Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucem Ferre
He thinks you are saying that you are more important or more valuable than your workers just because most of them couldn't do what you do when you're not because I doubt you could do what they do.
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He's a Communist who doesn't live in the real world. Life is all about choices. I chose a path in life that leads to the maximum amount of recurring profit because I want to invest and create opportunites for others. I'm not going to be able to do those things if I become a public school teacher or someone who dedicates themselves to a career that isn't scalable. That doesn't make them less "important" or "valuable" as human beings, but again...this is an "unequal' world where nobody will ever be rich on some hourly wage. Some people want to do just one thing with their lives and that's it: forgoing greater economic opportunity is part of the trade-off.
But again, that's the point of wanting to own business: I'm taking more financial risk so the profit I could potentially earn is obviously more than what some worker is going to make doing (generally) lower level tasks that have nothing to do with management at scale. I also pay more in taxes because I own an entity, ON TOP of having all the same taxes and individual burdens that they do.
Someone doesn't like that? Tough s
hit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by riseagainstrocks
I don't think many people would make a serious argument to say that mandated equality is required or even a desirable end-goal. What should be required and is a desirable end-goal is equal opportunity.
'Guaranteed opportunity, not guaranteed outcome' used to a mantra that the political left and right in this country agreed on. Use of influence and power, which are generally tied to money, to capture segments of the government is what the majority (I'd imagine) of modern leftists are angry about. We should be able to all agree that a billionaire should not have greater, easier, or more influential contact with members of Congress. There is a conflict between reality and idealism here but there are several steps that Congress could take to mitigate the risk of conflicts of interest, or the appearances of them, including what I think is the most important: taxpayer funded elections.
But that's a tangent. The crux of this discussion appears to hinge on the relative merits of 'keep what you earn', with earn being somewhat subjective, and the 'you didn't build that' camp, to borrow Obama's misquoted soundbite. I don't have the time or inclination to write a dissertation on the topic, but fortunately someone else did!
A History of Wealth Inequality
I am not for seizing wealth. I am for changing tax incentives to prevent the top .5% from simply banking a certain percentage of their income. What this would look like requires more economically-minded people than myself, but if someone is used to living on 5 million dollars a year, they could probably manage to live a comparable lifestyle for 4-4.25 million a year. And that money could then be funneled into homeless shelters, job training programs for displaced factory workers, infrastructure improvements, mass transit, etc etc. |
Agreed for the most part. Unfortunately, one of the problems that governments always face is trying to figure out how to keep the wealthy from leaving for somewhere where their wealth is "better off". That's one of the reasons some people really hated Hillary Clinton's proposed tax plan during the election, because she was raising things on the highest bracket to a "breaking point" according some economists. That point being where they'd say "
fuck it" and take themselves and all their assets to the Cook Islands or something.
I'd probably propose some kind of program that funnels money into the things you mentioned (plus more tech job training, sales training, etc.), but maybe with other kinds of incentives for the rich so that they'd stay in the U.S. and actually want to pay into it.