Afaithfulnihilist
@Afaithfulnihilist@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on How would you actually tax the ultra wealthy? 21 hours ago:
In several different ways. The trick is to attack the problem of excessive wealth accumulation by making the system feed more aggressively on accumulated wealth.
A wealth tax is important to prevent the excess accumulation of capital. Money is only really working if it’s in motion. Once it stops moving it stops adding value to the economy which is fine sometimes and in small amounts.
Tax disuse. Vacant real estate should be taxed extra. If they don’t want it taxed it should be actively used in a non-extractive way. This means low impact agriculture, preservation, or occupancy not mining, dumping or logging.
Tax non-resident ownership. You can own as many houses as you want but each additional one beyond your primary residence is going to incur a scaling tax penalty. Two probably would be manageable Three would be difficult once you get to four and five houses you’re going to find it extremely difficult to make any money. And the scaling tax penalty would apply to the most expensive one first.
If they’re extracting resources from it or doing heavy agriculture they should be paying a premium and not externalizing wastes. They could be taxed to ensure compliance and enforcement is adequate. They should also be taxed in advance to fund potential cleanup of any toxic or environmental hazards. The money can be held in escrow but it needs to not be held by the same people who have a financial incentive to cut corners.
See I don’t actually believe the problem is rich people or income inequality broadly it’s the runaway effect of the accumulation of wealth in the absence of any kind of functional theory about how money is supposed to actually work in the economy.
There are people that are going to just work like crazy people and they will in any fair system acquire more resources than most other people.
I think in a fair system the people who are likely to end up with more resources would look very different than the people who end up with more resources in our systems.
Something people don’t often understand about American dollars and American taxes is that the function of the government’s tax policy is not to pay its bills. Our government doesn’t need taxes to pay its bills. The function of the government collecting taxes is to delete money from the system.
They need to be deleting money from the places where there’s too much of it. Otherwise that money crowds out legitimate money that is the representative of economic value produced through labor. If labor has no voice, then the economy stops functioning. - Comment on The green lean mean killing machine 5 weeks ago:
Morrells are the one real exception because they are so easily distinguished from lookalikes.
- Comment on The green lean mean killing machine 5 weeks ago:
Unless you are with Stamets and he tries it first, you shouldn’t eat foraged mushrooms.
Generally speaking, the only safe wild mushroom is one you saw someone else eat a few days ago and they are still fine.
- Comment on 'Come down': locals seek Hanson meeting after diatribe 5 weeks ago:
- Comment on How does this thing work? (wrong answers only) 1 month ago:
It’s a Sterling engine. It uses the difference between the heat on the stove and the cool air to create a flow of thermal energy that literally drives the motor.
- Comment on The perpetually immature and irresponsible 1 month ago:
Oh mom, I promise I’m gonna be large Some day I’ma stop trying to borrow your car Gonna go far, with charisma and skill Until they put my face on a million dollar bill ~Slug
- Comment on conditional soap 2 months ago:
Yes this is true. You still have to do the maintenance. I do have to brush it twice a day, and the lady taught me the virtue of brushing it from the bottom up so I got that going for me. My hair is the longest it’s been since I started brushing it correctly 😅
- Comment on conditional soap 2 months ago:
I’m a long haired freaky people and have been for almost 40 years but I found my hair is healthier if I rinse it regularly, wash it once or twice a month and condition it at the same time.
I use Nizoral AD (some almost medicated antindandruff thing) and Head and shoulders conditioner twice a month at most.
I still have my long luxurious hippy hair and I’m told there is no recession yet so I got that going for me.
- Comment on So now that it's that time of year again in the US, what are some tips and tricks for dealing with that one relative who goes on about the same bullshit for hours and won't shut the fuck up? 4 months ago:
“If this is your entire personality it makes sense that the only place you have to talk about it is with people who think they have no choice but to invite you.”
“If you don’t learn how to read the room you may not be invited back into it.”
- Comment on Not impressed 4 months ago:
Silimar, I had a teacher ask us to write down the first animal that came to mind and I wrote, “wolf spider” because to an 8 year old, there are few more bad ass sounding animals.
She said “really? That’s the First animal you think of?” Eye roll
Me: looks down at doodles of giant spiders battling tanks that shoot lightning, “it’s the only animal I’m thinking of right now…”
- Comment on Those were the good old days 5 months ago:
- Comment on one bright second 5 months ago:
Stuff only burns for so long. We might learn more about the geometry of space and that there is more out there at greater distances where maybe even other Big bangs are possible but there is a certain maximum amount of time that a star can exist.
Over the time scales of the life of a proton the maximum variability in the amount of time a star can is a rounding error against the scale of numbers needed to express the amount of time it takes for hawking radiation to reduce black holes to ultra long wavelengths of infrared radiation.
