Submitted 3 weeks ago by okwithmydecay@leminal.space to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk
https://www.bigissue.com/culture/tv/youtuber-economist-gary-stevenson-wealth-tax-interview/
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
Even worse at least the local noble was local and would usually invest within their community instead of what we have now where they barely have to see us.
Uh…
Medieval robber barons most often imposed high or unauthorized tolls on rivers or roads passing through their territory. Some robbed merchants, land travelers, and river traffic—seizing money, cargoes, even entire ships—or engaged in kidnapping for ransom.
I mean, we have a kind of tentative re-implementation of this in the US/Iran fight over the Strait of Hormuz. Also, with the vision of the Network State professed by Silicon Valley elites. And then there’s the Trump economic plan of high tariffs and walled-off borders, which seems to echo the Israeli strategy of segregated micro-communities and settler expansion into neighboring enclaves.
Idk if I’d call any of this “investment” in the neoliberal sense. Much of it seems to involve rent-seeking through enclosure and extortion. There’s no real value-add to any of it.
I know Gary likes to play dumb and assume this isn’t actually the goal of the rich and powerful all along but they have been executing this class war now for 45 years. Its not likely its new and its had universal support from every government since the early 1980s. It is what the ruling class wants, because they get to own everything and live even better. There is a reason you can’t get Labour to do anything about it they have been pursuing this intentionally since the 2000s.
My brother in Christ, class war has been active for thousands of years.
Ever since the priests convinced others to work for them. The orginal lazy wealty class.
How does he play dumb?
I think he does so in that he makes it out as best as he can to not be left vs right as people have been propogandised as to what those terms mean, and he wants to appeal to the masses; but in practice it’s pretty left coded.
By not admitting this is actually something the government is intending and helping happen. He is treating the powerful as if they are unaware of the impact of what is clearly their chosen strategy and what will happen.
And also bizzarely attached to Labour.
Even his chats with Polanski seem to get ended with a “come and talk to me Labour-daddy and I’ll play with you instead, he’s not my first choice” attitude.
Maybe its genuine on his part then and he isn’t playing dumb he just doesn’t actually realise that Labour has been bought and paid for by the rich and wealthy since the end of the 90s. He does keep thinking he can get Labour to change tune, yesterdays interview on channel 4 he is still talking like Labour can be pressured into wealth taxes to save themselves from wipe out in 2028.
Yes thats entirely the point. All these ketamine snorting tech bros have hyped each other up into believing they are the new aristocracy who deserve an underclass
Isn’t that explicitly the goal of alt-right “thinkers” like Yarvin and his “Dark Enlightenment” (not clever enough for “Endarkenment”?)? Peter Thiel hopes to apply/spread it to all Western civilizations, not just the US.
He’s right but people in the UK are too racist to gain a collective class consciousness.
Right or wrong, it’s bizarre to make an overgeneralised statement accusing others of bigotry.
It’s a comment that is used to make everyone feel like it’s pointless trying to fight this.
We are powerful united and they don’t want us to fight back.
Eat the rich.
It is overgeneralised, but I look at how many people are feeding into the lies told by Nigel Farage and similar people, a lot of people hang on their every word and take it as gospel.
There are articles every week regarding racist attacks and outbursts, most recent discussion I could find: theguardian.com/…/belfast-southampton-riots-racis…
There will never be class consciousness as long as even a decent minority of people listen to the hate being spewed in this country.
Tax Wealth, or well shift from Trickle Down Economics to Robin Hood Economics, which usually doesn’t turn out well for the leadership.
Why do you think the tech bros are so busy investing? When you don’t even need the other people to maintain your luxury, they can just die off and leave the planet to them. Clean, empty, serviced by “I have no mouth and I must scream” AI robots and rewilding. Paradise for them and death for the rest of us. The stench of death will only last 10 years and then the robots can clean up.
Clean, empty, serviced by “I have no mouth and I must scream” AI robots and rewilding.
A very tempting offer of my death brings the dystopian, apocalyptic hell of “I have no mouth and I must scream” for billionaires.
I like his way of thinking but I really don’t like his nothing burger suggestions.
Like why are you telling civilians to do it. Like I’m gonna say “oh, ok I’ll go tax the wealthy then”. If you’re that rich as he claims to be why not go be a politican and represent us? Tax the rich my ass. Like it’s our fault. Like we can do anything at all.
There was one vid of him saying “oh I got richer because I bought oil commodity when the war started” like what the fuck man. And then he kept saying tax the rich again.
Also his book sucked. He was basically telling how clever he was and how everyone is else was an asshole tools. Sorry but unless he uses his power (money) and start moving some stones, he’s just another rich cunt that just talks bs to me.
Sorry, downvote all you want. But I’m sick of hearing people telling me to do something while they already have all the power to blast the things. I got fucking bills to pay and I’m dead on the evening can barely read a single page of a book without falling asleep. What the fuck am I supposed to do more? I’m drained.
Lmfao “downvote all you want”
Upvoted
But seriously guys like him sound like they just wanna hear themselves talk and look smart / on the morally right side of things. Absolute tool I guess. However not gonna tell him to stop saying it because the more people that do, maybe it’ll help.
Tax Wealth?
I want wealth caps!
Say, 10 million dollars, is simply the maximum amount of money anyone can have / control. Any income after that is 100% taxed
No more extreme riches
Governments get huge influx of resources which they can use for free healthcare, free education, universal basic income
Poverty could disappear. Poverty related crimes could disappear
Companies can no longer have huge share holders and owners, now requiring loads of smaller shareholders.
Limit company worths to max 1 billion too while we’re at it.l, because no ultra large company ever did something that was good for humanity
Now we have boat loads of smaller companies, makes your economy more stable
Since you can’t pass that wealth limit, incentives to screw over customers are gone because it won’t get you more anyway.
I can go on listing the benefits for another hour but you get the idea …
I literally can’t see bad sides to limiting wealth. It’s a simple rule to get control of the narcissist psychopaths that are ruining the world
Why haven’t we ever done that before?
The resources required to enforce such rules are controlled by the people who benefit from that not being the rules. Hell, the IRS has essentially said they don’t have the resources to go after the biggest tax evaders because it costs too much.
www.gq.com/story/no-irs-audits-for-the-rich
Excuses it cost everyone more if they don’t
“It costs too much” is a horseshit excuse when the result of the audit would likely pay for itself many times over. Use the first couple of years to automate/streamline as much of the process as you can, and they’ll likely start just paying the damn things like they should have been in the first place, if only to avoid the hassle.
I realize that’s an old article, but the problem is just the fucking MAGAt Rapepublicans gutting the IRS. I mean, on one hand you are right, they don’t have the manpower. By design. By the oligarchs who own the gov’t.
Ofc he’s not going to suggest that, that means he’ll lose his monies. “Rules for them but not me!”
Taxing wealth strikes me as like trying to scoop out the ocean. We have to recreate beaver dams and restore the metaphorical flood plains. Spread out and soak in. The water table is going down and the land is subsiding; moving some water isn’t enough.
How is a wealth tax just moving water? What would you say is more effective? A wealth tax isn’t just about recapturing some of the wealth back from the wealthy, arguably that isn’t even the most important aspect of it, but rather having the mechanisms in place to map out and track wealth. Having that in place would massively benefit us to understand the velocity of wealth and where exactly it is being accumulated so that we can more effectively act to remedy massive inequalities.
If you want to learn more, this video goes into it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmK74mfpHQA
It takes a long time to construct those things though right - you can take a bucket to the beach today.
Even if its the tiniest fraction of what they have, if it can fund campaigns and programmes that work toward a more just society, its helpful, right? Obviously it’s more important that we build those things, but while we’re building them if we can get a bucketful its better than nothing
True!
return to the feudal age
Ummm… when did we leave?
This man is a clown and can safely be ignored without negatively affecting any part of your life.
It’s a parody that this charlatan is making bank shilling populism to a magazine that is sold on the street by the homeless.
Listen to this self-aggrandising spiv winge about the “academics in their ivory tower” and how he’s so smart that none of them take him seriously, while making a career out of surface level platitudes like the title. It’s wild that anyone can listen to him without cringing out of their skull.
Apparently the hosts of that video you shared don’t like graphs either because they covered the most critical part of the graph with their dumb grinning faces: Image
Gary has a point, there can be endless playing about with numbers, and looking at a single graph is not enough to draw a vast conclusion. How about we look at a stat from the same page that graph was pulled from?
and that stat highlights the point Gary was trying to make about looking at the wealth of the top 0.1% who are largely the ones taking wealth from everyone else, including from the rest of the top 10%. The host trying to pull a gotcha on Gary can’t even read the graph he handpicked because he said that things are better now than in 1980 before trying to correct himself by saying “they’re kind of like they were in 1980” even though actually the share of wealth for the top 10% was lower in 1980 and the share of wealth for the bottom 50% was higher.
On top of all that, the numbers end at 2020, which is right before plundering frenzy that the wealthy did thanks to all the money printing that took place during the pandemic. Here’s the page with graphs and stats for anyone interested: …org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk/
I think you’re missing the main point a little bit, the problem with Gary is that he oversimplifies everything. He bigs himself up as this decisive voice without actually engaging with inequality research and policy holistically, consistently. He is not an exceptionally good economist, however he has vast reach and a large social media presence. The problems arising from this sort of populism is less apparent while his mission is aligned with what one believes, but is concerning nonetheless. He is just a burnt out millionaire turned influencer/media figure, who larps as this down-to-earth campaigner for good, while building his youtube brand and selling a book about how he was the tippy-top trader at Citibank.
You’re framing of that video is complete rubbish. The hosts repeatedly state that they agree there are problems with economic equality, and accurately describe the problem at every point. Their point isn’t about the stats, it’s about how Gary is a grifter that tailors his message to attract simpletons who like shiney words and empty rhetoric. That he can’t even engage with a chart that might support his message because actual data isn’t a part of the equation for him, only rhetoric and whatever cherry picked headlines he can find to support it.
You’re also just framing this as a gotcha for the same reasons, that Gary is constantly playing victim, so his fans carry that message as well. He wasn’t a victim, he’s a grown ass man that can’t handle any push back without crying like a little bitch.
You complain about a graph not being enough to draw a conclusion then point to an even worse data point that completely misses 49.999% of the population in its analysis. That’s some turbo charged populist brainrot, and Gary will definitely add it to his grab bag of factoids to dazzle his audience for year to come, like jingling keys in front of babies.
gary mate, i think thats what they want
Abandoning tech for a few generations might be a good thing. It seems all of society is forced to re-engineer itself based on the latest tech/gizmo/widget invention, in order to streamline “business”, but everything gets more expensive with diminishing quality over time. Knee-jerk reactions to the shiny and new aren’t good for anybody.
Abandoning tech for a few generations might be a good thing.
Are we “abandoning tech” or just segregating access to infrastructure based on professed loyalties to surveillance tyrants?
You’re either on the bus or off the bus.
Ludd is Love
Somewhere we lost sight of the idea that just because a person has an idea, does not make it a GOOD idea.
Me resisting the urge to explain how modern medieval historians consider feudalism to have never existed:
But yeah he's right. Or well something will give before that, but that's the end state we're looking at.
??? which part didn’t exist, the serfs, the literal kings and tiers of nobility, what
I’d love to know that, too. Would definitely like to have some books recommended by reputable historians who say feudalism never existed.
If you put a wealth tax on billionaires where you tax them on their total asset value, they’ll simply leave the country and take all of their millions/billions of dollars in taxes every year that they, their companies, and their employees pay, out of the country, leaving you in a much worse position than you’re already in since those are the people that already pay the majority of the countries income taxes etc.
Taxing wealth is a pathetic idea by people who can’t stand others being more successful than them.
You realise that they’ll not leave because it would be A LOT more expensive than just paying their taxes right ? Moving assets is expensive, they will not sell all their property, they will not move their companies. Them moving away is just propaganda for fools like you.
And in any case, they already don’t pay much, even if 1% of them move away, the tax income from the rest will make up for it.
According to Abigail Disney they already pay more to avoid taxes than the cost of the taxes themselves.
Short term cost for long term profit. Look at all the companies that up and left Delaware after what their courts pulled with musks pay packet.
This objection has been brought up repeatedly but these are solvable problems.
Firstly, a lot of assets the wealthy own cannot be transferred out of country. Stock in companies, real estate, etc. The super rich are not rich because they have bank accounts with all of their money that can just disappear overnight, but because they own real things in the real world.
Secondly, economist Gabriel Zucman has proposed a solution to the “they will all take their money and leave.” The USA taxes all citizens on their income no matter where they are in the world. You could simply create a wealth tax that says “if you have wealth over 100 million USD and have lived in this country in the past 5 years, you have to pay the tax no matter where you live for the next X years. (X could be 5, 10, 15, whatever.) If it goes into effect starting in some future date of course people will try to shift assets and move but if you make it retroactive they can’t. Also the tax needs to apply to companies so they can’t have an LLC holding all of their assets tax free neither.
Finally, taxing wealth is not about being jealous or craven that others have more. It’s about survival of society in some form that isn’t “ten people own everything and the rest live in desperate poverty.”
For the ultra wealthy, their wealth can grow passively from compounding interest leaving them will little choice but to continue acquiring assets. If you were given a million dollars every week (that’s roughly 5% annual growth on a billion dollars) you would quickly find that you had lots of money sitting around despite paying off all of your debt, upgrading your house, having fun trips. Eventually you would start using that money to either buy stocks, real estate, etc. Then those things appreciate and your $1M per week begins to climb despite living a lavish lifestyle. It’s just a natural consequence at that point that you buy up and own real world assets at an increasing rate. This means there is less and less available to own for everyone in your community.
Essentially, at a certain point these individuals become financial black holes where their wealth is not only self sustaining but continues to grow and consume things. There is no stop unless society puts brakes on it to limit the growth beyond a certain point.
You’re totally right, thanks for not making me write this comment.
Hey guys, the world’s smartest people are saying tax the multi-millionaires and some of them have spent their life working on this topic. There’s nothing you can bring up that the economists pioneering the modern version of this solution haven’t considered. If you think taxing the wealthy won’t work, for any reason besides they have a whole lot of power and will fight it, than you’re a part of the problem and being propagandized into an apathetic state.
We can win, we will win, it’s not that hard of a problem to solve, we just have to fight for it.
One will die:
Society or the billionaire.
This just isn’t true. Billionaires do very little that negatively affects society. Mostly they just pay all the tax and provide all the jobs.
Not false, but something has to give. Billionaires are a drain on society, the conditions that allowed their creation tanked the middle class. They centralize capital in their hand at the downfall of everyone else. A wealth tax is a step forward. Ideally, combined with international agreements with the biggest fiscal havens to not let them run away.
I want to stress how the rise of billionaires is a global phenomenon. In an ideal world, all nations would slowly implement wealth taxes.
Billionaires are generally the wealth creators, not drains. How many people do bezos and musk employ? How much tax do they, their companies, and their employees contribute?
The idea that billionaires would leave the economy that made them billions, the services and amenities that make being a billionaire worthwhille, and all their rich friends, all for a little tax break is pretty ridiculous. They already choose to live in California, New York, and London - expensive places with high taxes - rather than Cayman Islands or South Dakota.
They’re definitely not uprooting the whole corporate campus, moving it away from the skilled workforce it needs, the housing that they need, and the good schools that they want.
Billionaires’ personal wealth isn’t generating any taxable income, anyway, so there’s no income tax to lose if they do leave.
Avoiding a “wealth tax” isn’t just a “little tax break”.
Most wealth is on paper. Billionaires don’t just have a billion dollars of cash. I’m technically a multi-millionaire, but if I suddenly got hit with a 5% wealth tax I’d have too sell my house and be homeless to pay it. That’s not right or fair.
Is basically a tax on unrealised gains, and I shouldn’t have to explain to you how that is terrible.
They arnt paying anyway so it’s not a loss.
That’s just not true. Elon musk paid the single highest tax bill anyone has ever paid, for example.
Thry are a drain on society. If they leave, it’s a net positive. If they start to pay their fair share, it’s a net positive. Either way we win.
They literally pay the majority of all tax in a society lol. They usually create tens of thousands of jobs, and pay those wages.
There aren’t many billionaires that don’t own and run massive companies that contribute greatly to society.
Let millionaires leave every country to form their own utopia. Let them try and live without anyone making the life go around. Just millionaires eventually eating each other.
And what do you think happens to the countries that just lost 50% of their tax revenue because the 1% left?
Let them live in their floating city states or in their underground bunkers like erzatz Bond villains. Let’s see how much wealth they create there.
Come find me boot licker, I’ll show ya jealousy. Its damn near dinner time, I can’t wait I’m starvin
At least you admit it’s jealousy.
Do they take their British workforce with them? No, so those stay behind. Can they produce the products they produce in the UK without that workforce by themselves? No, then they wouldn’t need the workforce. Can the workers produce the product? They know how, and have successfully been doing it for the duration of their employment. The only thing stopping them is capital and IP.
PennyRoyal@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
He’s fucking right
camembear@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
He is wrong in one thing. The timeline. Digital feudalism already exists and we are living it.
jabjoe@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Have been a while. The American tech monopolies and their awful business practices have been with us decades. Been “too big to fail” and “too big to jail” for a while. Just now it’s in everyone’s faces.
jimmy90@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
his discussion with Dan Neidle indicates strongly that this is slopulism
it needs to happen but not in the magical way gary the dunce suggests