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What do you tell someone who is insistent that the Community Reinvestment Act helped lead to the 2008 financial crash?
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Jan 16, 2017 23:57
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Mr Interweb posted:What do you tell someone who is insistent that the Community Reinvestment Act helped lead to the 2008 financial crash? Nothing. You laugh at them and tell them they're so stupid you're shocked they understand how socks work.
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Jan 17, 2017 00:02
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Mr Interweb posted:What do you tell someone who is insistent that the Community Reinvestment Act helped lead to the 2008 financial crash? Tell them there is probably a Economics Nobel or three waiting for them if they can show their work. Otherwise, smoke more weed.
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Jan 17, 2017 00:21
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Mr Interweb posted:What do you tell someone who is insistent that the Community Reinvestment Act helped lead to the 2008 financial crash?
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Jan 17, 2017 00:23
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The thing about the CRA excuse is that while I hear it quite often, nobody ever explains specifically how it led to the crisis aside from some vague remark about the government forcing poor little multinational banks into making loans for dirty poors. But didn't the CRA just tell banks to not be racist dicks against minorities who wanted loans, but could actually afford them? I don't think it had any numbers or minimum requirements or anything specific into how banks should hand out loans (I may be wrong on this one, someone feel free to correct me). Furthermore, in terms of offering loans to people who couldn't afford them, weren't banks doing that of their own volition because 1) they ran out of customers with good credit and had to look elsewhere (hence finding "subprime" borrowers) and 2) because it didn't matter if these folks couldn't afford the loans because the banks chopped up the mortgages and repackaged them into securities and sold them off to investors, at which point it wasn't their problem anymore? This same friend posted this study: http://www.nber.org/digest/may13/w18609.html Sounds like some pro-business organization, but wiki says they're nonpartisan, so I dunno.
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Jan 17, 2017 01:20
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Pretty much yes. It had nothing to do with somebody forcing banks to loan money to dirty poors. It was actually deeper than that; banks were giving loans to people they knew absolutely could not pay it back. We're talking home loans, no questions asked, to NINA (no income, no assets) people. Not only were they wrapping the stuff up in packages with better rated stuff they were also buying insurance against the loans they knew were going to fail. It was straight up the financial sector creating a situation where no matter what happened to the debt they made money so they created as much of it as they possibly could. It was fraud on an absolutely massive scale. If it had anything to do with laws it had to do with a lack of them that happened due to deregulation.
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Jan 17, 2017 01:30
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Well it a good thing we didn't reward the behavior of the banks!
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Jan 17, 2017 01:36
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Private Speech posted:If you don't see the difference between the two things then I don't know what to tell you. The difference being "the whole country has a better quality of life" as opposed to "one person gets a better quality of life". By the same token you could reject taxes, social programs, education etc. etc. If your argument was the quality of life for millions of people, then you don't get to handwave away environmental destruction and regulatory capture, and revenue starved governments, etc that will affect the quality of life for billions with "a poor Vietnamese family doesn't care about that right now". Pick one dude, either it's okay to ignore larger structural problems and concentrate on your own family's immediate well-being or it isn't but be consistent. Practically speaking though your larger argument is bad anyway. Sure in a utilitarian sense if you drive one American family into poverty, opiate addiction, and early death to raise 100 foreign families out of poverty that's a win if you have to choose but we don't. The whole argument for free trade is that it raises the overall amount of wealth in the world so if true literally everyone could benefit. If American workers are harmed it's because a small ultra-rich owner class is hoovering up much of that excess wealth which should be going to those Americans who are being harmed, and not because it just had to happen to help the Vietnamese (and for that matter more of that wealth could and should be going to those foreign families as well because what does Mitt Romney need with another horse elevator). Your true argument is effectively that one American family should be impoverished so the rich can have more stuff, because if we wanted to we could raise up those 100 foreign families without impoverishing a single American. Not only is that morally abhorrent, but practically speaking the argument frightens and alienates vulnerable people in key states who, turns out, will break for an orange conman with a retinue of morons, thieves, and ghouls on some vague promises of financial security. As an aside: this argument doesn't apply to taxes, social programs, and education, because those are unambiguous goods and can be attained without driving anyone into poverty. The whole theory of progressive taxation is that the cost burden falls on the richest for whom payment is a mild annoyance rather than on vulnerable families at the edge of poverty. You're unintentionally adopting a right-wing framing here by blaming taxes for degradation in quality of life, when anyone whose quality of life is marginal is actually receiving a much bigger benefit from government programs, universal education, infrastructure, etc than they pay in taxes (and in fact, this very framing is how the right tricks millions of people into slashing programs they need in exchange for a pittance in tax breaks while the lion's share goes to the very richest). The way to get people to support taxes isn't to say: "your life has to suck so other people's kids can go to school", it's "your kids deserve to go to good schools, and that will only happen when the rich pay their fair share, Wall Street should not pay a lower tax rate than you". VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Jan 17, 2017 |
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Jan 17, 2017 03:29
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Helsing posted:I know from our past discussions that your position here stems from a tautological definition of American democracy in which you assume that elections are accurate reflections of what voters want because otherwise they'd elect someone else. This despite a substantial body of evidence, both qualitative and quantitative, showing deep and pervasive dissatisfaction with government and with both political parties. Part of what needs to be pointed out is that dissatisfaction and actual disfunction can be completely different things. There are many issues where the negative views of voters are essentially factually inaccurate - on crime, healthcare, immigration and all sorts of economic specifics. In regards to the study I have a few comments. First, significant chunks of it can be explained. Black voters are such a sure thing for democrats that democrats have zero incentive to pay attention to them. Second, as you pointed out voter sentiment can be conflicting which poses a chalenge for that study which tries to get relatively specific. Third its obviously true to an extent. Part of it will never go away - there will always be inequality in power which will give some groups an advantage. But also it probably captures the real anger we just saw in this election where the white working class openly broke with the elites they had long partnered with (but who had always ignored them). That's what power looks like in Democracy, you never get what you want all the time but when it came down to it the white working class effortlessly dismissed the republican elite, the spending of Jeb Bush and pathetic TV appeals by Mitt Romney. And then Dismissed the democrats to take the white house after that. Thats recent events, not tautology. Same with brexit or obvious patters in differences between liberal states where, again, the U.S. doesn't want single payer healthcare or higher levels of welfare and that's how it is. People in Sweden do, and they have it. How exactly have you incorporated the trump win into your worldview? Your whole post would seem a lot better if we currently had president elect Bush, coming off a win where he outspent everyone, planning 4 years of elite prescribed neoliberal policy including immigration reform and the TPP instead of trump tweeting about trade wars and the wall while intervening in the market at the level of individual factories to save working class jobs. quote:Obviously there's a lot of cultural baggage here. You can't really discuss the rise of New Right ideology or neoliberalism in the late 20th century without going into the role of race, crime, Vietnam, generational change, etc. And voters have made plenty of decisions to enthusiastically support right-wing figures like Reagan (even if his popularity is massively exaggerated in retrospect compared to what it was at the time). The US electorate is certainly not secretly yearning for socialism, even if a lot of individual social democratic policies poll extremely well. Indeed to a large degree the evidence suggests the underlying desires of voters are somewhat contradictory and incoherent. I was personally slow to recognize the general importance of race in the last few decades but this election, as well as Brexit, was a wakeup call. Race explains the marriage between the white working class and the republican elite that we just saw break down. That the marriage roughly coincided with globalization goes a significant way to explaining the decline of labor and the general shift right around that time. Race may single-handedly explain why America is unique in not wanting to hand out wellfare or healthcare, something on display as we watch Europe recoil just at the thought of increased migrants. Your regan paragraph makes sense but then you take things too far. Representative democracy isn't supposed to represent what the people want on an immediate basis but it does present real boundaries for what the people in power can do before they're punished. Of course the Democrats and Republicans routinely trade the various offices but the Tea Party and Trump are also examples of how it still really does work in multiple dimensions. quote:Look, this is just ridiculous. You're completely ignoring anything I say and repeating these "just so" stories. You don't have to agree with my arguments but you need to at least demonstrate you've read the words I wrote and took them into account before crafting a response. Everything you've written here could have just as easily been written by you had you not read any of my arguments. Let's drop this one.
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Jan 17, 2017 03:44
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VitalSigns posted:If your argument was the quality of life for millions of people, then you don't get to handwave away environmental destruction and regulatory capture, and revenue starved governments, etc that will affect the quality of life for billions with "a poor Vietnamese family doesn't care about that right now". Pick one dude, either it's okay to ignore larger structural problems and concentrate on your own family's immediate well-being or it isn't but be consistent. I never said that the American rich should 'have more stuff', but that is a question of domestic policy and I don't see how you get from there to saying that we should abolish globalisation. It really is a yes/no question, as the question is "Should we adopt protectionist policies against global trade and immigration?" And I would say that if your goal is less misery in the world then the answer is no. After all it was "workers of the world unite" and not "workers of the world, split up into nations and engage in tribal politics". To your second point, while you can claim that humanity can do "anything", the truth is that what is physically achievable is rather limited, and even less so what is politically feasible. For one the amount of capital the developed world would have to give up and transfer to the developing countries would be truly enormous, such that by current standards it would impoverish practically everyone in the US, even ignoring the issues which distributing wealth all over the globe would bring up (concentration of capital is arguably more efficient than the opposite, thus the overall level of world wealth/capital could be even lower than a simple equitable distribution would suggest). Even poor people in the developed world do have it rather good. As an aside I am not American and I find the current highly nationalistic "oh what about the poor white Americans who were harmed by evil companies giving work to foreigners" narrative started by the alt-right (and now adopted by sections of the American left) distasteful and idiotic. If for no other reason than because highly protectionist measures are not necessary to make America a more equal society, as practically all developed countries "suffered" from the same economic transformation but still have much lower levels of income inequality, and there is no reason beyond politics why America cannot follow them. quote:As an aside: this argument doesn't apply to taxes, social programs, and education, because those are unambiguous goods and can be attained without driving anyone into poverty. The whole theory of progressive taxation is that the cost burden falls on the richest for whom payment is a mild annoyance rather than on vulnerable families at the edge of poverty. You're unintentionally adopting a right-wing framing here by blaming taxes for degradation in quality of life, when anyone whose quality of life is marginal is actually receiving a much bigger benefit from government programs, universal education, infrastructure, etc than they pay in taxes (and in fact, this very framing is how the right tricks millions of people into slashing programs they need in exchange for a pittance in tax breaks while the lion's share goes to the very richest). The way to get people to support taxes isn't to say: "your life has to suck so other people's kids can go to school", it's "your kids deserve to go to good schools, and that will only happen when the rich pay their fair share, Wall Street should not pay a lower tax rate than you". That is a completely different issue, but taxes do economically "hurt" individuals, even if they benefit in turn. Don't look at it like "taxes should be slashed for everyone", instead look at it as "no poor person should pay any taxes whatsoever, they should be only paid by the middle class and up". If you accept that premise you can easily see that abolishing taxes for any given individual would benefit that individual, as long as somebody else picks up the tab. But of course we come back to practical feasibility, including the uncomfortable truth that the level of income (as opposed to wealth) of the rich is not enough alone to sustain public services, even if it were to be all paid in taxes (which would in fact cause a number of ancillary issues e.g. lack of funds for investment etc.). You can dismiss that as right-wing ideology, but it's not, that's simply how the basics of developed economies work. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jan 17, 2017 |
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Jan 17, 2017 16:40
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Yep no one ever complained about what outsourcing does to American workers before Breitbart brought it up Next you'll be conflating socialists and Nazis because they both have "social" in their names
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Jan 17, 2017 17:57
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rscott posted:Yep no one ever complained about what outsourcing does to American workers before Breitbart brought it up I always thought that was the more petty and populist side of leftism/socialism, but sure nationalism as far as jobs go has been around for a long time (see UK Labour campaigning against Irish immigrants and Indian industry back in the early 20th century). That doesn't make it right, not the least because where do you stop? Unless you take an explicitly nationalist position there is no difference compared to the jobs moving from one city/region of America to another, so should that be banned as well?
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Jan 17, 2017 18:11
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Private Speech posted:That is a completely different issue, but taxes do economically "hurt" individuals, even if they benefit in turn. Don't look at it like "taxes should be slashed for everyone", instead look at it as "no poor person should pay any taxes whatsoever, they should be only paid by the middle class and up". If you accept that premise you can easily see that abolishing taxes for any given individual would benefit that individual, as long as somebody else picks up the tab. But of course we come back to practical feasibility, including the uncomfortable truth that the level of income (as opposed to wealth) of the rich is not enough alone to sustain public services, even if it were to be all paid in taxes (which would in fact cause a number of ancillary issues e.g. lack of funds for investment etc.). You can dismiss that as right-wing ideology, but it's not, that's simply how the basics of developed economies work. Paying for food also hurts me, but then I in turn benefit by not starving. The benefit for example, of having free doctor visits, over a lifetime, versus the cost in taxation; at least in the US system, seems to very much weigh in favour of taxes being a bargain deal.
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Jan 17, 2017 18:15
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It's pretty embarrassing that Theresa May said in her address regarding Brexit that it's better for the U.K. to control their own immigration than have access to the European market. That's the equivalent of cutting off your own leg because you stubbed your toe. They should at least be honest and say they don't want dirty foreigners in their country from the Middle East or Eastern Europe and drop the excuses.
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Jan 17, 2017 18:16
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Raenir Salazar posted:Paying for food also hurts me, but then I in turn benefit by not starving. Yeah of course, I'm not saying that taxes shouldn't exist, but that's getting into a completely different argument. In fact when I said that accepting globalisation/not supporting protectionism and nationalism is like taxes I meant that taxes are good, even if from a personal perspective paying them is not good for you, and if you are a single young healthy professional then you are almost certainly paying more than you get back. By the same token you benefit from globalisation by having access to a wider range of goods and services.
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Jan 17, 2017 18:20
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In the big picture the anti-globalization sentiment is possibly the scariest aspect of recent political events. We have one planet and we therefore need global institutions if we're going to have any hope of solving global problems. Which we ultimately have to do to maintain peace and survive in an era when our technology could make us extinct. We were on a trajectory where that was happening but now it's being derailed. It's unlikely to benefit the first world much if at all, will almost certainly hurt the developing world and global efforts like climate change, weak as they already were, will be immediate casualties. Also watch for what it looks like if America completely loses the moral compass many people think it never had with trump not hesitating to ally with strongmen like Putin while re-evaluating the benefit of say African aid on shallow monetary terms.
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Jan 17, 2017 18:29
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Honestly I feel like globalization is a lesser concern compared to automation trends; I feel like the economy as it is now once automation enters its next golden age probably without artificial measures won't dip under 15% unemployment. Throw up all the protectionist barriers you want but even if you make it a law that every US company and any company that wants to do business in the US must have some large % of it's production in the US you'll just end up with that company employing 99% robots. I don't think there can be enough service jobs, servicing who? Either you need ditch digging programs or MinCome. What's the fastest we could potentially get trains theoretically? Fast enough to get from New York to Brazil in a day? At some point I figure we need to get traveling to find jobs to be super convenient and fast and across borders if necessary.
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Jan 17, 2017 18:36
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Private Speech posted:I always thought that was the more petty and populist side of leftism/socialism, but sure nationalism as far as jobs go has been around for a long time (see UK Labour campaigning against Irish immigrants and Indian industry back in the early 20th century). That doesn't make it right, not the least because where do you stop? Unless you take an explicitly nationalist position there is no difference compared to the jobs moving from one city/region of America to another, so should that be banned as well? There's a huge difference in terms of freedom of movement for labor moving within a country compared to emigrating to another one. That's actually one of the biggest things about globalization, the free movement of capital to chase the best return is to the detriment of laborers all around the world.
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Jan 17, 2017 18:48
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Raenir Salazar posted:What's the fastest we could potentially get trains theoretically? Fast enough to get from New York to Brazil in a day? At some point I figure we need to get traveling to find jobs to be super convenient and fast and across borders if necessary. You're more likely to see unemployment being criminalized and result in mandatory labor than ultra-long-distance, no-borders job markets in the Americas.
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Jan 17, 2017 18:51
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rscott posted:There's a huge difference in terms of freedom of movement for labor moving within a country compared to emigrating to another one. That's actually one of the biggest things about globalization, the free movement of capital to chase the best return is to the detriment of laborers all around the world. I agree that labour is not sufficiently mobile and saw that issue with the analogy I was making, but ultimately the solution to that is the world's nations being more open to each other rather than less. It would have to be gradual though, as suddenly opening up movement of labour completely would lead to a huge rush into America/developed world and far more job "losses" for Americans/other natives than current outsourcing causes. Whereas with a gradual approach the impact on the developed world can be managed/minimised. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Jan 17, 2017 |
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Jan 17, 2017 18:59
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Private Speech posted:I agree that labour is not sufficiently mobile and saw that issue with the analogy I was making, but ultimately the solution to that is the world's nations being more open to each other rather than less. It would have to be gradual though, as suddenly opening up movement of labour completely would lead to a huge rush into America/developed world and far more job "losses" for Americans/other natives than current outsourcing causes. Whereas with a gradual approach the impact on the developed world can be managed/minimised. ...or the world can have a populist backlash with authoritarians taking control in country after country as they begin to withdraw into themselves and ramp up global tensions to historic levels while the financial elite begin drawing up plans for good jack booted uniforms for their private security forces. I know which one seems a whole lot more likely!
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Jan 17, 2017 19:31
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Still ridiculous that in our system, having robots to do a job is a bad thing. Mincome or something similar need to be soon.
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Jan 17, 2017 21:26
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Private Speech posted:I never said that the American rich should 'have more stuff', but that is a question of domestic policy and I don't see how you get from there to saying that we should abolish globalisation. It really is a yes/no question, as the question is "Should we adopt protectionist policies against global trade and immigration?" And I would say that if your goal is less misery in the world then the answer is no. After all it was "workers of the world unite" and not "workers of the world, split up into nations and engage in tribal politics". Yes you are effectively saying that the rich should have more stuff. If your argument for liberal free trade policies is that it creates more wealth overall on the planet then there is no need for there to be 'winners' and 'losers', that wealth can be used to maintain the health and security of American workers while also raising up workers in developing countries. When you argue that it's okay if American workers can't afford to go to the doctor or send their kids to college or save for retirement if that helps foreign workers, what you're really saying is that it's okay if all the profits from free trade go to the ultra-rich. Not only is that morally wrong, but from a practical standpoint you get a populist backlash and if the first-word left won't protect workers then the fash will make those promises and win. Which is what is happening in the Anglosphere now.  at you quoting "Workers of the World Unite" and then pitting workers against each other by telling one group they have to suffer and watch their jobless kids die of opiate addiction to help another group of workers. Socialism means defending the right of all workers to a decent living, not defending the right of capitalists to use one group to undercut another's wages and safety.Although as Helsing pointed out, even your supposition that free trade is the best way to help developing countries is suspect because the poor countries that developed the most in the twentieth century and had the largest gains in quality of life, like the Asian Tigers, did not follow the Washington Consensus and instead followed the successful precedents of 19th-Century wonders like America, Prussia, and Japan. Private Speech posted:To your second point, while you can claim that humanity can do "anything", the truth is that what is physically achievable is rather limited, and even less so what is politically feasible. For one the amount of capital the developed world would have to give up and transfer to the developing countries would be truly enormous, such that by current standards it would impoverish practically everyone in the US, even ignoring the issues which distributing wealth all over the globe would bring up (concentration of capital is arguably more efficient than the opposite, thus the overall level of world wealth/capital could be even lower than a simple equitable distribution would suggest). Even poor people in the developed world do have it rather good. Nah the Top 8 richest people have as much wealth as the bottom half of the world combined. You could feed the world with just the wealth those people control. The idea that the ultra-poor can only be helped by loving the poor is a right-wing framing to get the poor to vote to "protect" what little they have (actually, this outcome only protects the rich). Private Speech posted:As an aside I am not American and I find the current highly nationalistic "oh what about the poor white Americans who were harmed by evil companies giving work to foreigners" narrative started by the alt-right (and now adopted by sections of the American left) distasteful and idiotic. If for no other reason than because highly protectionist measures are not necessary to make America a more equal society, as practically all developed countries "suffered" from the same economic transformation but still have much lower levels of income inequality, and there is no reason beyond politics why America cannot follow them. "Workers of the World Unite except American workers can get hosed, that capitalist who paid himself a billion-dollar bonus to fire you and hire someone else for a starvation wage in unsafe conditions is a noble humanitarian". OK well enjoy watching the fash take over more and more developed countries I guess, I hope you're from a place that has a good military.Corporations are greedy and evil, and people like Mitt Romney and Margaret Thatcher and Charles Koch are soulless monsters who will happily grind grandmothers into grist sandwiches and sell them back to the poor to make a buck. If you're being sarcastic about evil corporations then you're no friend of the working class. Private Speech posted:That is a completely different issue, but taxes do economically "hurt" individuals, even if they benefit in turn. Don't look at it like "taxes should be slashed for everyone", instead look at it as "no poor person should pay any taxes whatsoever, they should be only paid by the middle class and up". If you accept that premise you can easily see that abolishing taxes for any given individual would benefit that individual, as long as somebody else picks up the tab. But of course we come back to practical feasibility, including the uncomfortable truth that the level of income (as opposed to wealth) of the rich is not enough alone to sustain public services, even if it were to be all paid in taxes (which would in fact cause a number of ancillary issues e.g. lack of funds for investment etc.). You can dismiss that as right-wing ideology, but it's not, that's simply how the basics of developed economies work. No they do not "hurt" me, even as a young single professional I benefit from taxes because I can't afford my own private army and police force, and I don't have enough savings to support myself forever if I lose my job, I need unemployment insurance and medicaid and social security and food stamps to be there for me and I do not benefit by destroying these programs to save a couple hundred bucks. This is the same "logic" that says insurance hurts me economically because the average person loses money on all insurance. You're completely ignoring that even if an edge case exists where a middle-class person pays more than he receives directly (and I'm not sure such a case exists, but even if it does), that person is still buying risk management which is really important. Your argument "but if you alone were exempted from taxes it would benefit you" is stupid, "I alone" am not exempted from taxes when they're cut, when taxes are cut they are cut for everyone and the programs I need go away. Also there's the hidden cost of regressive tax cuts: rising inequality and the corresponding drop in demand hurts the economy and therefore hurts me financially, which is why I'm not convinced that your theoretical edge case middle-class person who would be better off in a Randian world without taxes and public education and welfare and regulation actually exists. I would also "benefit" if "I alone" were exempted from having to pay for anything, so I guess literally every transaction I make "hurts" me if I don't get everything for free. The logical conclusion of your argument by the way is that the worst possible time period for American professionals was the post-war boom with crippling 90% tax rates, and the best was the gilded age because of all the "benefits" of no income taxes, I'll leave you to work out where you went wrong. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 08:41 on Jan 18, 2017 |
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Jan 18, 2017 06:47
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you're my favorite poster VitalSigns, thank you
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Jan 18, 2017 13:32
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the greatest ideological victory in the West of the last decades has been "public institutions or indeed society-oriented public policies are poo poo for you why bother everything is better privatized", because loving really. (one of the reasons why I quit economics incidentally) fake edit: there is a lot going on to be argued that taxation is much more respected in democracies that have actual high public investment, which in turn generates trust in the democratic system, because what the gently caress people believe much more in a system when they get palpable benefits from it and they see their skin in the game dead gay comedy forums fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Jan 18, 2017 |
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Jan 18, 2017 16:48
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I hear Donald Trump is going to be great for American workers, just the best, will show all those cheating Mexicans and Germans and Japanese car manufacturers what for. China! China is cheating so much, it's so sad. Clearly what we need is to take back those jobs for working class folks. Thanks for twisting my words into so many strawmen, really quite something to behold. Things I support - higher taxes on the rich, more mobility for workers, free access to healthcare, education, childcare, unemployment, state provided housing even. But I guess I'm not a true socialist because I say that taxes can be a burden on poor people, huh. Transmetropolitan posted:fake edit: there is a lot going on to be argued that taxation is much more respected in democracies that have actual high public investment, which in turn generates trust in the democratic system, because what the gently caress people believe much more in a system when they get palpable benefits from it and they see their skin in the game Lol no, or cite examples at least. France, UK, Japan, in all those places most people think politics are worthless even though they have high taxes. Sounds more like wishful thinking. Note that I am not against high public spending, highly progressive tax systems or redistributionist policies, anything but, just lovely isolationism and nationalism. It's pretty simple Nationalism = bad, Redistribution = good, and if you disagree with the former then you start leaning more towards fascism than socialism. Oh and Marxism and companies is a fairly complex topic, not the least because a hierarchical organisation of production and resource allocation is to some extent advantageous. Just because you turn to socialism doesn't mean that economics doesn't exist anymore, or for that matter that accumulation of capital does not occur (as it does even among animals in nature, if you want to take it to absurdity). Private Speech fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Jan 18, 2017 |
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Jan 18, 2017 17:02
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Clearly we need to colonize Mars so all the people people have a new land of opportunity to create United States 2.0.
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Jan 18, 2017 17:14
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Poor articulation of my part. Worldwide skepticism in democracy is increasing, but in a slower rate and in lesser proportion in countries where public systems are better funded and better working. BUT The main problem here is redistribution and income inequality, which is one of the most (if not the most) problematic issue against democracy. Britain, during Thatcher, had a monstrous Gini increase - working class British hatred of government shot up afterwards, quelle surprise, until new labor got in and Blair proved to be poo poo too with a war to boot, then everybody goes "well democracy is indeed poo poo". That said, I feel strongly about "Socialism or Barbarism" so ymmv
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Jan 18, 2017 17:25
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Transmetropolitan posted:Poor articulation of my part. Worldwide skepticism in democracy is increasing, but in a slower rate and in lesser proportion in countries where public systems are better funded and better working. Just saying that low taxes aren't necessarily the primary cause of high inequality, even if they do contribute. For one Britain and the US both have very high inequality, while somewhere like Denmark is doing much better in that respect, despite not having a tax regime that much different from the UK. But really that's just me being petty, I can't disagree with inequality being a huge issue causing disengagement with politics. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Jan 18, 2017 |
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Jan 18, 2017 17:41
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VitalSigns posted:The logical conclusion of your argument by the way is that the worst possible time period for American professionals was the post-war boom with crippling 90% tax rates, and the best was the gilded age because of all the "benefits" of no income taxes, I'll leave you to work out where you went wrong. Jesus christ this is a overall great quality post. Gonna save this for reference later.
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Jan 18, 2017 22:34
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Private Speech posted:Thanks for twisting my words into so many strawmen, really quite something to behold. Things I support - higher taxes on the rich, more mobility for workers, free access to healthcare, education, childcare, unemployment, state provided housing even. But I guess I'm not a true socialist because I say that taxes can be a burden on poor people, huh. You don't get to do that when you posted this paragraph: Private Speech posted:To your second point, while you can claim that humanity can do "anything", the truth is that what is physically achievable is rather limited, and even less so what is politically feasible. For one the amount of capital the developed world would have to give up and transfer to the developing countries would be truly enormous, such that by current standards it would impoverish practically everyone in the US, even ignoring the issues which distributing wealth all over the globe would bring up (concentration of capital is arguably more efficient than the opposite, thus the overall level of world wealth/capital could be even lower than a simple equitable distribution would suggest). Even poor people in the developed world do have it rather good. This is not only instantly, provably false, but the underlying argument is literally a defense of crony capitalism. 71% of all the adults in all the world owns a total of 3% of global wealth. The median top 5% household wealth in the US has more than 90 times the wealth of the median US family. It would take an impossible level of wealth transfer to "impoverish everyone in the US". The United States has more wealth than any other country in the world, and at the same time its population is sicker, poorer and dumber than most other first world nations. The population of the US would benefit hugely from a massive, global wealth distribution. Private Speech posted:That is a completely different issue, but taxes do economically "hurt" individuals, even if they benefit in turn. I'm sorry, did you seriously just define yourself as a socialist? Dr. Fishopolis fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Jan 18, 2017 |
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Jan 18, 2017 23:05
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Private Speech posted:For one Britain and the US both have very high inequality, while somewhere like Denmark is doing much better in that respect, despite not having a tax regime that much different from the UK. This is not even remotely true. Denmark's taxes are 10-20% higher across the board than the UK's. Denmark has the highest top personal income tax rate in the OECD. It takes five minutes to google that information.
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Jan 18, 2017 23:17
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:You don't get to do that when you posted this paragraph: Wealth != income, which is the central point of why I said that we can't elevate everyone to a comfortable (for a western person) standard of living, and conflating the two doesn't help. Yes I read much the same Oxfam report as you, and in fact even the one before that, and post here about that one when it came out. Income inequality is a lot less clear cut unfortunately, at least in part because the income of the top few percent comes mostly from capital gains, which both require a considerable amount of wealth to get a relatively mediocre annual income, and actually rely on extracting the wealth of the workers they employ. Or from another angle you can look at reports about climate change, which frequently say that if every human engaged in the same level of consumption as the western world, and therefore caused a similar level of emissions, the pace of their accumulation would rise several times over. quote:I'm sorry, did you seriously just define yourself as a socialist? Think of it this way, why should the poor (and this bit is important) have to pay taxes? Indeed why should anyone whose income is considerably below the median? Presumably the goal of taxes should be to equalise, and isn't that the goal of leftism? There are a plenty of countries which absolve the poor of paying income tax (like the UK) and some at least nominally socialist countries tried to do away with taxing wages altogether. My point was a little bit flippant, but I never said that the rich shouldn't pay tax, just that paying tax self-evidently economically impoverishes individuals. I'm way too tired to post a full rebuttal right now, but yes I do agree with socialist ideas, most of them anyway. There's far too many definitions of socialism to really say one way or another.
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Jan 18, 2017 23:27
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:This is not even remotely true. Denmark's taxes are 10-20% higher across the board than the UK's. Denmark has the highest top personal income tax rate in the OECD. It takes five minutes to google that information. Are you taking into account national insurance etc. as well, and looking at the effective rate of tax for median income? I'm genuinely curious of the numbers if so, but I'd still say Britain is closer to Denmark than the US. In fact I specifically chose Denmark because I know it has a high effective rate of tax for the median wage earner, and because I've read that the UK has as well, while the US does not (due to low VAT and high tax thresholds). And in particular with Denmark and the UK you cannot omit national insurance, since it's a fairly large component of income tax in the UK while in Denmark it's only 0.2% of income and lowest in the EU. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jan 19, 2017 |
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Jan 18, 2017 23:33
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Private Speech posted:Are you taking into account national insurance etc. as well, and looking at the effective rate of tax for median income? I'm genuinely curious of the numbers if so, but I'd still say Britain is closer to Denmark than the US. In fact I specifically chose Denmark because I know it has a high effective rate of tax for the median wage earner, and because I've read that the UK has as well, while the US does not (due to low VAT and high tax thresholds). http://www.tradingeconomics.com/denmark/personal-income-tax-rate http://www.tradingeconomics.com/denmark/sales-tax-rate
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Jan 18, 2017 23:57
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This is the best I could find for effective tax rates, but it excludes VAT, which at additional 20% in the UK, 25% in Denmark and 0-8% in the US is going to push UK closer to Denmark (the big thing here in particular is that Denmark has only 0.2% national insurance, which is very little compared to the UK, and somewhat makes up for the higher income tax). Regardless perhaps choosing US, UK and Denmark wasn't the best, there are much better options mainly among other countries where effective tax rates don't generally correlate well with GINI. (in the above graph see Brazil, Japan, Greece, Czech Republic, Sweden, Australia at least - GINI is below) To rank the above graph according to gini world ranking (World Bank 2013): Belgium - 13th in the world Greece - 73rd in the world France - 43rd in the world Denmark - 18th in the world India - 56th in the world Brazil - 145th in the world Sweden - 11th in the world Britain - 39th in the world Czech Republic - 5th in the world Japan - 36th in the world China - 101th in the world Australia - 55th in the world US - 95th in the world Russia - 97th in the world UAE - N/A Sure seems like a direct correlation between the tax rate and inequality. While there probably is some, I'd expect it's twofold - how progressive the tax system is, and at some point in the lower parts of the spectrum government cannot provide equal opportunity public services, which then increases inequality. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Jan 19, 2017 |
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Jan 19, 2017 00:25
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Private Speech posted:Wealth != income, which is the central point of why I said that we can't elevate everyone to a comfortable (for a western person) standard of living, and conflating the two doesn't help. Yes I read much the same Oxfam report as you, and in fact even the one before that, and post here about that one when it came out. Income inequality is a lot less clear cut unfortunately, at least in part because the income of the top few percent comes mostly from capital gains, which both require a considerable amount of wealth to get a relatively mediocre annual income, and actually rely on extracting the wealth of the workers they employ. Or from another angle you can look at reports about climate change, which frequently say that if every human engaged in the same level of consumption as the western world, and therefore caused a similar level of emissions, the pace of their accumulation would rise several times over. Income inequality is absolutely clear cut and obvious, and so is wealth inequality, and we're talking about both. They're perfectly well studied, the data is available. Capital gains are beside the point and don't clarify your argument at all. I can't tell if you're handwaving because you're out of your depth, or if you're just cloudy about what your argument actually is. Why are you bringing up climate change? You seem to be arguing that wealth redistribution is bad because then everyone would be equally poor. Well yeah, no poo poo, that's the point. Everyone would make about $11.5K a year, and would control about $35K. The math isn't hard, and in most of the world, that's a very comfortable standard of living. The vast, vast majority of humanity would benefit from this happening.
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Jan 19, 2017 00:32
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Income inequality is absolutely clear cut and obvious, and so is wealth inequality, and we're talking about both. They're perfectly well studied, the data is available. Capital gains are beside the point and don't clarify your argument at all. I can't tell if you're handwaving because you're out of your depth, or if you're just cloudy about what your argument actually is. Why are you bringing up climate change? So, yep, seems like $11.5K a year. Which would indeed be close/past the poverty level in the US and many other developed countries. The reason I'm bringing up climate change is that such a radical redistribution of wealth and income would necessarily completely change what that money even means, and how the entire world works. It's not like you could still go and buy a burger at McDonalds like nothing happened.
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Jan 19, 2017 00:38
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Private Speech posted:This is the best I could find for effective tax rates, but it excludes VAT, which at additional 20% in the UK, 25% in Denmark and 0-8% in the US is going to push UK closer to Denmark (the big thing here in particular is that Denmark has only 0.2% national insurance, which is very little compared to the UK, and somewhat makes up for the higher income tax). Holy poo poo, look at those goalposts fly. What you said was: "Denmark's tax regime is not much different than the UK". It is wholly, significantly and completely different than the UK. You seem to be doing a hell of a lot of math for little apparent reason.
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Jan 19, 2017 00:39
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Holy poo poo, look at those goalposts fly. What's the difference between national insurance and income tax again? Beyond separate thresholds. I still stand by saying that, compared to the US, Denmark's tax regime is not much different from the UK. And I thought the whole point of the debate was to show that there is not a good direct correlation between effective tax rates and income inequality. Maybe I should've chosen a different country than Denmark (the graph above doesn't have many close to Britain, but either Sweden or Czech Republic would work well). Would you care to address how $11.5k is not a poverty wage in the US by the way? Private Speech fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Jan 19, 2017 |
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Jan 19, 2017 00:41
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