sendos
Immortal
I voted $5m because I largely see myself in the future as living alone and I wouldn't mind having a decent abode which might be a third to half that amount of money.
Wealth! How much is enough?
- Thread starter Birdjaguar
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Chieftain
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Think a different way
Someone needs to go to the GYM and do physical activity, paying for the comfort and safety, rather than getting some fresh air and helping lower your region taxes by getting gangs together to clean up and maintenance the properties with all the fun parts of doing something cause you care and enjoy it, But it's a culture thing, so it's difficult.
Sir.
What i'm thinking is more radical or less.
A simple application, which replaces government, by replacing the tasks that humans do, to achieve the desired goals.
If you command that something be built and you need it for a day, and it lasts for a week you are happy.
If you need it forever and it doesn't last you understand mother nature naturally taxes the material through the longterm usage on the material properties.
Education... that's the key..
You educate everyone like the bible so that they can understand when we talk tech tree development and how understanding what developments that mankind needs and having that shared through a common understanding, so that they too could have a say, and they too could understand how and why something was happening rather than tune it out.
A simple app
Time management
(Organizational system of minimum requirements, and assistance tools to reduce time input to complete task)
Information management
System Responsibility ( Provide the buffalo style system of product engineering, defining a need on the market place, and placing your product there, but using all by-products of the lifecycle of the product usefully) (Aka have a plan, and make money at each step of the way, turning lead into gold, the way of value engineering)
System Education ( Tax credits linked to learning, learning encouraged as smart workers make more product for the salesmen to sale)
okay perhaps not a simple app.
But... you can allow for each user to have secure connection to the state, NOT through 3rd party mediums!
(Now the transmission via service providers is to be regulated, and perhaps an override inplace)
Peer review of information to provide environmentally friendly resolutions
(Example of NON environmentally solution, any make work action ( aka you cause someone to have to apply effort, which could of been avoided thought forethought aka knowledge)
Training programs that includes certain segments of our economic so that they were part of an organized schooling system where they understood there was more, and it was easily an option to attempt more, ( once), the second time not so easy, since it's about a chance to be your own person. Having a background in knowledge to NOT screw up and cause pain of debt upon yourself, or to just not care, like so many others.
Answer what's better than democracy of 1945
Social democracy that requires technocrat base education levels, which phones do allow, and it is happening, it's just not a "focus of attention".
Sorry, Wealth generation
Question would you say this idea has value?
That groups of artist sign up to be the finished painters at a various levels of house finishing, where the owners enter into the lease that the house was an artwork with respect to the image on the walls, and that if modifications needed to be made that they are to consult with the artist for solutions that work with the piece.
Providing an internal feeling within the walls that make the rooms seem more alive, allowing the occupants to have a better understanding of what happens.
To add in that the requirements of the artists would be to work with the engineers to incorporate the maintenance features within building, and allow for a better blending of the two different style of thought.
Passive education through 3rd party/ or 1st party ideas embedded within the background of the dwelling unit, to assist with the tasks, reducing the brainpower required to do the task, and breaking it down so that's duration was of acceptable length.
Sorry.. i've got people here, it's a yellow day... i can't wait for Green DAY, perhaps we can live a better future and treat it like a dark age going to a glorious age!
A guy can dream can't he? As long as he willing to let people try to destroy them!
Certainly capitalism could provide a sustainable improved environment. We have seen steadily improving water and air for 70 years. We see continued reductions in the worst of the fossil fuels. So far it has not been quick, but it has been steady. Given the current situation and impending crisis, can capitalism move fast enough to avert what seems likely. And given that the ecological crisis is world wide, the bigger issue is how much will the key nations of the world actually cooperate. Nationalizing big industry does little to change people's minds about what is happening and to a large degree it is the attitude of people that will determine the success or failure of any effort. Only a government like China or NK can mandate a policy and have any likelihood of it getting followed by the masses. In the US we can't even get people to wear makes to save their lives. China has been trying very hard for 20 years to clean up its environment using the full power of the state. It has made progress but it is still way behind much of western Europe and the US. Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang are the price paid for that kind of control.
Until recently (the past 20 year or so), tech transfers out of the national labs was slow and much less frequent. The glitch has always been that the scientists that do the research usually lack the business skills and ability to take that research and develop the processes required to make products available to the general public. What usually happens is that a lab scientist partners with business people who put up the money for the transition from research results to "products" on the shelf. Not all succeed. NM has three national labs and I see numerous spin out companies from Los Alamos, Sandia, and Kirtland Air Force lab. The government has no capacity for developing small businesses to sell products. The motivation for going through years of transitioning products out of the labs is profit.
An example is UbiQD. They were spun out of Los Alamos in 2014 to manufacture quantum dot products. The owners have secured millions of dollars of funding and started selling some products in 2019. They are developing products in agriculture, energy and inks. They are not profitable yet. Their products are very cool. Time will tell is they succeed. To succeed they need to attract top level people who are willing to work very hard for a big payout possibility in the future. To say "Oh just let the government spin out all their tech and keep the profits." is very naive.
Typical examples. First, the USSR's industrial base had huge help during the war from the US lend lease program that enable them build up their infrastructure. Second, they mostly copied Western tech and practices to become a world power, but that status only lasted until their economic collapse in the 80s. Their centralized government programs could sustain either economic growth or a standard of living that approached that of the west. Their system had too many broken parts to keep running.
China is certainly an example of sustained and real economic progress. But it was almost entirely funded and developed by the US and Europe. Capitalistic industry and technology moved to China and proved money and jobs that raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Without the flight of US manufacturing from the US, that would not have happened. And even now China keeps needing foreign ideas and technology to maintain its technological growth. Theft of US tech is part of the plan because they do not have the cultural and educational infrastructure to grow their own yet. Why do you think so many Chinese student are in school in the US? Yes China has built a fabulous fast train network that is the envy much of the world. In reality is is very impressive, but it has had a cost.
What about those of who keep their wealth in bonds? Or privately held companies? The Stock market has about 3000 publicly traded companies. The US has about 18 million corporations. 98.7% of them have less than 100 employees. Example: Trump's company; privately held; it has generated millions of dollars in profits to the Trump family. To seize those company assets the government would be taking on the burden of running office building, hotels and golf courses.
that's flatly not believable. The only way that works is if all of these people are utterly removed from the labor force.
Farm Boy
I hope you dance
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People are desperately trying to make that true. They're not the leaders the world deserves, but I suppose they're the ones we've always had.
2.5 would buy you enough ground to start one of those evil "ruthless food exporting production enterprises" in the Midwest. Then again, you'd have to rent more ground and work for what I'm starting to understand isn't considered a rational wage. I've wasted at least two people's lifetimes thinking it was, at this point. I should probably up my insurance. I may yet salvage the 3rd.
2.5 would buy you enough ground to start one of those evil "ruthless food exporting production enterprises" in the Midwest. Then again, you'd have to rent more ground and work for what I'm starting to understand isn't considered a rational wage. I've wasted at least two people's lifetimes thinking it was, at this point. I should probably up my insurance. I may yet salvage the 3rd.
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https://www.statista.com/topics/2237/internet-usage-in-the-united-states/
Some of those do go on the internet at least ocasionally ofc
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/22/some-americans-dont-use-the-internet-who-are-they/https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/22/some-americans-dont-use-the-internet-who-are-they/
So 10% of US population roughly never uses the internet, often elderly, without a college education, poorer, more likely to be from minorities.
The internet occurred in time, so theoretically someone could have earned their cash before being able to use the internet before it became essential to earning a living wage.
So the true cohort to watch in order to determine if the internet is essential is the cohort that currently needs to earn money to survive.
What's the statistic? Something like 6% of the American population don't experience food security. Given that they're not dying of starvation, we could ask if we consider food security necessary. If so, and depending on how the breakdown of earning a wage depends on having access to a smartphone, we could ask whether the internet is similarly essential
In my more optimistic days, and when people were complaining about the Obamaphone, I would point out that access to a smartphone is one of the most cost-effective pieces of human liberalization out there, in that it creates a lot of capability that can then be taken advantage of to improve one's lot in life. Dollar for dollar, outside of being able to eat today, I can't think of a more cost-effective poverty reduction tool. Of course, that was in my more optimistic days
So the true cohort to watch in order to determine if the internet is essential is the cohort that currently needs to earn money to survive.
What's the statistic? Something like 6% of the American population don't experience food security. Given that they're not dying of starvation, we could ask if we consider food security necessary. If so, and depending on how the breakdown of earning a wage depends on having access to a smartphone, we could ask whether the internet is similarly essential
In my more optimistic days, and when people were complaining about the Obamaphone, I would point out that access to a smartphone is one of the most cost-effective pieces of human liberalization out there, in that it creates a lot of capability that can then be taken advantage of to improve one's lot in life. Dollar for dollar, outside of being able to eat today, I can't think of a more cost-effective poverty reduction tool. Of course, that was in my more optimistic days
yung.carl.jung
Hey Bird! I'm Morose & Lugubrious
This is a fallacious argument that is made all the time. Any technological or societal "advances" made in recent times are attributed to capitalism, even though that is both wrong and impossible to prove. Another person might blindly attribute all the "progress" we made to science. Another will blindly attribute it to "policy". Of course all of those are wrong as single answers. Capitalism did not bring us "steadily improved water and air", the opposite is the case. We managed to steadily improve access and quality of tap water in spite of capitalism, not because of it.
What capitalism did give us is the DuPont scandal, DDT and the mass genocide of aerial life, rivers full of meds and horribly disfigured babies, people who are crippled because pesticides and herbicides are sprayed over their villages, and other great features. These are actually specifically attributable to big corporations. All of the "progress" we have made is not a product of capitalism, but a consequence of the interaction of human labor, research, policy and human social dynamics. If anyone attributes all progress to capitalism or science, you can instantly tell they're bullshitting reductionists. It would be equally stupid to say that all of the milestones of the Soviet Union happened because of the "command economy", in fact lots of "progress" happened despite the command econony.
Ironically enough your statement is wrong in two ways. Not only has water quality and water access objectively worsened because of capitalism (if you are interested read up on Nestlés predatory water empire) - rather, what you are talking about is not water itself but exclusively tap water. Even more ironic, in many countries, especially in Europe, tap water quality only increased when it was nationalized.
Another fallacious argument that is made all the time. The USSR only "copied" from Western tech. This is also a lie which is often repeated, though nowadays it is almost always aimed at China. Fact is that the Soviets themselves invented a great deal of patents, were in some venues much behind, in others toe-to-toe, in then others "ahead" of "the west", if you even buy into all of these dumb generelizations.
It would be equally stupid to say that "Germany copied all of its industrial revolution from England". This is not how engineering, science, or anything really works. Virtually everything is built upon a predecessor. The only difference is that when it's white people, you call it "inspiration", "collaboration", but when it's nonwhites it's "copying" or "stealing".
I don't think it's completely fair to compare China to the West, and then just declaring that socialism is superior to capitalism. Too many factors.
On technology, I am always going to harp on the fact that an integrated system creates better outcomes.
Capitalism has quite a few tools when it comes to preventing environmental degradation, because it just needs to acknowledge the property rights of whoever is having their environment degraded. Socialism also could, but that's a question of just whether people respect the people outside of their borders. That's more of a human question than an economic system question.
The fact that one system creates the capital that allows a small handful of people to bribe politicians is a difference. I don't see enough about human behaviour to assume that a strong democracy really cares about people outside their borders or about the future, at least not sufficiently so
On technology, I am always going to harp on the fact that an integrated system creates better outcomes.
Capitalism has quite a few tools when it comes to preventing environmental degradation, because it just needs to acknowledge the property rights of whoever is having their environment degraded. Socialism also could, but that's a question of just whether people respect the people outside of their borders. That's more of a human question than an economic system question.
The fact that one system creates the capital that allows a small handful of people to bribe politicians is a difference. I don't see enough about human behaviour to assume that a strong democracy really cares about people outside their borders or about the future, at least not sufficiently so
It is quite easy, though, to prove me wrong. Just post a list of Russian invented items from the second half of the 20th C that had no history in the west prior. There might well be some. Enlighten me, please. Yes Sputnik is one. The RBMK reactor is another. If you look for important Russian patents, you will find that there are quite a few important ones. They are pre soviet usually dating back to the 19th C or those developed by Russians in the US. But hey do look, you are probably more motivated than I am to dig deeply.
Then compare your list with what is not on it and developed in the west.
Capitalism today is not just an economic system; it is tightly wrapped with all the varied political systems all around the world. It is a personal and corporate profit and market based system that produces goods and services. It is deeply entwined with both policy and science (R&D). Certainly greed and to a lesser extent power are at it's roots. And while corporations have regularly despoiled water and the environment, the market and profit motivation have also driven people to find fixes for those depredations. There has been an ongoing back and forth between regulation and deregulation and new tech that runs amok and needs regulating and so forth. One offshoot of capitalism is the non profit corporation. There are about 1.8 million of those (of all types; 2018). They are a demonstration of how people have used the corporate system to focus on improving peoples lives.
It is very easy to attack capitalism for its centuries of violating 20th century norms and doing cruel and distasteful things to people all around the world. Attack is the only socialist only weapon because they have nothing to replace it with. Once it has been torn down, there is nothing to fill the void.
You are right, the failure of the Soviet Union was not solely because of their command economy. It was a whole system of government, social policy, economic policy, party politics etc. that sucked and had few allies outside of its sphere of influence to help them. It worked for while but was not sustainable.
DDT was first synthesized in 1874 by an Austrian university chemist, but its insecticide properties were not discovered until 1939 by a Swiss chemist at JR Geigy AG. From the 1950s through the 1970s DDT saved millions of lives and eradicated malaria from much of the world (as it devastated the environment). Does DDT balance the feather on the scale of Anubis?
If you are going to attribute all the progress over the past couple of hundred years to "the interaction of human labor, research, policy and human social dynamics." you have to include business in that mix; business has always been part of the social economic mix.. You also would have to attribute all the ills you mentioned to the same mix of factions. DDT was made in a university laboratory by scientists, engineers designed airplanes, government policy encouraged their use. You want to put all the evil on capitalism and all the good elsewhere. It doesn't work that way. That is why I stated at the top that capitalism today is more than just an economic theory in action. It is the push pull of many forces.
So when you run out of arguments, you play the "you are a racist" card?
Ironsided
Flower of happiness
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Everything is for sale, everybody is for sale, and that enforces depression. Peoples sense of powerlessness. The problem is not the wealth itself; it is the power attributed to it and the distribution. Personal hoarding of wealth, also in working assets, is in and of itself a signal that society is failed in fundamental parts. The sense of belonging and caring for the community is replaced with private insurance. The main reason to horde wealth is not to be happy – that is only true up to a surprisingly small figure, far less than $1M even in the wealthiest and most expensive societies. The main reason is to be secure with power and status. Fear makes people hoard and conserve their wealth instead of spreading it – when spreading it would demonstrably and objectively be the best way to maximise and extract the value to society. To come to terms with the problem you must discard capitalism and Randian egocentricity justifications from your mind and most people are not there yet. The fear is too strong.
sendos
Immortal
I don't mean living like a hermit. I mean having a reasonable amount of money, minimal expenses and a decent house. My social circle is virtually non-existent and I have a very limited, if any, desire to find new friends. I just don't want to waste time and money into social investments that will likely just wither away.
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I like Senator Warren's threshold of $50 million, above which there is a 2% tax on assets, and 3% above $1 billion. That's enough that all but 75,000 Americans wouldn't be affected, and for those who are, it's still possible to grow their wealth with average rates of return (assuming it isn't all tied up in fixed non-appreciating assets like yachts).
Alternatively, repealing the 2017 tax cuts, raising the top tax bracket (to somewhere in the 50-70% range, which matches the historical rates in the '70s and early '80s), and ending some loopholes would also be a good option. One of the biggest loopholes is that, regardless of the amount of profits they generate for someone, capital gains are taxed lower than income. I'd support making capital gains taxed at the same rate as regular income. For the average person, the effect wouldn't be great, particularly if most/all of their investments are in a retirement account. But for someone like Warren Buffet, it would take the long-term gains tax from 15% to (with pre-tax-cut top income brackets) 39.6%, making a huge difference in tax income while still allowing profits to be derived from investment.
At the same time, have the government create free, accessible-to-everyone tax software, and automate as much of the process as possible.
Alternatively, repealing the 2017 tax cuts, raising the top tax bracket (to somewhere in the 50-70% range, which matches the historical rates in the '70s and early '80s), and ending some loopholes would also be a good option. One of the biggest loopholes is that, regardless of the amount of profits they generate for someone, capital gains are taxed lower than income. I'd support making capital gains taxed at the same rate as regular income. For the average person, the effect wouldn't be great, particularly if most/all of their investments are in a retirement account. But for someone like Warren Buffet, it would take the long-term gains tax from 15% to (with pre-tax-cut top income brackets) 39.6%, making a huge difference in tax income while still allowing profits to be derived from investment.
At the same time, have the government create free, accessible-to-everyone tax software, and automate as much of the process as possible.
hobbsyoyo
Deity
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The government already developed this but the tax return lobby has fought tooth and nail to keep it from general release.
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Well, yes, but that doesn't mean I can't support the idea.
That's also the main reason I do my taxes myself, without tax-prep software - to not support the tax return industry.
Patine
Deity
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Which "leftists," in the United States who would have any true support for actually propagating and nurturing Socialist regimes abroad that have any chance of coming to power were you thinking. Gloria de la Riva is imperceptible in the polls, and the DNC are NEVER going to allow Sanders, Warren, AOC, or someone else of their ideological camp to be nominated - and, even if they did, they'd have a tortuous General Election and a hostile Congress - from Republicans and a majority of Democrats. And, the three I listed as possible left-wing Democratic nominee candidates, and others like them (as opposed to de la Riva and such), are not actually Socialists ideologically, but Social Democrats, and may not be up for supporting the Third World takes on Socialism. I'm not sure who these "leftists," with clout to come to power you're thinking of are, but I'm drawing a blank.
stinkubus
Emperor
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GMAFB. We are obviously discussing hypotheticals.
Patine
Deity
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Well, you might as well be discussing Islamists or Monarchists coming to power in the United States for those kind of hypotheticals, frankly...
Weren't you the person advocating for the complete overthrowal of the current party system in the US? Thats a pretty unlikely hypothetical too.
