Wealth! How much is enough?

[hobbsyoyo]

That's true and what was a frivolity yesterday is essential today. The entire internet falls under that category.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I don't have exact figures for most of your questions, I was just using numbers others had posted for the sake of argument. Knowing their exact figure either way won't make a major difference to the argument.

But I do have an answer for this -

Federal minimum wage in 1965 was $1.25/hr, or $10.33 when adjusted for inflation. It rose to $1.60/hr or $13.22/hr by 1968. For comparison, federal minimum wage is now $7.25/hr and has been stuck there for about a decade. The last time there was an effort to raise it, it was only to $10.10/hr (less than in 1965) and the effort failed.

A couple other huge differences we shouldn't overlook -

Life was cheaper in all respects back then. In the preReagan years, you didn't have to have a cell phone and wireless plan, or an internet connection just to function in modern society. Many of the creature comforts were also cheaper, if they existed (depending on how far pre- we are talking, cable TV may not have even been a thing). And while we can argue that people don't need cable or PC games to function, we can't really say that about the internet or cell phones, student loans or hospital bills.


The other thing is that the proportion of truly minimum wage jobs as a portion of the overall society was much lower back then compared to now. Moreover, if you worked as a short order cook or a stocker back then, there was a reasonable expectation that you'd be able to work your way up to a decent living. Back then, you could have started as a short order cook and got consistent, decent raises and then maybe be promoted to a management position that was a good living.

Today, you're lucky to get a dime/hr raise per year and managers in most locations make ~$25k/yr for atrocious hours. And I have to reiterate that $13.33 in 1968 went a lot further than it does today, much less $7.25. It may not have been the high life but it wasn't destitution either.

It has gotten so bad with how companies were abusing salaried employees that Obama forced through a rule change to make those making less than ~$40k on salary eligible for overtime and even that was quickly overturned by Trump, relegating many ambitious people to effectively less-than-minimum wage when compared to the amount of mandatory uncompensated overtime they work.

I can't speak about your time in those industries but when I worked them, there were an awful lot of middle aged workers making right at or just above minimum wage with literal decades of experience. I have a hard time believing that was the case back then.

Comparing times is fraught with problems because wage rates are not the whole story. What one can say is that wages at the bottom have always been too low and business practices have pretty much favored the employers over the workers. Exactly how, changes over time. And while federal minimum wage is stuck at $7.25 many local minimums are higher. The current push for $15 is a start.

 

[AmazonQueen]

That's true and what was a frivolity yesterday is essential today. The entire internet falls under that category.

14.2% of the US population don't have access to the internet so its debateable that its essential. Same goes for a mobile.
Is it a disadvantage not to have them? Yes, but not essential.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

14.2% of the US population don't have access to the internet so its debateable that its essential. Same goes for a mobile.
Is it a disadvantage not to have them? Yes, but not essential.

It's essential - even our federal government says as much which is why they spent billions building out rural networks, though it's a massive, ongoing scandal that most of that money has gone directly into the pockets of shareholders rather than going into infrastructure.

And those that can't access the internet are more or less doomed to never make more than local minimum wage, our entire economy above the bottom wrung is tied to the internet.

Comparing times is fraught with problems because wage rates are not the whole story.

I know, but I feel compelled to highlight how much worse things are getting for a large (and growing) portion of our society even as the rest pulls away.

 

[Birdjaguar]

14.2% of the US population don't have access to the internet so its debateable that its essential. Same goes for a mobile.
Is it a disadvantage not to have them? Yes, but not essential.

It is not essential to live, but it is essential if one wants to improve one's ability to take advantage of what the world offers for better jobs, cultural understanding and education.

 

[El_Machinae]

@El_Machinae Clarity is important and I see economic relief as something different from "sustainable". One can certainly relate them over the long term. As I see things finding ways to improve the current lives of children, everyone's future is brighter.

Yeah, the calculus gets difficult very quickly, but also allows us to be optimistic if we invest our surplus wisely. I was referring to this above when I was discussing 'compounding returns'. There are many poverty-relieving interventions that will create compounding wealth, which means that sufficient investment would make the future easier.

Economic relief isn't really different from 'sustainable' because if the relief destabilizes sustainability, then it's just stealing from the future to help the present. It's valuing the present more than the future instead of valuing relief-from-suffering itself. They're strongly related, even if not exactly equatable. I'm again pretty sure Stink was referring to ecological sustainability, not the sustainability of a poverty-reduction program. Those can be temporary without stealing from the future poor, obviously.

The wealth cap itself might not increase sustainability (I expect it wouldn't, much. It would allow people to care more about the future, but we don't really care that much, so it will be an insufficient bump), but what you do with the proceeds could easily do so. For example, if we taxed the ultra-wealthy in order to fund a series of sustainable initiatives, we'd both migrate wealth down to the working class AND provide relief to the truly poor (mostly the future poor). Compare it to (say) seizing lands that contain proven coal reserves and setting them aside to remain untouched (which needs to happen). That would be one way of capping wealth, but might not provide some of the economic relief that we need today ... it would make future wealth easier to earn.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Yeah, the calculus gets difficult very quickly, but also allows us to be optimistic if we invest our surplus wisely. I was referring to this above when I was discussing 'compounding returns'. There are many poverty-relieving interventions that will create compounding wealth, which means that sufficient investment would make the future easier.

Economic relief isn't really different from 'sustainable' because if the relief destabilizes sustainability, then it's just stealing from the future to help the present. It's valuing the present more than the future instead of valuing relief-from-suffering itself. They're strongly related, even if not exactly equatable. I'm again pretty sure Stink was referring to ecological sustainability, not the sustainability of a poverty-reduction program. Those can be temporary without stealing from the future poor, obviously.

The wealth cap itself might not increase sustainability (I expect it wouldn't, much. It would allow people to care more about the future, but we don't really care that much, so it will be an insufficient bump), but what you do with the proceeds could easily do so. For example, if we taxed the ultra-wealthy in order to fund a series of sustainable initiatives, we'd both migrate wealth down to the working class AND provide relief to the truly poor (mostly the future poor). Compare it to (say) seizing lands that contain proven coal reserves and setting them aside to remain untouched (which needs to happen). That would be one way of capping wealth, but might not provide some of the economic relief that we need today ... it would make future wealth easier to earn.

My personal preference is to use any excess wealth "captured" by some program to be used for infrastructure, technology, healthcare, Immediate relief for the worst off, and education projects that benefit the rural and urban poor.

 

[High Empty]

Question

Would a tiered tax system be more useful

Such that you have a double claw back

First your normal income tax
Then your additional (new) asset tax
Such that as follows:

Minimum wage worker, (yearly income) (40 hours a week)

So the start of the tax would occur at

1000 times the salary of a yearly income in assets,
So taking a base of 10$ per hour, it works out to 20,800$ a year.

So 1000 times would start at 20,800,000$ at this point 5% of assets over this amount would be taxed
At 10,000 times this would be 208,000,000$ at this point 10% of the assets would be taxed, this would have generated $9,360,000 of additional tax on owning the difference between.
At 100,000 times this would be 2,080,000,000$ at this point 15% of the asset would be taxed this would have generated $187,200,000 of additional tax on owning the difference between.
At 1,000,000 times this would be 20,800,000,000$ at this point 20% of the asset would be taxed this would have generated $3,120,000,000 of additional tax on owning the difference between.
At 10,000,000 times this would be 208,000,000,000$ at this point 25% of the asset would be taxed this would have generated $37,440,000,000 of additional tax on owning the difference between.
And so on until 100% Which if you were that rich you could just pay more Minimum wage and boost your own bracket!

The idea is that if they have more assets than a certain amount than they need to be working assets that are earning more than this additional tax claw back.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@High Empty Hello and welcome to Off topic. I will take a look at your post an offer a reply later.

 

[El_Machinae]

My personal preference is to use any excess wealth "captured" by some program to be used for infrastructure, technology, healthcare, Immediate relief for the worst off, and education projects that benefit the rural and urban poor.

That's pretty similar to my matrix. I'm fully willing to build wealth today that makes tomorrow more survivable. When it comes to 'immediate relief', I prefer economically sustainable packages. That said, the current wealth imbalance creates a pool that just needs to be drawn down, so it doesn't need to be spent in 'sustainable' ways.

I often liken these things to an aquifer. You can draw down the first 50% without consequences, and probably even should, but you'd better spend that water in ways that you're capable of weaning the consumption down to sustainable levels before doing so would cause pain.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Question

Would a tiered tax system be more useful

Such that you have a double claw back

First your normal income tax
Then your additional (new) asset tax
Such that as follows:

Minimum wage worker, (yearly income) (40 hours a week)

So the start of the tax would occur at

1000 times the salary of a yearly income in assets,
So taking a base of 10$ per hour, it works out to 20,800$ a year.

So 1000 times would start at 20,800,000$ at this point 5% of assets over this amount would be taxed
At 10,000 times this would be 208,000,000$ at this point 10% of the assets would be taxed, this would have generated $9,360,000 of additional tax on owning the difference between.
At 100,000 times this would be 2,080,000,000$ at this point 15% of the asset would be taxed this would have generated $187,200,000 of additional tax on owning the difference between.
At 1,000,000 times this would be 20,800,000,000$ at this point 20% of the asset would be taxed this would have generated $3,120,000,000 of additional tax on owning the difference between.
At 10,000,000 times this would be 208,000,000,000$ at this point 25% of the asset would be taxed this would have generated $37,440,000,000 of additional tax on owning the difference between.
And so on until 100% Which if you were that rich you could just pay more Minimum wage and boost your own bracket!

The idea is that if they have more assets than a certain amount than they need to be working assets that are earning more than this additional tax claw back.

If I understand your post, you are suggesting that personal assets be taxed based on their value as a multiple of a determined minimum wage. A mix of corporate and personal accounting. If I were rich and had $100 million in land and housing assets and did not have a job or company, my asset tax would be 5% of that $100 million? What minimum wage rate would be used? A national number? How would my land and houses be valued? Purchase price? Insurance replacement cost? Market appraisal? Local tax valuation?

 

[Farm Boy]

Education projects. Hrm. It's good to keep people productive, perpetual work training is required to keep the gears lubricated. But inculcation and accreditation won't cut it. Sometimes you just need to fund useful and good work at a level that's respectable, ie, not cheap. The amount of lives needed spent doing sustainable, needful tasks that are not sexy or futuristic is vast. Far in excess of the tasks we cast as aspirational. But that's an attack on status itself and if you're more successful than the garbageman or streetsweeper it's easier to say he needs replaced with tech and retrained to something more aesthetically attractive. Thus is status maintained and the rationalization reinforced.

 

[Patine]

preach. shame it won't work though because as soon as any country anywhere even mentions "nationalization", especially in regards with "oil" a fascist dictator just pops out of nowhere and overthrows the democratically elected government in a coup aided by the CIA. truly weird how that works, innit?

Well, certainly a populist, authoritarian, reactionary dictator in the pockets of big money, yes, but Fascist ideology was as hostile to Free-Market economics as it was to Communist/Socialist economics, but had a VERY brutal and harsh form of Third Way economics meant to benefit a massive war engine and rapid industrial revival and to instill "nationalistic ultra-patriotic pride," in both workers and industrialists. This is one of quite a few reasons I was pointing out (and taking a lot of slings and arrows for it) that the common practice of just casually and irresponsibly slapping the label of "Fascist," on Trump and the Republican Party of the United States is not at all accurate or valid, even they are, indeed, an extremist, populist, nationalist, toxic, right-wing movement that is indeed very dangerous and fearsome. But "Fascism," is NOT a generic socio-political term for all populist, authoritarian, right-wing political movements, it's a very specific term, and people should understand this.

What do you mean by a "sustainable future"? My understanding of the term has nothing to to with improving the lives at the bottom of society.

A VERY good quote never used, and usually ignored and even pretended to not exist by the Evangelical, Dominionist, Fundamentalist, and especially Prosperity Gospel, "Christians," (quotation marks used advisedly in their cases):

"How you treat the least amongst you is how you treat Me,"
-Jesus Christ

14.2% of the US population don't have access to the internet so its debateable that its essential. Same goes for a mobile.
Is it a disadvantage not to have them? Yes, but not essential.

It's essential - even our federal government says as much which is why they spent billions building out rural networks, though it's a massive, ongoing scandal that most of that money has gone directly into the pockets of shareholders rather than going into infrastructure.

And those that can't access the internet are more or less doomed to never make more than local minimum wage, our entire economy above the bottom wrung is tied to the internet.

I know, but I feel compelled to highlight how much worse things are getting for a large (and growing) portion of our society even as the rest pulls away.

Most of my clients from work have no Internet, though some do. Quite a few get a dirt-cheap cell-phone package that is ONLY for phone and music purposes, and no motive Internet.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Education projects. Hrm. It's good to keep people productive, perpetual work training is required to keep the gears lubricated. But inculcation and accreditation won't cut it. Sometimes you just need to fund useful and good work at a level that's respectable, ie, not cheap. The amount of lives needed spent doing sustainable, needful tasks that are not sexy or futuristic is vast. Far in excess of the tasks we cast as aspirational. But that's an attack on status itself and if you're more successful than the garbageman or streetsweeper it's easier to say he needs replaced with tech and retrained to something more aesthetically attractive. Thus is status maintained and the rationalization reinforced.

I agree. There is nothing wrong with educating people in the trades as plumber,s electricians, repair people, etc. Even those jobs are changing with new materials and options.

 

[El_Machinae]

If I understand your post, you are suggesting that personal assets be taxed based on their value as a multiple of a determined minimum wage. A mix of corporate and personal accounting. If I were rich and had $100 million in land and housing assets and did not have a job or company, my asset tax would be 5% of that $100 million? What minimum wage rate would be used? A national number? How would my land and houses be valued? Purchase price? Insurance replacement cost? Market appraisal? Local tax valuation?

There's something simple to keep in mind, the amount we tax the wealth is just a number that we use to generate the income we need. It doesn't matter if people under-value or over-value their houses, for example. If the city needs $2k on average, they can make that 1% of fairly valued houses or 0.5% if we decide to value the houses at twice the rate. Same thing happens when the city deliberately under-values my house on my tax assessment. They under-value my house, but then just charge a higher percentage. We rather pay 2% on a tax where our house is falsely under-valued than pay 1% using our houses at fair value. In other words, for practical purposes, the income from the tax is more important than the actual valuation of what's being taxed. We will just modify the percentage based on the income we need.

The cutest system I've seen for a wealth tax is to just get people to write down the fair market value of their assets. The caveat is that you must sell the asset if someone offers the price. Most of the loopholes/problems with this system involve just having a large personal exemption before the wealth tax kicks in. So, because we actually care about the income from the tax more than anything, the fact that everything will be valued more highly than its actual market value just means we'd charge a lower percentage on the tax.

 

[Birdjaguar]

There's something simple to keep in mind, the amount we tax the wealth is just a number that we use to generate the income we need. It doesn't matter if people under-value or over-value their houses, for example. If the city needs $2k on average, they can make that 1% of fairly valued houses or 0.5% if we decide to value the houses at twice the rate. Same thing happens when the city deliberately under-values my house on my tax assessment. They under-value my house, but then just charge a higher percentage. We rather pay 2% on a tax where our house is falsely under-valued than pay 1% using our houses at fair value. In other words, for practical purposes, the income from the tax is more important than the actual valuation of what's being taxed. We will just modify the percentage based on the income we need.

The cutest system I've seen for a wealth tax is to just get people to write down the fair market value of their assets. The caveat is that you must sell the asset if someone offers the price. Most of the loopholes/problems with this system involve just having a large personal exemption before the wealth tax kicks in. So, because we actually care about the income from the tax more than anything, the fact that everything will be valued more highly than it's actual market value just means we'd charge a lower percentage on the tax.

I love that system for property valuation!

 

[Patine]

I agree. There is nothing wrong with educating people in the trades as plumber,s electricians, repair people, etc. Even those jobs are changing with new materials and options.

In the '80's, a gaffe by a Reagan Administration official that, "someone needs to dig ditches," that became a pre-Internet meme for a while (notably said by a character in Caddyshack 1) has become obsolete, because, unless you're a small private property contractor or landscaper, no one digs ditches with a shovel anymore - they use a backhoe, and that requires training, certification, safety standards, and, often, in many area, being unionized.

 

[High Empty]

If I understand your post, you are suggesting that personal assets be taxed based on their value as a multiple of a determined minimum wage. A mix of corporate and personal accounting. If I were rich and had $100 million in land and housing assets and did not have a job or company, my asset tax would be 5% of that $100 million? What minimum wage rate would be used? A national number? How would my land and houses be valued? Purchase price? Insurance replacement cost? Market appraisal? Local tax valuation?

Education projects. Hrm. It's good to keep people productive, perpetual work training is required to keep the gears lubricated. But inculcation and accreditation won't cut it. Sometimes you just need to fund useful and good work at a level that's respectable, ie, not cheap. The amount of lives needed spent doing sustainable, needful tasks that are not sexy or futuristic is vast. Far in excess of the tasks we cast as aspirational. But that's an attack on status itself and if you're more successful than the garbageman or streetsweeper it's easier to say he needs replaced with tech and retrained to something more aesthetically attractive. Thus is status maintained and the rationalization reinforced.

@Birdjaguar
Yes i'm suggesting that if you had a 100,000,000 in assets, that you would be taxed assets on 100 million less ( 1000 times minimal annual salary), but not on the first 20.8million.
This would mean that you would need to earn to keep a rate of return on that asset of greater than 5% to keep the asset. aka making money work rather than collecting it and hording it. They most likely were going to make this 5% anyways this just give another means to collect it, and they will find ways to dodge.

@Farm Boy

Hololense 2.0 + Pokomon GO+ How to run a deep fryer safety training= reduce risk through education
Elevate Phone APP ( Provides basic building block of English grammar for adults, and math refreshers to build speed and confidence) (Can be used to achieve other training too!)

Work?? What's work?
If you have fun is it still work?
It can be!

So the goal would be to cap wealth funnel the money back into the economy.

@ Birdjaguar
If the person with 100 million petition the state to increase minimum wages to be 50$ an hour ( or WTH they may be) so that 1000 times that they wouldn't have to pay that tax, yes they could do that.
I'm not sure the poor would be upset.

Sorry for my poor grammar and english, i'm a person that didn't do well at formal thought writing from a grading point of view, i jump alot.


So... with that...
Wealth is information?
Wealth is raw land and what sits on it
Wealth is control of corporations and Non-Profits
Wealth is investment in something
Wealth is having assets, that grow and shrink in value or that can be set.

Wealth HIDES!

Be it the simple way of a house?
Does the wealth of it mean the replacement value for the insurance
or does it mean what a quick fire sale price would bring
or does it mean what would a new construction cost that was planned and reasonable rather than rushed
Or is it the taxed value,
or how much the banks will lend you against it.

It's a tricky thing, I know not all it's ways, however one can only try to acquire them with time and age. Knowledge is a wealth that isn't taxable, except through income consider that? It's application breeds the ability to tax, proper application mitigates that taxation. Feedback loops with reasonable time delay to prevent exploitation of loopholes is a useful thing.

P.S you can make information worth less if you make it common knowledge So a central database that manages that information would be useful to reduce the cost of that information and help the common folk, but the integration of that at a state level, so that the information can be peer reviewed and vetted, would allow for an additional barrier of protection.

Things depend.

So to answer you what minimum wage... it doesn't matter choose one, but it's the idea ( aka when are you rich), i think i gave the beginners the ability to not be hinder by the tax until they had an economic engine up and running which was creating them greater yields. This just slows the progress it doesn't stop it.

Sorry for the chaos

 

[Birdjaguar]

Thanks for your explanation @High Empty

 

[stinkubus]

What do you mean by a "sustainable future"? My understanding of the term has nothing to to with improving the lives at the bottom of society.

What is your evidence that nationalization of the largest industries is beneficial and to whom is it beneficial?

Again you are talking about corporate wealth and not personal wealth. They are not the same.

When I say sustainable I'm talking about ecological sustainability. Capitalism can never provide this because doing what it's going to take to achieve it only cuts into the bottom line. Even if you manage to successfully impose regulations on the capitalists so long as they retain their wealth you run the risk of losing control of the political process to them again and those regulations then get thrown or openly flouted without consequence. Since this is our current lived experience no one should need to have their arm twisted to be convinced of this.

Our evidence that nationalization works is historical. The US dominates tech industries because R&D for the entire sector has been nationalized through the Pentagon. Our financial institutions dominate the globe because they are effectively nationalized through implicit guarantee of bailout in the event of a crisis. Instead of nationalizing the profits, however, we let those go into private hands.

At the risk of being labeled a "tankie" I'm also going to point to both the USSR and China as what are probably the two most potent examples of the power of nationalization. Tsarist Russia was one of the poorest and most backward nations of Europe and within two generations transformed itself into an industrial superpower despite being diplomatically and economically isolated by a much, much strong rival. China has achieved economic growth and expansion of its middle classes which are historically unparalleled.

If you (or anyone else) is queuing up a "won't someone please think of the atrocities" reply to this point I am going to preemptively rebut that our own society could not and would not have industrialized without killing off the natives to clear land, stealing mineral wealth from the rest of the world via colonialism, accumulation of capital via the export of cotton which necessitated slavery to be profitable, etc. There is no difference between "us" and "them" in this regard. If anything the US has more blood on its hands but no one is going to relentlessly propagandize you regarding this fact nor are they able to point to singular large scale disasters like failures of collectivized agriculture which we are obviously under no obligation to repeat in any event.

Corporate wealth and personal wealth will always be linked for the super rich because their personal wealth is primarily held in the form of corporate stock. Once the productive assets of a corporation have been seized by the state that stock instantly becomes worthless. You cut the legs of a capitalist right out from underneath them.

As an example of how we could use nationalization to immediately aid the poor without doing much else let's take our nation's electrical grid as an example. In our hypothetical the grid and all power plants have been nationalized by legislative fiat. Without changing anything else about how these entities currently operate the state can order that instead of paying back profits in the form of dividends and buy backs we will instead use them to finance reduction of emissions to improve the lives of those who are currently stuck living next to them and we could also be outright waiving payment for those who can't currently afford their service instead of having the state pay a subsidy to enrich and empower a private entity.

If we nationalized the internet again we could transform it back into the educational and communications tool it was intended to be instead of the Orwellian "Big Brother" surveillance service and propaganda/advertising delivery vehicle that it's become. The global ascendency of the far right has been in lock step with the rise in use of social media and this is NOT AN ACCIDENT.