Sounds like you robbed his ass but were oh so gracious to allow him to keep that 10 million out of the goodness of your heart. Until you need that for something.
10% of a billion isn't 10 million.
But you have a point. Maybe we should start a gofund me page for all those ... poor rich? People that loost 90% of their billion? I am sure we can find someone to donate caviar, gold and such. You don't happen to have a spare yacht lieing around somewhere you don't need? Maybe a rolex with diamonds? It would be appreciated.
Crni
So your saying that Germany is having a high population of refugees not because their benefits are better but simply because nobody else will take them and Merkel decided that Germany would be the sacrificial lamb?
Watch the video, it contains all the necessary informations, sources and what the German government officialy stated. Of course many people would like to come to Germany and Europe to improve their situation. But just lookig this alone, is a gross simplification. Refugees are not the same as migrants or asylum seekers by the way. You're more talking about people like my parents who came hare 40 years ago, to get jobs, better oportunities etc. I would never compare my parents to the people that fleed from the Kosov during the Kosovo wars or during the Yugoslavian civil war or well people from Syriah, Lebanon, Jemen etc. I also spoke with many people from Afghanistan and many other refugees and asylum seekers that I worked with. People from Afghanistan for example often well, escape due to beeing persecuted. One person I know was interogated by the Taliban for example because they where looking for his brother who dared to repair a police car in his workshop, which the Taliban hate. Economic reasons definetly play a role, but most people are just happy to get some stability in their live, at least the one I talked to and the majority is actually not looking for exploiting the well-fare state.
They HAVE to be productive members of society
Why?
So it is sad enough you want to limit income but you want to tax what gets in at 91 percent? And you said you do not want to remove all incentives to work?
91% of very wealthy people, a taxation that was at some point already in place - funny enough during a time when the US had some of their highest economic growths and actually introduced many social reforms.
Do you love to missread what I writte or do you just read what you want to read? Nowhere did I say I want to tax medium incomes or that I want to tax all incomes the same way. But the higher the income, the higher the tax. That simple. When it comes to income, you reach a point where you're income is not releated to your work and labour anymore, but the amount of money you gather from interests and returns, not to mention that a large portion of the wealth is also inherited. I quote :
"An estimated 35 to 45 percent of wealth is inherited rather than self-made, according to Kopczuk's review of the literature". but no one is talking about 'their' lazy asses doing nothing for the money they 'earned' I guess. Has this neoliberal propaganda penetrated so deep in your minds (no offense meant) that you get triggered so easily by just a few words like higher taxes and maximum wage? Does it mean nothing that even Warren Buffett argues for higher taxes?
No one is talking about making wealthy people in to poor bums or something, but to prevent excessive wealth from accumulating in to the hands of a few, which is also a huge problem politicaly when you look at how much money is dominating politics these days. Does it not bother you even in the slightest how the US is becoming slowly but steadily an oligarchy?
Come on man. The reason why we get the best is because we pay the best. The only way your proposals would work is if EVERY country adhered to the same principles, which I KNOW wouldn't happen. A lot of things like wages is directly tied to competition, both internal and external.
And you really believe that? I don't want to attack you, but honestly people often call me naive but it's always funny to find people that believe we would be living in societies that promote hard work, competition and the like. All it does is creating a selection process, where some people make it trough while the majority doesnt, often for reasons that are comletely out of their controll. This idea of competition as struggle is born in a missrepresented darwinian idea by a neoliberal ideology, I quote
(...)Competition among firms has been suggested to reflect the ruthless logic of Darwinian selection: a free market is a struggle for survival, in which successful firms survive and unsuccessful ones die.
However, what does competition actually mean in this context if you think it trough? It would mean that the strong rule over the weak. Survival of the fittest. However, if anyone with an economic degree would actually take their time to read Darwins work, they would realize that this is often not true and not what Darwin was talking about, particuliarly as he wrote, I quote
"looking to future generations, there is no cause to fear that the social instincts will grow weaker, and we may expect that virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed by inheritance. In this case the struggle between our higher and lower impulses will be less severe, and virtue will be triumphant" - Charles Darwin.
To say it that way, there is zero reason in a capitalist or neo-liberal society for a wealthy person or the owner of a factory to actually pay his workers more than he has to or to do anything to improve their conditions. The goal of anyone in such a society is to make profit, at all costs. And this is what pushed many societies during the 18th century close to revolutions where governments have been forced to privatise and/or split some large companies and to actually get social laws in to action.
We have had past discussions with UBI and I think with %100 automation, it could happen. Otherwise, until that point, your not going to find a lot of enthusiasm for such a project.
Depends on the type of income and the survey, but roughly speaking about half of the population in the western world would be at least open to the idea. In some cases even up to 60%, like if you look at Europe in particular which is a bit more open to the idea than the US.
However, when it comes to the UBI we can not wait till 100% of the workforce is automatized as the automatisation will not happen from one day to the next, but gradualy. More and more people will lose jobs or at the very least be affected due to the higher efficiency from AI, digitalisation and machinery. It could be that in 10 years it's 20% of the workforce that's affected in 30 years maybe 40% and so on. ANd it will happen in some areas sooner while taking more time in others, pretty sure any occupation that includes driving will be done by machines in the near future. We have to find solutions for those people. Or do you think 30% of the population should be left with food stamps and living at the poverty line? What kind of ideological and political polarisation would we be seeing then. I am not saying the US would become the next Nazi regime, but unemployment and economic and political uncertainity was a huge factor for the raise of the Nazis.
We have to think about solutions and how to implement them now, not in 40 years when it's to late.
I believe anyway that it will the rich people in the end that will implement the UBI at some point, that is if they really care about living in a functional society where someone has at least the income to buy the products that generate their wealth without starting a riot every second which is actually the big question in the room.
The bank bailout is not corporate welfare, it was quite simply, WELFARE for everyone.
Yeah, the same companies that now troll Trump and lay of workers. Or do you mean all the people that lost their homes in the housing bubble?
Sorry, I don't believe that even for a second. If you took all the money from the bail outs, and simply threw it out of an airplane over the affected regions, you might have done more for the 'small' man. Most of the money ended up in stabilizing the interests of share holders and company value. Pretty much nothing of that money, went in to the hands of employees or thost that have been victims by the gambling of the financial instutitons.
