Wealth trickling up is the nature of Capitalism. If I start with ten and you start with ten, and I sell you something worth 2 for 4, I now have more wealth because I’ve just gained $2 profit and you’ve lost $2 of value on your goods.
This will continue to snowball and accumulate. It’s baked into physics.
Not saying Capitalism can’t work. But it has to be heavily regulated and we need a wealth cap. Hence Bernie suggesting anyting over $1 billion gets taxed at 100%. I favor a logerethmic approach using a soft cap on earnings and counting investments as earnings. Basically, the closer to X amount you make each year, the less you take home. You never hit the cap, but you might be keeping pennies on the dollar the closer you get to it.
I think we’re in total agreement. The accumulation of wealth is natural under capitalism. And as long as wealth is not overly skewed, capitalism aligns somewhat well with the needs of humanity. But as the balance tips, the alignment drifts. People could argue about the exact point at which capitalism no longer serves the people, but I think many of us believe we are currently past that point. I believe we are.
It’s not that capitalism is wrong, it’s that it has become unbalanced and we need something to reset it. In the past that something has been revolution and violent upheaval. I hope we are able to find another way.
the person with more resources tends to win and the prize for winning is more resources. combine that with corporations that are literally immortal and you have a system that pushes resources upward and then locks them in place once they get there. there has to be an artificial intervention to shake those resources loose and get them circulating again or the whole machine is gonna seize up and fail when we insist on producing what no one can afford to buy.
Wealth trickling up is the nature of Capitalism. If I start with ten and you start with ten, and I sell you something worth 2 for 4, I now have more wealth because I’ve just gained $2 profit and you’ve lost $2 of value on your goods.
This will continue to snowball and accumulate. It’s baked into physics.
Not saying Capitalism can’t work. But it has to be heavily regulated and we need a wealth cap. Hence Bernie suggesting anyting over $1 billion gets taxed at 100%. I favor a logerethmic approach using a soft cap on earnings and counting investments as earnings. Basically, the closer to X amount you make each year, the less you take home. You never hit the cap, but you might be keeping pennies on the dollar the closer you get to it.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/
I think we’re in total agreement. The accumulation of wealth is natural under capitalism. And as long as wealth is not overly skewed, capitalism aligns somewhat well with the needs of humanity. But as the balance tips, the alignment drifts. People could argue about the exact point at which capitalism no longer serves the people, but I think many of us believe we are currently past that point. I believe we are.
It’s not that capitalism is wrong, it’s that it has become unbalanced and we need something to reset it. In the past that something has been revolution and violent upheaval. I hope we are able to find another way.
Its parasitic though (it truly benefits well only the few), and as you stated, needs constant resetting.
Not sure that you can call a system that needs constant ‘resetting’ as the right system to use.
the person with more resources tends to win and the prize for winning is more resources. combine that with corporations that are literally immortal and you have a system that pushes resources upward and then locks them in place once they get there. there has to be an artificial intervention to shake those resources loose and get them circulating again or the whole machine is gonna seize up and fail when we insist on producing what no one can afford to buy.