Elon pays NEGLIGIBLE TAX

[Tech36363]

People who think taxxing the rich is the answer , you don't understand why government allows them to not pay taxes .

Watch this 

Tax LOOPHOLES The Rich Don't Want You To Know -Robert Kiyosaki:  https://youtu.be/fY4OKy54Yfs

[Windappreciator]

just tax them properly and fair and that good

Edited January 21, 2022 by Windappreciator

[Tech36363]

@Windappreciator sounds good doesnt work

[Windappreciator]

@Tech36363  it work, it work, don't worry.

don't buy into that stuff too much.

we all good, we all set, it will all work.

[DocWatts]

Allowing individuals and small syndicates to amass more wealth than a significant portion of the entire society is unsustainable in a democratic society.

If left unchecked it will eat democracy, due to the divergent incentive structures between what is good for the entire society and what is good for a relatively small group of socio-economic elites.

To prevent this from happening society would need to prevent individuals from amassing more wealth than entire countries. But the catch-22 is that this would require fairly aggressive wealth taxes, which is exactly the sort of thing that extremely wealthy individuals are in a position to obstruct through political system capture.

[Tech36363]

@DocWatts It is not that simple , first of all when you try to tax the rich they will buy you . 

Second , even if you try to implement a system where rich are "fairly" taxxed in a way they don't become a threat to "democrazy" it will eventually be overturned just because you will lose with your competitors on global scale . People hurt and the countrys economic progress hurts because rich will just go somewhere where they get a better deal . 

Thirdly lets assume you have a world where each country taxes the rich "fairly" , it will be bad for employees and consumers because the tax justs gets rolled onto the consumers , rich do not create money out of thin air they earn it and distribute it according to their projects 

fourthly , the "democrazy" youre talking about is an illusion because both the parties are funded by corporates to further their interest and to make it in politics you need money which comes from donations which comes from furthering corporate interests 

fifthly , hypothetically lets say you achieved a world where rich are taxed , this does not mean the game is over . This will just create competition at this new level to manipulate politics . No matter what try they will sell out . just because your scale has shifted from 1 to 10 to now 1 to 5 doesnt mean the people in 1 to 5 scale arent comepeting in that particular scenario . competition is going to be there no matter what .

sixthly , so if you think having lots of money to manipulate politics is bad because its too much power , why arent you talking about politicians who ACTUALLY POSSES all the power . Why is that all the power in the hands of few people who write laws is sustainable but too much money is not sustainable ? 

 

[DocWatts]

@Tech36363 My primary point was more that capitalism and democracy work at cross purposes.

The reason that simply raising capital gains taxes doesn't work is that the extremely wealthy will always find ways to bend political systems to thier will, because of the incentive structure inherent to capitalism, where corporate wealth and political power are heavily intertwined.

In the US, the gains of the New Deal successfully being rolled back by business interests over the later half of the 20th century is a good example of this. This is my primary critique of mainstream liberalism, by the way, namely the Game Denial about exactly this dynamic.

Which is what makes it such a difficult problem, and a Catch-22. I recognize that there's no quick and easy solution, and that substantial structural changes will almost certainly be necessary to address problems like widespread wealth inequality.

So I guess you can tell me whether we're actually disagreeing or not.

Edited January 21, 2022 by DocWatts

[Tech36363]

@DocWatts we aren't , however what I am throwing light at is Human Nature . it stays the same unless you are enlightened and declared dictator . Humans will always find a way to further their interests 

[DocWatts]

8 minutes ago, Tech36363 said:

@DocWatts we aren't , however what I am throwing light at is Human Nature . it stays the same unless you are enlightened and declared dictator . Humans will always find a way to further their interests 

For sure. I would never claim that the dynamic you mention is unique to capitalism, the Marxist experiments of the 20th century (which to be more accurate were versions of State rather than Private Capitalism) had this same problem to the same if not a greater degree.

I would argue that the Social Democracies of Western Europe have probably done the best job of accounting for this aspect of human nature, but even if it's preferable to what exists in the US it's far from perfect since in some sense the worst aspects of exploitation have simply been 'exported' to other parts of the world.

Edited January 21, 2022 by DocWatts

[roopepa]

1 hour ago, Tech36363 said:

Human Nature

"Human nature" is whatever the current system benefits from. What it needs people to believe.

A few hundred years ago "human nature" meant a sinful creature in trial by judgemental divine power.

[Tech36363]

@roopepa What "system"? It's people. It's what people benefit from. 

I'm talking about real raw human nature that is being selfish. Self interest first. 

Few hundred years back people were dumb but you see even in ancient rome 2000 years back the rich merchants manipulated the senate. The senate was exclusively for socialites. Who cares what some religion says about human nature but structures of power have a pattern. Focus on that. 

[Yarco]

Elon Musk is paying $11 billion + in taxes for last year. That's more than the GDP of many countries. How is that nominal?

It's the equivalent of someone with a net worth of $500k (a modest house in most cities, a 5-year-old car, and some savings) paying like $22,000 a year in taxes.

[roopepa]

12 hours ago, Tech36363 said:

Few hundred years back people were dumb but you see even in ancient rome 2000 years back the rich merchants manipulated the senate. The senate was exclusively for socialites. Who cares what some religion says about human nature but structures of power have a pattern. Focus on that. 

In the early cultures, hunter gatherers for example, power was not centered for the most selfish. It was for the most experienced, oldest. There wasn't even an idea of a separate individual yet.

Capitalism is not some universal "human nature" and a pinnacle of human civilization, a "natural system". The idea that human nature = selfish materialist is just propaganda the social matrix feeds people to keep the system running. Look at the people on this forum. Most active users here would choose emotional and spiritual well-being instead of material posessions and power in a heartbeat.

[Lyubov]

I’m not one of those “eat the rich” types, but I think a more advanced society will just make being some super billionaire not possible. Society will sort of remove this power structure with the billionaire at the top, or greatly curb it. I just wonder what this redistribution will look like. Will we just have stronger governments or will it be sorta spread throughout the economy where everyone has a pretty decent standard of living, guaranteed basic income, etc? What would happen to luxury goods and all the stuff people are competing to own? I feel like it’s unrealistic to just expect people to move beyond competing and falling for supply and demand. We can greatly diminish and even eradicate poverty, health care disparities, food shortages, etc but there will always be some stuff in limited supply to go around like that luxurious LA mansion and private jet. 

[Tech36363]

@Yarco I said that lure people with 0 knowledge screaming "tax the rich" into this thread lol , because that is what they believe !

Edited January 22, 2022 by Tech36363

[Bernardo Carleial]

On 21/1/2022 at 11:25 AM, Tech36363 said:

People who think taxxing the rich is the answer , you don't understand why government allows them to not pay taxes .

Watch this 

Tax LOOPHOLES The Rich Don't Want You To Know -Robert Kiyosaki:  https://youtu.be/fY4OKy54Yfs

Financial Education = Lobbying 

[DocWatts]

21 hours ago, Tech36363 said:

@roopepa What "system"? It's people. It's what people benefit from. 

I'm talking about real raw human nature that is being selfish. Self interest first. 

Few hundred years back people were dumb but you see even in ancient rome 2000 years back the rich merchants manipulated the senate. The senate was exclusively for socialites. Who cares what some religion says about human nature but structures of power have a pattern. Focus on that. 

While there's validity to the idea that selfish behavior is inherent to some degree in human nature, what I would take issue with is that the extreme form of selfishness that Capitalism posits as basic 'human nature' is closer to a self serving social construction rather than a Universal truth. Understand that I'm not accusing you of saying this, but it's something that largely goes unquestioned in many parts of our culture.

We don't have to romanticize earlier societies to understand that for the majority of our existence on this planet, humans lived in relatively egalitarian hunter gatherer tribes where extreme forms of selfishness by individuals posed an existential survival risk to the tribe. That's not to say that human beings are inherently selfless, just that human nature is malleable and shaped by the survival context it finds itself in. For what it's worth I think we should also avoid the other extreme, which is the mistake that comes from positing that human nature as infinitely malleable, which is a form of Game Denial with disastrous consequences.

Under an atomized system where human beings are put in artificial competition for the basic necessities of life it's not surprising that selfishness plays a more prominent role in social interactions. (For the sake of clarity when I say 'artificial competition', by that I mean there's enough material abundance in first world societies so that there's no justifiable reason why the basic necessities of life such as shelter, food, and health care should be scarce in a wealthy country like the United States).

Of course contemporary capitalist societies are hardly unique in this regard in pushing socially constructed values as universals of human nature. I'm far from an extreme Relativist and have good reason to think that there are many universals to human nature (because contrary to the idea that 'contexts are boundless', biology and psychology place limits on the number of contexts).

Devily (as Leo defines it) is part of this, but it's far from the whole story. How much that gets emphasized has a material and sociological component (or a 'Collective Exterior' quadrant, in Ken Wilber's model).

Edited January 22, 2022 by DocWatts

[Tech36363]

@roopepa That is true but we are not in a hunter gatherer society , we are in a broken nuclear family system . divorce rate is more than 50% . kids out these relationships are traumatized . And people were collective in hunter gatherer because THEY HAD TO , otherwise they will die . In todays society you dont need a community to survive . most people dont have one . everyone is one their own for the most part or their family . Being selfish is not  propaganda , it is what works as leo said it is devilry . Still doesn't change the fact that it works .Yes we can do better . Will we do better ? prolly not . Because we lack such people . Enlightened people dont run companies or politics . Power attracts pathological personalities 

[Danioover9000]

   Man, sometimes I feel like we must be as closely ruthless as the billionaires to tax them properly, and to not get too attached to paper money when trillionaires, billionaires, maybe millionaires wave you paper money to try to coerce and persuade to not get heavily taxed, in their view.

    

[Tech36363]

@DocWatts The problem is consciousness of society needs to be raised . Competent people need to be in power . Not someone who says they will bring a utopia but causes total catastrophe like in communist countries . Extreme capitalism is also societies fault , not the companies who are doing it . In a conscious society the dynamic would be different . Just changing economic system will not do anything . everything from ground up in every individual needs to be taught the way of life