• @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      60
      edit-2
      15 days ago

      In the before times, when corporate and marginal income tax rates were high and stock buybacks were illegal, a business could do two things with its profit:

      • Reinvest it into the business, as employee compensation, equipment or facilities, and/or
      • Pay taxes.

      In the 1980s, we gave them a third option:

      • Keep the money

      …which for some reason was supposed to not encourage the rich to hoard money and/or engage in non-productive financialization.

      The rich, of course, hoarded and engaged in financial engineering pretty much immediately, and everyone else, which meant employees, suffered for it.

      Think about how stupid of an idea this is: giving the rich the ability to hoard money and then against all reason, somehow expecting that they won’t do the thing you’re incentivizing them to do. Even George Bush called it “voodoo economics”.

      If you look at wages-vs-productivity curves you can see society “break” in the 1980s, with the rich running away with their wealth and everyone else getting stuck in a quagmire of low wages and starved public services.

      So that’s why high progressive taxation helps employee: it forces the rich to either invest in their businesses or fund the nation.

      • ᴅᴜᴋᴇᴛʜᴏʀɪᴏɴ
        link
        -3816 days ago

        Do you think the corporate world (that effectively runs governments) is going to regress or go back to “let’s all make less money”?

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          2816 days ago

          You’re right, getting money out of politics is necessary for correct decisions to be made by the government.

          • DessertStorms
            link
            fedilink
            616 days ago

            Or one can aim to abolish the entire system instead of applying band aids to the cancer that it is and and pin all of your hopes on them sticking (not even fixing anything, just… sticking)…

        • @Schmuppes
          link
          916 days ago

          You’re right, they wouldn’t. But maybe they can be convinced with burning pitchforks.

    • @metallic_substance
      link
      1616 days ago

      Tomorrow morning just head out your front door, find a school bus, and just get on it

      • ᴅᴜᴋᴇᴛʜᴏʀɪᴏɴ
        link
        -315 days ago

        Sorry I’m not smart enough to understand what you’re inferring.

        Corporate tax rates go up, company lays off workers and moves to a less-taxed jurisdiction.

      • kora
        link
        fedilink
        -516 days ago

        He asked agood question you hush!

        I will be taking this for myself tho tyvm