• brucethemoose@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    7 days ago

    It’s a good idea. Kill the tax loopholes.

    But, separately, I am asserting that the theoretical amount of money we gain is not the right order of magnitude. What you propose by itself would yield revenue, but barely enough to make a dent.

    And if I’m wrong, if it’s somehow an extremely large amount of money that’s gained, we run into a more fundamental issue: if we are going to tax such huge percentage of GDP (let’s say over 30%, well above the EU average) getting setup to spend it correctly is very tricky. Historically, such a sharp rise would be a sign of civilizational collapse, especially for a large heterogenous “empire” like the United States (as opposed to somewhere like Denmark, a relatively compact state that developed a high-tax economy gradually).

    The idea is good. But it’s just not enough by itself, even theoretically, once borrowing costs explode, which is all-but-certain to happen now. I simply do not agree that tax reform alone is going to fix this.

    • sportsjorts@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      7 days ago

      Economics aside, the only thing I’ve learned about this country that is consistent, is it’s ability to sustain its fear and hatred in order to bamboozle the public. It’s been my entire life here since 9/11. And it’s been a huge hate grift ever since with disastrous side effects punctuated by democrats rebuilding the economy everytime a republican president slams it into the ground. It’s he idea that the market can sustain externalzing costs like happiness and satisfaction, health etc. is like trying to model climate change. We dont have all the information to really see the real time variables we need to account for.

      I just had a conversation with a Finnish person and they were like, “wages have been stagnating here for forever and there isnt unrest like in America” (loose on the quotations on that,) and it’s like well you have so many guarantees that we don’t have.

      I guess I just kind of see it as a returns problem that we keep trying to solve with the gdp . And I feel like Dem. Administrations have a tendency to approach my point with their marked investments in social safety nets and programs that benefit the public over the mega wealthy (while also benefiting the mega wealthy but to a lesser degree, because money and being monied is ab affiliation all of its own accord and separate from the common American language experience.)