Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
"It's not an ideology, it's just a comprehensive world-view built around a distinct set of ontological, ethical and aesthetic assumptions."
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What does the American Conservative stand for anymore?
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GoodSarmatian
Jokerfied Western Male
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Maybe you don't know a single one who will admit to believe these things, but that's because conservatives are fundamentally dishonest people.
Patine
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A word for you is "Conservator," if I'm not mistaken. VERY similar sounding, but very different meaning. Though, in Spanish and Portuguese (which means, a fairly large number of countries), "Conservator" does mean "Conservative," politically, which confuses things a bit.
Yung knows that he's not a conservative. He's trying to craft meme space in order to convince conservatives to start caring about the future, by protecting things that already exist
yung.carl.jung
Hey Bird! I'm Morose & Lugubrious
the "original" meaning of conservative is actually close to what I advocated for, a conservative was simply one who wanted to conserve.. the status quo, social order, the environment, the patriarchy, and so on. honestly, when people nowadays say "conservative" they don't mean that at all, rather they mean neocon, which is a general term for a con-man that tries to sell you a past that never existed (read mark fisher for more insight on lost future/past). conservatives today are no longer interested in conserving anything but the very social order that is keeping them at the top and everyone else down.
from "conservare" (latin)
Patine
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Oh, I'm all too aware of the "fairy-tale, magical past where all social, political, and economic problems of today didn't exist because tradition, old values, and functional families took care of everything, and this was only ruined by the malicious, evil, and destructive intent of Progressives, Liberals, and Marxists," line of snake oil that conservatives basically push. I've brought it up to other posters on these very forums, and another set of strategy game forums otherwise, as well as to RL acquaintances, quite a few times, myself, previously.
Zardnaar
Deity
It kind of existed for 20 or 30 years post war.
Those reasons it existed are circumstantial though, can't really be replicated and taxes were higher.
People became more conservative in say the 50s due to the chaos of the 20s, 30s and 40s.
Arguably due to the chaos of the 60s and 70s as well- rise of Reagan for example.
Patine
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Well, actually, the '50's were, in truth, NOT at all sugar-coated, idealized past praised by Conservatives. Such a past never actually existed. And the '60's and '70's were not "chaos" - they were just a time of social challenge to a broken, elitist, corrupt, and self-serving status quo. A challenge with enough momentum to get results - but without toppling the government in a violent, insurgent revolution. Reagan, and his ideological "soulmate" across the Atlantic, Thatcher, were awful leaders, in truth, and did damage to the American and British way of governing and economic system, and certain parts of global politics and economics, that have been recovered from to this day. They also brought political power at the top level, for the first time in their respective nations' history, to a very virulent, ruinous, deluded, and detached form of Conservativism that has been behind much evil in the world.
Did a search '1975' London trash and got this:
England was known as the:
"IN THE 1970s, Britain was dubbed “the sick man of Europe”, a role previously played by the Ottoman empire in the late 19th century. A poor growth record since the second world war combined with terrible industrial relations (29m days lost to strikes in 1979) to make many ask the question “Is Britain governable?”.
The reason Britain joined what was then the EEC in 1973 (at the third attempt) was, in large part, a desperate attempt to find a way of forcing the country to become more competitive. Whether Europe was the key factor, or whether it was Margaret Thatcher’s reforms, by the mid-1990s, the trick seemed to have worked. In particular, London, which lost a quarter of its population between 1939 and the early 1990s, became a global, self-confident city, attracting expats from all over the world. There was a point, a decade ago, when London started to talk of overtaking New York as the global financial centre."
https://www.economist.com/buttonwoo.../britain-back-to-being-the-sick-man-of-europe
Who turned it around? Only the shadow knows.
England was known as the:
"IN THE 1970s, Britain was dubbed “the sick man of Europe”, a role previously played by the Ottoman empire in the late 19th century. A poor growth record since the second world war combined with terrible industrial relations (29m days lost to strikes in 1979) to make many ask the question “Is Britain governable?”.
The reason Britain joined what was then the EEC in 1973 (at the third attempt) was, in large part, a desperate attempt to find a way of forcing the country to become more competitive. Whether Europe was the key factor, or whether it was Margaret Thatcher’s reforms, by the mid-1990s, the trick seemed to have worked. In particular, London, which lost a quarter of its population between 1939 and the early 1990s, became a global, self-confident city, attracting expats from all over the world. There was a point, a decade ago, when London started to talk of overtaking New York as the global financial centre."
https://www.economist.com/buttonwoo.../britain-back-to-being-the-sick-man-of-europe
Who turned it around? Only the shadow knows.
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Zardnaar
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That's basically chaos. You had people getting killed in the streets left wing terrorism, civil right murders of activists, students getting shot, Vietnam War protesters.
Dress it up how you like it's chaos compared to the 50s.
Nothing's ever perfect, the world didn't go mad by electing Thatcher and Reagan.
Looking back didn't turn out so well. At the time it was rational I suppose with stagflation.
Patine
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Look at Libya, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, and the Eastern DRC today, and then tell me again, sincerely, that the '60's and '70's in the U.S. was "chaos." Perspective and context are being disregarded in socio-political discourse CONSTANTLY nowadays, and any credibility therein is suffering immensely. Also, the tenures of Reagan and Thatcher may not have made "the world go mad," but they normalized and institutionalized what was then, specifically speaking, a relatively new and creeping form of political evil that the world is still reaping the consequences of today.
Zardnaar
Deity
What happens overseas is irrelevant.
What happened in the 60s and 70s had consequences. The stagflation, oil crisis, political violence in the USA.
Not disagreeing with the long term consequences. See why I was agreeing with you about violence in the other thread.
New York also was in bad shape in the 70s.
Now we know better, back then neo liberal trickle down was kind of new. Or at least how they packaged it. Long term gilded age 2.0.
I'm a big believer in cause and Effects, did a lot of reading while at uni on 20th century economics. Per capita my country was one of the richest in the world 1913.
Why did FDR and the Dems win for 20 years? GoP screwed the pooch hard.
Havevi not been consistent with my dislike of political violence or more cheap labour equals stagnant wages?
I read my brother's neo liberal books, economic text books,how the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany structured their economy.
It's also why I opposed taxes being to high like they were back then and few people actually paid tax that high anyway.
Obviously it wasn't all milk and honey back then. No government can replicate it. Maybe if we have WW3.
Timsup2nothin
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This plays to another false premise that I suspect most conservatives know is false, at least in the US, but the rich chanted about it endlessly until the ignorant public let it get burned into their thinking and now the ignorant public just runs with it rather than admit they've been duped.
Yes, the high end tax rate used to be extortionately high. Yes, hardly anyone actually paid that rate no matter how rich they were or how much they made.
That's because taxes are supposed to serve a purpose, not just fund the government. Let's look at a current world example, hypothetically.
We're going to start you off with a really good high end job, salary $500,000 a year. The bad news is that we're going to attach a 90% tax rate on incomes that high, rather than whatever everyone seems to think is fair. So even though you were expecting to have 400K to toss around, maybe stuff it in a mattress, maybe buy some savings bonds, or maybe that summer house that you can use for two weeks a year while a big chunk of the population is homeless since real estate is always appreciating anyway, you actually are staring down the barrel at "getting by" on fifty grand.
But here's the kicker. Anything you invest in constructing low income housing we are going to take right off the top. So when you put 350K down on a deal to build an apartment complex, with a ten year loan paying off another 2.8 million plus interest at 350K a year your taxable income for this year and the next ten years is going to be 150K and the rate there is only 30% so you are gonna get to spend twice as much and you wind up the proud owner of an apartment building full of rent payers.
Incidentally, this helps solve our homeless problem. Not just because you are building some apartments. Not even just because a bunch of hard chargers like you are building apartments. It's also because all you hard chargers that we know used to hang out down at city hall scratching palms in support of every effort to block anything that might hurt your property values are instead going to be down there ranting and raving about how the building permit process needs to be streamlined, and it needs to be streamlined right fornicating now!
But the rich convinced the stupid that proper use of taxation was unfair loopholes that only benefited the rich. So the rich convinced the stupid that they should take this benefit away from the rich. How stupid do the stupid actually have to be to buy into the idea that the rich would push them into any such thing?
Zardnaar
Deity
Don't get me wrong I'm favor of higher taxes. However especially now it would be very difficult to enforce. People can just move to a lower tax country.
I'm not sure where the tax rate would top out at. I would be looking at 40% or 50% range off the top of my head.
First:
Comparing the highest rate of tax between countries makes little sense when the income hurdle is not mentioned as well.
If one country has 60% for the income part higher than 250,000, it is a lot lower effective tax than another country with 50% for the income part higher than 100,000.
then:
In countries where there is a VAT, you should also take into account the increase over time of the VAT and the "net" effect on spending from the different income groups.
When the VAT was introduced in NL in the 60ies it was an increase compared to the older sales tax (around 6% on average for all goods) and the VAT was 4% for daily needed goods and 12% for the more luxury goods.
This increased in the late 80ies to 90ies to 6% and 18%.
Also in the 90ies the highest step of the income tax (for income higher than 68k Euro (in today's value) was decreased from 72% to 60%, and later to 52%, the current highest percentage.
(the current high VAT rate 21%)
For the higher income groups, spending most of their income in the luxury VAT rate, the "VAT" went up from 6% to 21%, for a net 15% change. And the tax decreased with 20% (from 72% to 52%).
Well... if we would adjust that VAT change a bit for the higher incomes because not all their spendings are luxury.. their average VAT went up I guess roughly with 12% or so.
All in all the high income groups gained 8% (20%-12%).
And then considering that you can live very well with a gross income of 68k... I really see no need for that 8% gain...
=> that decrease of the tax step to 60% was perfectly compensating for the differences caused by introducing the VAT.
That further decrease was after 2000 when the neo-liberal wave of tax reduction became too much of a hype for the rightwing political parties as magic tool to improve our GDP growth.
Such nonsense.
If it had not been done, there would have been much less government debt in 2008, and as consequence much less need for that austerity hype after the GFC, and as consequence not that too huge dip we had in NL in our GDP growth,
Comparing the highest rate of tax between countries makes little sense when the income hurdle is not mentioned as well.
If one country has 60% for the income part higher than 250,000, it is a lot lower effective tax than another country with 50% for the income part higher than 100,000.
then:
In countries where there is a VAT, you should also take into account the increase over time of the VAT and the "net" effect on spending from the different income groups.
When the VAT was introduced in NL in the 60ies it was an increase compared to the older sales tax (around 6% on average for all goods) and the VAT was 4% for daily needed goods and 12% for the more luxury goods.
This increased in the late 80ies to 90ies to 6% and 18%.
Also in the 90ies the highest step of the income tax (for income higher than 68k Euro (in today's value) was decreased from 72% to 60%, and later to 52%, the current highest percentage.
(the current high VAT rate 21%)
For the higher income groups, spending most of their income in the luxury VAT rate, the "VAT" went up from 6% to 21%, for a net 15% change. And the tax decreased with 20% (from 72% to 52%).
Well... if we would adjust that VAT change a bit for the higher incomes because not all their spendings are luxury.. their average VAT went up I guess roughly with 12% or so.
All in all the high income groups gained 8% (20%-12%).
And then considering that you can live very well with a gross income of 68k... I really see no need for that 8% gain...
=> that decrease of the tax step to 60% was perfectly compensating for the differences caused by introducing the VAT.
That further decrease was after 2000 when the neo-liberal wave of tax reduction became too much of a hype for the rightwing political parties as magic tool to improve our GDP growth.
Such nonsense.
If it had not been done, there would have been much less government debt in 2008, and as consequence much less need for that austerity hype after the GFC, and as consequence not that too huge dip we had in NL in our GDP growth,
Zardnaar
Deity
VAT and GST seems to be a tax on the poor. You can avoid them by not spending aka investing.
We got a tax cut but GST went from 12 to 15%
We got a tax cut but GST went from 12 to 15%
How can it be a "tax on the poor" when it applies to everyone (for all goods purchased) ?
And with differing VAT rates, whereby basic necessities like food have a lower VAT rate than for exampler cars, VAT works effectively as a redistributing tool for more financial spending power equality.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
That Maoists bowing up mail-boxes is considered "chaos" but the Klan murdering hundreds of black people is not represents just the sort of selective memory we're talking about.
Socrates99
Bottoms up!
Americans can't. The only way to avoid US taxes is to renounce your citizenship since its one of the few countries that taxes expats.
You don't get taxed like that anyway, you pay tax on each threshold at that range's rate, and this is something I very often see people get confused about.
I'm going to make a very simple example, lol. Say you get taxed 0% up to $50k, and then 50% up to $90k, and then after that you pay 90%. So if you're earning $100k, you're not paying $90k in tax, but instead you're paying $29. Because you pay 0% on your first $50k, then you pay 50% on your next $40k, and then you pay 90% on your last $10k. So like if your real tax rate is 90% for say more than $1,000,000 of income, you're only paying that much on anything you earn over a million dollars, not on your whole income when you reach that threshold.
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