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Originally Posted by Acajack
About a third of the world tried that out at one point or another during the 20th century.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rousseau
This is a red herring, though. Never in history has the world ever been more economically equitable or had less poverty or starvation. The "vast ills of inequality" are gradually receding into the past. Capitalism with proper regulation has proven itself as the only real effective system for raising standards of living.
The current CEO vs worker wealth disparity in certain Western countries is a tweakable problem. It's hardly cause for reconsidering catastrophically murderous 20th century pilot testing. Wealthy people making dumb decisions with their wealth is a big "meh" in the larger scheme of things. In a democratic society they get reigned in when they run up against laws and regulations put in place to protect against robber barons anyway.
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The real red herring is the idea that because global poverty has slowly - and marginally - improved along with the huge advances in technology, that the current system is the most effective way for things to improve. Let alone the only way. I mean, the hundreds of times the wealth possessed by the top global 5% has to multiple just in order for the wealth of the bottom 50% to double is absurd. According to the
Guardian, the richest 8 people have as much wealth as the bottom 50%. Besides, if anything, the major problems caused by the current system are getting worse rather than better. The main reason why we've been practically paralysed as a global society in terms of any large scale mobilization against climate change is that the wealthy who are mostly insulated against its effect spend vast amount opposing progress by propagating doubt amongst the general public about climate change's actual existence. make people fear any change due to the tenuous economic position many people occupy, confuse the public through the green washing of consumer products, persuading everyone that it's an issue of individual responsibility (and a fairly hopeless one at that) in order to dodge any systemic critiques.
It also doesn't make sense to claim that any possible alternative has "failed" because one alternative seen in about 1/3 of the world failed after being vigorously opposed for decades by about 2/3 of the world (it isn't called the cold "war" for nothing). Any system is likely to fail under such pressure regardless of its merits. But regardless, the failure of authoritarian republics with command-style economies has little relevance to anyone seeking an expansion of democracy when those models represent the opposite. I happen to believe in and support both democracy and the power of the market. I'd just prefer to combine the two so that democracy isn't just restricted to narrow aspects of live when "work", which for most people plays a much bigger role in their life, remains predominantly authoritarian. Not with a government controlled, command style economy, but with workers having greater control and ownership of the work place and re-distributive policies that ensure private capital doesn't amass in such as way as to dominate society. But of course, tweaking is a perfectly fine start.
Anyway, I'm not really a political person so this isn't something I'm that interested in talking about as it's a topic that can spiral off into time-consuming tangents. I just get annoyed sometimes when people defend a system that causes so much harm based on tautological reasoning. People can get so mired in the normativity of the current system that it's hard for them to imagine anything different.
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Originally Posted by someone123
It's pretty telling that there's all this angst about big business when we mostly can't even grow them here in Canada, and the prime examples of rich people that come up in this thread live in the US and wouldn't be subject to the wealth taxes proposed by the NDP and Greens. I would like to see more Canadian big business, not less, but more of a shift to innovation and away from oligopolies. I would also like to see better services for many of the poorest in Canadian society but I don't believe it's all zero sum. The Liberals turned on a huge, poorly-aimed firehose of spending during the past year and they are not exactly the "eat the rich" party.
I don't believe that Canadian pension funds and the like can run vibrant and innovative small to medium business ecosystems that result in major companies in globally unique niches.
I think people often overestimate how high the ceiling is beyond which taxation produces somewhat self-defeating outcomes for revenues. For example the NDP proposal is 2% more federal tax for income earned over $216k or so. This is the kind of scenario that can make doctors retire a bit earlier, people who might work at a Canadian office for a company like Google, etc. We can say that those fat cats don't deserve to keep 47% of their pay and should keep 45% but the point is Canada will get less work out of them, and more may move away.
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Asset management firms don't run the companies, they just provide investment. The same way that many companies owned by the ultra wealthy aren't run directly by the owners and instead are fully or partially run by the executive and management staff who, while well paid, are mostly not the kind of ultra wealthy we're talking about.
However, I 100% agree that global inequality and the global economic system in general isn't at it's worst in Canada. Unfortunately as individuals we have relatively few options to influence the global state of affairs beyond the officials we elect as our representatives which is one of the limitations of democracy being limited to electoral politics.
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