FuzzyWuzzy said:
mikecohen said:
drizzlybears brother said:
iwantwinners said:
Unit2Sucks said:
calbear93 said:
So, it is not about greed or selfishness. It is about different opinions on capital and asset allocation in a world with finite resources.
Why can't it be about both?
We just awarded the wealthiest people in America a massive tax cut (largest in history according to the president) at a time when they least needed it. It's amazing to me that after all we've learned from the numerous economic cycles in the last century +, that at a time when the economy is nearing the end of a boom we combined a massive decrease in taxes with a massive increase in spending. I say it's amazing but not at all surprising since I said that this is exactly what would happen and I don't say that to take credit for by prescience but merely to indicate how utterly predictable it was. I don't know what it's going to take to save this country from itself but I have no faith in the current establishment to do it and even less faith in the anti-establishment populist types that appear to be the alternatives.
It's anecdotal, but I know AT&T and Starbucks announced raised/bonuses for virtually all their employees when tax law was finalized. Surely it is partly PR for these companies to do this (and announce it) and most are probably not, but it illuminates how allowing corporations to keep more of their profits doesn't just enrich the bigwigs and stockholders, it can contribute to wage increases and/or free up capital for reinvestment, growing business that will always benefit the richest more in pure dollars than it's lower end employees. Forced added costs to business (taxes, raising wages) will almost always be passed on to the consumer. I reject the assumption that giving the government more earned income = helping the poor or middle class. The government can sustain poverty, but it cannot sustain the escape from poverty. In this society, only an individual's decisions can.
We agree on the idea that corporate taxes are simply a cost passed to consumers. But the examples of bonuses in response to the cuts actually prove the point that it's not taxes depressing wages. Look at the percentage of the windfall that went to labor compensation - a tiny fraction yet again. If it were real, what little did go to comp would have been permanent, not bonuses.
Regarding your concern for taxation used to combat poverty, what do you think is the point of wealth redistribution?
Corporate taxes are not passed onto consumers if business competition (which is supposed to be one of the virtues of capitalism) operates to keep prices down and force the corporations to create greater productivity despite the higher taxes. This has actually happened; but, instead of keeping prices down, it's just balooned corporate profits up, with the further detriment of failing to meaningfully increase investment into job-creating endeavors, some of which could improve our crumbling infrastructure (which it does not benefit most corporations enough to cause them to make such investments instead of just piling up cash).
Mike, you make many excellent points in your last several posts but let me explore one which you touch on above: corporations, despite ballooning profits, are not incentivized by market forces or other forces to invest in job-creating endeavors. This is going to be one of the great challenges of our, and the next, generation. At one time you had a manufacturing company that employed 100 people. Now with automation it produces the same amount using 2 employees, a highly educated engineer and a highly educated businessperson. That sounds like a great thing, right? It would be one thing if, say, we all worked less to produce (and earn as income) the same amount of domestic product. But instead, the same amount of income from the enterprise gets concentrated into many fewer hands. 98 people are out of work and taking opioids and two are working very hard and making a lot of money. How can we fix this problem? It seems so inefficient to artificially incentivize corporations to create "make work" jobs.
Switzerland had a referendum not too long ago for a - I forget the term - basic minimum income? I do not think that is the answer either. The 98 might not starve but having them sit around with no work is not good for society, IMO. It is almost as if our technology has gotten too productive for our own good.
It is the job of liberal arts education to give people the tools to create the new cultural and societal norms that incentivize the creation and expansion of new cultural and institutions necessary to fit the vastly expanded ability of civilization to provide materially for life.
Martin Luther posting his new religious paradigm on the church door comes to mind, as do Steve Jobs and the other visionaries who have exponentially expanded the abilities of masses of people to exercise intellectual and social activities.
Put thusly, the main problems (which have historically led to devastating consequences) have to do with the lagging ability of cultural and social institutions to deal with the reality of these possibilities. Fighting the Civil War, and then WWI, with military tactics woefully out-gunned by the military technology of the times is a particular example of this. The massive and sudden bi-polar crash of the high of new cultural possibilities represented by Woodstock and the summer of love into the utter degradation of addiction, sexual abuse, and Manson, is another.
Things like the subject of the Swiss Referendum have been established in human affairs ever since charity first appeared; and the existence of a paid clergy is an institutionalization of another solution.
Further, the governance and economies of developed countries have massively increased this since at least WWII, such that untold millions of people (somebody on this board recently said something about 40% below the poverty line in this country) actually are able to live while not being "productive members of society" - the problem with that here being that more and more people here don't have anything esteemed to do (although, to a significant extent, the lack of esteem is unwarranted), and they are consequently stigmatized for their endeavors not coming within the narrow range of those applauded by society.
And, in fact, slowly but slowly, new and valuable ways of being are coming into existence - the problem being (which is the subject of this post), in addition to the speed within which such cultural changes occur, is that the valuing of these new ways tend to both lag behind and be super-vulnerable to cultural backlash.
Again: There are endless numbers of meaningful goals, and endless possibilities to help things - all bounded only by narrowness and lack of openness of thought, plus the natural and meaningful resistance of any institution, once formed, to change (after all, the function of an institution is to provide the meaningful degree of stability that human life needs. But institutions, in order to be viable, have to be able to survive necessary changes brought on by the inevitable developments of human life.
So, I don't denigrate experimental ideas, and the identification of their flaws is reason to improve the ideas, not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.