Death, drugs and HSBC

[Starglider]

Would the obsolesence of nearly all un- and semi-skilled manual labour by automation be a suitable disruption?

It's sufficiently disruptive but that doesn't mean that the outcome is likely to be the one that you want.

[Zaune]

It's sufficiently disruptive but that doesn't mean that the outcome is likely to be the one that you want.

True, but it's still a closely related issue in that it will force -and is already forcing- the denizens of the industrialised and post-industrialised world to seriously examine fundamental assumptions about labour and capital, and whether social conventions like capitalist economics or even currency itself are still fit for purpose.

[Flagg]

Well on the surface, why should people have a wealth cap? If you earned the money legitimately, why can't you be a billionaire?

Because no one individual should be allowed to control that vast an amount of resources and power simply for what family they were born into or because they got lucky in life. Especially not when the country they live in has fucking war veterans living under bridges.

[Ace Pace]

Well on the surface, why should people have a wealth cap? If you earned the money legitimately, why can't you be a billionaire?

Because no one individual should be allowed to control that vast an amount of resources and power simply for what family they were born into or because they got lucky in life. Especially not when the country they live in has fucking war veterans living under bridges.

Why? Why does the misfortune of one control the fortune of another? Even taking away 90% of every billionares wealth would not change the fact there are homeless people.

[Ralin]

Well on the surface, why should people have a wealth cap? If you earned the money legitimately, why can't you be a billionaire?

Because no one individual should be allowed to control that vast an amount of resources and power simply for what family they were born into or because they got lucky in life. Especially not when the country they live in has fucking war veterans living under bridges.

Why? Why does the misfortune of one control the fortune of another? Even taking away 90% of every billionares wealth would not change the fact there are homeless people.

I think the idea is that taking away all that wealth would prevent said billionaires from shaping the system to benefit them and block changes that would help everyone else at their expense.

Which isn't at all relevant to to the blatant immorality of robbing billionaires of their wealth. Their rights are not contingent on other people's welfare.

[Flagg]

Well on the surface, why should people have a wealth cap? If you earned the money legitimately, why can't you be a billionaire?

Because no one individual should be allowed to control that vast an amount of resources and power simply for what family they were born into or because they got lucky in life. Especially not when the country they live in has fucking war veterans living under bridges.

Why? Why does the misfortune of one control the fortune of another? Even taking away 90% of every billionares wealth would not change the fact there are homeless people.

Guess what, asshole: most extremely wealthy people are born that way. The rest use tax payer funded education, infrastructure, and services like Police and Firefighters. Not to mention the Military that keeps them safe. Oh, and the number one reason they got rich: LUCK. The luck of being gifted in some way (or just falling into an opportunity) or being born in a safe stable country that encourages innovation and gives grant money to help them succeed. Billionaires either inherit it or make it off the backs of others.
The fact that people are so mindfucked into believing that the accumulation of as much wealth as possible before you die and give it to your rotten kids who don't contribute anything to society except widening the income and wealth gaps is a good thing is obscene. And anyone suggesting that setting an income cap is tantamount to stealing can seriously eat my ass. I'll bet there is virtually little if any difference in the kind of opulent degradation that $999,999,999 gets you as opposed to $1.5 billion.

Oh won't someone please think of the billionaires?!?!?

[The Romulan Republic]

The inherited wealth issue is why, while I would not be comfortable with putting a cap on an individual's wealth, I am a fan of high inheritance taxes. I think Obama discussed this issue in one of his books, though somehow I doubt he's done much about it as President.

[Flagg]

Which isn't at all relevant to to the blatant immorality of robbing billionaires of their wealth. Their rights are not contingent on other people's welfare.

Robbing them of their wealth? Fuck you. Do you put on silly hats and scream at government buildings that people who barely pay taxes because of all the loopholes created by the various government officials on their payroll (not to mention the offshore accounts, well hidden in Swiss and Caribbean banks) that the extremely wealthy are just fucking "Taxed Enough Already!!!"?

By the way, how moral was it for all of those rich cunts that destroyed the housing market, throwing tons of families out of their homes (in many cases illegally) and who almost destroyed the entire fucking economy in 2008 to walk away scot free and keep all the fucking money they made off of it? Was it more or less moral than instituting an income cap, the benefits of which could go to fix all of those thousands of bridges deemed obsolete before more collapse and more plebes die? Was it more or less moral than an income cap that could help us lower the infant mortality rate that's been steadily rising due to a myriad of poverty and women's healthcare related issues?

I guess what I'm getting at is, why the fuck should the teeny tiny number of billionaires take and hoard so much wealth and live so lavishly when we have starving children and a 16% poverty rate? So you can take your moral superiority and shove it up your ass if you can fit it around the thick skull stuck up there with the rest of your head.

PS: Before the 13th Amendment, whites in some states could own black people. They were part of their "owners" wealth. Do you consider the 13th Amendment immoral? After all, the Government went right in and robbed those rich as hell plantation owners of a huge portion of their wealth. Was that a moral or an immoral act?

[Bernkastel]

I agree with Flagg, for both his post before Romulan Republic and the one after it.

Currently accepted economic theory gives the government little to work with in regards to saying no to unreasonable demands. In fact, it's more likely that a government will fold out of fear of the wealth creators running elsewhere. Also, even a fairly moral person will be tempted to use their wealth to protect their enterprise and develop it. After all, they've earned this money and put so much effort into their company. Now, remember, there is only so much wealth in existence. So, billionaires gain increasing power over the state due it's lack of inclination to resist the wealthy and the enlarged position of the nation's wealth in their possession.

An increasing amount of billionaires undermine equality and the ability/inclination of governments to implement policies that suit the long term needs of the people, rather than billionaires. This only gets worse when you consider that automation means that an increasing portion of the population is no longer needed, so it has less ability than ever to make any sort of demands to the wealthy. If anything, the idea of that is an absurd joke.

[Ralin]

By the way, how moral was it for all of those rich cunts that destroyed the housing market, throwing tons of families out of their homes (in many cases illegally) and who almost destroyed the entire fucking economy in 2008 to walk away scot free and keep all the fucking money they made off of it? Was it more or less moral than instituting an income cap, the benefits of which could go to fix all of those thousands of bridges deemed obsolete before more collapse and more plebes die? Was it more or less moral than an income cap that could help us lower the infant mortality rate that's been steadily rising due to a myriad of poverty and women's healthcare related issues?

Vastly more moral. You aren't entitled to housing or health care or whatever the fuck. They are entitled to do as they please with their money.

I guess what I'm getting at is, why the fuck should the teeny tiny number of billionaires take and hoard so much wealth and live so lavishly when we have starving children and a 16% poverty rate? So you can take your moral superiority and shove it up your ass if you can fit it around the thick skull stuck up there with the rest of your head.

Because it's their wealth and no amount of sob stories changes that?

PS: Before the 13th Amendment, whites in some states could own black people. They were part of their "owners" wealth. Do you consider the 13th Amendment immoral? After all, the Government went right in and robbed those rich as hell plantation owners of a huge portion of their wealth. Was that a moral or an immoral act?

This is pretty hilarious given that you're straight up advocating a form of slavery for rich people.

[Terralthra]

You say "their" money, not society's, as if "money" isn't a societal construct designed to facilitate a functioning network of humans.

[Ralin]

You say "their" money, not society's, as if "money" isn't a societal construct designed to facilitate a functioning network of humans.

Eh, without money and property none of the other rights are really worth much and can easily be taken away.

[Terralthra]

You say "their" money, not society's, as if "money" isn't a societal construct designed to facilitate a functioning network of humans.

Eh, without money and property none of the other rights are really worth much and can easily be taken away.

You say "rights" as if human rights aren't a societal construct designed to facilitate a functioning network of humans. Seriously, have you applied any thought to this at all?

[jwl]

Flagg, when you say an income cap, are you literally talking about a cap on the maximum amount of income you can earn or do you just mean high income tax for high bands? If the former, why?

[K. A. Pital]

The fact that you had to reach back 25 years for an example illustrates how vanishingly rare such incidents are.

25 years is nothing, considering the timeframe of human history. The idea that you can proclaim the end of history after 25 years is even more absurd than the attempts to proclaim it after 100, 200 years and more.

In theory, the ability to become very wealthy motivates business owners to make more efficient businesses

In practice almost every business owner says that he or she is motivated by something other than potential billions. Either they are lying, or humans are more complex than the homo economicus moneybot.

All that is required is disregarding/dismantling the social convention that a higher value in your $ACCOUNT_BALANCE database record lets you make people do what you want, with the range of behaviour you can purchase increasing steadily as $ACCOUNT_BALANCE increases.

Man is for sale - either he is, or his time is, which is a more benigh form of humantrade, but still a form of it; that is the ultimate truth of the property order, and it cannot be changed. "Dismantling" this social convention would mean dismantling the economic order of today's world.

[Gerald Tarrant]

Guess what, asshole: most extremely wealthy people are born that way.

Do you have a source for that? Does it count when they inherit millions and turn that into Billions? Does Bill Gates count as being born that rich? He was born upper middle class, Lawyer and Banker parents. Was he born into it?

The rest use tax payer funded education, infrastructure, and services like Police and Firefighters. Not to mention the Military that keeps them safe.

Does it matter that they pay it back? Or can bankers use this logic too? "You only got rich because I loaned you the money. <Insert claim above and beyond repayment on successful person's assets>.

Oh, and the number one reason they got rich: LUCK. The luck of being gifted in some way (or just falling into an opportunity) or being born in a safe stable country that encourages innovation and gives grant money to help them succeed. Billionaires either inherit it or make it off the backs of others.

Can you explain what you mean by the underlined? Do you mean they inherit all of their Billions? What do you mean by "off the backs of others"? Do you mean they're all Walton-like villains who barely beat the minimum wage? Or is there something else?

[Zixinus]

Everyone makes/earns their wealth, no matter how small or little, on the work that other people do. I didn't plant, grow, keep and harvest the potatoes I ate today: I brought them from someone who did. Am I eating on the back of another person? Am I, who currently does no work unless you count studying, living off the back of society who pays for my tuition? Unless you mean that billionaires somehow trick everyone else to give their money to him for nothing (which isn't what happens), making wealth off the backs of others is what most people do. That is kind of what bothers me about that phrase.

Should billionaires be help to much higher ethical expectations and obligations than the rest of us? Kind of yeah, because their wealth comes from society valuing their (or their parent's) contribution to society so high. It is all the rest of us that allow those billionaires to enjoy their massive wealth. If an average person is entitled to the ownership of what is legally theirs, why should the rules be different for billionaires?

The problem is billionaires having misappropriate power in a system that is supposed to work trough democracy, not the existence of billionaires. The problem is that nobody has the motive and authority to fight what isn't even openly considered a form of corruption.

[Flagg]

By the way, how moral was it for all of those rich cunts that destroyed the housing market, throwing tons of families out of their homes (in many cases illegally) and who almost destroyed the entire fucking economy in 2008 to walk away scot free and keep all the fucking money they made off of it? Was it more or less moral than instituting an income cap, the benefits of which could go to fix all of those thousands of bridges deemed obsolete before more collapse and more plebes die? Was it more or less moral than an income cap that could help us lower the infant mortality rate that's been steadily rising due to a myriad of poverty and women's healthcare related issues?

Vastly more moral. You aren't entitled to housing or health care or whatever the fuck. They are entitled to do as they please with their money.

I guess what I'm getting at is, why the fuck should the teeny tiny number of billionaires take and hoard so much wealth and live so lavishly when we have starving children and a 16% poverty rate? So you can take your moral superiority and shove it up your ass if you can fit it around the thick skull stuck up there with the rest of your head.

Because it's their wealth and no amount of sob stories changes that?

PS: Before the 13th Amendment, whites in some states could own black people. They were part of their "owners" wealth. Do you consider the 13th Amendment immoral? After all, the Government went right in and robbed those rich as hell plantation owners of a huge portion of their wealth. Was that a moral or an immoral act?

This is pretty hilarious given that you're straight up advocating a form of slavery for rich people.

So taxation is slavery now? Get the fuck out of here you imbecile. You have no concept of morality or empathy.

[Flagg]

Flagg, when you say an income cap, are you literally talking about a cap on the maximum amount of income you can earn or do you just mean high income tax for high bands? If the former, why?

Income/ Wealth cap, including property owned, stocks and bonds owned, the whole fucking shebang. Basically you can accumulate as much wealth as you please until you hit the $999,999,999 cap, then any further liquid income goes right to the government coffers to be redistributed and used to fund important infrastructure, welfare, and education programs along with a myriad of other uses.

And honestly because billionaires are bad for society as it puts too much power into the hands of unelected ideologues willing to throw money at any candidate for any office with the expectation that those officials will do as Richie Rich says.

[Flagg]

Guess what, asshole: most extremely wealthy people are born that way.

Do you have a source for that? Does it count when they inherit millions and turn that into Billions? Does Bill Gates count as being born that rich? He was born upper middle class, Lawyer and Banker parents. Was he born into it?

Demos

Bill Gates made his billions and who the fuck cares? He's over the cap, everything over the cap is taxed by the government.
The rest of that quote is just a sloppy attempt at sidetracking the thread over minutiae only rich bitch defenders care about.

The rest use tax payer funded education, infrastructure, and services like Police and Firefighters. Not to mention the Military that keeps them safe.

Does it matter that they pay it back? Or can bankers use this logic too? "You only got rich because I loaned you the money. <Insert claim above and beyond repayment on successful person's assets>.

Nope and nope. Idiot.

Oh, and the number one reason they got rich: LUCK. The luck of being gifted in some way (or just falling into an opportunity) or being born in a safe stable country that encourages innovation and gives grant money to help them succeed. Billionaires either inherit it or make it off the backs of others.

Can you explain what you mean by the underlined? Do you mean they inherit all of their Billions? What do you mean by "off the backs of others"? Do you mean they're all Walton-like villains who barely beat the minimum wage? Or is there something else?

It's pretty fucking clear to those with reading comprehension. As I and others have pointed out several times in this thread, you can't make billions without a massive amount of support from the rest of society. Be it education, public services, and infrastructure (along with too many others to mention), the likelihood of becoming a billionaire are almost totally dependent on the society you live in along with pure old fashioned luck.

[Flagg]

Everyone makes/earns their wealth, no matter how small or little, on the work that other people do. I didn't plant, grow, keep and harvest the potatoes I ate today: I brought them from someone who did. Am I eating on the back of another person? Am I, who currently does no work unless you count studying, living off the back of society who pays for my tuition? Unless you mean that billionaires somehow trick everyone else to give their money to him for nothing (which isn't what happens), making wealth off the backs of others is what most people do. That is kind of what bothers me about that phrase.

Should billionaires be help to much higher ethical expectations and obligations than the rest of us? Kind of yeah, because their wealth comes from society valuing their (or their parent's) contribution to society so high. It is all the rest of us that allow those billionaires to enjoy their massive wealth. If an average person is entitled to the ownership of what is legally theirs, why should the rules be different for billionaires?

The problem is billionaires having misappropriate power in a system that is supposed to work trough democracy, not the existence of billionaires. The problem is that nobody has the motive and authority to fight what isn't even openly considered a form of corruption.

I love how almost all the posts in this thread on the pro-billionaire side of things are virtually the exact same arguments made by anti-tax conservotwats. Pretty telling.

[Ralin]

So taxation is slavery now? Get the fuck out of here you imbecile. You have no concept of morality or empathy.

Of course not. But what you're talking about isn't taxation; it's straight up stripping billionaires of their wealth to deny them basic rights like free speech and political representation. You do realize that the US is a democracy, right?

[Terralthra]

Your argument is that denying billionaires more "speech" (money) and "political representation" (money) than the average citizen is...bad? They made more money, so they deserve more influence over government?

I mean, if that's your position, fine, but that's not a democracy, that's a plutocracy.

[Gerald Tarrant]

Guess what, asshole: most extremely wealthy people are born that way.

Do you have a source for that? Does it count when they inherit millions and turn that into Billions? Does Bill Gates count as being born that rich? He was born upper middle class, Lawyer and Banker parents. Was he born into it?

Demos

Thanks. This pdf HERE <PDF Warning> is the wealth distribution study in the article you linked. It's longish, and there's some stuff which seems to contradict the article you linked. Specifically in the Abstract

Abstract: We found that on average over the period from 1989 to 2007, 21 percent of
American households at a given point of time received a wealth transfer and these
accounted for 23 percent of their net worth. Over the lifetime, about 30 percent of
households could expect to receive a wealth transfer and these would account for close to
40 percent of their net worth near time of death. However, there is little evidence of an
inheritance “boom.” In fact, from 1989 to 2007, the share of households reporting a
wealth transfer fell by 2.5 percentage points. The average value of inheritances received
among all households did increase but at a slow pace, by 10 percent, and wealth transfers
as a proportion of current net worth fell sharply over this period from 29 to 19 percent or
by 10 percentage points. We also found, somewhat surprisingly, that inheritances and
other wealth transfers tend to be equalizing in terms of the distribution of household
wealth. Indeed, the addition of wealth transfers to other sources of household wealth has
had a sizeable effect on reducing the inequality of wealth.

The bolded section seems to out and out contradict what you're saying, so maybe the link doesn't say what you think it says.

Bill Gates made his billions and who the fuck cares? He's over the cap, everything over the cap is taxed by the government.
The rest of that quote is just a sloppy attempt at sidetracking the thread over minutiae only rich bitch defenders care about.

First; that's hilarious, the discussion of people accumulating this much wealth is something you started, in a thread which was talking about the illegal actions of a financial firm. Tangential at best. Complaining about Sidetracking a Sidetrack is a glass house stone throwing sort of problem.

Second; No It's topical, You're just an illiterate jackass. At no point did I ask for clarification for how your confiscate-everything-over-a-cap-plan would work. A literate human being would read my question as related to what you said immediately ahead of it.

Guess what, asshole: most extremely wealthy people are born that way.

Do you have a source for that? Does it count when they inherit millions and turn that into Billions? Does Bill Gates count as being born that rich? He was born upper middle class, Lawyer and Banker parents. Was he born into it?

At no point did I ask anything about how much you'd confiscate or not, I asked whether Bill Gates qualified as being born extremely wealthy or not.

The rest use tax payer funded education, infrastructure, and services like Police and Firefighters. Not to mention the Military that keeps them safe.

Does it matter that they pay it back? Or can bankers use this logic too? "You only got rich because I loaned you the money. <Insert claim above and beyond repayment on successful person's assets>.

Nope and nope. Idiot.

I'm sorry, I poorly posed this question. You answered what I wanted, thank you.

Oh, and the number one reason they got rich: LUCK. The luck of being gifted in some way (or just falling into an opportunity) or being born in a safe stable country that encourages innovation and gives grant money to help them succeed. Billionaires either inherit it or make it off the backs of others.

Can you explain what you mean by the underlined? Do you mean they inherit all of their Billions? What do you mean by "off the backs of others"? Do you mean they're all Walton-like villains who barely beat the minimum wage? Or is there something else?

It's pretty fucking clear to those with reading comprehension. As I and others have pointed out several times in this thread, you can't make billions without a massive amount of support from the rest of society. Be it education, public services, and infrastructure (along with too many others to mention), the likelihood of becoming a billionaire are almost totally dependent on the society you live in along with pure old fashioned luck.

It's not clear what you mean by "off the back of". Here's a link from a free dictionary. link

to use what other people produce in order to live, without giving them anything in exchange

That's close enough to the way I use it. And I asked the question because what you're seems ridiculous when you use that definition. Even barely above minimum wage paying Waltons, give something in exchange for their work. They pay taxes, so they aren't living off the backs of society either. Let's revisit an earlier question shall we?

Does it matter that they pay it back? Or can bankers use this logic too? "You only got rich because I loaned you the money. <Insert claim above and beyond repayment on successful person's assets>.

Nope and nope. Idiot.

This was in regards to whether or not rich people's financial obligation to the state had an upper limit, I phrased it poorly, so I don't think the message came across. But the point seems to underlie your claim on basically all assets over some arbitrary cap. I don't see how they could at all be living off the backs of society either. They pay taxes the same as the rest of us. A PDF from the IRS (page 29)Shows taxes from those generating 1 Million or more in taxable income, being about 225 Billion. Their income is about 814 Billion. The tax paid by the 40-100,000 income group is about 250 billion on 1752 Billion. Both groups have roughly the same tax burden, the Million plus crowd just does it on half as much income. So, the "on the back of" thing looks incomprehensible.

[Ralin]

Your argument is that denying billionaires more "speech" (money) and "political representation" (money) than the average citizen is...bad? They made more money, so they deserve more influence over government?

I mean, if that's your position, fine, but that's not a democracy, that's a plutocracy.

Not unless you also think it's somehow undemocratic that some people are better at public speaking or writing or organizing an election campaign or protest. Other people not having the chops for political activity isn't a pretext to infringe on other people's rights.