EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 2842
| Forum Index > General Forum |
Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
|
JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
| ||
|
Oukka
Finland1683 Posts
On November 20 2020 09:52 Wegandi wrote: Well the fact that you cant tax ex post puts a hamper on eat the rich. They dont make their money primarily via income. Their wealth is in assets not money. You guys have some weird Scrooge Mcduck fascination going on. Wealth taxes aren't impossible or unheard of either. Banerjee and Duflo, 2019 Economics nobelists suggested something along the line of 2% on assets over 150M and 3% at a 1B iirc. As you said the wealth is in assets and it's over the years become even more so, with various rents rather than labour income being the main way richest of the rich accumulate wealth. Tapping into that pool seems reasonable enough. And yes, capital gains and dividends etc are already taxed, but mainly through flat rates, so raising them would hurt middle class savers disproportionately more. Duflo's and Banerjee's book, Good Economics for Hard Times, is a good read by the way. Two top economists who've made a career in studying inequality and poverty both in developing world and the west writing in very approachable manner. | ||
|
LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
On November 20 2020 09:15 BisuDagger wrote: I don’t think that you guys are wrong, because your heart is in the right place and I understand what you mean. My concern is once the momentum for this train of though is put into political motion, those in power won’t know when to stop. Once you start telling someone they can’t make X amount, four years later people will start yelling that wasn’t enough. Everyone can live happy with 1 million dollars. Why should they make more? And then that goes down and down until it’s all completely government controlled. It’s knowing this could happen and the way communism ruined so many other countries that I have trouble getting behind it. Have you ever lived on the poorer end of a capitalist oligarchy? That's kind of the situation in the US for the vast majority of people who don't either have generational wealth or one of the few professions that still make for a decent living (software seems like the popular one these days). Even straight communism is going to be a lot better for all the people not in that favored group. I do understand what your concern is. You believe that you worked hard to get what you have, putting you in a respectable position in that rat race of life, and you don't want that to be taken away from you to prop up the position of the less successful. By all means, you earned your place in that hierarchy. The problem is, that's not entirely true. There's a lot of good fortune that goes into being successful in that system, and the hard work and smart choices you might have made really aren't as much of a determination of said success as factors related to such fortune. When there's many ways to lose and few ways to win, it's still possible to win - but there's also plenty of ways to end up finding yourself back on the shit track and joining the ranks of the unsuccessful. The aspects of a social safety net that come with various forms of socialism help to prevent those worst outcomes. An economy in which there are a couple of winners and many losers is great if you happen to be a winner, but not that good if you're not. And unless you're sitting on some substantial generational wealth, chances are that you'll eventually end up a loser in a system that works against you. | ||
|
Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On November 20 2020 09:46 Wegandi wrote: Do people not understand wealth/assets =/= money. What are you going to do, expropriate assets and stocks? Now tell me how thats going to end up differently than every time thats been done. There's also not enough assets that the "rich" have to temporarily subsidize the masses. The fact is you'd have to expropriate from the middle class as well. Then there is the other moral issue that you yourself are a 1%er. Why shouldn't you be expropriated to give to the poor in Nigeria, Cambodia, or Uzbezkistan? You're on the argument behind the argument. It will have to hit the middle class to fund all the health care and subsidized college that leftists are wanting the Biden administration to get done. The problem is the historical value for money the middle class has gotten back from this arrangement. With all the waste, fraud, and incompetence of federally administered programs (the easy example here is the VA system of healthcare), the middle class has rejected increased taxes to pay for them. The trouble with all the prescriptions for increased government intervention is convincing Americans that this time, they'll really do a good job instead of mucking it up like all the past times. That's where America, being full of Americans, decides to default to the freedom to make as much money as you possibly can, and give the middle finger to the government and leechers of society that say you aren't allowed to make that much. (And there'd be a lot less strife in politics if Republicans didn't have cause to worry that their wallets aren't safe stemming from the promises of free this and that. The millionaires and billionaires rhetoric always obscures the real victims of tax and spend policy. Leave us alone. Nobody should have to pay close attention to politics except a couple months every 2-4 years) | ||
|
WombaT
Northern Ireland26751 Posts
On November 20 2020 10:33 LegalLord wrote: Have you ever lived on the poorer end of a capitalist oligarchy? That's kind of the situation in the US for the vast majority of people who don't either have generational wealth or one of the few professions that still make for a decent living (software seems like the popular one these days). Even straight communism is going to be a lot better for all the people not in that favored group. I do understand what your concern is. You believe that you worked hard to get what you have, putting you in a respectable position in that rat race of life, and you don't want that to be taken away from you to prop up the position of the less successful. By all means, you earned your place in that hierarchy. The problem is, that's not entirely true. There's a lot of good fortune that goes into being successful in that system, and the hard work and smart choices you might have made really aren't as much of a determination of said success as factors related to such fortune. When there's many ways to lose and few ways to win, it's still possible to win - but there's also plenty of ways to end up finding yourself back on the shit track and joining the ranks of the unsuccessful. The aspects of a social safety net that come with various forms of socialism help to prevent those worst outcomes. An economy in which there are a couple of winners and many losers is great if you happen to be a winner, but not that good if you're not. And unless you're sitting on some substantial generational wealth, chances are that you'll eventually end up a loser in a system that works against you. Fortune is a bit underrated in the overall system, I mean the blind luck element of it. Not even counting coming into wealth. I had a friend who I still keep in contact with from my old mental hospital days. Generous fellow, always offered to help me out or fund my current studies outright. Nice guy, not the brightest guy in the world. Turns out at the worst of his bipolar episode (where impulsivity is king, the rational brain departments) he threw money into Bitcoin. Think he made 50 grand in our money that he’s not even allowed to manage now, hasn’t been able to hold down a job or anything in years either. Just threw literally all his money into something he’d heard was a get rich quick scheme when he was high on the bipolar brain and it paid off for him. I mean does he deserve it? Why not, he’s one of the nicest and self-sacrificial guys I’ve ever met in my life, did he earn it? Well yeah he put down the money. He just completely fluked it in an area he had no knowledge of, but hey he at least took the risk. | ||
|
GreenHorizons
United States23930 Posts
On November 20 2020 11:14 Danglars wrote: + Show Spoiler + You're on the argument behind the argument. It will have to hit the middle class to fund all the health care and subsidized college that leftists are wanting the Biden administration to get done. The problem is the historical value for money the middle class has gotten back from this arrangement. With all the waste, fraud, and incompetence of federally administered programs (the easy example here is the VA system of healthcare), the middle class has rejected increased taxes to pay for them. The trouble with all the prescriptions for increased government intervention is convincing Americans that this time, they'll really do a good job instead of mucking it up like all the past times. That's where America, being full of Americans, decides to default to the freedom to make as much money as you possibly can, and give the middle finger to the government and leechers of society that say you aren't allowed to make that much. (And there'd be a lot less strife in politics if Republicans didn't have cause to worry that their wallets aren't safe stemming from the promises of free this and that. The millionaires and billionaires rhetoric always obscures the real victims of tax and spend policy. I don't understand where this idea comes from? | ||
KwarK
United States43965 Posts
On November 20 2020 10:11 RenSC2 wrote: I feel like the analogy is breaking down here. The arbitrariness of the race and how much each runner gets is different from real life. In a real market economy, people are paid based on value. You get paid well because you do a job that your employer values and your skillset is somewhat rare. If your skillset was more common, you'd be paid less. If your employer did not need your skillset, then you would not be hired. It may seem that being good at spreadsheets is not really valuable when looking at basic human needs, but society is much more complex than basic human needs. Sometimes the rewards seems absolutely ridiculous, but they are always tied to something that people want/need. In your case (from what I understand), a complex set of regulations has created a value in being good at spreadsheets in a specific way. Certainly from a government perspective on how to guide the economy, I would make some adjustments to tax brackets and welfare programs to take more from the rich and give more to the poor. However, that's still quite different from the completely arbitrariness of the amount given for winning the fictional race that everyone must participate in. Employee compensation is extremely far removed from creation of value. I can assure you that as a specialist in the area of calculating what things really cost to make. | ||
|
Salazarz
Korea (South)2591 Posts
On November 20 2020 11:14 Danglars wrote: You're on the argument behind the argument. It will have to hit the middle class to fund all the health care and subsidized college that leftists are wanting the Biden administration to get done. The problem is the historical value for money the middle class has gotten back from this arrangement. With all the waste, fraud, and incompetence of federally administered programs (the easy example here is the VA system of healthcare), the middle class has rejected increased taxes to pay for them. The trouble with all the prescriptions for increased government intervention is convincing Americans that this time, they'll really do a good job instead of mucking it up like all the past times. That's where America, being full of Americans, decides to default to the freedom to make as much money as you possibly can, and give the middle finger to the government and leechers of society that say you aren't allowed to make that much. (And there'd be a lot less strife in politics if Republicans didn't have cause to worry that their wallets aren't safe stemming from the promises of free this and that. The millionaires and billionaires rhetoric always obscures the real victims of tax and spend policy. Leave us alone. Nobody should have to pay close attention to politics except a couple months every 2-4 years) I don't know enough about the intricacies of college funding systems to discuss that in any detail, but the continued remarks about the lack of funding to cover 'leftie socialist healthcare' in the US are not even funny at this point. The US already spends more government money per capita on healthcare than any other country in the world. The reason you can't afford decent healthcare for all is precisely because it's privatized. The myth about US healthcare being the best in the world is also just that, a myth. Private options elsewhere in the developed world are just as good as those in the US. So please, tell me, where is this 'value for money' that comes from private enterprise rather than the 'wasteful and fraudulent' government programs? https://www.nhpr.org/post/what-country-spends-most-and-least-health-care-person#stream/0 | ||
|
Wegandi
United States2455 Posts
On November 20 2020 11:29 KwarK wrote: Employee compensation is extremely far removed from creation of value. I can assure you that as a specialist in the area of calculating what things really cost to make. Kwark the marxist. Interesting turn about. Revival of the LToV. Wait til you see real poverty. | ||
|
Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On November 20 2020 11:22 GreenHorizons wrote: I don't understand where this idea comes from? Politicians are like the slugs of humanity and shouldn't command such deep attention. I would prefer their records over the past two years are reviewed just before each election cycle to determine if they did well, and otherwise to toss the bums out. I say this with my sweetest, bipartisanship hat on, because the differences between parties in this are small. On November 20 2020 11:36 Salazarz wrote: I don't know enough about the intricacies of college funding systems to discuss that in any detail, but the continued remarks about the lack of funding to cover 'leftie socialist healthcare' in the US are not even funny at this point. The US already spends more government money per capita on healthcare than any other country in the world. The reason you can't afford decent healthcare for all is precisely because it's privatized. The myth about US healthcare being the best in the world is also just that, a myth. Private options elsewhere in the developed world are just as good as those in the US. So please, tell me, where is this 'value for money' that comes from private enterprise rather than the 'wasteful and fraudulent' government programs? https://www.nhpr.org/post/what-country-spends-most-and-least-health-care-person#stream/0 The reason it sucks so bad is both parties have tried their hands at adopting the dumbest, market-interfering policies to make the insuring and purchase of medical care a trial in and of itself. Would that the private market could function as such, without government telling the consumer what constitutes minimum essential coverage, how policies may not be sold over state lines, hospitals lobbying their politicians for bigger Medicare disbursements, and medicine and care overregulated to hell. Go research a little about the VA and the scandals in that system within the last couple decades to tell me if patients dying in government-run hospitals is a preferable alternative to expensive employer-focused barely-a-private-market health insurance. You're only offering false choices. | ||
|
GreenHorizons
United States23930 Posts
On November 20 2020 11:55 Danglars wrote: Politicians are like the slugs of humanity and shouldn't command such deep attention. I would prefer their records over the past two years are reviewed just before each election cycle to determine if they did well, and otherwise to toss the bums out. I say this with my sweetest, bipartisanship hat on, because the differences between parties in this are small. I can understand why this is appealing (the Hillary Brunch crowd comes to mind). I just don't know where the notion that you can run an effective government like that comes from? | ||
|
RenSC2
United States1088 Posts
On November 20 2020 11:29 KwarK wrote: Employee compensation is extremely far removed from creation of value. I can assure you that as a specialist in the area of calculating what things really cost to make. My suggestion is that in a modern society "value" is much more abstract than it once was. Before heavy mechanization, a farmer working a field had a pretty obvious and straightforward value. His labor directly addressed a human need. However, in today's world, a guy can buy a bunch of bitcoin and make a lot of money. What was his value? Well, it turns out that society values risk takers. Society values people who can pick the right values to offer up their government backed money in exchange for blockchain based money. He still provides a value, it's just far divorced from base needs and the next guy who provides those same abstract needs/wants will also reap the profits. You could say that society's values are warped, but there is a value there. I would suspect fiat currency is a big culprit in warping values. If we went back to a barter based system, I think more value would be given to direct things and less to the abstract. However, fiat currencies have a lot of benefits to society that may be worth the increased abstractness of value. | ||
|
Salazarz
Korea (South)2591 Posts
On November 20 2020 11:55 Danglars wrote: Politicians are like the slugs of humanity and shouldn't command such deep attention. I would prefer their records over the past two years are reviewed just before each election cycle to determine if they did well, and otherwise to toss the bums out. I say this with my sweetest, bipartisanship hat on, because the differences between parties in this are small. The reason it sucks so bad is both parties have tried their hands at adopting the dumbest, market-interfering policies to make the insuring and purchase of medical care a trial in and of itself. Would that the private market could function as such, without government telling the consumer what constitutes minimum essential coverage, how policies may not be sold over state lines, hospitals lobbying their politicians for bigger Medicare disbursements, and medicine and care overregulated to hell. Go research a little about the VA and the scandals in that system within the last couple decades to tell me if patients dying in government-run hospitals is a preferable alternative to expensive employer-focused barely-a-private-market health insurance. You're only offering false choices. I guess I'm just not American enough to comprehend how can one claim there isn't enough money in the US budget for healthcare reforms despite the fact that the US already spends more money on healthcare than every other country out there. Clearly, the issue is the lack of money and not the fact that private enterprises care more about increasing profits than providing a good service; so despite the overwhelming evidence of universal healthcare systems being far superior at ensuring good health for the citizens of a state at a fraction of the cost, it simply cannot be done in the US because that would be... too expensive. | ||
|
KwarK
United States43965 Posts
On November 20 2020 12:12 RenSC2 wrote: My suggestion is that in a modern society "value" is much more abstract than it once was. Before heavy mechanization, a farmer working a field had a pretty obvious and straightforward value. His labor directly addressed a human need. However, in today's world, a guy can buy a bunch of bitcoin and make a lot of money. What was his value? Well, it turns out that society values risk takers. Society values people who can pick the right values to offer up their government backed money in exchange for blockchain based money. He still provides a value, it's just far divorced from base needs and the next guy who provides those same abstract needs/wants will also reap the profits. You could say that society's values are warped, but there is a value there. I would suspect fiat currency is a big culprit in warping values. If we went back to a barter based system, I think more value would be given to direct things and less to the abstract. However, fiat currencies have a lot of benefits to society that may be worth the increased abstractness of value. Let's say me and an immigrant on a work visa do the same job. I can change jobs at will, he cannot. He is therefore forced to accept a much lower rate of pay than I would because of the difference in our bargaining power. But is the value he provides to the employer any lower? I would argue no. Even in a purely theoretical model the value you provide to your employer is only a ceiling on compensation because they would not rationally pay you more than the value you provide. There is no compensation floor, the floor is mostly influenced by factors outside of the control of individuals. But in the real world it's even less rational because there is no good way to measure the value that chat support, for example, brings to the company. My specialization is manufacturing cost accounting which, in layman's terms, means trying to trace costs back to manufactured products. With something like a wooden chair parts of it are simple, you can measure how much wood goes into a chair and assign the chair the cost of that quantity of wood. But it gets harder, take something like a sawblade that needs replacing every other week. You could perhaps work out how many chairs are made during that time and assign the cost of sawblades between them. Now assume that the same sawblade is also used on tables. We can't assign it evenly by unit because tables are bigger and take more sawing to make, we need to come up with some allocation units like machine hours there. By the time we get to assigning my own costs it's completely abstract. How do you allocate the cost of the time spent allocating the costs? And what value does properly allocated costs even bring? Once I’ve calculated that the cost of allocating costs adds a third of a cent to the overall finished product we then need to measure whether that was worth doing. Perhaps it would have been better to allocate the costs less accurately and save that money. They need someone to calculate that for them, which I can also do, though I’ll have to allocate that out eventually too. TLDR: Nobody actually has any clue at all what value 90% of employees actually bring to a company. Which honestly should make sense to anyone who has actually worked a job because all workplaces have people who bring zero or negative value to the employer and somehow still get paid. The system doesn't really work. People talk about government inefficiency and waste and insist that if only there were a profit motive all that inefficiency would clean itself up because with a rational profit incentive no company would waste all their money. Those people have never seen the kind of shit that goes on in the private sector, the kind of idiocy and waste I run into on a daily basis is beyond belief. When profit happens it's mostly by accident and nobody really knows where it came from or why. | ||
|
Vivax
22303 Posts
On November 20 2020 12:12 RenSC2 wrote: My suggestion is that in a modern society "value" is much more abstract than it once was. Before heavy mechanization, a farmer working a field had a pretty obvious and straightforward value. His labor directly addressed a human need. However, in today's world, a guy can buy a bunch of bitcoin and make a lot of money. What was his value? Well, it turns out that society values risk takers. Society values people who can pick the right values to offer up their government backed money in exchange for blockchain based money. He still provides a value, it's just far divorced from base needs and the next guy who provides those same abstract needs/wants will also reap the profits. You could say that society's values are warped, but there is a value there. I would suspect fiat currency is a big culprit in warping values. If we went back to a barter based system, I think more value would be given to direct things and less to the abstract. However, fiat currencies have a lot of benefits to society that may be worth the increased abstractness of value. Ramblings about bitcoin: + Show Spoiler + Nobody has any clue as to who is the main driver of bitcoin, but a hint may be found in who is the biggest profiteur: The producers of the equipment needed to mine it, GPU manufacturers. In that, bitcoin is even worse than fiat. You need to pay for computing power to mint it? And you end up with a completed sudoku that someone is paying big bucks for? I don't even want to know how much limited energy and resources went into something that abstract. But eating meat is the problem. If I were a GPU manufacturer or any corporation behind it I'd just borrow money to buy bitcoin up (because nowadays everyone wants to lend but nobody wants to borrow to the point that we have negative rates so a scheme like this would be welcome), drive the demand for my hardware up, never sell a coin until the price reaches absurd levels because the supply side (as in me) doesn't budge an inch, then dump all I can, which is probably the vast majority of mined coins. I'd fleece the suckers who bought my products to chase the price I created and the suckers who bought it outright. I don't think the guy holding the currency to buy it is going to be the sucker because the government decides what you have to pay with. How is fiat different from barter? It's just the rate of exchange between two goods or services. If you'd sell 10 cheeseburgers for a pizza, we can agree on a cheeseburger being worth a fiat unit and a pizza ten fiat units. The fiat part being that you'll actually give me 10 cheeseburgers for the fiat unit we agreed upon when I want them. | ||
|
Slydie
1935 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + Nobody has any clue as to who is the main driver of bitcoin, but a hint may be found in who is the biggest profiteur: The producers of the equipment needed to mine it, GPU manufacturers. Why would that be? With the absolutely massive data centres running servers for the global online companies, and how every office is filled with computers, why do you think crypto mining specific GPUs even makes a dent in the budgets? Not to mention, the powercost of running the mining operation is pretty substantial as well. No, I think there are very good reasons to believe that risk-willing capital, illegal, shady or legit, is the main driver of crypto currencies. I agree that it is an enormous waste of energy, though, and it might even be forbidden in the future. | ||
|
maybenexttime
Poland5807 Posts
On November 20 2020 11:14 Danglars wrote: You're on the argument behind the argument. It will have to hit the middle class to fund all the health care and subsidized college that leftists are wanting the Biden administration to get done. The problem is the historical value for money the middle class has gotten back from this arrangement. With all the waste, fraud, and incompetence of federally administered programs (the easy example here is the VA system of healthcare), the middle class has rejected increased taxes to pay for them. Ah, yes, America's so exceptional. Somehow most other developed countries made it work for far less money than the US is already spending. The trouble with all the prescriptions for increased government intervention is convincing Americans that this time, they'll really do a good job instead of mucking it up like all the past times. That's where America, being full of Americans, decides to default to the freedom to make as much money as you possibly can, and give the middle finger to the government and leechers of society that say you aren't allowed to make that much. (And there'd be a lot less strife in politics if Republicans didn't have cause to worry that their wallets aren't safe stemming from the promises of free this and that. The millionaires and billionaires rhetoric always obscures the real victims of tax and spend policy. Leave us alone. Nobody should have to pay close attention to politics except a couple months every 2-4 years) Could that have something to do with the Republicans actively sabotaging the state's institutions, I wonder? On November 20 2020 11:55 Danglars wrote: The reason it sucks so bad is both parties have tried their hands at adopting the dumbest, market-interfering policies to make the insuring and purchase of medical care a trial in and of itself. Would that the private market could function as such, without government telling the consumer what constitutes minimum essential coverage, how policies may not be sold over state lines, hospitals lobbying their politicians for bigger Medicare disbursements, and medicine and care overregulated to hell. Can you name a single country where that actually works? | ||
|
Uldridge
Belgium5121 Posts
I think you've given an example for a company that is reasonable in size, say like 100+ employees. Have you ever thought about the optimal size of a company, where cost calculation and value allocation are much less esoteric? Perhaps companies of 50 people are a goldie locks zone where there's just the right balance of people vs control of value, go any larger and you're screwed because things get way too fuzzy. I know difference in sectors matters, but there could be some generalization I'm sure... | ||
|
Neneu
Norway492 Posts
| ||
|
Salazarz
Korea (South)2591 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + The only reason it exists is because people are greedy and fear of missing out is greater than fear of getting scammed. Despite billions of dollars 'invested' into cryptocurrency development and infrastructure over the last decade, it has produced no real 'value' to anyone except the 'early adopters' who cashed out with 1000x returns and the margin gamblers / technical analysis gurus / crypto exchanges / initial coin offerings profiting off the suckers who continue to dump money into it. It's estimated that anywhere between 5 and 10 billion dollars has been syphoned out of the cryptocurrency 'ecosystem' by scammers and thieves alone, so you're looking at 50 billion+ usd spent developing complex mathematical algorithms that to this day have not a single useful real world implementation, and thousands of overexcited folks whose lives were completely ruined by various crypto bubbles bursting and scams taking off. In South Korea alone, in the aftermath of the 2017-18 altcoin bubble there was an estimated 3000 suicides linked to cryptocurrency, and god knows how many more lives ruined irreparably. And what did humanity gain from it all? Decentralized money? Please. 90%+ of all cryptocurrency is held by a handful of whales. Folks like to talk about how 'fair' a world of Bitcoin would be -- except wealth distribution in the crypto sphere is so bad, even the United States is a communist utopia by comparison. 'Bitcoin standard' is not a thing and will never be a thing, everyone knows this but they won't admit it because admitting it would mean accepting that you're a scam artist no better than Madoff. I say this as someone who has worked in every aspect of the 'industry' for many years (and loathing myself for ever getting into it, no matter how financially lucrative it has been). It's a shitshow that continues to bring out the worst in people, and no, not a single Bitcoin millionaire has 'earned' their money, no more than Charlie Ponzi has earned his. | ||
| ||
