Why don't you think taxing the super rich is great?
I read this as "socks" and thought "What the hippy shit is this?"
Then I realized my error but still wondered the same thing.
The "make every company a cooperative" concept has been proposed before. For certain companies it could make sense, but it gets a little tricky when it's anything that needs significant funds to get off the ground.
Corporations were invented for a reason: it creates a mechanism whereby investors can put money in up front in exchange for a share of possible profits once the venture gets going. For example, that makes it possible to build a billion dollar nuclear reactor with 100 staff people who couldn't each pay 10 million dollars.
The mechanism that creates billionaires is only sort of related. Elon Musk, for example, built up his wealth through tangential involvement with a series of really successful companies.
I don't get how you can think Taxes aren't the answer but removing stocks are. Billionaires exist because they have a lot of money in some form and are able to reinvest that money to get more money. If you remove stocks, they will find another way to have a lot of money, whether that's owning a lot of business, buying up properties etc. Start applying a sort of wealth tax, disallow financial influence in election (putting actual limits on spending), fix the loophole for passing on wealth to children with little to no tax, etc. There really isn't a simple solution, but a wide range of changes that need to be done in my opinion.
Well, if you want to tax billionares out of existance u need a wealth tax, aka unrealized gains.
taxing unrealized gains is just going to force individuals to sell their business to liquidate the cash to pay their taxes. Institutional traders will buy them up, so youre universally taking control out of the hands of people and giving it to banks and hedgefunds, which will just end up owning eachother.
I dont think any billionares exist that made their money in some other way than selling stocks in a business they acquired at a lower value, aside from inheritance or divorce.
Maybe you do implement a wealth tax anyway though, but you do it after abolishing stocks, just to catch the loopholes.
People should be allowed to give their money and possessions to their children with NO tax whatsoever.
Power accumulation in families would be through the roof. I get that it feels crude when you can't pass on all your wealth to your children, but it would widen the wealth gap so so much in just a couple generations. Is there another reason you think it should be untaxable?
It’s already been taxed.
Why?
Because it’s their money…..
It has also already been taxed.
Because it’s their money……
So? There's lots of restrictions on what you can do with your money. Most people agree this is a good thing.
It has also already been taxed.
Kind of the same answer. Governments can legislate whatever they want, including tax number n+1 in addition to the n you paid while alive.
Are you against having a government at all? Do you believe in a certain natural right that would restrict inheritance tax specifically? You came in here with a bombshell take and it feels incomplete without some context, haha.
I read through almost the whole thing wondering how it would connect to “socks”. Is he a shill for “big footwear”?
You need a way to invest in companies, especially for any to grow, and you need to motivate people. A central economy might budget tax revenue, typically on a multi-year plan, but it tends not to be responsive to real world messiness nor motivating. Capitalism means anyone can invest in a company, getting partial ownership and partial benefit from gains and responding quickly to the whims of the market. People are motivated by profit. Are you proposing a third way?
Why do all solutions need to be destructive? The stocks and companies exist to make one thing - maximize the stakeholder value. So, to get rich, one just needs to - hold stocks, and the company works to make you money. Nothing more, nothing less. But why are so little people actually owning stocks? Because you don't get tought in school about financial literacy.
Money is actually on the table for everyone to grab, just that majority of the people lack basic knowledge - where is the table and how to get to it.
Just teach people in school how to manage stocks, and everyone can ~~be rich~~ have a lot of money.
"Everyone can be rich" - no.
For one to be rich, another needs to be poor. Rich and poor are entirely relative terms.
Pardon my expression, everyone can have a lot of money.
A man who doesn't want anything is rich, even if he doesn't have money. I adjusted my comment accordingly.
How about no financial products, period. No loans, no mortgage, only rent-to-own or rent. Obfuscating financial products into more complex combined financial products is half of the economy crashes. Obfuscate the numbers, steal, grab, pillage while no one can understand what the frickel you are doing and BAM: profit on the backs of normies who are tOo dumb to understand what a margin call is or why CDO's are here to violate you. All financial products are a scam waiting in ambush, waiting for another bank-bro to think of a way they can leach from society without giving anything back.
Idk, man. I paid my rent last year with some stocks i cashed out.
I'd recommend just researching companies to invest in for like 10 years, and then research information on ETFs to help your money grow with the market. I'm basically poor and the stocks i invested in helped when i needed it, and i am definitely going to invest again.
But I wouldn't say get rid of the stock market. Just do some research, and only invest what you're willing to not keep in a savings account for a rainy day.
I've got a better idea: Make stockholders criminally liable and eligible for prison/execution for the crimes committed by the companies they invest in.
Oh, PharmaCorp knowingly put a medication in to production that causes baby's brains to catch fire? Every single investor in PharmaCorp is gonna serve three consecutive life sentences in Rapesburg-Asspain penitentiary.
Wipe out a few generations of the upper class by getting a couple mass first degree murder convictions to stick and the problem will sort itself out.
I think a more effective idea would be to remove all profits (and maybe executive income and bonuses) from the company for a fixed period of time instead of a fixed fine that's less than the profit from doing the illegal activity.
Investors won't be happy if they're getting nothing, so they'll be more careful with their investments, and no-one will have to pay to house thousands of unwitting investors in prisons.
No I think it's going to have to involve large numbers of perforated colons. Consequences should be physical.
Who said we're paying to house prisoners? The US constitution permits enslaving convicted felons. They're all going to the mines. They will WORK or be mutilated.
unable to be sold or owned
So what incentive is there to start a company? Who funds it? People are expected to start a company, take all the financial risk, for what exactly?
People being billionaires is not the issue people like to think it is. Public servants becoming millionaires by trading and taking bribes/kickbacks and cushy jobs upon leaving politics is the problem.
Billionaires are definitely a problem. Corrupt public servants are also a problem. We can admit there is more than one problem.
I don't think outlawing the existence of stocks fixes things though.
Billionaires aren’t a problem though. Corrupt politicians being bought by billionaires is a corrupt politician problem, not a billionaire problem.
What problems do billionaires cause by themselves, not via influencing people who shouldn’t be influenced?
The obscene concentration of wealth is bad for the stability of the country. The existence of billionaires is a policy failure. And there's no world where they exist without them being able to influence politicians, rules against it or not. You can't just exclude one of the biggest drawbacks of their existence from criticism
So you agree the problem is really politician corruption, not billionaires.
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