turn boys into girls and want to take all their money and throw them in prison.
This is not far off from what a huge voting block of old men sitting in la z boys watching Fox News believe. That is not to say it's worse than the hysterical liberals who watch MSNBC religiously.
Great interview. IMO you are hitting on a very important topic. Is it a huge issue, Yes. We need to be very careful here not to create a new enemy “Evil Rich People”. Is the increasing wealth divide the root cause. I don’t think so. We need to think deeper. I believe it is our monetary system and human nature that is causing this. This problem has manifested over many decades. We are at a critical state in our history and a significant change is required. Taxing the wealthy I don’t think will work. Making the economic system fair for everyone and immutable to change? Now there’s an interesting idea. I don’t have the answer, but if we keep working together we can find it.
Through the last four decades, we have UN-taxed the wealthy, we have UN-taxed the corporations. This UN-taxation has widened the divide between rich and poor and destroyed the middle class.
So rather the narrative should be, re-establish proper just taxation, and eliminate fiscal hideaways.
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
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.
There is nothing socialist about "woke", that's the entire left critique of woke politics. This is utter Alex Jones nonsense where you just connect a bunch of bad words together on corkboard with yarn without knowing the meanings of any of the words.
Exactly. The Liberal Party has never been truly "left", they are just woke capitalists. As for the NDP, they abandoned criticism of capitalism under right-winger Mulcair. Why the NDP ever hired him I'll never understand.
I'd have less problem with "big" business if the concepts of "corporation" and "LLC" existed. Shareholding is the worst ever invention with capitalism.
You should learn what those words mean. You have this our side good-their side bad Manichean child's picture of the world. That's how you can throw a bunch of random left-coded labels in the same basket and think of it has an undifferentiated evil. Pick up a book once in a while and stop embarassing yourself.
Interesting read, however a key point not raised in this interview is the US estate tax laws. The highest impact is the law that allows the estate to pass stock shares to beneficiaries WITHOUT pay and tax on the increase in value since the original purchase. What this means is Bezos' estate will pass 100% of wealth of Amazon shares to his kids without paying any tax. The price of the stock is adjusted to the "new owner" to reflect the price at the time the estate was settled. An example of this is Bezos buys Amazon stock option at $100. When he dies and stock is transferred to his kids, the value is reset at $1,000 (assuming this is stock price at the time) for the new owner and NO income tax is paid on the capital gain of $900 per share. This allows for 100% of wealth transfer intergenerationally with no taxes paid. The beneficiary will have to pay capital gains tax on the stock only when they sell it and their cost is $1,000, not the original value of $100.
Rich Republicans managed to get poor voters to support slashing the dreaded "death taxes", even though poor voters are never going to have to worry about estate taxes kicking in on what inheritance they're able to scrape together and leave behind.
To paraphrase John Steinbeck, poor Republican voters don't see themselves as an exploited working class, they see themselves as temporarily cash-strapped millionaires.
There's having a future, and then there's expecting to catapault from rags to riches any day now, so better vote against taxing the rich in preparation for the day the catapault kicks in.
You ARE so full of it. You link to a CARTOON written by a hard-core "liberal" / "progressive" / whateverhewantstobecalled to pretend to exemplify the feelings of "poor republican voters" (your own words).
You are SO full of it.
Propaganda about propaganda. Bring on the Entergandament!
Dear Tara. It is a good interview. But we have all already been reading these cranky American Liberals. It would be really great to speak with cranky Canadian leftists. Please consider.
People who talk about the super rich never understand the situation.
The United States has a private central bank. It has loaned out 30 trillion dollars to the US government. It doesn't have 30 trillion dollars.
The US national debt doubles every 8 years regardless of who is president, and it's done this since 1971 - when the US left the gold standard. It was 398 billion dollars in 1971. I'll leave the calculation up to you. Actually, I won't because nobody will do it:
1971 398 billion
1979 796 billion
1987 1.592 trillion
1995 3.184 trillion
2003 6.368 trillion
2011 12.736 trillion
2019 25.472 trillion
2027 50.944 trillion
2035 101.888 trillion
Our debt is right this second: $29.8 trillion - https://usdebtclock.org/ - there are SLIGHT variations, but on average, doubles every 8 years. You can see how closely with today's current debt in early 2021.
You want to find out who the REALLY rich are? Find out who owns the unaudited Federal Reserve. Be careful though, they are the world's most powerful mafia. They fund what they want to do, and do not fund what they want to kill and they have unlimited resources because they are literally the bank - they make money at will.
Material inequality is a fact of human existence and as long as it does not become excessive, it is probably healthy for society's evolution as it motivates growth. Extreme wealth is quite another matter and those engaged in various strategies to hide it do not have society's best interests in mind. Our current political system's dependence on power derived from wealth is the primary reasons for the prolongation of the lack of redress. I don't see any substantive change on the horizon until a critical mass of informed voters demand systemic change. Ridding ourselves of a Party System would be a good place to start. I strongly suspect that are more places to hide and minimize corruption within the Party System then there are within the castle walls of the wealthy.
I think she'll come around; male sex offenders in women's prisons has been a seriously underreported issue in Canada, so Tara could be one of the first to really dig into it.
That, and the new "conversion therapy" ban in Canada could limit doctors from properly assessing youth who claim to be trans, before putting them through the hormone/blocker pipeline to what Abigail Shrier calls "irreversible damage"
If you ever follow up on this topic, I'd be curious if you could address inequality vs. absolute poverty. Clearly the standard of living of poor Canadians is today is well above the standard of living of e.g. a middle class person two centuries ago.
Presumably no one would advocate for a solution where e.g. a tyrant takes action to lower everyone's standard of living to that of the poorest member of society. I'd be curious if someone could address why inequality matters more than people having their material needs met, and if there's a "tipping point" where the normally tolerated inequality becomes intolerable.
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.
The article provides you with some answers to your question.
Two quotes from the article:
"When you play this out into the future, we’re looking at families with huge amounts of wealth that they use to influence political systems, acquire media, shape the culture, lobby for law changes or, more often, particularly in the U.S., block meaningful change. So, it threatens democracy."
"In some ways it’s a stuck conversation because people line up politically. … Some people see it as a threat to free-market capitalism. And this is one way I’ve tried to bring my own upbringing in. I say, “Look, this system is bad for everybody, including the wealthy.” It undermines the stability in our societies, it fuels polarization. It doesn’t help healthy capitalism to have great monopolies of power and wealth that distort the functioning of an economy. It doesn’t help commerce, small businesses. … These inequalities really undermine everything we care about. It’s keeping us from responding in a nimble and appropriate way to the threats around us, whether it’s a pandemic or global climate disruption. Inequality is bad for democracy, bad for the economy, bad for civic life, and bad for your health."
Thanks for this. Yeah, it intuitively makes sense that inequality in our own society leads to issues. I was curious more broadly about how you define inequality in a universal and rigorous way that's not just rooted in envy. Clearly, for example, we care relatively little about the inequality between Canada and e.g. Cameroon, even though that's a much more severe inequality than the inequality within Canada. So I was curious if there's any scholars that have looked at this from a more philosophical standpoint rather than focusing on a particular society.
Yeah but taxing billionaires is wrong because they deserve it. And it's a slippery slope. First you tax billionaires, and then everyone is in poverty because you're a communist!
You say this sarcastically as though there weren't many societies in living memory that destroyed their productive capacity and oppressed their own people in the ostensible pursuit of equality.
I don't think it's a trivial philosophy question. If inequality is in itself undesirable the fastest way to eliminate it would be to bring people whose standards of living are above the median to the median. Most people would probably be okay with that only to a point.
Globally, a net worth of about $90,000 is enough for a household to be wealthier than 90 percent of all other households. But we never talk about how a family in Timmins isn't paying their fair share because they're richer than almost everyone else on the planet.
I'm not trying to apologize for the rich, just saying the answer is more complicated than "make everyone pay their fair share." Who is everyone, and what is fair?
I think politicians will talk about fair. The rest of us just want to see fair-er. These blogs are popping up because so many educated people can sense that our systems are out of whack with basic economic principles. The wealthiest keep amassing money while countries are stuck in austerity mode. We can't be afraid of pursuing fair-er simply because there might possibly be negative repercussions for the rich down the road. These systems are in constant flux and from time-to-time need intervention. The Rococo ended with the French Revolution; the Gilded Age ended with mass unionization and labour laws. There are lots of examples in history where interventions (both peaceful and violent) have corrected similar imbalances. I think most of us want a peaceful solution while we still have the choice.
First you have to tax billionaires at a fair tax rate. Buffett on average pays $15M a year in taxes. As he says, my accountants follow all the tax laws. The issue is the tax laws are written to benefit the rich. Suggest you read up on the SALT (State and Local tax) tax deduction that the Democrats built into the BBB bill. It would have generated $268M in new tax deductions for the rich. The GOP under Trump reduced the SALT from no limit to $80K per year max. The Democrats BBB bill raised the deduction to $450K. This is the type of political changes the rich pay lobbyists and politicians for and this is what needs to be addressed.
I'm curious to know your response to Steven Pinker's critique of the inequality question. I find his argument persuasive: that although inequality correlates to the outcomes Richard Wilkinson discusses, the cause may be elsewhere and, more to Pinker's point, inequality means little so long as we end poverty. The main problem with inequality may be with the human propensities toward insufficiency ("why do they get so much when I get so little??") and coveting ("I want it because they have it").
Because the billionaires do not relinquish their wealth readily, plugging the taxation loopholes (which has seemed like a no-brainer to me) may well lead to unintended but terrible outcomes, with the poor worse off. I believe billionaires will go to war before they allow any government to limit their wealth.
Since the root causes are greed and inadequacy, we need to address those to actually solve the problem. These are psychological and spiritual problems; taxation alone cannot solve this meaningfully.
"I believe billionaires will go to war before they allow any government to limit their wealth."
They don't have the numbers to play that game; the poor have far more foot soldiers.
The wealthy will run before they fight - if one country raises their taxes they'll just move to another. That's why any serious attempt to close the loopholes would require international cooperation.
As for Steven Pinker's point, you're right that it boils down to human nature. As I put it in another post, 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. The French Revolution is a case study in what eventually happens when inequality goes unchecked for too long.
I don't believe warfare these days is about foot soldiers, though. I believe it's about controlling the flow of information (which they do). It's also about controlling the government(s) by first controlling the political parties (which they do). So there won't be an actual war -- nor will there be any massive redistribution of wealth without the consent of the billionaires.
But I agree that they would leave if the ruling class starts to turn on them (I just don't foresee that happening).
And I agree with you about the French Revolution. However, lessons from then bear only so much insight on the present given the weaponry, including information, involved in modern warfare.
One thing that's true of both conventional warfare and democracy: numbers matter. Even rich people only get 1 vote at the ballot box.
That said, there are basically 2 ways to get billionaires to swallow some redistribution. One is national emergencies, like WWII when tax rates on the rich went way up, major corporations were co-opted for the war effort, etc.
Another is if billionaires are faced with a choice between agreeing to "tolerable" concessions, or risking an uprising that could cost them way more. Sort of like how Malcolm X made MLK's life much easier, because he could sell his vision of Civil Rights as the less extreme version of reform.
If the mob is outside their front doors with torches and pitchforks, you'd be surprised how quickly billionaires will agree to a wealth tax.
Preeeeetty sure you actually don't agree if you understood his point, which is that the mega-rich within our society are buying up the flow of information and creating a disinformation cartel.
You think the Deep State controls the billionaires; Greg is arguing that the billionaires control the Deep State.
If you replay the suggestion that the pitchfork people are trying to steal the torches, the torch people will eventually go to war with the pitchforks. The billionaires don't need the numbers to play the game. They just need the connections and the relationships.
Even the threat of a Bernie Sanders can be enough to scare some concessions out of the rich. Sadly, Trump ran on "sticking it to the elites" and then as soon as he won started cutting taxes for the rich, so it's important to beware false flags.
A quote from an excellent article published by Politico titled;
The Fed’s Doomsday Prophet Has a Dire Warning About Where We’re Headed.
Thomas Hoenig knew what quantitative easing and record-low interest rates would bring.
"The Fed’s policies encouraged or discouraged things like Wall Street speculation that could lead to ruinous financial crashes.
But it also did more than that — encouraging speculation and rising asset prices also shifts money between the rich and the poor because the rich own the vast majority of assets in the United States. Hoenig was worried that a decade of zero-percent interest rates would have the same effect."
The book to read is Engine of Inequality and the woman to interview is its author, Karen Petrou. It's all about the Federal Reserve and its crazy policies that had many, many evil results. Heightened wealth inequality is one, but not the only. They also include the parasitic cottage industries of private equity, share buybacks, and unchecked financial speculation.
Wealth is *not* being redistributed upwards. New paper or electronic wealth is being minted by ongoing, endless expansion of credit not based on prior savings, while everyone else's wealth is stagnating. The new wealth made this way creates a well-connected class of people with too much money and too much influence, with a vested interest in preserving and extending this system of endless credit inflation.
Much of the inequality of classes is really an inequality of generations. Prior owners of assets have seen what they already own expand greatly in paper value (and they can borrow more against that inflated collateral). Younger folks earn incomes that are not growing fast enough to catch up with the inflation of asset prices (real estate most importantly).
"Old age is a source of ambivalence in the modern world. A lot of contemporary discourse is concerned with various sources of inequality, whether those be racism, sexism, or foreign policy. But perhaps the most pernicious trend of the last 30 years or so has been the shift of wealth from the young to the old. This has been no-one’s fault—no bigotry is involved. It is just the tendency of appreciating assets, real estate especially, to accrue value faster than even a busy person can earn with his labour. But my suspicion is that this is driving as much of the current unrest as the stated grievances. So much seems stacked against the young at the moment. It cannot have escaped their notice that COVID-19, left to its own devices, would have acted at scale as a brutal leveller in this regard. Instead, the young have been asked to gamble their economic future in order to protect the elderly from losing at most a few late, compromised years of fiscally protected retirement. So, it is good, now more than ever, to also be reminded of the value that age can provide.
"I wonder if this too underlies the disquiet I and many have felt about the recent mania for tearing down statues. Few would mourn the odd slaver, unaccountably still honoured in bronze in a city that looks very different to the one that erected him, let alone the one in which he practised his evil trade. But the fear is of zealotry, which can spread and consume like an uncontrolled fire. Being locked indoors and away from inglenook fireplaces and pewter tankards, one feels somewhat adrift, unanchored, and then comes the worrying sense that much of what we love, simply for being mellowed by time, is being summarily dismantled outside our windows while we press our faces to the glass. For many of us those statues carry no more hostile, triumphalist message than this: that we live—all of us—in time."
The wealth tax is not so rare in the US. If you own a house, you pay taxes on the value of the home, every year. It would be fine to have a 0.1% tax on publicly traded stock market assets. That is $1,000 for every $1M.
I'm seeing many "deletions"...some of which were mine. In particular, my deletions were critical of left-wing posts with nothing to say but disparagement. If this is a trend--shooting only selected messengers--the post space will be wasted and subscriptions lost.
The whole premise of this article if false. Poverty doesn't produce crime, crime produces poverty. Thomas Sowell discussed this in detail. He destroys commie drivel wherever it rears its ugly head.
True, the 2008 financial crisis proved that. Lots of rich criminals
Notice that the government refused to prosecute any of them..
Took a while but we finally have an insane Fox News old-timer complaining that taxing the mega rich is "commie drivel". Tell us about Saint Reagan who defeated communism and how your dad was a manly man who pulled himself up by the bootstraps without the help of Big Gubmint.
Liu, I've read a number of your posts here and your message is always the same: sarcasm, denigration, name calling...and damned little of substance. Please upgrade your posts to contribute to the article's message. Agree, disagree...but provide substance to the discussion.
I'm not going to divert brain power to writing a lengthy reasoned response to some geriatric whose brain ossified decades ago and whose only contribution is some reductive cliche we've all heard about ninety billion times. There are multiple online cesspools where types like that can go to circle jerk. The most efficient response to that sort of "drivel" is just to dunk on them so they slink away. It's a waste of time arguing in good faith. Just put them out to pasture.
You can't divert what you haven't got. OTOH, I'm at least as dumb for even bothering to respond to you.
Great, you can do some gardening or spend more time with the grandkids.
:-) You're no dumber than me!
I'll give Liu some credit; she does seem to respond to substance with substance.
Hackneyed right-wing talking points, on the other hand, she definitely replies to in a denigrating manner. John Stamp implying Tara's interview with Collins is "commie drivel" is setting the bar fairly low.
Miles. Liu just clarified her contribution quality.
Agree on the "commie drivel" crack. Perhaps some of these folks can try an upgraded and more respectful post. This topic is certainly worthy of thought.
Well, I can take a stab at upgrading. John Stamp missed the point of the article, which isn't that "poverty produces crime" (lack of decent-paying jobs creates both poverty and crime, but that's a separate issue).
The point of the article is that runaway wealth inequality starts to look pretty dystopian and oligarchic pretty quickly. There were a few decades from the 50s through the 70s where inequality was being successfully mitigated, but now inequality is regressing back to the bad old days of feudalism and mass exploitation that made Karl Marx look at society and say "we have to be able to do better than THIS".
Conservatives love to harp on what Marx got wrong (and he got a LOT wrong), but they don't like talking about the kind of society he was living in (newly capitalist and MASSIVELY inequitable), and why it led him to think capitalism was unsalvageable.
Useful comment. You and I could have some interesting discussions, Miles. And that is what I hope for here at Tara's site. Economically and politically, Tara is quite dissimilar to by business-ownership background and political inclinations. But she does aspire, I think, to providing context for debate.
And yes...we have to be able to better than this.
No problem, but first you tell me how lucky you feel your ancestors were never any of the 60 million who starved to death under Mao.
Watch out, you totally nailed Maoists like me with one sick burn.
Youth is another word for inexperience. I believed a lot of leftist junk when I was young. I had time to get wise. Unfortunately for you, by the time you realize you supported the ideology that destroyed your future it will be too late. You'll have a permanent jackboot on your neck.
Haha. Jackboot on my neck, that's a classic. You're a dime a dozen, you tried and failed. Step aside and stop ruining society even more than you have gramps.
The biggest criminal syndicate is the government. They cause poverty.
I'll agree that poverty in Detroit alone isn't because of income inequality - there are other complex factors in play - some politically incorrect. But dynastic wealth, and the increased concentration of resources in the hands of a fewer families isn't good. The capital becomes less dynamic in this situation - which hurts society. And as many of the children/grandchildren in these dynastic families are not as talented or as bright as their forefathers (regression towards mean phenomenon) - power starts going into the hands of more mediocre people. This winner take all economy is also disturbing. One chinese-canadian started an online crypto company about FOUR years ago - and is now worth about 100 Billion USD. How is that normal or good? https://www.9news.com.au/world/changpeng-cz-zhao-crypto-ceo-becomes-one-of-the-worlds-richest-billionaires/5a25a649-1220-4ea8-9526-7ac55bd9dc86
I am a conservative, but I have no membership in any political party.
I became a conservative after some decades of passing through socialist political life, but became concerned along that way that socialism was no answer to solving the ills of our societies and economies because, among other things, it did not change human nature and had too much prior baggage.
I found that socialism, at least in Canada and other places I knew, also subsumed within its zeitgiest or the thinking patterns of its adherents, an admiration of "experts" (like Fauci, for example), such as well-educated and trained specialists in sciences and pseudo-sciences (such as psychology, sociology, etc.) whose opinions, ideas and proposed policies were sacrosanct and so far above the 'ignorance' of the "masses" that deviation from that collection of opinions, ideas and policies was not only heretical, but not to be tolerated and allowed. Democracy, free speech, freedom of thought, etc. were not cherished or valued.
Socialism merely substituted another way to govern the means of production and the redistribution of money and wealth that was as corrupt and flawed as the system dominated by the owners of the vast wealth derived from the benefits inheritance, or of monoploy capitalism as described in this interview.
Once the so-called workers became the wielders of power, they became as corrupt, autocratic, fascistic and arrogant, tribalistic and intolerant of ideas, and the people that held those ideas, that did not accord with their own ideological predelictions or dogmas, as today's Wokeists or as the aristocracies and the dominant religious powers of past centuries, such as the RC Church.
What disturbs me about Mr. Collins exposition is to be found in this statement: "If you don’t have broad worker ownership or a real stakeholder society where others share, then you do have to redistribute." If I have ever heard such an idea once, I have heard it hundreds of times.
As well, as I've read, real, competitive capitalism, might be tolerable, but who is to decide and judge what is or is not "competitive capitalism". It cannot be the politicians and their hand-servants in the bureaucracies, for their record heretofore is not envious or admirable. So what are we really talking about?
I wonder if you have abandoned the dogmas and thinking patterns you learned in your earlier years. I certainly have. I do not know you Ms. Henley, so I cannot be certain of that.
All -ism systems are corrupt because they exclude competition and opposition in their hard core form. Communism and Socialism are just as bad as Wokism, Fascism and Capitalism when pushed to the extreme. Competition, Freedom of thought and expression, and Civil Liberties for all should be celebrated and promoted.
You lost me at "I am a conservative". Do you really think the words "conservative" & "liberal" still define 2 homogeneous groups? Do you wear dull-colored clothing?
Mr. Anderson, you must get lost a lot. You have no basis for making any assumptions at all. Instead of being snarky, you could ask.
I did ask. There were 2 questions:
Do you really think the words "conservative" & "liberal" still define 2 homogeneous groups?
Do you wear dull-colored clothing?
You didn't answer either one.
"Once the so-called workers became the wielders of power, they became as corrupt, autocratic, fascistic and arrogant, tribalistic and intolerant of ideas"
I would say it's more pseudo-workers than actual workers.
Most revolutions and political upheaval in history has been the battle of the 2% vs. the 1%. The Bolsheviks were all pretty well off, especially by Russian standards, but they didn't have the kind of fuck-you wealth the Tsar had. So they just "self-identified" as the representatives of the proletariat, and seized power for themselves. The actual proles didn't see any benefit; they just saw one cartel of exploiters swapped out for another.
Moderately rich people always resent insanely rich people (case in point: bougie progressives hating on Trump). Sometimes, some good can come of this; Magna Carta was a reform pushed by the general nobility (earls, dukes, etc.) to rein in the power of the King over their lives, and that concept of power limitations eventually trickled down and benefited the rest of society.
More often than not though, socialism is just a power-play by those ALMOST at the top of society, that benefits nobody outside of their own caste (in this case, the Professional-Managerial Class).
Yes, you are correct. The Senior Managerial Class largely abandoned us during the Pandemic by hyping the Covid "cases" as opposed to deaths in the main stream media. Many large law firms have also taken retainers from the Trudeau government to litigate against us with respect to Charter Rights/Bill of Rights... and forced vaccination. Turkey and Israel are now on to fourth and fifth doses to update their "passports". Good legal help is needed.
Worthwhile comment, Miles or miles. I happen to agree with most of what you said.
Via "The Scroll", published daily for free by Tablet Magazine(which you should check out as it may arguably be one of the very best magazines today)....this excerpt from the link below:
"There’s a bipartisan effort by members of Congress to get rich by trading stocks while in office, often in sectors directly affected by pending legislation. In 2021, 105 sitting members of Congress conducted more than 3,500 stock transactions worth an estimated $290 million, according to a report compiled by the website Unusual Whales, which tracks high-volume transactions in the financial markets. Last month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the practice, telling reporters, “We’re a free market economy,” and saying that federal lawmakers “should be able to participate in that.” Pelosi’s statement followed a report from the publication Insider that found 52 lawmakers and 182 senior congressional staffers had violated the Obama-era STOCK Act designed to prevent insider trading and conflicts of interest......"
https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/full
Getting a bit nervous. I thought this platform was going to be balanced and look especially at the sudden political emergence of critical theory and its various manifestations including cancel culture and wokeism. I know it’s early days, but this is beginning to feel like just another left-leaning echo chamber.
If it helps, I've heard Jordan Peterson make the same argument on Joe Rogan's podcast; that too much inequality destabilizes society and encourages "nothing-to-lose" revolutionaries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bq3YrYjG-s
(start at about 4:11)
Thanks for that, Mike’s. I think JP does does a great job of trying to strike a balance view on the issue of inequality. Aiming for equality of outcome is obviously nonsense. But he recognizes that excessive inequality is destabilizing and potentially destructive.
We all know that we presently have a serious income inequality issue. This is obviously simplistic, but the mantra on the left seems to be “tax the rich”. That may well be the solution to the problem, but I doubt it.
It would be great to hear about other potential solutions (or mix of solutions) to the problem. Can we learn anything from the 1950s and 1960s when income inequality was at it’s lowest?
Well, tax rates WERE much higher post-WWII; they only started getting cut way back down in the Reagan era, and never went back up to those levels.
Tax the rich is a big part of it, but also, college has been sold as a false panacea to poverty. Young people take out massive loans to get degrees that don't really improve their job prospects, so they're stuck trying to pay them off while working at Starbucks.
Trades have been stigmatized as "low-class" jobs, even though a journeyman certificate is a far better career booster than a gender studies degree.
"Tax the rich, get the poor into trades" would do a great job of solving inequality. Then layer in repatriating supply chains back away from overseas sweatshops, and we'd be in good shape.
Thomas Piketty explained and documented in his 2014 book, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," how and why capitalism inexorably produces increasingly extreme inequality of wealth unless it is regulated and taxed or periodically disrupted by destructive wars and/or revolutions. (We now know that pandemics seem to have the opposite effects.) It seems to me that we may soon be testing the upper limit on wealth inequality. It may be that limiting factor will turn out to be resulting war or revolution. We'd be wiser if we tried some regulation and taxation before we get to that point, but it seems that the greater the inequality, the less chance we will have to try those methods.
"tax the rich" is not the only mantra on the left for eliminating income inequality. It is not even the #1 mantra.
#1 is use QUOTAS in the work-place in every decision.
#2 is Equal Pay Regardless of Merit.
#3 might be Tax The Rich, but that doesn't actually address INCOME. That addresses wealth, which is a different thing.
#1 driver of income inequality is GLOBALIZATION. You can learn that there was little globalization in the '50s & '60s.
Thanks for your input, Leo.
Do you actually think people don't understand that basic concept? Do you think some get the warm & fuzzies because Peterson said it. Just listen to your specious choice of words "TOO MUCH inequality". Gee, is TOO MUCH of anything a good thing? Let's ask Mae West?
"Do you actually think people don't understand that basic concept?"
Yes, they're called libertarians.
"Do you think some get the warm & fuzzies because Peterson said it."
Yes, they're the people complaining that Tara's substack is a woke echo chamber. If Trump says 2+2=4, they'll believe it, but if Biden says 2+2=4, they'll say it's a liberal hoax.
ps: you don't even understand the #1 focus of "libertarians". Dreadful.
It's a tie between tax cuts and deregulation
Not even close.
So, you'll just pass on the specious use of the modifier "TOO MUCH". Typical of you. Words are a toy. They mean nothing. Slip one here. Slip one there. Yawn.
At this point, I'm not sure you even know what the word "specious" means. You just kind of throw it around like it's a magic spell to own the libs.
but you did say you're "not sure", which is the most honest thing you have said all day, most likely.
I know exactly what it means. You specialize in it. But, good job changing the subject away from your meaningless choice of words and jumping to pretending to have a unique grasp of the language. Laughable.
Lol tax policy doesn't create billionaires. I'm a CPA so this is my wheelhouse; you don't want to get into this discussion.
You said, and I quote, "The wealth divide of the ‘common’ person has a lot to do with the corrupt tax system and that is also by design."
That is just flat out dead-ass wrong.
Identity is the smokescreen that class/wealth is using to obscure itself. One is the dancer, the other the dance. Both have to be discussed......
I don't see this as a left leaning echo chamber. Having opposing views is great. In reading the comments below, I find a very lively conversation with views from all across the spectrum which is great to see. Not very many places where well stated views are being shared.
Hi James. I was thinking more of the content itself: Tara’s guests and their views. I’m hoping that we will see a mix of interviewees with different perspectives and focus more on the complex and dangerous phenomenon of politicization of Critical Theory, which was how this new platform was presented.
there is nothing well-stated in that interview.
I can pretty much guarantee Tara won't be drinking the MAGA Koolaid anytime in the next 30 days, so no need to check back. Maybe you could check in on what the term "cognitive dissonance" means instead; you tend to just throw buzzwords around in a context that makes it clear you don't actually understand what they mean.
That doesn't matter because these right wingers have been propagandized to for years that the left is basically a bunch of communists who want to destroy America and woke, critical theory, socialist, etc. are all the same thing. They're all commies who want to turn boys into girls and want to take all their money and throw them in prison.
Propaganda about propaganda, neat
Thanks Russel, I just used your "Propaganda about propaganda" line above. It is so common these days.
This is not far off from what a huge voting block of old men sitting in la z boys watching Fox News believe. That is not to say it's worse than the hysterical liberals who watch MSNBC religiously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ27GKeUSlA&ab_channel=JT
meh, they can keep the money. Buy ciggies in prison.
Great interview. IMO you are hitting on a very important topic. Is it a huge issue, Yes. We need to be very careful here not to create a new enemy “Evil Rich People”. Is the increasing wealth divide the root cause. I don’t think so. We need to think deeper. I believe it is our monetary system and human nature that is causing this. This problem has manifested over many decades. We are at a critical state in our history and a significant change is required. Taxing the wealthy I don’t think will work. Making the economic system fair for everyone and immutable to change? Now there’s an interesting idea. I don’t have the answer, but if we keep working together we can find it.
Oh, the poor billionaires.
Through the last four decades, we have UN-taxed the wealthy, we have UN-taxed the corporations. This UN-taxation has widened the divide between rich and poor and destroyed the middle class.
So rather the narrative should be, re-establish proper just taxation, and eliminate fiscal hideaways.
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.
There is nothing socialist about "woke", that's the entire left critique of woke politics. This is utter Alex Jones nonsense where you just connect a bunch of bad words together on corkboard with yarn without knowing the meanings of any of the words.
Exactly. The Liberal Party has never been truly "left", they are just woke capitalists. As for the NDP, they abandoned criticism of capitalism under right-winger Mulcair. Why the NDP ever hired him I'll never understand.
The uber rich and the megacorporations, on a per dollar basis, create MUCH LESS employment and public good than small businesses.
define "on a per dollar basis". Per dollar of what?
I'd have less problem with "big" business if the concepts of "corporation" and "LLC" existed. Shareholding is the worst ever invention with capitalism.
Sure, ... as long as you don't tout big business as contributing anything of value to society.
You should learn what those words mean. You have this our side good-their side bad Manichean child's picture of the world. That's how you can throw a bunch of random left-coded labels in the same basket and think of it has an undifferentiated evil. Pick up a book once in a while and stop embarassing yourself.
and that's your right. But it makes you irrelevant to the discussion to how to fix the left.
Same way leftists are irrelevant to fixing the right.
Interesting read, however a key point not raised in this interview is the US estate tax laws. The highest impact is the law that allows the estate to pass stock shares to beneficiaries WITHOUT pay and tax on the increase in value since the original purchase. What this means is Bezos' estate will pass 100% of wealth of Amazon shares to his kids without paying any tax. The price of the stock is adjusted to the "new owner" to reflect the price at the time the estate was settled. An example of this is Bezos buys Amazon stock option at $100. When he dies and stock is transferred to his kids, the value is reset at $1,000 (assuming this is stock price at the time) for the new owner and NO income tax is paid on the capital gain of $900 per share. This allows for 100% of wealth transfer intergenerationally with no taxes paid. The beneficiary will have to pay capital gains tax on the stock only when they sell it and their cost is $1,000, not the original value of $100.
Rich Republicans managed to get poor voters to support slashing the dreaded "death taxes", even though poor voters are never going to have to worry about estate taxes kicking in on what inheritance they're able to scrape together and leave behind.
To paraphrase John Steinbeck, poor Republican voters don't see themselves as an exploited working class, they see themselves as temporarily cash-strapped millionaires.
poor Republican voters see themselves as having a future. poor democrat voters see themselves needing a handout.
There's having a future, and then there's expecting to catapault from rags to riches any day now, so better vote against taxing the rich in preparation for the day the catapault kicks in.
You got it. Ain't optimism grand?
Not when it mutates into delusion.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_LvRPX0rGY&ab_channel=FahQue
You ARE so full of it. You link to a CARTOON written by a hard-core "liberal" / "progressive" / whateverhewantstobecalled to pretend to exemplify the feelings of "poor republican voters" (your own words).
You are SO full of it.
Propaganda about propaganda. Bring on the Entergandament!
Dear Tara. It is a good interview. But we have all already been reading these cranky American Liberals. It would be really great to speak with cranky Canadian leftists. Please consider.
Better stock up on aspirin first.
:D
People who talk about the super rich never understand the situation.
The United States has a private central bank. It has loaned out 30 trillion dollars to the US government. It doesn't have 30 trillion dollars.
The US national debt doubles every 8 years regardless of who is president, and it's done this since 1971 - when the US left the gold standard. It was 398 billion dollars in 1971. I'll leave the calculation up to you. Actually, I won't because nobody will do it:
1971 398 billion
1979 796 billion
1987 1.592 trillion
1995 3.184 trillion
2003 6.368 trillion
2011 12.736 trillion
2019 25.472 trillion
2027 50.944 trillion
2035 101.888 trillion
Our debt is right this second: $29.8 trillion - https://usdebtclock.org/ - there are SLIGHT variations, but on average, doubles every 8 years. You can see how closely with today's current debt in early 2021.
You want to find out who the REALLY rich are? Find out who owns the unaudited Federal Reserve. Be careful though, they are the world's most powerful mafia. They fund what they want to do, and do not fund what they want to kill and they have unlimited resources because they are literally the bank - they make money at will.
Material inequality is a fact of human existence and as long as it does not become excessive, it is probably healthy for society's evolution as it motivates growth. Extreme wealth is quite another matter and those engaged in various strategies to hide it do not have society's best interests in mind. Our current political system's dependence on power derived from wealth is the primary reasons for the prolongation of the lack of redress. I don't see any substantive change on the horizon until a critical mass of informed voters demand systemic change. Ridding ourselves of a Party System would be a good place to start. I strongly suspect that are more places to hide and minimize corruption within the Party System then there are within the castle walls of the wealthy.
Hi Tara - can you please cover why you would rather women no longer be categorized by biology and instead by feeling?
I think she'll come around; male sex offenders in women's prisons has been a seriously underreported issue in Canada, so Tara could be one of the first to really dig into it.
That, and the new "conversion therapy" ban in Canada could limit doctors from properly assessing youth who claim to be trans, before putting them through the hormone/blocker pipeline to what Abigail Shrier calls "irreversible damage"
If you ever follow up on this topic, I'd be curious if you could address inequality vs. absolute poverty. Clearly the standard of living of poor Canadians is today is well above the standard of living of e.g. a middle class person two centuries ago.
Presumably no one would advocate for a solution where e.g. a tyrant takes action to lower everyone's standard of living to that of the poorest member of society. I'd be curious if someone could address why inequality matters more than people having their material needs met, and if there's a "tipping point" where the normally tolerated inequality becomes intolerable.
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.
The article provides you with some answers to your question.
Two quotes from the article:
"When you play this out into the future, we’re looking at families with huge amounts of wealth that they use to influence political systems, acquire media, shape the culture, lobby for law changes or, more often, particularly in the U.S., block meaningful change. So, it threatens democracy."
"In some ways it’s a stuck conversation because people line up politically. … Some people see it as a threat to free-market capitalism. And this is one way I’ve tried to bring my own upbringing in. I say, “Look, this system is bad for everybody, including the wealthy.” It undermines the stability in our societies, it fuels polarization. It doesn’t help healthy capitalism to have great monopolies of power and wealth that distort the functioning of an economy. It doesn’t help commerce, small businesses. … These inequalities really undermine everything we care about. It’s keeping us from responding in a nimble and appropriate way to the threats around us, whether it’s a pandemic or global climate disruption. Inequality is bad for democracy, bad for the economy, bad for civic life, and bad for your health."
Thanks for this. Yeah, it intuitively makes sense that inequality in our own society leads to issues. I was curious more broadly about how you define inequality in a universal and rigorous way that's not just rooted in envy. Clearly, for example, we care relatively little about the inequality between Canada and e.g. Cameroon, even though that's a much more severe inequality than the inequality within Canada. So I was curious if there's any scholars that have looked at this from a more philosophical standpoint rather than focusing on a particular society.
Yeah but taxing billionaires is wrong because they deserve it. And it's a slippery slope. First you tax billionaires, and then everyone is in poverty because you're a communist!
You say this sarcastically as though there weren't many societies in living memory that destroyed their productive capacity and oppressed their own people in the ostensible pursuit of equality.
I don't think it's a trivial philosophy question. If inequality is in itself undesirable the fastest way to eliminate it would be to bring people whose standards of living are above the median to the median. Most people would probably be okay with that only to a point.
Globally, a net worth of about $90,000 is enough for a household to be wealthier than 90 percent of all other households. But we never talk about how a family in Timmins isn't paying their fair share because they're richer than almost everyone else on the planet.
I'm not trying to apologize for the rich, just saying the answer is more complicated than "make everyone pay their fair share." Who is everyone, and what is fair?
I think politicians will talk about fair. The rest of us just want to see fair-er. These blogs are popping up because so many educated people can sense that our systems are out of whack with basic economic principles. The wealthiest keep amassing money while countries are stuck in austerity mode. We can't be afraid of pursuing fair-er simply because there might possibly be negative repercussions for the rich down the road. These systems are in constant flux and from time-to-time need intervention. The Rococo ended with the French Revolution; the Gilded Age ended with mass unionization and labour laws. There are lots of examples in history where interventions (both peaceful and violent) have corrected similar imbalances. I think most of us want a peaceful solution while we still have the choice.
"I'm just asking the question!"
First you have to tax billionaires at a fair tax rate. Buffett on average pays $15M a year in taxes. As he says, my accountants follow all the tax laws. The issue is the tax laws are written to benefit the rich. Suggest you read up on the SALT (State and Local tax) tax deduction that the Democrats built into the BBB bill. It would have generated $268M in new tax deductions for the rich. The GOP under Trump reduced the SALT from no limit to $80K per year max. The Democrats BBB bill raised the deduction to $450K. This is the type of political changes the rich pay lobbyists and politicians for and this is what needs to be addressed.
LMAO
I'm curious to know your response to Steven Pinker's critique of the inequality question. I find his argument persuasive: that although inequality correlates to the outcomes Richard Wilkinson discusses, the cause may be elsewhere and, more to Pinker's point, inequality means little so long as we end poverty. The main problem with inequality may be with the human propensities toward insufficiency ("why do they get so much when I get so little??") and coveting ("I want it because they have it").
Because the billionaires do not relinquish their wealth readily, plugging the taxation loopholes (which has seemed like a no-brainer to me) may well lead to unintended but terrible outcomes, with the poor worse off. I believe billionaires will go to war before they allow any government to limit their wealth.
Since the root causes are greed and inadequacy, we need to address those to actually solve the problem. These are psychological and spiritual problems; taxation alone cannot solve this meaningfully.
"I believe billionaires will go to war before they allow any government to limit their wealth."
They don't have the numbers to play that game; the poor have far more foot soldiers.
The wealthy will run before they fight - if one country raises their taxes they'll just move to another. That's why any serious attempt to close the loopholes would require international cooperation.
As for Steven Pinker's point, you're right that it boils down to human nature. As I put it in another post, 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. The French Revolution is a case study in what eventually happens when inequality goes unchecked for too long.
Good points.
I don't believe warfare these days is about foot soldiers, though. I believe it's about controlling the flow of information (which they do). It's also about controlling the government(s) by first controlling the political parties (which they do). So there won't be an actual war -- nor will there be any massive redistribution of wealth without the consent of the billionaires.
But I agree that they would leave if the ruling class starts to turn on them (I just don't foresee that happening).
And I agree with you about the French Revolution. However, lessons from then bear only so much insight on the present given the weaponry, including information, involved in modern warfare.
One thing that's true of both conventional warfare and democracy: numbers matter. Even rich people only get 1 vote at the ballot box.
That said, there are basically 2 ways to get billionaires to swallow some redistribution. One is national emergencies, like WWII when tax rates on the rich went way up, major corporations were co-opted for the war effort, etc.
Another is if billionaires are faced with a choice between agreeing to "tolerable" concessions, or risking an uprising that could cost them way more. Sort of like how Malcolm X made MLK's life much easier, because he could sell his vision of Civil Rights as the less extreme version of reform.
If the mob is outside their front doors with torches and pitchforks, you'd be surprised how quickly billionaires will agree to a wealth tax.
Preeeeetty sure you actually don't agree if you understood his point, which is that the mega-rich within our society are buying up the flow of information and creating a disinformation cartel.
You think the Deep State controls the billionaires; Greg is arguing that the billionaires control the Deep State.
I've heard Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk called many things, but "Marxist" definitely isn't one of them. Your tinfoil hat is showing again.
If you replay the suggestion that the pitchfork people are trying to steal the torches, the torch people will eventually go to war with the pitchforks. The billionaires don't need the numbers to play the game. They just need the connections and the relationships.
Even the threat of a Bernie Sanders can be enough to scare some concessions out of the rich. Sadly, Trump ran on "sticking it to the elites" and then as soon as he won started cutting taxes for the rich, so it's important to beware false flags.
A quote from an excellent article published by Politico titled;
The Fed’s Doomsday Prophet Has a Dire Warning About Where We’re Headed.
Thomas Hoenig knew what quantitative easing and record-low interest rates would bring.
"The Fed’s policies encouraged or discouraged things like Wall Street speculation that could lead to ruinous financial crashes.
But it also did more than that — encouraging speculation and rising asset prices also shifts money between the rich and the poor because the rich own the vast majority of assets in the United States. Hoenig was worried that a decade of zero-percent interest rates would have the same effect."
The book to read is Engine of Inequality and the woman to interview is its author, Karen Petrou. It's all about the Federal Reserve and its crazy policies that had many, many evil results. Heightened wealth inequality is one, but not the only. They also include the parasitic cottage industries of private equity, share buybacks, and unchecked financial speculation.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/grants-current-yield-podcast/id1207583745?i=1000516453710
https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/karen-petrou-wealth-inequality-fed/
Wealth is *not* being redistributed upwards. New paper or electronic wealth is being minted by ongoing, endless expansion of credit not based on prior savings, while everyone else's wealth is stagnating. The new wealth made this way creates a well-connected class of people with too much money and too much influence, with a vested interest in preserving and extending this system of endless credit inflation.
Much of the inequality of classes is really an inequality of generations. Prior owners of assets have seen what they already own expand greatly in paper value (and they can borrow more against that inflated collateral). Younger folks earn incomes that are not growing fast enough to catch up with the inflation of asset prices (real estate most importantly).
https://quillette.com/2020/07/08/thoughts-on-longevity/
"Old age is a source of ambivalence in the modern world. A lot of contemporary discourse is concerned with various sources of inequality, whether those be racism, sexism, or foreign policy. But perhaps the most pernicious trend of the last 30 years or so has been the shift of wealth from the young to the old. This has been no-one’s fault—no bigotry is involved. It is just the tendency of appreciating assets, real estate especially, to accrue value faster than even a busy person can earn with his labour. But my suspicion is that this is driving as much of the current unrest as the stated grievances. So much seems stacked against the young at the moment. It cannot have escaped their notice that COVID-19, left to its own devices, would have acted at scale as a brutal leveller in this regard. Instead, the young have been asked to gamble their economic future in order to protect the elderly from losing at most a few late, compromised years of fiscally protected retirement. So, it is good, now more than ever, to also be reminded of the value that age can provide.
"I wonder if this too underlies the disquiet I and many have felt about the recent mania for tearing down statues. Few would mourn the odd slaver, unaccountably still honoured in bronze in a city that looks very different to the one that erected him, let alone the one in which he practised his evil trade. But the fear is of zealotry, which can spread and consume like an uncontrolled fire. Being locked indoors and away from inglenook fireplaces and pewter tankards, one feels somewhat adrift, unanchored, and then comes the worrying sense that much of what we love, simply for being mellowed by time, is being summarily dismantled outside our windows while we press our faces to the glass. For many of us those statues carry no more hostile, triumphalist message than this: that we live—all of us—in time."
The wealth tax is not so rare in the US. If you own a house, you pay taxes on the value of the home, every year. It would be fine to have a 0.1% tax on publicly traded stock market assets. That is $1,000 for every $1M.
I'm seeing many "deletions"...some of which were mine. In particular, my deletions were critical of left-wing posts with nothing to say but disparagement. If this is a trend--shooting only selected messengers--the post space will be wasted and subscriptions lost.
Only deletions I've seen were Jewel doing us all a favour and deleting her account.
:-)
Tara. Your desire to demonize the wealthy is evident in your choice of guest. It you bring in a guest with opposing views and expertise, I will have more respect for you are a journalist. I recommend that you try to get Dr. Robert Murphy on your show to discuss the issue of wealth inequality. His personal email is bob.murphy.ancap@gmail.com. Here is his profile. Robert P. Murphy https://g.co/kgs/devr79 His podcast is https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/bob-murphy-show/id1441789978?i=1000547501036