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Poignant post on the state of things
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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Billionaires shouldn't exist. Everything after $999,999,999 should be taxed 100%. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to ever have a billion dollars. All that tax could pay for universal health care, free education, ending hunger, and homelessness. Billionaires are the problem.
That, and a land tax
Do billionaires actually have billions of dollars cash?
This implies it's income, although if it's taken as assets + unrealized gains then that would be very cool. Each year, anyone with cash + assets over $999,999,999 will get a bill from the IRS for the entirety of the overage. That would put sell pressure on real estate and stocks while funding (hopefully) social programs. Sounds like a good solution.
Either they are billionaires or they are not billionaires. Which is it?
If it's all stock options, then redistribute their stock options.
The way net worth works, if I understand it correctly, is like this:
Take Bob for example. If Bob has $100M in his checking account, 4 houses worth $100M each, and 500,000 shares of NILE (the company he owns) which are each worth $1,000 each, then it's said his net worth is a billion dollars. He's Bob the Billionaire.
Say he starts selling his NILE shares, but he has so much that each sale puts downward pressure on the price (and spooks investors) so that instead of cashing out for the full $500M he only gets $400M for the sale. Then his net worth is $900M and he's no longer a billionaire.
Or say Costa Rica invades his country and both the stock market and real estate markets crash. He's not Bob the Billionaire anymore, he probably has just the $100M now.
After writing that example it seems a better threshhold would be $100M, lol. Here's a good visualization of the resources under the control of Jeff Bezos.
The first question is why the fuck does Bob have four houses, and the second would be how is it that people like Bob are easily able to become billionaires only since the Reagan administration? Certainly Bob did not actually work for this money, all those shares, for all four of those houses. That amount of wealth is far beyond what any reasonably productive person could possibly earn. The only possibilities for him to have all of that is either through nepotism, inheritance, or corruption. If he is gaining that wealth by being given stock options and then borrowing money against those stock options and then using tax write-offs to not pay that money back, then Bob is stealing from his company, the country, and his employees.
So, no corporations and no individual wealth? Who owns a factory or a datacenter? These are fantastically expensive things. A chip foundry cannot exist under these conditions.
I don't think you have a strong enough concept of large numbers to be able to hold a respectable opinion here.
Lmao brutal, but -1 for ad hominem.
That's fair. I chose violence.
You didn't answer the question though.
It could be owned by, like, multiple people? Also, a lot of companies in the world, and especially the ones managing costly infrastructure assets, are owned by states (which are a form of "multiple people").
Multiple people working together with 1 goal? Like a .... Company?
Yes, a company which shares the results of it's efforts between all involved and not one person or family.
So a company whose ownership is open to the public, with that ownership divided into "shares". And all the "share" holders can cooperate to decide the direction of the company...what would one call this novel form of organizing a venture...a "cooperation"?
Not open to the public. Open to those who actually contribute to it's operations.
And in none of your objections can you justify the CEO pay and the political power they weild. 40x the lowest paid worker, and no more.
Ok so. Shares of ownership are open only to employees. How does this company get external investment? I suppose outside entities are allowed to invest with an expectation of a return on investment?
Stock is used to raise money for investment. When that investment has been covered and profit acheived, the stock should immediately drop in value or be bought back AS OPPOSED to being used for government manipulation and golden parachutes for CEOs who did very little work in making the company successful. If the CEO fails, the company fails. Paying multiple millions to CEOs who were not involved in the building of the company but were only brought in after the company failed is a gross misappropriation of shareholder funds. The new guy should get a salary of not more than 40 times what the lowest employee gets and then get stock options only after the stock and the company has been saved.
What do you mean by this?
Sorry, I swear I'm not doing that Just Asking Questions thing where I keep asking questions until you get tired and leave, I'm legitimately curious. Because the way stock works now is, there's an initial offering of a company's stock, at say $1 a share. Then anyone who has a share can re-sell it to people who think the value of the company is going to go up, say someone who thinks it will be worth $1.50 a share. Anyone who buys shares hopes to re-sell them at a greater value, so as a whole, this market of investors is, in aggregate, demanding ever-increasing value from every share of every company.
There's no one particular target where a company can say "we did it!" and settle the permanent value at like $3 a share or something. So I'm wondering how you would define "profit achieved" in this context, and what should happen to those shares at that point. Does the company buy them back? If the company is buying them back at $3 a share and someone just bought a share for $3.10, why would they sell it back to the company for $3? Will they be forced to sell?
The stock market has repeatedly proven that it is driven by inflated and imaginary "values". Any argument in favor of unregulated stocks falls flat in the face of that evidence. At some point the company has to pick utself up by it's bootstraps and start paying it's own way instead of putting the public at risk over hyped "value". It's an entirely fraudulent system designed to crash on the reg and allow a tiny percentage of people to gather and hoard devalued property.
Stocks were originally about getting businesses started and people employed. They are the opposite of that now. Some stocks are actually managed to make businesses fold and put people put of work. This is the job of hedge fund managers (a business that should not exist) and was the entire point behind the GameStop rally.
Okay, but what sort of regulation? How would stocks work differently than they do now?
The value would reflect ACTUAL productivity and not the amount that CEOs pay themselves.
Watch Tesla slow burn over this exact issue. Hopefully every company engaging in greedflation has the same fate.
How do you determine that value?
Currently the value of a stock is whatever someone is willing to pay for it. Who decides what the value should be, in your scenario? A government department?
If necessary, yes. Otherwise its just fraud. "Whatever someone is willing to pay" doesnr make a thing valuable; it just makes the buyer stupid. If I sell you a rusty old tricycle for $6000 just because you have a psychotic nostalgia for it, the value of old rusty tricycles doesnt become $6000.
Elon bought Xitter at what, $45/share? It was never worth that much...he tried to manipulate the stock value (i. e. commit fraud) and a government official forced him to commit.
That would work maybe...so you'd have a government body to assess companies like houses are currently assessed. Sounds expensive though. We'd need to raise taxes, which is probably a good thing anyway
It wouldn't involve raising taxes as much as it would involve collecting taxes in the first place from billionaire assholes hiding their wealth. This is a recent problem and is easily fixed.
And also, btw: abolish corporations.
Leftist version of "I hate Obamacare, but don't touch my ACA!" rofl
My question to you then would be why would you continue to defend an entity that is controlling your government but is entirely immune of any consequences and answerable to no one?
I don't think I want to know what conspiracy hole this weird statement crawled out of
Are you saying that corporations do not buy politicians and use money to coerce legislation in their favor against the wishes of the American people?
Oh, whew. I thought you were about to start talking about the Jews or something.
I'm totally in favor of regulating corporations much more strongly. I just think that as long as we have appropriate regulation, there's no better socioeconomic system we've yet found.
It works great when highly regulated. The "invisible hand" is a myth, and cooperation always acheives more than competition (which wastes resources nonstop).
Do you think shareholders want their money going to extravagent buildings, Italian desks, and billions in hoarded cash?
Your view of "shareholders" is that they are just cash cows to be milked and not financial participants. As a shareholder I gained fourteen cents this year; how much did the CEO gain?
Only open to the Workers, not the public, and it's a Worker Co-operative. An existing Socialist organizational structure, not new.
Fcking lol
Workers own the factory. Collectively. Through democratic process of any variety.
In those situations what do the workers that have no interest in owning the means of production do? Like, if you just want to do your job and go home, is there still room for you under that system? Or does it require active participation from every worker?
Do you think Capitalist owners can't just do their job and go home? Do you even think Capitalist Owners work?
If Workers share ownership, they can hold electoral councils, elect a manager, or do any other form of decision making without requiring constant input.
Do you actively participate in every company you own in your S&P 500 ETF?
Ooooooookaaaaayyyyy. You are more interested in feeling attacked and defending your ego than discussing praxis. I'm not interested in that.
Also lmao thinking I own stock.
No, I'm not. I was genuinely asking questions here, I was not intending on being confrontational. I'm not even who you originally replied to.
Even if you personally don't own stock, do you imagine everyone who owns a share of VOO makes decisions for every company in the S&P 500? That's my point, ownership isn't necessarily management, just entitlement to control and profit.
If Workers collectively own a factory, they may choose to vote on how to produce, or vote on a manager. The point is leaving it to the Workers to decide, rather than a dictatorial owner, ie a Capitalist.
Yes I noticed, which makes it even weirder that you are asking about my knowledge about capitalist systems and my personal opinions, which have zero relevance to the question.
I still have no idea what this has to do with a system where the workers own the means of production.
It is entirely relevant. By asking what a worker would do if they don't want to contribute to actively managing a company, you are demonstrating a lack of understanding how Capitalist systems function. You're implying Capitalist owners actively contribute and manage the companies they own. Owning stocks and thus a portion of companies doesn't mean you're an active manager, it just entitles you to voting power proportional to your ownership.
If workers owned the Means of Production, then they collectively have voting power, but a worker that does not wish to use said voting power would act just as any other Capitalist that does not wish to exert their power would do: Collect profit and maintain their current power.
XD my man... I knew you could do it! You just had to stop attacking your assumptions for 2 seconds!
Not sure what you're on about, haha. I've been entirely consistent, you've just avoided actually responding to me.
They get a part of the company's gains regardless because they are workers.
Simple. That sounds really good.