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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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politics
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Idk about you, but nobody I personally know makes over $400k per year. (I know it's €, but I'm in the US and the euro and dollar are similar enough in value). I'm in a very wealthy and expensive area of the US, so I know plenty of people who make over $200k. My plant manager probably makes about $300k. Even then, still not over $400k.
Do you or people you know work to earn anywhere close to €400k? If not, (which I strongly suspect,) then I'm not sure why you would balk at that tax rate. Isn't €400k plenty for getting through a year? Can't the rich fucks budget a little better and maybe prepare their own breakfast instead of throwing money away on coffee shop lattes and pastries? I mean, that's roughly the advice they've been giving us poors for 20 years... Doesn't it work?
If somebody is in the position of making over €400k per year, they should be happy to give back to the system and structures that made that possible so that everybody can benefit. There shouldn't be unhoused people freezing to death or hungry people starving to death in the same country that sees salaries that high. Full stop. I say go further. 100% tax over €400k until all people are humanely housed, clothed, and fed, then relieve that back to 90%. It can come down to 80% once 80% of workers has a €50k salary, and again to down to 70% once 70% of workers has a €100k salary. Incentivize these greedy fucks to help themselves by helping others first.
One person, no, but I know families that make about that when both salaries are combined (in the Bay area)
A change in taxes like that would incentivize people to leave the bay area, lowering cost of living. If the families you know suddenly lost all or most of their earnings over $400k, but their mortgage/rent were cut in half, they'd benefit. The insane hot spot of cost of living there would stabilize closer to the national median cost of living. They would be affected in the extremely short term, but they would either move away or wait a year or so and start feeling the benefits of the change.
The only downside is that homeowners would see property values drop. I'd propose that some amount of the tax dollars be allocated to paying off the difference in property values for primary residences. Idk I'm not a legislator, but I'm sure there are reasonable carve outs to not fuck over "the middle class" in the process of trying to help people climb up to that status. I'm just some dipshit who sells his time and labor 12 hours at a time, not a career politician or lawyer.
I'm not against. I was just replying that I know families that earn that kind of money
Bay Area has insanely low local purchase power though.
I agree with the sentiment, but in practice the world of politics prohibits such drastic actions without employing violence and ultimately authoritarian control. Unless you can convince the centrists otherwise.
It's not about what we want or what is right. It's about what is possible, by necessity. Our entire system is predicated on the importance of equality, which means people who disagree with you (if there are enough of them) must be allowed a seat at the negotiating table, and be allowed to get some of what they want.
This way the government can efficiently produce results, which voters can see, which in turn convinces them to continue supporting those leaders, which enables the leaders to continue to improve the system. This is just kinda how reform works, as opposed to revolution, which has a tendency towards unpredictable results that may sometimes unintentionally create something worse than what existed before. Like, we wanted equality but ended up with the Holodomor. Oopsie.
Funny how going the opposite way (super high to super low taxes for the rich) didn't require violence or authoritarians in power...
It does actually. The status quo is maintained by authoritarians utilizing the state to enact violence against the working class.
Yeah, it's deeply frustrating, something that took years to build can be torn down in a day. Centrists can be annoying sometimes. This is why we need to convince people to support progressive policies though. Grassroots has always been our strength, one voter at a time. This makes it very important to deliver them something, even if its imperfect, to reward their support when we do manage to win.
Republicans realized this, and it is why they obstruct anything that improves life for everyday people at every opportunity, and then redirect anger towards culture war issues. We can't let that strategy continue to succeed, we have to deliver progress. At least something.
The French have a solution for that too. I think the rich folks will prefer this option.
lol Yeah, you are not wrong.
To me, though, it's important to manage expectations. When people set their heart on getting everything instead of working with the genuinely ugly realities of real life politics, it just hurts both them and their team. It would be one thing if the left had a majority, but a majority was not secured. We can't just pretend we have one when we actually don't, and that shouldn't stop us from working to improve the lives of our people as best we can.