You must log in or # to comment.
Meanwhile I’m being taxed far too much
T(axed) E(nough) A(lready) Party
Axed nough lready
They’ve been allowed to game the system to hoard way more wealth than any single person should have been able to. They were supposed to pay their employees more, charge less to their customers or if all fails pay more taxes. But they didn’t do any of that.
If this was a video game that would be called an “exploit that breaks the gameplay experience for everyone else” and it would have been solved in a patch. But to remain in the same analogy, they are buddies with the game developers so they’re allowed to do anything they want. The only difference is that everyone in the country is forced to play this broken game as it is.
I’ve played fallout for more than 2 decades. How the fuck are we diving face first into every sci-fi dystopia at the same time? Like, there’s hints of star wars, dune, fallout, 1984, the outer worlds, hunger games, Idiocracy etc. I’m hoping cyberpunk 2077 shows up and gives a sliver of a chance.
Because those things were based on the real world and we are very bad at learning from the ever-growing list of mistakes we can’t stop making.
Cyberpunk 2077 is not a good world and does not have a good ending. That world is a horrid, capitalist dystopia. Maybe you should watch Edgerunners if you still can’t figure it out from the game.
The point was that as bad as cyberpunk’s future is, I’m fairly certain ours will be worse in 52 years. At least in their timeline there’s a resistance.
I suppose so? But there are things we can do right now that give us far more than a sliver of a chance. Unfortunately those things are “boring” and not as fashionable, like doing actual research and trusting real experts so it’s rough out there.
The main reason is because people are stupid and get taken advantage of accordingly.
Every time you saw a moron say “they’re a business and they need to make money!” you saw someone lowering their standards to make a rich person richer.
Seize their assets, fund NASA.
That’s how you actually make America great.
National space programs suck. We need a united international space push. Something overseen by… Let’s call it the Union Aerospace Corporation. When earth science and tech is combined who knows what they can do on distant research bases set up in places like Mars. Maybe even open portals to transfer matter and energy across vast distances.
You would think more people on Lemmy would recognize a Doom reference. I’ve never played any Doom game but that was enough for me to go “That’s Doom right?” and confirm with a quick search
I know right. This was the original story in 1993.
The downvoters almost certainly didn’t even make it to the end of the comment before they clicked the down arrow and resumed scrolling. The last sentence made it 10x more obvious, imo.
Um, no.
the thing is that NASA did indeed try to build reusable spaceships themselves back in 1968 with the space shuttle. the thing is: they didn’t make it. their space shuttle sucked and cost more than non-reusable rockets. Then some 30 years later SpaceX came along and somehow did the impossible, which is to build reusable rockets that are actually cheaper than the previous, non-reusable rockets. So, that’s a big step forward. As a consequence, NASA started paying SpaceX for the fine product they were making that they tried to make themselves previously but failed.
No one should have enough money to purchase entire branches of government. Musk could give every member of congress 10 million and still be a billionarie many times over. That kind of wealth is not compatible with democracy.
These assholes get taxed 1-2% on their total wealth increases per year - and even that gets offset with their loopholes - meanwhile the average people pay anywhere between 30-50% of just their income (and that doesn’t account for other taxes like VAT, property, vehicle and road taxes, and so on).
And not only that, but if you taxed them at 99% they’d still have silly amounts of money and ungodly financial security while even 20% off a poor person being paid by a less rich local business is just hurting the both of them. Taxes are a good thing but like you say they are horrendously unbalanced.
They are choosing to devote vast amounts of finite earth resources on their space man hobbies instead of using any of it to fix or improve the situation on earth, in their countries or for anyone else other than themselves. These people should be dragged out of their comfortable lives for crimes against humanity.
They have nothing to improve. Their life is great. And that’s the problem.
And when earth will inevitably be uninhabitable for humans, they will fuck off to space and let us die here.
Yea, it is.
It’s not a policy failure at all. It’s a systemic feature. Capitalism is dog eat dog until only one dog remains. If you want to fix it you need a new economic system.
Thr government is supposed to enforce regulations in a capitalistic market like ours.
Amazon should have been torn a new asshole for some of the anti competitive things they’ve done for example, which would have maybe prevented or at least slowed what happened.
Google should have been broken up ages ago
And so on.
The rules and regulations are there, it’s just become so corrupt they aren’t being enforced.
Hereeee we areeeee…
I think capitalism can work depending on two things
-
The state must discipline and tax the capitalists constantly.
-
There is a competing system that capitalism has to outperform.
No, what actually ends up happening is the capitalists constantly pressure and influence the state to not tax them and not discipline them. It’s hard for the state to say “no” to that kind of money.
It’s especially hard for the state to say no because the state is run by the capitalists themselves. They are the same people.
There is a competing system that capitalism has to outperform.
That’s an interesting thought. Still trying to wrap my mind around how it might work.
Basically like the cold war.
Public services.
E.g A well funded and not abused USPS.
Let them compete with that instead of crippling USPS in favor of the private options.
Edit: In Canada we had Air Canada, which was then sold off and privatized. We shouldn’t have done that.
-
If you want to fix it you need a new economic system.
We could try actually free markets with no benefits to anyone. By benefits here I mean tax breaks, government contracts and subsidies for companies.
“We could try actually free markets with no benefits to anyone. By benefits here I mean tax breaks, government contracts and subsidies for companies.”
I’m far from an expert but didn’t we more or less try that during the industrial revolution? As I recall from old history books, it wasn’t so great for the majority of citizens and the economy was an actual roller coaster ride.
I don’t think so. Protectionism was high, government-granted monopolies were typical. The British East India Company was the only company that was allowed trade with India and China from UK, for instance. The Dutch had something similary.
Perhaps later though in late 1800s it was more like you described.
It’s a clear sign the government isn’t, itself, spending enough on spaceflight and associated R&D.
Turning our next generation of economic and military supremacy over to the dipshit horn dogs that tanked retail sales and fucked up the post office seems like a huge mistake.
With higher progressive taxes, not only do we stop billionaires from possibly existing, but the government gets more resources to spend on spaceflight R&D among other things.
Governments HAVE the resources. They CHOOSE to not spend it on R&D.
But taxing the rich would give them even MORE resources
That they also won’t use on R&D. Or healthcare. Or housing. Or feeding people. Those things aren’t shit for a lack of resources to fund them, they’re shit for a lack of interest in funding them. That’s not a problem you can fix with more money.
Both can be true
I say we put them all in a rocket and shoot them into space…
That’s it. Problem solved.
Subs are cheaper
Anchor and chains in 20m waters is much cheaper.
Ancher and chain?! In this economy! A .22 round is about ¢28
I mean at that rate stoning is free, but I don’t wanna stoop to taliban. Maybe French had the right idea.
Ya gravity and a blade sharpener is a good rate for upkeep.
Especially if you don’t plan to bring them back.
That’s kinda expensive. Just put then in a field and strap some explosives on them, same net effect without wasting millions of taxpayer money.
Yeah… no. First other, no less greedy people will inherit their wealth, second capitalism guarantees the concentration of wealth to absurd degrees. “Kill all billionaires” is surprisingly not a good solution to the problem of billionaires.
We can build more rockets…
I say we put them all in a rocket and shoot them into space…
you’re not gonna believe this but that’s actually what they’re trying to do.
Win win
90% should be the minimum after 1 million a year
I’d go for 99% after 5 bil
Billionaires shouldn’t exist at all
Log tax rate.
There should be a wealth cap much lower than that. Perhaps 10 mil. Enough to live comfortably for life but not enought to have enormous power over politics.
it isn’t. it is an intended best case scenario for those invested. capitalism rewards trickery and thievery. excess wealth is part of its system dependent on class hierarchies. it was millionaires before billionaires and now we’re about to have our first trillionaire. for fucks sake.
The fact that there are billionaires is the sign that they’re not being taxed enough.
Massive infrastructure / R&D projects like a space race is actually one of the more productive ways that billionaires could use their money.
I think we just need to send them into space… Forcibly. Permanently.
That’s what they want. We can’t eat the rich if we can’t reach the rich.
I wouldn’t want to eat deep-freeze-dried meat anyway.
