this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
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Yeah we have to outgrow the POV that says putting limits on wealth equals communism, or means no freedom. Democracy loses its meaning if kings can live inside it - which is what we get if wealth gives individuals more power than the rest of society. We're on course back to the age of aristocrat landowners and tenant farmers. That's not human progress, that's degeneration. To me the slogan, "We won't go back!" means a lot more than avoiding another Trump administration. It means recharting the course of our society away from a nobles vs peasants world and toward a world of true equality. It will take changes that are much more fundamental than imposing taxes on wealth. We have to de-legitimize extreme wealth and disable the huge leverage it gives a few people over the rest of us.
I fully agree with you but I'd do it through taxes. It's not forbidden to be ultra wealthy, it's just impossible to become that. Just after a certain about of either current wealth or income, income taxes go to 100% and at certain wealth levels, be it through owning buildings, yachts, or whatever, taxes will make sure you'll have to sell off some of those assets until you're within normal range. Nothing wrong with that in my book
Okay but you could also lock people in a room full of water and say you're not forbidding breathing. Technically the truth, but not if we're being honest. Using the law to make something impossible is forbidding it. Taxation doesn't address the belief that the big bad gubmint is stealing something you earned. I think the underlying problem is way more complex to solve by just doing that. We have to get rid of the scarcity mentality, a survival trait that will take a long-term effort to eliminate. We're probably talking multiple lifetimes.
Taxation isn't theft, you get loads of things back. Roads, police, (in functional countries) healthcare, fire departments, military to protect against invaders... If you're rich it's easier to pay more, and you should
Yes, I'm not arguing that taxation is bad. Looks like we're having two different conversations so I'm gonna just bow out.