Its not a question of who is better at managing money but more who needs benefit in our society. The government supports welfare programs. Someone throwing 100m in the market does not unless they are taxed to do so.
The government also supports bombing the living fuck out of people on the other side of the world. Similarly, someone throwing 100m in the market does not unless they are taxed to do so.
The government will spend the money regardless. Does the money come from
1. inflation - a regressive tax that disproportionately takes from the poor
2. taxation as a % of wealth - takes from everyone equally
The fact is the rich pay a WAY lower tax rate, we can spend the next 1000 years playing legal cat and mouse over how to tax these people but it doesn’t get us closer to option 2 unless the government gets aggressive about collecting tax.
We all earned the money. Nobody makes 100M in a vacuum. That sort of profit only comes from taking full advantage of a country's infrastructure, its educated population, its safety from invasion. We all provide the society that allows someone to amass that much wealth, and we all deserve a piece of the pay out.
> That sort of profit only comes from taking full advantage of a country's infrastructure, its educated population, its safety from invasion. We all provide the society that allows someone to amass that much wealth, and we all deserve a piece of the pay out.
This is such a goofy argument. The US 2% of its budget on infrastructure. It spends 4% on education (yet literacy rates are only marginally higher than they were before compulsory education). Military spending is 20% of federal spending, and could be 1/4 of that without any risk whatsoever of invasion.
You don't need more tax revenues to pay for the stuff that makes business possible.
There is a broader definition of "infrastructure." For example, Medicare is infrastructure that is directly related to the success of any company in the United States.
Has Tesla ever received a check from Medicare? Probably not. But the fact that Medicare exists means that Tesla's factory workers don't need to be paid at levels that reflect they need to 100% self-fund their retirement.
Has Salesforce ever asked for regulation or assistance from the FDA? Probably not. But because the FDA exists, Saleforce's employees don't have to spend time verifying their medication is authentic and does what it claims to do, so they can spend more focus on their work for Salesforce.
Even beyond government: how much do you think a Ford or Chevy have benefited from the US's culture? They certainly don't sell many large consumer trucks Europe or Asia. That profit exists because of the ideals and beliefs Americans have about how they should live their lives and what type of car they need to do that. Yes someone made the truck, and the truck maker should reap most of the benefits, but some of that profit should feed back into society that supported it.
Sure, we probably spend too much on the military and there exists some cronyism that we should strive to stamp out, but make no mistake that anyone with 100M in investable wealth has earned it with substantial help from the society we have all built together.
> Medicare is infrastructure that is directly related to the success of any company in the United States.
That must be why there were no successful companies in the United States before 1965.
> But the fact that Medicare exists means that Tesla's factory workers don't need to be paid at levels that reflect they need to 100% self-fund their retirement.
Tesla is paying them that much, because Tesla--and all employers and employees--are funding Medicare via earmarked taxes on income.
> There is a broader definition of "infrastructure."
"The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those they have already held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. Adn the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but to change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer, and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language." ~Hayek
> That must be why there were no successful companies in the United States before 1965.
Of course there were. There were also lots of successful companies before we had highways or municipal plumbing. So I’m not sure what point you are trying to make here.
>Tesla is paying them that much, because Tesla--and all employers and employees--are funding Medicare via earmarked taxes on income.
Tesla benefits because every employer has been paying in. Anyone can freely go work in a Tesla factory because they know they will receive the same health benefits at the end of their working life if they go work there. They also benefit because their current employees don’t need to pay for the cost of their parents healthcare, which Tesla most likely did not pay for.
Regarding your quote. Was your intention to imply that I’m a totalitarian because I’m using a slightly different definition of a word than you? That seems a bit severe.
Let’s ask Wikipedia about infrastructure:
> One way to describe different types of infrastructure is to classify them as two distinct kinds: hard infrastructure and soft infrastructure.[4] Hard infrastructure is the physical networks necessary for the functioning of a modern industrial society or industry.[5] This includes roads, bridges, and railways. Soft infrastructure is all the institutions that maintain the economic, health, social, environmental, and cultural standards of a country.[5] This includes educational programs, official statistics, parks and recreational facilities, law enforcement agencies, and emergency services.
I don’t think it’s by any means a stretch to say Medicare or the FDA are institutions that maintain economic/health standards.
> So I’m not sure what point you are trying to make here.
Companies are no more successful with Medicare than they were without Medicare, so simply claiming that it is "directly related to success" is meaningless.
> Tesla benefits because every employer has been paying in.
Your argument was that Tesla was paying lower wages, which was objectively false. Now you're really branching out! This first claim is just a low-effort handwave. They benefit because... the program exists? Compelling.
> Anyone can freely go work in a Tesla factory because they know they will receive the same health benefits at the end of their working life if they go work there.
People went to work before Medicare, and more freely, because they kept more of their income. So the only difference you're actually stating here is that "they know they will receive benefits", which, again, is tautological--the benefit of the program is that people know the program exists. Amazing.
> They also benefit because their current employees don’t need to pay for the cost of their parents' healthcare, which Tesla most likely did not pay for.
How is this a benefit to tesla? Vibes?
> Was your intention to imply that I'm a totalitarian because I'm using a slightly different definition of a word than you?
I was merely observing the age-old tendency of people who advocate for the never-ending growth of the state to manipulate language in service of their goals. It usually takes the form of conflating less popular things for which they're advocating (welfare, etc) with obviously necessary things (roads, bridges, the electric grid, etc) which already enjoy broad support. I don't doubt that you are sincere in your belief that this new definition is legit. (Who wouldn't happily use terms which make their policy preferences sound better?) Yet this is an obvious example of the old trick, which is always worth calling out for the benefit of the uninitiated.
How many of the people on welfare contributed to those things? It just sounds like you're in favor of distributing the wealth to people based on their contribution to the country as a whole.
It’s simply pay for use. The more someone uses the system, the more they pay back into it. Anyone with more than 100M in assets has used the system a shit ton and owes a lot back into it.
This is false. Toll roads are "pay for use". Capital gains tax is, objectively, not "pay for use".
> Anyone with more than 100M in assets has used the system a shit ton
There's zero evidence that supports a strong correlation between how many assets someone has and how much value they've obtained from government services. This is just entirely fabricated.
> and owes a lot back into it
...which they've already actually paid through taxes on profits.
This bundle of falsehoods is just a thin facade around the emotional plea that "someone having more money than me is bad, and I should get some of it".
Pointing out that toll roads are "pay for use" is factually true.
Capital gains tax is, factually, not "pay for use". There's no usage that is being metered.
You also claimed "Anyone with more than 100M in assets has used the system a shit ton" and I pointed out that there is no evidence that supports a strong correlation between how many assets someone has and how much value they've obtained from government services. This is, again, a fact - had you had any evidence against this, you could have put it here, in your reply. But no, you didn't have evidence, so you tried to (incorrectly) portray it as an "opinion".
You calling my true statements "opinions" proves that you cannot differentiate between opinions and reality. The fact that you think that pointing out that capital gains tax is not pay for use is a conjecture proves that you literally cannot tell the difference between facts and opinions.
The US government, both at the federal and state level, is extremely inefficient at building infrastructure, in terms of value per dollar spent.
Proposing that we should continue to throw more money at infrastructure, before diagnosing and fixing the problems that are causing that inefficiency (at which point, sure, double the infra budget - as long as we're getting good value, the absolute amount can go up as far as I'm concerned), is straight-up malicious.
The only people who make the argument to keep increasing the infrastructure budget before fixing the problems are those generically interested in throwing more money and power at the government, not those actually concerned about infrastructure (who will seek to fix the problem first).
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