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Post by CoolJGS☺ on Apr 23, 2017 13:35:12 GMT
What say you?
Would the economy or tax systems collapse if everyone was middle class or lower?
Should Tom Cruise being making an blue collar salary?
Lawyers and doctors capped at 50/hour?
Business owners averaging their revenue across all employees and prices so that everyone, including the owner, make the same amount of money with the difference going to government or charity or something?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 23, 2017 17:57:21 GMT
We need people who are willing to take risks and employ others. Those people tend to be rich.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 23, 2017 18:01:08 GMT
We need people who are willing to take risks and employ others. Those people tend to be rich.And/or get rich.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 23, 2017 18:01:36 GMT
What say you? Would the economy or tax systems collapse if everyone was middle class or lower? Should Tom Cruise being making an blue collar salary? Lawyers and doctors capped at 50/hour? Business owners averaging their revenue across all employees and prices so that everyone, including the owner, make the same amount of money with the difference going to government or charity or something? Are you reading from a manifesto?
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Post by coldenhaulfield on Apr 23, 2017 18:03:44 GMT
No.
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Post by Nalkarj on Apr 23, 2017 18:12:53 GMT
No matter how you do it, you can never get rid of "the rich." Try to destroy that subset of society, and you will create another band of "the rich," whether it be government bureaucrats or party commissars, and they will be even worse.
That was the result of the grand experiment in Marxism that has left so many dead in its wake.
Attempts at levelling from on-high nearly always lead to social stagnation, not equality. This was Hayek's great insight so many years ago. (Has anyone here ever read The Road to Serfdom?)
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Post by 🌵 on Apr 23, 2017 18:14:19 GMT
No, we should get rid of rich people. All of their money should be transferred to my bank account. Then there would just be a rich person, rather than rich people. I feel that this would be a much more reasonable arrangement.
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Post by PanLeo on Apr 23, 2017 18:18:35 GMT
As a communist I say rich people can go fuck themselves.
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Post by lowtacks86 on Apr 23, 2017 18:29:24 GMT
We need people who are willing to take risks and employ others. Those people tend to be rich. If you're already rich and decide to invest in a company, is that even really a "risk"? Even if the company goes under, the person would still be rich so long as they didn't put all their eggs in one basket. If Bill Gates invested maybe a $30,000 into a company I wouldn't really consider that much of a risk for him since a loss would barely even be noticeable compared to the obscene wealth he already has.
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Post by lowtacks86 on Apr 23, 2017 18:30:40 GMT
Technically speaking, no, not that I really have anything against rich people though(I myself would like to be rich someday)
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Post by althea on Apr 23, 2017 21:59:03 GMT
It depends what you mean by "rich people".
...if you mean better off middle class people, like the rich people we have in countries like Australia and the US, then no, it isn't a problem. We're all middle class, just with varying degrees of success.
If I lived in a country with an aristocracy and an established class system, I expect my answer would be very different.
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Post by 🌵 on Apr 23, 2017 22:09:32 GMT
It depends what you mean by "rich people". ...if you mean better off middle class people, like the rich people we have in countries like Australia and the US, then no, it isn't a problem. We're all middle class, just with varying degrees of success. I think you're severely underestimating the degree of inequality in countries like Australia and the US.
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Post by CoolJGS☺ on Apr 23, 2017 22:13:59 GMT
It depends what you mean by "rich people". ...if you mean better off middle class people, like the rich people we have in countries like Australia and the US, then no, it isn't a problem. We're all middle class, just with varying degrees of success. If I lived in a country with an aristocracy and an established class system, I expect my answer would be very different. I'm American so I would define rich as what the Tax Code states. Top tax rate (39.6) starts at about 415,000 per year. However, if you don't actually make money , then another way to define wealth is in assets. So let's say that wealth is based on when the estate tax kicks in which is around 5 million total assets. This would allow a realistic take on business owners who may very well have that much even if they weren't allowed to make a commensurate salary.
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Post by theoncomingstorm on Apr 23, 2017 22:29:47 GMT
It depends what you mean by "rich people". ...if you mean better off middle class people, like the rich people we have in countries like Australia and the US, then no, it isn't a problem. We're all middle class, just with varying degrees of success. I think you're severely underestimating the degree of inequality in countries like Australia and the US. ^This. Rupert Murdoch alone accounts for much of the inequality in Australia while Gates/Buffet/The Walton family control a huge portion of the wealth in the U.S. I don't think a single family with eight multi-billionaires can really qualify as simply "middle class".
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Post by althea on Apr 23, 2017 22:48:13 GMT
It depends what you mean by "rich people". ...if you mean better off middle class people, like the rich people we have in countries like Australia and the US, then no, it isn't a problem. We're all middle class, just with varying degrees of success. If I lived in a country with an aristocracy and an established class system, I expect my answer would be very different. I'm American so I would define rich as what the Tax Code states. Top tax rate (39.6) starts at about 415,000 per year. However, if you don't actually make money , then another way to define wealth is in assets. So let's say that wealth is based on when the estate tax kicks in which is around 5 million total assets. This would allow a realistic take on business owners who may very well have that much even if they weren't allowed to make a commensurate salary. In terms of tax, income is often quite dependent upon how good an account you can afford to hire... Rich is a relative term. What is important is that the gap between the rich and poor is not too wide...which is best established with a strong middle class. What we're seeing here is the erosion of the middle class into distinct groups of haves and have nots, and that is leading to economic problems (low wages are stagnating the economy) and political issues (the Aussie equivalent of what you're seeing with Trump in the US.) Confusing class and income is why western culture is heading the way that it is, though. When everything is expressed in economic terms, too much of the other stuff (like shared experience and equal opportunities for everyone to make something of themselves through hard work and sacrifice) that makes society cohesive is lost.
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Post by CoolJGS☺ on Apr 23, 2017 22:52:05 GMT
altheaI wasn;t stating those things on the basis of it being audit worthy. Income is what it is for most people. However, if you are of the opinion that rich people don't necessarily even exist, then I suppose that's an answer in and of itself.
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Post by althea on Apr 23, 2017 22:52:14 GMT
It depends what you mean by "rich people". ...if you mean better off middle class people, like the rich people we have in countries like Australia and the US, then no, it isn't a problem. We're all middle class, just with varying degrees of success. I think you're severely underestimating the degree of inequality in countries like Australia and the US. I don't think the inequality we're seeing is actually structural yet...I think we need to do something quickly before it becomes structural though. Income and class are not the same thing. We have income inequality, but we've not built a class structure yet. Not that the people driving our economies aren't doing their best to get us there...
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Post by althea on Apr 23, 2017 22:57:07 GMT
althea I wasn;t stating those things on the basis of it being audit worthy. Income is what it is for most people. However, if you are of the opinion that rich people don't necessarily even exist, then I suppose that's an answer in and of itself. Of course rich people exist. ...but for as long as their fortunes rely more on their efforts, and their skills at taking risks and their willingness to gamble, rather than structural inequality, then their existence is not an issue.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Apr 23, 2017 22:59:03 GMT
I don't want to get rid of people who have a disproportionate amount of scarce resources. I just want to make it that the way they get there is via making other people's lives better/easier. People who make an extraordinary effort for that or who supply a remarkable amount of ingenuity for it should be rewarded with a greater number of scarce resources.
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Post by theoncomingstorm on Apr 23, 2017 23:04:37 GMT
althea I wasn;t stating those things on the basis of it being audit worthy. Income is what it is for most people. However, if you are of the opinion that rich people don't necessarily even exist, then I suppose that's an answer in and of itself. Of course rich people exist. ...but for as long as their fortunes rely more on their efforts, and their skills at taking risks and their willingness to gamble, rather than structural inequality, then their existence is not an issue. People become billionaires by paying thousands or millions of people working for them less than a living wage. Seven or eight of the richest people in the world are all members of the Walton family (children/grandchildren/nieces of the founder of WalMart). WalMart employees are paid virtual slave wages, pay for their own health insurance, receive few benefits of any kind and, upon being hired, are subjected to an orientation that attempts to convince them that labor unions are evil and they should never even think about worrying about their children having a decent life. Your claims about "structural inequality" are an attempt to draw a distinction that simply does not exist.
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