fuck off with that neoliberal bullshit.
I am not opposed to inreasing taxes necessarily, but people need to understand that the income of wealthy individuals is not used purely for the fulfilment of their needs and wishes. Rich people play a rather important role in allocating and managing resourses(capital) in society, and increasing the taxes will decrease the capability of rich people to invest, which is not ideal.
Governments already do “investing”. Elon Musk is the wealthiest man in the world thanks to the US government subsidizing Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink. Your tax money is already going into allocating and managing capital in society, so how about instead of letting wealthy individuals choose how capital gets invested we let the government decide that? It’s neoliberal brainrot that wealthy capitalists, without any real oversight, should be the ones to dictate how capital is used.
Also, if the tax increase is percieved to be unfair, rich people can just leave and go to Monaco or Switzerland or any other “rich friendly” country. They are pretty much free to do so and they do it all the time. So increasing taxes will not necessarily lead to more tax revenue if they are increased above what is reasonable.
And let them go. The wealthy can go wherever they want but most their wealth is tied to their businesses and moving those businesses elsewhere is extremely expensive. The can take their wealth with them only if they spend an insane amount to transfer all their businesses out of the country or if they cash out their businesses. Both come with a significant drop in wealth, so they’re not going to do that. You’ve been fed bullshit propaganda.
Governments invest in some things, but they can’t effectively manage the entire economy. It is too complex, and markets provide information that will simply not be available under central planning.
Hell, even now government investments are highly inefficient for many reasons. The government is getting ripped of by private contractors, as they can’t control the complexities of production, have nearly unlimited resources, so they do not optimise, and a lot of asinine decisions are made because nobody cares enough. Look at how bloated the military funding is in the US for example.
I don’t feel like writing an essay so I’ll approach it a bit differently.
Governments invest in some things, but they can’t effectively manage the entire economy. It is too complex, and markets provide information that will simply not be available under central planning.
I’m not sure why you brought up central planning. That didn’t even cross my mind when I made my comment. I don’t think there’s anything else to address here because most of what you said seems to be in the context of central planning.
The government is getting ripped of by private contractors
Why do you think the wealthy aren’t getting ripped off? What are they doing that the government cannot do?
as they can’t control the complexities of production
And the wealthy can? And by wealthy I mean the wealthy individual, not the companies they own.
have nearly unlimited resources, so they do not optimise
unlimited resources is clearly hyperbolic because if they did have unlimited resources then who cares if they’re getting ripped or and are extremely inefficient, as long as the things get done. As for “optimizing”, optimizing for what? Should the government optimize for profit the same way companies do?
and a lot of asinine decisions are made because nobody cares enough.
Do you think companies don’t make asinine decisions? COVID showed that work from home is perfectly viable. It’s also an obvious cost cutting method because you don’t need to rent or own a huge office space, you get to downsize and save money. Most companies chose the more expensive option. For what?
Look at how bloated the military funding is in the US for example.
How do you think the military industrial complex came to be? Modern MIL came into existence during and after WW2 when private enterprises saw a huge market in war. The very people you claim should be making the decisions about capital allocation are the people who played an integral role in bloating the US military funding.
You said the govenment ahould decide how capital is allocated, and not capitalists. What is it if not central planning?
You are talking about wealthy individuals, how they are not special and can get ripped off, do not know more than other people, etc. But this is not the point. The competency of the individual matters, but less than the incentive structures that exist around them.
Competition and profit motive create incentives to decrease production costs, increase production, look for new markets and lower the price(not always, do not tell me about when this is not the case, I know).
And both capitalists and upper management exist in a very pressured environment. Capitalists have to allocate resources correctly, because they own them. For that reason, they are careful when investing, and only do economically sensible things(if they themselves are sensible, and if they are not they will see their capital diminish). The organisations that manage finances and corporations are held accountable by that: they have to make sure they are making correct decisions to attract capital.
Corporate structure in America is characterised by a prominence of markets in management. High publicity of company actions and results, coupled with a structure that holds management accountable to the shareholders creates a system where both good and bad decisions are reflected in the capitalisation and management is, as I said, under great pressure to perform because the will have to pack their bags and leave otherwise.
This is the system that made America the largest economy in the world.
The same can not be said about government owned firms. I said nearly unlimited, and this is more or less the case. Governments throw money at the problem until it is solved, since there is no profit motive, no pressure to perform, costs are higher, performance is worse, etc. Of course, they try to optimise, but history shows that they are almost always less efficient than private firms.
They should still be employed in certain parts of the economy, like social services, infrastructure, etc. But probably only when there are good reasons for that.
That’s an interesting point. The government tends to get ripped off because of negotiation issues. Private orgs can hire and retain the best negotiators, whereas govt can’t afford that and if they can, they’d still be vulnerable to accusations of cronyism to have the best of the private sector’s negotiators negotiating with the companies they’ve probably dealt with privately before and who they will likely be back with in the future.
This is one reason why competitive procurement is such a big deal and so complicated and time consuming.
We know from bitter historical experience that privatising public operations, especially natural monopolies like utilities, results in worse service and higher prices, coupled with sub-par investment. A private company can be bailed out if it goes bankrupt sending all its profits out to shareholders. A public org has an incentive not to waste taxpayer money.
