US politics (4 Viewers)

[ann post]

I am possibly part of the problem.
Like shouldn’t we let Paul McCartney be a billionaire though?
Shouldn’t Tiger Woods be one? Oprah? Those Stripe lads.

The scale is the bother to me. at present an Irish household gets by on less than 3.5 million in a lifetime (75 years).

If you had a billion euro, that would leave you 996.5 million Eu in change after you'd taken care of your family for a lifetime at an average level. Thats a lot of times richer than a person needs to be without still being able to have a stupid lifestyle.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Yeah, if people were paying taxes then the billionaire issue wouldn't exist. There's literally nothing you can do that will ever justify it.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

The scale is the bother to me. at present an Irish household gets by on less than 3.5 million in a lifetime (75 years).

If you had a billion euro, that would leave you 996.5 million Eu in change after you'd taken care of your family for a lifetime at an average level. Thats a lot of times richer than a person needs to be without still being able to have a stupid lifestyle.

Yeah, if people were paying taxes then the billionaire issue wouldn't exist. There's literally nothing you can do that will ever justify it.

Well, I know it’s not a popular take, but I think if enough taxes are being paid that we’re keeping people out of poverty, then I think you can get a billion bucks for inventing the Beatles.

Heck, even JK Rowling should have a billion.
People seem to really like those wizard books

 

[Lili Marlene]

Well when enough taxes in the US are being paid to keep people out of poverty you can try out your idea. Seriously, there are few countries, and they're usually war torn, I'd want to be poor in less than the United States. Great place to be rich though!!

JK Rowling, for all her faults, agrees with paying decent taxes and never became a tax exile.

 

[magicbastarder]

what can you do with a billion though? buy five megayachts?

 

[ann post]

what can you do with a billion though? buy five megayachts?

More like 4

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[7 - No tomorrow]

what can you do with a billion though? buy five megayachts?

I think you want multiple billions for that. Like they're $100m+ if you want something decent that won’t embarrass you in front of the other billionaires.

And you wouldn't want to be down to your last half billion.



My boss builds homes, hospitals and hotels. That’s what he does with his.
He's a developer and owns the construction company I work for.
He's got a really nice house. And I think a helicopter?
But all he cares about is building the company.
He's one of these guys that's in here at 4:30am, leaves after dark.
I think we need people like that. Like we need all sorts of people.

You don’t want people in poverty, but you want enough incentive and fairness in the system that people with drive and vision can succeed. Whether they’re writing songs or playing football or building hospitals.

If you work twice as hard, you should have more to show for it.

They tried socialism in the UK in the 60s and 70s and it didn't work. Worse than that, it gave us Thatcher.
Every communist country you can name has failed - or tapped out of the communist model - one size does not fit all.
Rampant capitalism in the US is not working out for those in the bottom tier.

You have to look out for everyone. But you do need a base in your economy containing innovation and dynamism that's going to provide for the society that works for everyone.
And a side effect of that is billionaires. You just want ones that are paying their taxes.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

That's not me lecturing

Just trying to figure out what I think about this

IN REAL TIME!!!!

 

[ann post]

They tried socialism in the UK in the 60s and 70s and it didn't work. Worse than that, it gave us Thatcher.
Every communist country you can name has failed - or tapped out of the communist model - one size does not fit all.

I generally make the argument that communism has never actually be tried, it has been run as a demo on a capitalist planet. It was like running an emulator on something while at the same time someone is using the computer for advanced online gaming. All commie experiments had to interface with capitalist markets to secure resources.

Not that i think it is great or something, I just think it never really happened because it would have to be global or not at all. Capitalism is more in tune with the human drive to compete.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Capitalism is more in tune with the human drive to compete.

That's the nub of it. You can't eliminate competition from the system.
Plus the regimes needed total control to succeed, so you run into this coercion that's ultimately counterproductive. You have to lock up anyone disagreeing with you. Murder them if you have to.
The Chinese seem to be adapting the competitiveness - but I can't tell if it's to make things better for everyone or just to sustain the party and system for the lads running it.
The coercive control is still necessary for them to sustain. You'd be shiteing it in Taiwan if you were watching Hong Kong.

But really I don't know.
What did dynamism and innovation really get us?
From the Spinning Jenny to garment industrialisation to an insatiable need for cheap cotton which led to slavery and the famine which led to Irish nationalism and revolution and independence, which led to the Statute of Westminster, which weakened the UK and allowed for the appeasement of Hitler, which allowed him to seize power, and resulted in WW2 and the Holocaust.

Most of what we've done since the invention of radio, TV and internet is find ways to be stupider and angrier at each other.

So I don't know at all. Maybe the smart lads have fucked everything up ab initio.
Maybe we only pay the artists and the doctors and the carers.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Every communist country you can name has failed - or tapped out of the communist model - one size does not fit all.

Well it's more accurate to say that every communist country you can name that was doing fine has had its leaders murdered in CIA coups and brutal right-wing US friendly dictators installed but I digress.

Besides it's not full communism or nothing, the Nordic countries are doing pretty well and e.g. Norway I believe has a higher percentage of state controlled enterprise than Venezuala but that rarely comes up.

If someone wants to spend their entire life in pursuit of money by "working hard" (because working hard in a supermarket isnt real work and only highly paid work is hard work, right?) then being a millionaire should be incentive enough.

I generally make the argument that communism has never actually be tried, it has been run as a demo on a capitalist planet. It was like running an emulator on something while at the same time someone is using the computer for advanced online gaming. All commie experiments had to interface with capitalist markets to secure resources.

Not that i think it is great or something, I just think it never really happened because it would have to be global or not at all. Capitalism is more in tune with the human drive to compete.

There is no full communism or full capitalism on the planet, there are libraries that are free even in the USA. All commie experiments had to "interface" with capitalists markets by which you mean endure brutal sanctions if they didn't do what the US dictated. Look at these guys, we cut them off from the market and now they suck at the market, proof that communism sucks.

Also, the human drive to compete is just one of many drives, it is foolish and stupid to concentrate on that solely.

and ALL OF THIS DOESN'T APPLY anyway since that's not what Bernie Sanders is campaigning for, it's just the argument that thinktanks like Turning Point USA want people to have because god forbid that there's a presidential candidate who thinks that GoFundMe shouldn't be primarily used for raising money for medical bills.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Anyway, i'm team #YangGang meself.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Such rage Lili, let it all out. There, there. Here, have a copy of Das Kapital.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Well it's more accurate to say that every communist country you can name that was doing fine has had its leaders murdered in CIA coups and brutal right-wing US friendly dictators installed but I digress.

China and Russia?
The Eastern bloc?

 

[Lili Marlene]

China and Russia?
The Eastern bloc?

China? The country with a wealthy oligarchy who run the entire thing centrally with no oversight aside from what they says goes? Or is that the billionaires in Silicon Valley?

Soviet Russia, for all its faults, and they are many, brought a country from a pre-industrial agricultural society right up to the space age in 50 years where it took everyone else 200 odd years, and it had a similar death rate to every country that goes through an industrial age - all while under constant trade restrictions and attempts to undermine the whole thing from foreign aggressors. If we are to say capitalism "works" by comparison then we are saying we are cool with the Atlantic Slave Trade and all deaths that occur under colonization including the Irish famine, which was ground zero for testing neoliberal economics.

Also, the death of the culture of Soviet Russia was and is a great loss to the world considering the key cultural output Russia since the fall of the Berlin wall and the embracing of free markets seems to be dashcam videos. Even in the US it is a common enough theory that the loss of the great ideological opponent the USSR meant shitty neolibs no longer feel the need to justify their awful policies of allowing the market to dictate all decisions because there's no alternative out there. Capitalist realism as they say.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

China? The country with a wealthy oligarchy who run the entire thing centrally with no oversight aside from what they says goes? Or is that the billionaires in Silicon Valley?

Yup. Who tried Communism for a long time and failed.
And are doing whatever Frankenstein version of it they're doing now.

Soviet Russia, for all its faults, and they are many, brought a country from a pre-industrial agricultural society right up to the space age in 50 years where it took everyone else 200 odd years, and it had a similar death rate to every country that goes through an industrial age - all while under constant trade restrictions and attempts to undermine the whole thing from foreign aggressors. If we are to say capitalism "works" by comparison then we are saying we are cool with the Atlantic Slave Trade and all deaths that occur under colonization including the Irish famine, which was ground zero for testing neoliberal economics.

Yup, Russia. Where they tried Communism and it failed.

I'm not saying capitalism works or is super great. It works in the sense that it's still around.
And literally everywhere from Berlin to Beijing has said "fuck this noise" to Communism.
Because - no matter how long the list of excuses - communism doesn't work.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Well when anyone at all is coming out in favour of centralized, state-controlled communism you'll have all the arguments ready won't you?

In the meantime, capitalism has also failed comprehensively, even the Financial Times have realised this, so time to try something new.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Well when anyone at all is coming out in favour of centralized, state-controlled communism you'll have all the arguments ready won't you?

In the meantime, capitalism has also failed comprehensively, even the Financial Times have realised this, so time to try something new.

Always up for trying something new

Just not something that's fallen on its face 50 times.

 

[Lili Marlene]

What, the thing no one is calling for? Yeah, agreed.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

What, the thing no one is calling for? Yeah, agreed.

Glad to hear everyone agrees now that it's always been an unworkable fantasy and should never be tried again

:-D