A new poll finds most U.S. adults think personal choices are a major driver of poverty and homelessness, while fewer blame a lack of government support.
This might have been true in 1960s, when wages were actually high and if you saved up, you could become a millionaire, but it’s no longer true. The mindset is simply stuck in people because people are slow on updates and haven’t recognized yet that there’s practically no well-paying jobs on the labor market anymore, no matter what you do. The consequence is that you can’t get rich if you’re poor today, no matter what you do. No kind of saving is gonna do that.
The only way forward is a better social system, and i did some maths the last few weeks and figured out that it’s surprisingly doable economically on a macroeconomic level, i.e. if the US introduced a wealth tax and a universal basic income today, it would NOT really hurt the US’ long-term competitiveness on the global free market, and import tariffs aren’t even needed to sustain the US companies’ competitiveness.
This is fascinating because you would kinda expect that if you tax the rich, they would try to make up for it by bigger profits on their products and it would simply lead to inflation. This is partially true, but only partially, because the tax only applies if the company is owned by rich people, and not if it’s owned by a large number of normal people. So, companies owned by a large number of normal people have a competitive advantage because they don’t need to profit as much to make up for the wealth tax, so they have an easier time in the domestic market.
But even better than that, domestic companies don’t even suffer in international competition. Because at first, yes, prices would rise and there would be inflation, but that makes the dollar cheaper (in other words, a bit more worthless), and that makes manufacturing inside the US cheaper, because the wages are cheaper in international competition, because the dollar is cheaper. So it stimulates manufacturing and exports, keeping the import/export business in balance.
I would argue that money is actually pretty useless, the true value in a economy is time - the time to spend on family and friends, the time to create new ideas, the time to learn, and the time to support society. Capitalism forces people to hyperfixate on money in order to survive, which inherently limits what a person can do to better themselves and the world around them.
It encapsulates the existence of an individual into a fishbowl, forever unable to do more than simply exist in place.
You make some perfectly valid points, the only thing I take issue with is
Money is actually pretty useless
So, I do historical reenactment and one of my focuses is the history of money. Money has been in use, in some form or another, all over the world, for about ten thousand years. Roughly twice as long as written language.
Again, I agree with what you’re saying about time and how important it is. But go back to when humans had huge swaths of free time and you still find money. It’s just INSANELY useful.
I think that money money represents effort, knowledge, and time - problem is, the wealthy don’t appreciate what goes into the money that they hoover up from society. By locking away too much money from society, the wealthy have essentially robbed the meaning from money. By drying up the fiscal river, the rich have destroyed the possibility of life flourishing within its banks.
I guess that I don’t disagree with your correction, so much as that I believe that the worth of American money has been corroded towards the breaking point.
This might have been true in 1960s, when wages were actually high and if you saved up, you could become a millionaire, but it’s no longer true. The mindset is simply stuck in people because people are slow on updates and haven’t recognized yet that there’s practically no well-paying jobs on the labor market anymore, no matter what you do. The consequence is that you can’t get rich if you’re poor today, no matter what you do. No kind of saving is gonna do that.
The only way forward is a better social system, and i did some maths the last few weeks and figured out that it’s surprisingly doable economically on a macroeconomic level, i.e. if the US introduced a wealth tax and a universal basic income today, it would NOT really hurt the US’ long-term competitiveness on the global free market, and import tariffs aren’t even needed to sustain the US companies’ competitiveness.
This is fascinating because you would kinda expect that if you tax the rich, they would try to make up for it by bigger profits on their products and it would simply lead to inflation. This is partially true, but only partially, because the tax only applies if the company is owned by rich people, and not if it’s owned by a large number of normal people. So, companies owned by a large number of normal people have a competitive advantage because they don’t need to profit as much to make up for the wealth tax, so they have an easier time in the domestic market.
But even better than that, domestic companies don’t even suffer in international competition. Because at first, yes, prices would rise and there would be inflation, but that makes the dollar cheaper (in other words, a bit more worthless), and that makes manufacturing inside the US cheaper, because the wages are cheaper in international competition, because the dollar is cheaper. So it stimulates manufacturing and exports, keeping the import/export business in balance.
I would argue that money is actually pretty useless, the true value in a economy is time - the time to spend on family and friends, the time to create new ideas, the time to learn, and the time to support society. Capitalism forces people to hyperfixate on money in order to survive, which inherently limits what a person can do to better themselves and the world around them.
It encapsulates the existence of an individual into a fishbowl, forever unable to do more than simply exist in place.
You make some perfectly valid points, the only thing I take issue with is
So, I do historical reenactment and one of my focuses is the history of money. Money has been in use, in some form or another, all over the world, for about ten thousand years. Roughly twice as long as written language.
Again, I agree with what you’re saying about time and how important it is. But go back to when humans had huge swaths of free time and you still find money. It’s just INSANELY useful.
I think that money money represents effort, knowledge, and time - problem is, the wealthy don’t appreciate what goes into the money that they hoover up from society. By locking away too much money from society, the wealthy have essentially robbed the meaning from money. By drying up the fiscal river, the rich have destroyed the possibility of life flourishing within its banks.
I guess that I don’t disagree with your correction, so much as that I believe that the worth of American money has been corroded towards the breaking point.