Why do people expect a system designed to make a few people rich, at the cost of all other people at that, to care about poverty?
Capitalism is doing what it's supposed to be doing. There are many ways to escape it. Nobody needs to be suffering or to be poor.
But going after the people who are good at it isn't going to solve anything. They are good at it. No matter who you tax and how much, they'll find other ways to keep being good at it.
You'd change nothing, you'd just make it even more difficult to change it for the next generation. This is exactly what the rich guys want. Until the gap is so big that any solution will be acceptable, even slavery and terminationa for being a drag on the system.
You can't use capitalism to regulate capitalism. Social things have to exist on another level entirely. Just like the judge can't be the jury and executioner.
No to bothsideism, but communism also killed millions with famines and caused orphans by purging and imprisoning folks whose only crimes is making jokes or whose farm is a little too productive.
I saw POSIWID mentioned in reference to this aspect of capitalism. If capitalism keeps resulting in exploitation of the many and not the end of poverty, then its purpose is exploitation of the many.
I don't think a wealth tax is going to resolve all the problems of society. The rich are super good at off shoring their assets, mingling them into family, setting up legal entities to hold it, etc
The more solvable problems I see are (1) corporations basically don't pay tax (2) 1-2tn per year is not even accounted for by the US military
Not sure why you're getting down voted. The OP wasn't explicitly about the US but Bernie Sanders got 13M votes in the 2016 primary and he is very clearly in support of taxing the wealthy. That sure is a lot of "insane" people isn't it?
What is unreasonable is assuming that taxing wealthy individuals is, on its own, enough to solve all these other social problems. There just aren't enough billionaires for that to work.
It’s about priorities. Money is information about how we prioritize distribution of material and labor. If we prioritize housing and feeding everyone, the money will go there. Right now we prioritize the supremacy of a small number of individuals and their “right” to own personal armies navies and air forces.
What is unreasonable is assuming that taxing wealthy individuals is, on its own, enough to solve all these other social problems
Let's just take Jeff bezos.
His net worth rose about $70b last year.
There are about 250 million adults in the US. The US poverty rate is about 12.5%, that's about 31 million adults.
At a flat tax rate of 50%, that's about $1100 per person in poverty per year. That's just one billionaire.
How Many Billionaires Are in the United States? America is home to 759 billionaires. The estimated that U.S. billionaire total wealth was a combined $4.48 trillion as of November 2022, an amount that grew grown a staggering 50% since before to the pandemic.
To put in perspective, $2.25t / 3 years / 31 million adults in poverty is about $24,000 / year for each adult.
For an individual, the poverty line in the US is about $15,000.
If we focused on taxing billionaires the way we used to, we may not be able to fix everything, but we could certainly afford to bring every single person in the US out of poverty. Saying it's not a solution is not correct.
Edit: I'm not saying that it's simple and easy as that. I'm just saying that the math is there. If we gave people an amount of money per year based on their income, from money that is directly taken from billionaires at a high tax rate, we'd find that a lot of our social problems fix themselves.
About half the US population are indoctrinated to believe taxes = wealth redistribution = socialism/communism = evil, and those four-letter words send the average American into a frothing unhinged rant (I've seen/heard it enough)
