This has no relevance to anything, I’ve just been feeling the need to say it somewhere, so…
I’ve fucked up my life about as much as I possibly could’ve, given the cards I was dealt. So a lot of this is no doubt down to envy. But when I see people reach the level of wealth where they can throw away thousands and not give it a second thought, I feel anger and resentment. Even if they’ve worked hard, and they’re decent people, and they’ve pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. Even if they grew up poor, and spent years sweating away for the minimum wage, before their natural talent finally allowed them to break through to the sunny uplands of prosperity.
Even if they’re everything our society tells us we should be. I don’t care. Unless you’ve cured cancer or some equivalent undeniable public good, you shouldn’t have that level of wealth. I’m not talking about people who make 100-200k a year, and maybe over a few decades accumulate a million or 2 in assets. Fine. Good luck to them. But if you earn so much that you can do that in 1 or 2 years, it’s just… offensive.
No one needs that much money. No, really, you don’t. If you can throw thousands away on a casual poker game with friends, or fancy clothes, and not even worry about it, you have too much money. You are accumulating too much of a limited thing. You’re taking up an unfair share of global resources.
It wasn’t always this way, Western societies used to tax the rich at much higher rates. There were far fewer of them. And society was better for it. Even if you believe governments to be incapable of efficient spending, it’s still a better way to do things. It keeps people grounded, stops them accumulating undue power and influence, and reduces the chasm between the haves and have nots. It increases social solidarity and reduces resentment. A society that is richer but where more of the wealth is unevenly distributed can be worse than a poorer one. More neurotic, less trusting, more fragmented. We’re living in those societies. GDP goes up, yet for most people real wages and living conditions stagnate, and mental health deteriorates.
Call me a fucking communist, but taxing wealth to improve society wasn’t always a radical position. There were a few decades where social democracy was the consensus. But “there’s no alternative”? Really? When someone making a middle income gets taxed at the same rate as a billionaire? That’s the consensus? That makes economic sense? That’s insane! Who came up with this horseshit? Who sold this to us as a sensible way to run a society? For all the conspiracy theories people rot their brains with, for all the time we spend handwringing about disinformation, this has to be the ultimate example of the hidden power of vested interests and effective brainwashing of populations. To effectively convince so many people that political pragmatism consists in allowing very wealthy people to hold onto more of their money.
3 comments
You’d be communist where I live, Oklahoma, for believing the rich should pay more taxes. If you started believing businesses should pay any taxes, or in the seperation of church and state, you’d be a certified left wing loony like me. Welcome comrade, there are many of us around.
It’s a tactic of the far right, which is an entity only having existed for the last hundred years, to make itself seem unavoidable and total. So when you are in a place the far right has dominated, like Oklahoma, you’re encouraged to give up.
That’s the thing about democracy and capitalism, they go together. You vote with your wallet, whatever assets you have are powerful in their way. So me taking my entire family wealth out of this state, as well as my substantial yearly spending and productivity will be felt economically. It could be easily replaced, but this could well be the reason my city never grows.
Anyway, the workforce holds the actual power. The wealthy holding power is an illusion, to save you several years of reading economic theory. Even the people the wealthy pay to defend their wealth are paid in stolen wages. They are usually the last to catch on because the wealthy pay industrial psychologists really good money to condition security people.
Seriously, if we ever get back around to the idea of humane treatment of the worker, we’ve got to re-evaluate the emotional and ethical treatment of law enforcement and security workers. They live in an artificial world, and that’s the only way it can work. I have a close friend, and it’s like having a loved one in a cult. Okay Joe. He’s a really wise and smart guy otherwise, but he’s bought into some really dumb ideas, I suspect because it’s part of this group he’s in.
Then I’m over here, communist free love you be you agnostic peacenik save the forests lock the guns up universal basic income….. I’m more left than Che Guavara, and definitely than Vladimir Lenin. We shant talk about Mao or Stalin, neither of them were left, they were right.
with empathy for conservatives, it’s a curse.
THIS is one of my biggest rants of life on Earth, especially here in the US. There’s SO much to say so I’ll just nod in agreement.
The rich control our media- tv, internet, social media, newspaper, radio, online radio, etc. They control the content we see, and ALL we see is their propaganda- they’ve made the ppl believe that “taxing the rich” is a bad thing, that these ppl are “job creators,” not the vultures and vampires they really are. They have brainwashed half the population that “socialism” is a dirty word, that “communism” is bad, that capitalism is the best thing since sliced bread.
When in reality, capitalism IS the reason for all this poverty and wealth inequality and greed and all the ills we are seeing in America.
It’s actually funny because I used to think capitalism made a lot of sense until you really begin to realize it’s all croney capitalism. Our actual system is so completely broken, and it’s difficult to see a logical path forward anymore. The greatest trick the right wing ever played on its voters is by convincing them to vote against their own best interests. “The greatest enemy to fascism is reality.”. I can’t remember where I heard this, but it’s true.
I wouldn’t worry too much about this, because it seems like even billionaires can’t save themselves from climate change.