r/FluentInFinance • u/AstronomerLover • 2d ago
The rich get richer while the rest of us starve. Why can’t we have an economy that works for everyone? Discussion/ Debate
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u/JTuck333 2d ago
Every trade that I made with Jeff Bezos has been voluntary and benefited me. It’s a good thing that bezos is about to make this trade billions of times.
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u/MooreRless 2d ago
Any monopoly grows that way. Bezos controls the distribution of goods. If you have a great product, Amazon will clone it into Amazon Basics and undercut your business until you go out of business, then he raises the price. When no competition remains, he can do a McDonalds and double the price in 4 years.
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u/rtf2409 2d ago
Are you trying to say McDonald’s doesn’t have competition?
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u/CrowdGoesWildWoooo 2d ago
I think if we ignore the mcdonald part, the patterns were observed with the tech startups (and those that “make it”) which practically is enshitification.
At first they offered a solution, and people are intrigued because it is not only better, but cheaper. It then disrupt a more traditional businesess, which is fine in the context of natural progression of human advancement, if not for the last point.
Sometimes we just end up with the same problem but with a new player, another time the company was burning money to destroy competitors only for it to raise prices when competitors are off the table. Another time, it creates a new set of socioeconomic problem.
Companies like Uber, Netflix, AirBnB are some of the easy example.
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u/hoptownky 1d ago
The best example of this was Walmart vs toy stores in the 1990s. There were toy stores in pretty much every town in America. I live in a small town and we had one in the mall and two stand alone.
Walmart priced the toys so cheap that they lost money for about five years and ran every toy store out of business and then jacked the prices back up. By the end of the 1990s small towns had no more toy stores and Walmart was your only option.
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u/Slumminwhitey 2d ago
Yes but seeing as the employees who deliver my product wind up either pissing in bottles, or wearing adult diapers because a bathroom break or 2 might get them fired by an AI employee monitor, I would completely understand if the workers went postal one day.
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u/Ok-Bug-5271 2d ago
Bezos isn't the one providing the good. Your logic is the same as saying the king deserves all of the profits of the peasants because it's mutually beneficial.
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u/TalElnar 2d ago
But you're happy with the fact that Bezoz is one of the richest people in history, with his own space programme, whilst his workers are on the poverty line and sleeping in their cars?
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u/thinkB4WeSpeak Mod 2d ago
It's called propaganda
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u/MooreRless 2d ago
You mean to tell me the problem with giving a raise to the burger flipper is that the teacher now makes the same, and we need to pay more to teachers? Or is the problem we need to have a maximum wage we can pay burger flippers?
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u/Agreeable_Device_351 2d ago
The problem is teachers and burger chefs fighting while billionaires pick everyone pockets. The %1 exploit public infrastructure and goodwill. All hail the oligarchy of 🇺🇸
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u/MkBr2 2d ago
Nobody is forcing you to use the services or purchase the goods provided to you by billionaires.
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u/Slumminwhitey 2d ago
Sure however depending on what you are looking for or where you are located you don't actually have a choice, just the illusion of choice.
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2d ago edited 17h ago
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u/Toberos_Chasalor 2d ago edited 2d ago
You say that like Amazon is still just a store that sells things direct to consumers, and not a tech giant you can’t go two pages on the internet without connecting to an AWS-run website, or a wholesaler that sells bulk merchandise and processes payments for the small businesses you shop at.
Nobody needs Amazon, but it’s pretty much impossible to avoid supporting them indirectly since they got a hand in every cookie jar of the economy.
Just look at some financial articles about the company and realize that they’re much more than an online shopping mall. https://fourweekmba.com/amazon-revenue-breakdown/ (TLDR, Amazon wouldn’t even be profitable as a direct retailer, but the exclusive consumer data they get from their store makes AWS integration invaluable to advertisers and third party merchants, and AWS is what makes the company profitable. They’re like Alphabet/Google or Meta/Facebook at this point, we’re no longer the customer, we’ve become the product.)
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u/StoicVoyager 2d ago
I'm not a victim. But I do think that so much wealth being concentrated into the hands of a few like Bezos Musk and Gates not only isn't right, it's dangerous.
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u/Difficult-Mobile902 1d ago
I’m not sure if they’re actually criticizing the private allocation of capital and the benefits that has brought us, i read their concern more so due to the snowballing effects of that capital and where it’ll take us in the very long term
the thing is we’re seeing a massive trajectory acceleration in the trend of wealth distribution skewing towards the upper end of the scale, a smaller % of people are accumulating a larger % of the wealth at a faster rate than we have ever seen before. In some ways it does sort of feel like we’re moving towards a dune-like future where a small handful of families effectively control everything in the galaxy lol
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u/Morifen1 2d ago
So I can stop paying my portion to lockhead Martin for shit we don't need? Oh wait, the government IS forcing me to pay for goods provided by billionaires.
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u/Suicidalbagel27 1d ago
the military industrial complex is one of the few things that makes me somewhat ok with taxes
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u/Pinkamena0-0 2d ago
Every single facet of daily life in America is provided by a semi monopoly of billionaires. Corporatism runs rampantly unchecked. Not a single person that values their life can just not use the services or purchase the goods. The entirety of the system is set up to feed the rich at every single opportunity.
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u/FeelAndCoffee 2d ago
When they are de facto monopolies and do collusion that translate in gouging, merge of competitors, lobbying, wage fixing, and coercion for things like medial services, then yes you are forced.
It's not all the time, but it's too common.
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u/ZookaLegion 2d ago
When did this finance page become a whining and complaining page with communists?
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u/SputteringShitter 2d ago
When too many people became poor and had to learn class consciousness.
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u/Felixlova 1d ago
Ah yes, communism is when people complain that the billionaire doesn't want to pay their employees a living wage
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u/EduCookin 1d ago
Misusing the word communist aside.....It's reddit and anything popular eventually gets full of leftists and they upvote nonsense when it comes to finance.
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u/purposeday 2d ago
The richest person in Australia is rumored to have suggested those who make $15 should get paid much less: $2. What personality is that? Where else does this get any attention besides in a book like this?
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u/Playful-Mix8273 1d ago
Wasn't there an Australian businessman who said that employees have gotten it in their head that they have power they don't, and that there needed to be financial suffering in order to teach them that?
Or something along those lines? Fuck that guy.
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u/CinnamonToastFecks 2d ago
The thing is that most people don’t demand or require $2500 and hour. They would be thrilled to sleep at night knowing their basic bills are paid with a nominal amount of extra to play with. But somehow society tells them that’s unreasonable.
It’s not.
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u/NotThatSpecialToo 2d ago
Americans are so ignorant they seriously do not know the difference between class warfare, tribal partisnaship, and finance.
No wonder we are going to elect Trump.
We have reached idiocracy.
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u/EmotionalScallion705 2d ago
Well, the rich gave the poor and middle class topics to fight each other through the media.
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u/fisconsocmod 2d ago
if we didn't allow monopolies and conglomerates, we would have thousands more millionaires and fewer billionaires. these thousands of millionaires would own privately held companies where they don't feel pressure from stock holders to increase profits by lowering wages.
we need a president who is a trust buster! but the only way we can get one is to elect one.
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u/Dairy_Ashford 1d ago edited 1d ago
these thousands of millionaires would own privately held companies where they don't feel pressure from stock holders to increase profits by lowering wages
this part is doubtful, particularly the implication that the pressure is applied externally; or that exiting capital equity and credit markets reduces the desire or need to maximize cash profits.
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u/The_Silver_Adept 2d ago
George Carlin said it best....the goal of the rich is to use the poor to scare the hell out of the middle class
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u/BigDong1001 2d ago
Because that’s not how Capitalism works. lol.
If you want something that works for everyone then it becomes Socialism, but you don’t want Socialism, do you? lmao.
Because then everybody becomes poor. lmfao.
Or so the Capitalists tell you, and insist that you believe them, without being able to show you any actual/concrete evidence of that actually being the case.
Truth is, there are other versions of Capitalism out there.
In other countries.
In the hands of Socialists (in Europe) and Fascists (in Asia).
Where they have modified Capitalism so that it actually works for the population as well as for the rich/wealthy/wealthiest.
Not everybody’s an asshole to their own countrymen.
Some people in other countries are actually patriotic.
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u/AMX_30B2 1d ago
Except it’s not working well in Europe, I can tell you first hand as a dual citizen that having your well educated kids find opportunities in the USA is a very common goal parents have for their children right now. There are more jobs, more funds to do science, it’s easier starting a company, salaries are higher, etc.
There is a reason way more people move to the USA than out of it
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u/Mexican_Boogieman 2d ago
Poverty is component of capitalism. It’s literally part of it.
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u/shane25d 2d ago
What's the solution? More government that you think is going to make everyone equal? We've seen that play out countless times and it never ends well. Never.
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u/Cakelord 2d ago
I think people want to live work play in a thriving economy. People are getting a raw deal and feel like big corporate interest are actively hostile against workers. So people start to lean on the government to intervene.
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2d ago edited 17h ago
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u/Felixlova 1d ago
"We're doing better today than we were yesterday, let's just give up continuing trying to improve the situation."
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u/Felixlova 1d ago
The guy you replied to didn't say if he thought it was better or worse before, just that people were fed up with being treated like crap by large companies.
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u/Felixlova 1d ago
And then we're back at "it's the best it's ever been let's stop trying to improve". It might be the best it's been through history but it's still far from good enough.
According to the UN 3.1 billion people can't afford a healthy diet, 49 million people in the US had to turn to food assistance, and according to the world economic forum at least 150 million people are homeless, over 600k in the US alone.
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u/SantaClausDid911 2d ago
Oh here we go again on the "criticizing business means big government commies".
"More" and "less" government is a lazy way to cop out of debating a solution.
In any case, regardless how you facilitate it, the answer is actually more competition. Free markets don't really work when you reach a point of scale where that's not possible.
Mom and pop shops won't have the competitive firepower to stand up to conglomerates that can afford loss leaders, outsource production, and buy up competitors and new verticals.
You have options, some more practical than others.
You can vote with your dollar of course, but enough people are too poor to do so that it wouldn't work even if we had enough willing participants.
You can start trust busting.
You can figure out any number of ways to deincentivize poor wages or outsourcing.
You can create public options in important sectors.
Take your pick. And do better.
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u/Haildrop 2d ago
Regulation is needed to save unchecked capitalism from raising to the bottom and killing itself
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u/Ok-Bug-5271 2d ago
The Nordics certainly seem to be doing better than the US for the average person and they have far more government.
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u/Booty_Eatin_Monster 2d ago
Average disposable income: US $60.3k, Denmark $34k, Sweden 34k, Finland $39k.
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u/badassboy1 2d ago
Less deals between government and companies. Increasing wages and implementing strong labour laws while simultaneously increasing taxes on import , so that any company who wants to do business has to do it through local branch.
And overall add people who are good in this subject to decision making just like rich use to save money
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u/Dairy_Ashford 1d ago
"More government" doesn't make everyone equal, but private enterprise is built on exploiting ineffeciences and asymmetric information, while focusing on short-term, siloed self-interests that will always need to be checked or offset.
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u/Roymachine 1d ago
What you’re currently experiencing is late stage capitalism. Everyone saying that the government can’t fix it need to stop voting against their own interests.
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u/sanguinemathghamhain 2d ago
Save it is a lie that wages haven't increased they have routinely out pace inflation: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA646N
Also looking at the pre-Reagan vs post-Reagan stats 2/3 people that left the middle class moved up to the upper-class not down to lower class, median and mean incomes are up even accounting for inflation and the slope is greater peri/post-Reagan than pre-Reagan, virtually everything save for habitation and education (two of the most heavily regulated industries mind you) is cheaper when accounting for inflation and/or objectively better quality than at anypoint 10+ years ago, also every objective measure of quality of life is up not down, percentage of people working at minimum wage is down from ~20% in the 70s to ~1.8% now, number of hours worked per week per worker has decreased by 14hrs since the 50s, home ownership is up from the 70s but down from the high of 2007-2008 https://dqydj.com/historical-homeownership-rate-united-states/ and just about every other stat is better now too. If that is failure can we please I beg of you have more of that sort of "failure?" And if it is a scam then can we get more scams that improve everyone's lot?
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u/MiracleManS 1d ago
What was the rate increase for the wealthy? If all things are equal I would expect the % of wealth growth to be similar. It isn't. How many households need two full time workers than in the 70s? Inequality isn't just the raw numbers, when the wealthy see a larger share of the increase in wealth that's inequality and what is bothering people.
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u/KingMGold 2d ago edited 2d ago
I’m sick of people who make 250$ per hour
Getting bribed by people who make 2500$ per hour
So they pay less taxes than people who make 25$ per hour
While people who make 15$ per hour
Try to compete with people willing to work for 10$ per hour
And people who make 250$ per hour
Tell us everyone should make 20$ per hour
Even if they work harder than 20$ per hour
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u/HolyRamenEmperor 2d ago
$2,500 an hour is hilariously off the mark. I make low six figures and last year Zuckerberg earned my annual salary in about 30 minutes. It only took Elon Musk 8 seconds, and Bezos earned my salary every 3 seconds.
Bezos made the equivalent of $8,000,000 an hour in 2023, yet he makes his workers pee in bottles and won't let them unionize.
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u/bgmrk 1d ago
Bro doesn't understand the difference between income and networth.
When the stocks bezos owns goes up, his networth goes up. Bezos wasn't handed $8M of new cash to spend every hour, the value of his stocks went up. This is beyond absurd and not at all how finance works.
Amazon's net sales in 2023 (thats sales before expenses) were ~$127B, at $8M/hr bezos would have earned $16B working full time...so by your logic bezos took home 12% of all the money amazon took in...and he's not even the CEO anymore...do you hear how absurd that is?
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u/pseudogrammaton 1d ago edited 1d ago
What drove those valuations up? Fairy dust? If you know that much, then you understand P/E ratios, pump&dump, leverage, or how collaborative networks can control prices. Bezos happens to be good at competitive strategy & scaled out logistics, but there's no high minded principle here, as evidenced by some of his more notorious tactics.
Excessive financialization contributes to speculative frenzies, which pool resources into fewer & fewer hands.
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u/mamapizzahut 1d ago
People who make $100 an hour pretending that they have it just as tough as those making $20 an hour ate just as annoying. The upper middle class NIMBYs are certainly no friends of the working class, but really want to pretend.
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u/WearDifficult9776 2d ago
The collect money (the value produced by other people) they’re not earning that money. The people who make paycheck are earning their money.
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u/sauceyNUGGETjr 2d ago
It’s always been this way. Worse now and alternatives haven’t worked. We’re so selfish by nature only a system that assumes sociopathy, capitalism, works at scale and by work I mean doesn’t collapse as it drains the life out of so many.
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u/CappyJax 2d ago
The problem are bootlickers. All those people who defend capitalism because they are class traitors and can’t think for themselves.
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u/AndyCar1214 2d ago
The system to properly distribute the wealth created by technology has not been developed. When 1000 people were needed to make a product, they were paid a (reasonable) living wage. Now 1 person controls the line that makes the product, and 999 are laid off. And the owner? 5000x more profit than before. This system will destroy our world as we know it.
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u/EdPozoga 2d ago
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-rich-is-jeff-bezos-mind-blowing-facts-net-worth-2019-4
Since mid-October 2019, Bezos' fortune has grown by $80 billion. Based on the year-over-year change in his net worth, Bezos has made $152,207 per minute — and $2,537 per second. That latter figure is more than three times what the median US worker makes in a week.
I'd suggest the answer is mandatory conversion of conventional corporations to worker owned cooperatives, for any business above the level of a "family" company (say more than 1000 employees?).
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u/Stunning_Tap_9583 2d ago
Stop importing cheap labor. Then everyone goes up to $50 an hour and the fat cat drops to $1,000
Wall Street, donors to politicians, and business owners want open borders. Why do you want the same thing?
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u/james_deanswing 2d ago
Seems like such and easy fix by capping the multiplier they’re allowed to make more than the lowest paid person
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u/RantFlail 2d ago
America can’t have an economy that works for everyone because too many Americans vote for republicans.
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u/Specialist-Basis8218 2d ago
If that’s frustrating- wait until you try to convince Americans that America is great
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u/flyer12 2d ago
Or, if you look at the $46B Elon Musk got from Tesla over the past 6 years (I think it was 6), assuming he works 12 hour days, 7 days a week (which he certainly does NOT do) then that works out to:
$46,000,000,000/4,380hours/year ≈ $10,502,283.11per hour
$10 Million dollars per hour. Jebus.
Because his time is mostly spent at Twitter and SpaceX, he doesn't put that much time into Tesla. If we say he works 24 hours per week at Tesla then that works out to:
$46,000,000,000/1,248hours/year ≈ $36,858,974.36per hour
$36 Million dollars per hour.
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u/gargle_micum 2d ago
Because it's controlled by the government. And the government wants to control the people.
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u/Geezer__345 2d ago
We were headed, that way; before Ronald Reagan destroyed The Progressive Tax System. The Purpose of Progressive Taxes, was to reward People who worked hard, and got ahead; by working hard, but beyond a certain point, after Your basic needs were covered, along with some other discretionary expenditures, like savings, investing, retirement, etc., as You made more money, there was a growing disincentive to make even more money. Estates were taxed, at death; to allow future generations, in a family; some benefits, earned by The Deceased, but, in the spirit of Fair Play, and Equality; the larger the Estate, the bigger, the Tax bite, actually, since People were not taxed, by the Estate Tax, until a certain amount was reached; say, $60,000; for State Estate Taxes, to even begin, to be assessed, and $300,000, for Federal Estate Taxes; with some exemptions (and, this was in 1990 dollars, so correct, for inflation); most Estates paid little, or no, Estate Taxes. The Theory was, there should be some reward, to Heirs, for the hard work, of their Benefactors, bur We did not, want a Class System, as in Europe; based on Wealth, and Land Ownership, While Heirs should be given, a slight "head start", in the race; the race should be fair, to all. The same, applied to Income Taxes: as income grew, there should be a "disincentive", to earn additional money. Moreover, deductions were given, for taking care of Children, the elderly, the disabled; and, as incentives, to accomplish, a "public good". It was not a perfect system, nor was it, indexed to inflation (which would have given, Government; a disincentive; to raise taxes, without consulting The People); but it did, work.
In the 1960's and 1970's; there was a belief, fostered by The Republican Party; that Taxation, at all; was unfair. This led to Proposition 13, in California; and "Jarvis-Gann" Legislation, being passed, across the Country. The Estate Tax, was labeled, as The "Death Tax", with the impression given the Public; that everyone paid it, which was untrue.
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u/groundpounder25 2d ago
Short answer is a party keeps giving corporations unlimited power because “capitalist free market” but the same people also give them “socialist bailouts”. It’s a fun little game they do while keeping us fighting against each other.
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u/Milam177 2d ago
ITS REALLY PISSING ME OFF AS WELL - There’s no getting ahead in life anymore unless you’re already rich. Something needs to happen
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u/stevenmacarthur 2d ago
The rich get richer while the rest of us starve.
We have an economy that works for everyone - that the rich think actually matters. Obviously, "the rest of us" don't.
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u/StudyAffectionate248 1d ago
You don’t understand. If the poor aren’t fighting each other, they might finally realize the rich have been fucking them over the entire time.
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u/EduCookin 2d ago
Name an economy that works for everyone
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u/Kartelant 2d ago
We don't currently know of one. Is that sufficient evidence that one can't ever exist?
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u/GeneralZaroff1 2d ago edited 2d ago
Hey up until pretty recently, slavery was seen by many as a pretty good system of economics until some people got all uppity about it. (/s)
I’m sure plenty of people back then also thought it wasn’t worth changing as well.
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u/RoundTableMaker 2d ago
Slavery never really ended. Most people were wage slaves before that. Now everyone is wage slaves.
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u/EconomicRegret 2d ago
If we rewrite it this way: "Name an economy that works for
everyoneall social classes, then I can name quite a few (e.g. Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, etc.).All of them have this in common: free, democratic unions, recruiting and active at national and/or industry levels, not at branch/company levels.
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u/samhouse09 2d ago
1950s-1960s America. With aggressively high top tax brackets. It’s about forcing the rising tide to lift all ships instead of just the guy at the top. Incentivizes companies to pay their employees well instead of just dumping all compensation on executives. The social strides we’ve made have been awesome, the fiscal ones have been so stupid.
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u/Senior_Pie9077 2d ago
We live in the age of new robber barons. Only when the government and the people, stand up to break the trusts will thi go get better
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u/Lorien6 2d ago
It’s in the interest of those in power to keep the cattle as starving as possible.
Easier to control them.