“It’s not only undesirable but *literally impossible* to afford basic social infrastructure or redistribute basically anything, so suck it up” is perhaps the most amazing article of faith I’ve seen among US-style libertarians.
Yup, it’s like Western Europe does not exist.
What if EU implodes and Western EU except Germany just go into full crisis?
You have to admit that the fiscal situation in most of Western Europe is not pretty and Brexit, Greece and peripherals really could be ticking time bombs. You can say money are just numbers on paper, but they really do reflect something fundamental even if non-obvious and distorted.
Like I don’t think I need to say that it’s entirely plausible that by making today nice it could make the future a lot worse, since that’s what more or less Greece did. In this case whoever they imported stuff that they can’t make easily stopped giving them imports because they can’t come up with those numbers in their bank account.
It’s easy to say pretty words, and I’m sure rich people as a whole are incredibly good at that. But if they are really less charitable than the average person, from that article I saw floating around, then probably you (idk what’s your objective, but just a reasonable guess xD) need to be careful there. Since we also can agree they are probably very good at dodging bills too. And just let you know I want those skills too for obvious reasons because I believe with good faith and careful consideration that it’s in my best interest to do so.
“We” might not be able to resist completely, but we are really good at it!!! And our resistance makes us less productive and also incidentally salt the earth for the rest of you as well. And who knows, I feel maybe, just maybe you people here actually will be pursuing your objective better if you kept us around and just tried to focus on structuring things better than to trying to take more and more blindly without focusing on the logistics. But then again this is like the whole strategy from a subgroup of us who’s politically connected. Because I’m pretty sure bureaucratic power must stroke someone’s fetish out there as well.
And honestly my charitable mood from my childhood over the years gradually turned sour from seeing how entitled people can be, so who knows. I don’t think I’m the only one here who might put up extra effort into resisting just because ~feelings~ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Greece? You want to invoke Greece in the last 6 years to caution against the successes of Western Europe since 1950 (arguably, since Bismark in the German Empire) ?
A crisis which was in part due to corruption, widespread tax evasion and financial advisors from Goldman Sachs advising the Greek government to misreport their level of debt ?
Where did the economic crisis began by the way¹ ? Oh yeah, a boom-and-bust cycle in the USA.
And then you want to argue why it is desirable for you to acquire those ‘skills’ ?
“Take more and more blindly” does not represent the reality. Increasing volumes of tax evasion, weaker enforcement of tax laws, greater sophistication of tax avoidance, on the other hand…
Nice veiled threats too and spite against the “entitled”. Thanks for reminding me why I am for very large punitive damages for tax evasion.
(note: even the IMF says that only in extreme cases redistribution lead to bad growth outcomes)
¹not that the Greek situation was stable, mind you.
Yep, the veiled threats and the laughable… petulant tone really got me as well. Also, nice passive-aggressive essay in the tags there…. Pretty words this ain’t.
Tagged with: politicsreference for discussioni honestly think with existing revenue you people already can do a lotyou also can reform god dam corporate tax and stuffand that will raise revenue and growthand you can reform welfareand bite the fking bullet and end protectionismmaybe if you people even did a bit rather than exacerbating it more I wouldn’t have gone to the other campbut I’m deep in there now and you won’t ever get me back except make me disinterested in topics like thiswhich is what I’m trying to do because I want $$$$$$$$$$
Okay seriously, I do agree with NN on a lot of this. The socialdemocracies of Western Europe are not in trouble because of the inaffordability of redistribution, they are in trouble because of the inaffordability of all the bullshit they’ve tacked onto the redistribution.
Finland could pay every single person a basic income of 15 000€ a year without increasing taxes a single cent. That’s almost double the minimum pension, nearly three times the spending money people on welfare get (along with rent, and significantly more than the highest amount welfare pays out even with rent included), and more than what tens of thousands of working poor earn. And as a result poor people’s effective marginal tax rate would go way down from the 50-100% it’s now.
And this includes children. Right now the state pays, at most, 4000€ per child; free education, healthcare and childcare would end but the extra 11 000€ a year would go a long way in letting poor families access the services they need. Or if we want to account for the fact that not all families would know to purchase the right insurance etc. and spend 5000€ per child per year in providing vital services to them we would “only” up the money children directly get to 10 000€ a year.
And obviously this massive basic income would render pretty much any tax scheme progressive, so we could drastically simplify the tax code. I don’t even know what the true transparent flat tax level would be because the system is so complicated with all kinds of hidden fees and multi-level taxes, but it would make things simpler. If one assumes that, after privatizing all other forms of social security (15k€ is already more than a lot of people make even from the income-dependent benefits) the income tax level would end up a transparent 40%, someone earning another nominal 15k€ on top of the basic income would get to keep 24k€ to themselves. Easy, simple, not hard to calculate. (And if it sounds ridiculously high, one should note that currently around 25% of people’s wages goes straight to pensions but it’s hidden so they only see 7% as “”“the employer pays”“” the rest (they buy it because most people cannot into math))
But the tax system itself could use some (and by “some” I mean “an awful lot of”) change; property taxes should be replaced with land value taxes, income taxes could be shifted onto consumption, a revenue-neutral carbon tax should be instituted, corporate taxes taken only from dividends to owners, etc.
And we could end so many laws. Who needs regulations on working hours, minimum wages and benefits when one has the 15k€ option to simply tell the boss to screw themselves if a job offer is unacceptable? (only statists) Ending corporatism and freeing both employers and unions to negotiate without external coercive intervention would make the economy a lot more responsive to changes, and everyone has that 15k a year to fall back on even if they end up without work (and a lot of bureaucrats rightfully would), along with any savings they have. That’s a lot more than what most working-class people currently would get from unemployment insurance.
Privatizing public services and state-owned corporations would be most naturally done by handing ownership to their users and workers; so schools would be owned by parents and teachers, universities by students and professors, buses by drivers, etc.; this would prevent a massive transfer of wealth and capital from the state to cronyist oligarchs while allowing all service providers to participate equally on the markets. Finland is one of the per capita richest countries in the world because of its absolutely bloated pension funds (in fact, to such an extent that the national debt is effectively -80% of its nominal value) and this money could be either used as the basis of a post-labor universal capital fund, or immediately redistributed to everyone as an investment account of 15 000€ while keeping enough in reserve to cover the national debt (of course, paying out the debt would be folly when the interest rates are around zero but the return on investments is several percent; any sane corporation would borrow and invest on such terms).
Furthermore, this would completely decimate the non-productive parts of the economy, freeing both labor (which is not desperate and exploitable because remember that 15k€ a year?) and money to productive things (of course, ex-bureaucrats would be so pissed at having to learn how to do good things to people, but you know what scorn dem).
The private sector would be almost as dramatically rearranged as the previously public sector, as artificial industries such as agriculture (where something like 50% [fucken sic] of revenue comes from subsidies instead of selling things people want to buy) and exploitation of forced labor (the current welfare system is inhumane and there are basically sweatshops where disabled people work for 1,5€/h [fucken sic] making scarves rich ~designer~ assholes sell for 300€ a piece, pocketing the difference) would be flattened into the economic equivalent of a glowing glass parking lot. The ensuing stimulus of domestic demand and the abolition of many cumbersome regulations would open up massive opportunity for people to make a value-creating living while reducing the economy’s dependence on big businesses. The abolition of regional subsidies and artificial limits on the housing supply of Helsinki would trigger a significant movement into the big cities where jobs are available, workers productive, and services cost-efficient.
And if one wants to get really hardcore, abolishing patents and copyrights would be a pretty huge move. Suddenly obscene barriers on innovation would be wiped away and people wouldn’t need to waste time figuring out whether they need to push lots of paper just because someone else “owns” a number, and drugs and many other things would get dramatically cheaper.
And they should totally build the hyperloop between Turku and Stockholm.
Without an increase of a single cent in taxes.
Yeah, it would be quite a drastic shock doctrine. A glorious, magnificent shock doctrine leaving behind only the ashes of the old system. Ashes which the seeds of freedom and poor people finally not being treated shittily could blossom from. A beautiful, terrifying cataclysm of creative destruction. The value-destroyers and parasites would feel the pain of righteous vengeance, a pain which would be far less than what they had previously imposed on others because 15k€ a year.
But instead, we have some “”“engineer”“” who got lucky and became a millionaire prime minister despite having no economic or political savvy whatsoever, and whose dream seems to be to become the Thatcher of Finland; a dream he pursues mainly by trying to become as widely hated as Thatcher was/is, and assuming the rest follows on its own.
1 month ago · tagged #bitching about the country of birth #the best heuristic for oppressed people since sharp stick time #i am worst capitalist #win-win is my superpower #this is a social democracy hateblog · 37 notes · source: multiheaded1793 · .permalink
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socialjusticemunchkin reblogged this from multiheaded1793 and added:Okay seriously, I do agree with NN on a lot of this. The socialdemocracies of Western Europe are not in trouble because...
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neoliberalism-nightly reblogged this from obiternihili and added:I agree that welfare is not the sole contributor to it. And that other factors combined certainly outweighs it. But many...
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I’m certainly less economically literate than you are, but I can’t help but think you’re pinning ~welfare~ in general...
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Yep, the veiled threats and the laughable… petulant tone really got me as well. Also, nice passive-aggressive essay in...
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