The rich aren't the enemy, rent-seekers are.
They may overlap, and Bezos may be both, but wealth and capital on their own are orthogonal to justice.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EHKZRLcW4AA1aju?format=jpg&name=...
They may overlap, and Bezos may be both, but wealth and capital on their own are orthogonal to justice.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EHKZRLcW4AA1aju?format=jpg&name=...
Land is a public good. We have to compete for it but that doesn't mean private individuals should get a cut of the public wealth around the plot of land merely by owning it. It only makes sense to tax it or to turn it over to public ownership (the transition would obviously take decades).
They use their market dominance to reduce the income of authors resulting in less choice and lower quality books for you to read, while increasing the price of available books.
They use their vast wealth to buy out or strike deals with competitors, preventing any challenge to their hold on the industry.
As market maker and participant they use their exclusive market data to undercut their own providers resulting in more hoarded wealth for them but a less creative and productive society for all.
They engage in continual astro-turfing which alters public debate away from whatever is really going on and toward what the mega wealthy owners want people to believe.
And much much more.
[1] https://www.tcd.ie/Economics/assets/pdf/SER/1995/Alan_Dunne....
Add to that that the legal framework (talking about the USA) is seriously skewed to favor employers and disadvantages workers and any attempts to unionize. This has to stop.
Putting the employer on the hook for more aspects of the employee's well-being (healthcare, living wage) only increases the gap between employed and unemployed, therefore increasing the bargaining power of employers. I think it's better to have society provide a basic standard of living (most importantly housing and healthcare) to all poor people, employed or not.
If I'm a single mom with 3 kids, is the "living salary" the same as a single 20 year old who lives at home?
Let us assume both household's single earner brings in 15382 €/a (EU-27/28 average net income for 2013). Household 1 with two juveniles and one child is 6688 €/a, poverty. Household 2 remains 15382 €/a.
How did you think this would actually work?
Why can’t you have a conversation in good faith?
It sounds like in Scandinavia you don’t worry about corporate welfare. That’s news to me, but good to know.
Not really, but what's the purpose of this particular reply other than to try to wind me up?
> What is a "living salary"?
> If I'm a single mom with 3 kids, is the "living salary" the same as a single 20 year old who lives at home?
Your diversion with focusing on a new totally unfruitful topic is not my problem.
That’s a yes/no question. Not sure why you’re struggling to answer it.
I think cloudfifty already answered the question in good faith. And honestly; this question comes over as a bit trolly.
But hey, I'll bite!
> The mother will also receive a monthly allowance for each child. She will also likely be eligible to rent support. So children is a special case, but a living wage doesn't involve that.
In this case, rent support would come from the state and if the mother in question is also working, you could classify this as additional support. So, if the mother is working, she should get a salary high enough to not warrant this kind of support. (Given that rent is usually highly dependent on the location of the property, not having such a support could further push gentrification and require longer commute for the mother in question. In this case we also need to make sure that the day care for the kids doesn't suffer in quality if the mother in question has to move to a less desirable living location.)
In general, we should not do corporate welfare. In particular there might be cases where we need to support people, even if they are working.
Isn't it weird how it is possible to prevent other people from working by simply withholding money? Meanwhile we expect the people who couldn't work as a result of this withholding of money to keep working, we consider them lazy and not worthy of sympathy.
What dries up money circulation is not any one company's hoarding, but the banks' willingness to lend as a whole, and the economy's desire to borrow and spend as a whole.
Recommended reading: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-...
If “rent-seeking” contributes to people becoming wealthy then the two notions don’t remain orthogonal. The chances of finding more rent seeker among the wealthy is far higher than more rent seekers among the non-wealthy.
Additionally the size of “problems” that a single low-wealth rent-seeker causes is not equivalent to the amount of “problem” created by a single high-wealth rent seeker.
On the other hand, proving that a specific piece of income is “economic rent” - I think that’s intractable and only produces loss on both sides. It’s a fight to the death for the accused, a hill they’ll die on. The idea is appealing at a surface level but I can’t see any way forward with it.
Tax people who can afford to be taxed. The alternative is hardly going to work.
Tax harmful externalities and rent-seeking. The alternative is unjust and illiberal.
The ultra-wealthy's what? Their wealth is held offshore, their income is more than offset. You want to tax yachts? They'll buy jets. Taxing the symptom is playing tax law whack-a-mole (and the mole is rich and the hammer is limp, and the mole pays the hammer's mortgage). Tax the cause. Their rent-collecting mechanisms are much more immobile and difficult to hide.
> and they still get to be ultra-wealthy afterward.
Not a justification.
> We already do it
Doesn't mean it's right.
> the discussion is only “how much?”
It's not right to presume we can take from someone just because they can afford it. The only policy that makes sense to me is to reclaim the portion of the public good that is privatized via rent seeking. If someone got ultra wealthy by their blood, sweat, and tears, as long as they did so without collecting rent or causing negative externalities, I don't care if they can buy and sell Andromeda.
> and what to do with the money.
The reasonable thing to do with the money is to offset negative externalities (pollution, climate change, illiteracy, etc.) and equally redistribute the rest (citizen's dividend).
> (Incidentally - the rich have been winning this argument for a long time, as their effective taxes fall and fall and fall.)
The only way to reverse this trend without massive deadweight loss is a tax on land rent.
> On the other hand, proving that a specific piece of income is “economic rent” - I think that’s intractable and only produces loss on both sides. It’s a fight to the death for the accused, a hill they’ll die on. The idea is appealing at a surface level but I can’t see any way forward with it.
I disagree. The simplest form of economic rent is that on nature. A tax on the unimproved value of land, and a carbon tax are simple, straightforward examples anti-rent, anti-externality measures.
Declaring the clearest and most effective ways of solving it as "unjust" because they clash with your particular ideology perpetuates a vastly worse injustice—one that costs millions of lives, rather than merely feeling wrong.
If you have a minute, just browse the "Economic properties" section of the wiki page on Georgism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism#Economic_properties
(there is debate about which activities qualify, but the gist is obvious)