"Will Bernie Sanders wipe out billionaires?"
Of course he won't. What a stupid question.
Wealth & Income Inequality
- Thread starter Eboue
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Of course he won't. What a stupid question.
Just pay what is due and all assets should be in the open...not hidden off shore.
Chile, the inequality made country, finally woke up these last days. (More like only Santiago though)
The drop that spilled the glass was the raise of the subway ticket prices.
Santiago on fire tonight.
@Red Dreams I hope so. I don't think it will escalate much more. People need the subway so... But good warning call. Will force the debate on some issues.
The drop that spilled the glass was the raise of the subway ticket prices.
Santiago on fire tonight.
@Red Dreams I hope so. I don't think it will escalate much more. People need the subway so... But good warning call. Will force the debate on some issues.
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Hope all of you are alright.
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I'm of the opinion there shouldn't be billionaires. The problem is, how can a massive company that has the ability to earn its owner billions structure its company different so that its employees benefit far more than employees of companies that don't make that kind of money? I can't see how it could work. There would surely be chaos, and companies that don't make much money would be left with poor employees?
Progressive tax for the benefit of all. And hang tax evaders.
Taxes?
Tax those massive companies profits, and leave them only enough to pay market wages and reinvestment in the company.
All the rest should go to social welfare, cleaning the world, etc.
Also, humoungus companies should be divided in several smaller companies as soon as they cross some certain threshold. (probably sometime before they become a monopoly force or a too big to fail company)
Ah makes sense. I've read too much r/latestagecapitilism where they all think employees of rich companies should be rich, which I can't imagine working very well.
We need Union representation in the boards so employees have a voice.
Medallion trust fund are all millionaires and is working. But exceptions aside, nobody is saying that they have to be rich but not paid minimum wages. Nobody is saying that everybody has to be paid the same, but the gap should be way smaller, the ones in the top to get pad way less and the ones at the bottom be paid much better with a balanced and healthy company results
Equality is like confisticating all the chickens in the world, and spread it equally to every person on earth.
Most will cook the chicken and eat it
Some will treat it as family pet
Few would think about getting 2 chickens together, mate them and get more chicken
Most will cook the chicken and eat it
Some will treat it as family pet
Few would think about getting 2 chickens together, mate them and get more chicken
I'm not sure why this is worded like you're telling me off, but to be clear, some people are saying that over on Reddit. And to be clearer, I agree with you in principal.
You can't close the gaps, because those on the tops have infinite means to duplicate their wealth. A billionaire and a blue collar worker each has 24 hours in a day, problem is the billionaire has hundreds of companies making money for him while the blue collar worker only has 2 hands and 10 hours.
To answer the last comments I will put as an example the Mondragon cooperative in Spain, 7th largest company in the country that employs more than 70.000 workers. An extract in wikipedia of how the wage equality can work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
"
Wage regulation
At Mondragon, there are agreed-upon wage ratios between executive work and field or factory work which earns a minimum wage. These ratios range from 3:1 to 9:1 in different cooperatives and average 5:1. That is, the general manager of an average Mondragon cooperative earns no more than 5 times as much as the theoretical minimum wage paid in their cooperative. For most workers, this ratio is smaller because there are few Mondragon worker-owners that earn minimum wages, because most jobs are somewhat specialized and are classified at higher wage levels. The wage ratio of a cooperative is decided periodically by its worker-owners through a democratic vote. "
So there is proof that it can work perfectly fine and have a healthy company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
"
Wage regulation
At Mondragon, there are agreed-upon wage ratios between executive work and field or factory work which earns a minimum wage. These ratios range from 3:1 to 9:1 in different cooperatives and average 5:1. That is, the general manager of an average Mondragon cooperative earns no more than 5 times as much as the theoretical minimum wage paid in their cooperative. For most workers, this ratio is smaller because there are few Mondragon worker-owners that earn minimum wages, because most jobs are somewhat specialized and are classified at higher wage levels. The wage ratio of a cooperative is decided periodically by its worker-owners through a democratic vote. "
So there is proof that it can work perfectly fine and have a healthy company
...Some companies are worth a trillion dollars
So effectively your saying somebody shouldn't be able to own 0.1% of a company they founded.
And it's all our fault. Most of em use The Netherlands as a tax paradise. Someone should bomb us.
I'm not doing this argument as I don't have all the answers, but maybe if a company is worth a trillion dollars they're ripping people off.
dunno - I mean personally i don't feel massively ripped off by google ... they help me find stuff on the internet and i ignore the targeted advertising they sell ... I don't think that's a terrible deal
They avoided 1.5 billion in tax though, despite easily being able to afford it.
How does that fix anything though? The billionaires owe the majority of their wealth in stocks, not in cash. For example, let's assume Billionaire A starts a company with some money, when it goes public he owns 60% of the shares, and later the company gets a market cap of 50b (30b of which is of billionaire A). The guy actually gets a salary (for example 10m per year) which gets taxes. Let's further assume that there is either some dividend (double-taxed in the US) or no dividend at all. Still, almost the entire 'money' is in stocks, not in cash. If you are taxing the stock (without him selling it), you are essentially losing the control of him to control the company which he funded, and essentially 'stealing' his company.
Additionally, actually those 'big' companies, quite often do not have cash at all to be taxes. Amazon, for example, was losing money until recently. Tesla is still losing money. Sure, there are Google, Apple, BH, Microsoft who actually are very profitable, but many big companies, lose money (probably cause of aggressive strategies of growing), which means that there isn't much to be taxed, and the wealth of their owners is totally based on the stock price (which in turn, often is a speculation).
Larger taxes for the super-wealthy is fine, but it won't remove the billionaires. The problem is much more complex than tax the super-wealthy.
Then blame the badly written tax laws
They are beholdent legally to shareholders to maximise returns within the bounds of the laws... ( Ironically havibg somebody own all trillion dollars of stock would negate this as they could do as they please) ... Instead If they gave away 1.5 billion of shareholder money they didn't have to then shareholders like me would look to take action
Not their fault the tax laws are shite is it
They lobby for shit tax laws.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/21/us-tech-tax-avoidance-google-amazon-apple
Beat me to it.. It's massively their fault tax laws are shite. Almost exclusively their fault I'd venture.
And again as a shareholder id be bloody pissed off if they didnt use all legal avenues to maximise profits
the point raised was that nobody should be a billionaire... I think for example Larry page was pretty instrumental in the growth of google (alphablet etc) hes worth 66bn
or about 0.04% of the company value
I dont see why an arbitrary value should be put on what hes allowed to be worth meaning that shareholders like me should have been paid another 65BN and his wealth capped - that just sound silly
The executive of the modern state is nothing but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie
It sounds a bit like you're placing shareholder payouts over morals.
The law is pretty arbitrary in itself so why on earth would we be okay with companies using all "legal" avenues if it comes at the cost of people?
You said it wasn't their fault for the tax laws being shite.
It clearly is their fault because yes its in their interest to have
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The company has just a few hundred employees though, easier there for everyone to be largely paid, than in companies with thousands of employees. Additionally, the gap there is very big too, with the owner being worth 20B+. Additionally, the employees there are some of the smartest people on Earth. Additionally, the entire business of Medallion trust (the flagship of Renaissance Technologies) is based on high-frequency trading, which in itself is a parasitic zero-sum game that has a negative effect on the economy, and essentially is a way to send the money from the poor to the rich. Additionally, they have avoided taxes in the past. Additionally, they don't accept outside money, with the employers essentially managing their own money. Additionally, their 2 public funds barely beat the market, which has lead speculations that they are cheating (essentially, the big wins get send to Medallion, while the other transfers to the other two funds, again, this is total speculation).
I don't think that you could have made a worse example though.
Fun fact: Their No.2 (until recently) is Mercer, a shitcnut of the highest order who has been financing Bannon and other alt-right people. Mercer family essentially hates McConnell for being too left-wing, and is widely considered to be one of the top 3 most powerful Republican influencers (together with Koch and Adelson).
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Why are you making excuses up for it? This kind of barminess is very odd and all too prevalent, making out as if it's somehow right because of such a reason, despite the whole thing being a sham.
These companies are allowed to tread the fine line between tax evasion and tax avoidance. It's wrong.
...and the wage earner makes up the shortfall in Revenue for the government.
Indeed, and there's nothing to stop like-minded people from establishing such co-operatives.
They are beholden to share holders, but also to society- something which is becoming more substantiated.
If this was not the case, big Tobacco’s behaviour in the 20th Century would not be seen to be abhorrent as it was. Legal responsibility for providing dividends to shareholders does not supersede their human social responsibility for ethical behaviour. The law may not be adequate to control all corporations but that does not excuse individual humans for acting immorally, nor does it shield them from criticism when they harm people.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/19/the...-value-is-no-longer-their-main-objective.html
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social-wealth-fund/
(I don't support this fully but it is one way out)
Thanks for the paper, skirmished over it. Obviously, it deserves an in depth reading and thinking about it. While, I am against the state getting control over the companies, I think a middle ground can be reached. I think that the government literally sucks at managing, but the authors propose to circumvent this by essentially running it as a mutual fund (I would prefer it to be passive). In general, getting some of the shares from companies to the citizens, could be an interesting move. I actually would prefer the no-voting scheme (again, cause governments suck at it) which possibly could mean that the government/people can own quite a lot of assets, without actually voting on how to run them (but then, the company might be less willing to issue dividends if the majority goes to other people instead of private shareholders). It is a very interesting and though-provoking idea though, no doubt about it. As I said, the problem is much more complex than ‘tax the rich higher’, ‘nationalize tech companies’ or ‘kill the billionaires’, all ‘solutions’ that Caf members on their infinite wisdom have provided.
Ultimately, I think that a good solution might involve several things (some of the ideas mentioned in the paper, the ever-present raise the taxes, having a UBI, and maybe making the system fairer by banning purely parasitic financial tools like stock shortening, high frequency trading, options and futures, in addition to many others things that someone much smarter than me can come with).