Redistribution

Reality:

“No, I saw it on the news.”

“Who owns that news station?”

“I don’t know, why?”

The wealthy like to hide the fact that they are affecting policies and public perception in their favor.

They’re the ones usually hiding behind biased journalist, news stations, social media companies, advertising companies, cherry picked science, lobbying groups, and religion.

Rant time.

Wealth taxes aren’t the best. They can very very easily be dodged. Also, enforcement is expensive (as you need someone to sit calculating wealth). Also, deadweight loss is super high.

In my opinion, wealth inequality shouldn’t be higher than a certain limit. Wealth taxes shouldn’t HAVE to exist. Wanting them to exist is like trying to use a bandaid to put out a fire.

Instead, imo, the best way to reduce wealth inequality should be through the existence of consumer cooperatives and worker unions.

Most wealthy people become wealthy through equity ownership of businesses. The equity ownership gives them control (generally) over the business’s ability to allocate resources. This control is what makes them rich.

If this control was instead democratic, the members of the cooperative would be richer.

I’m in Canada and can attest to this. Consumer cooperatives (like credit unions I bank with), cooperative federations (like the one my family gets insurance from), the coop we get electricity from and so on. Almost always, we come out on top financially (compared to if we decided to go with a non coop alternative).

Marx was poor though, had to dedicate hours to cracking Engels

Redistribution of wealth doesn’t work… for whom?

Sure as hell worked to redistribute the vastly distributed wealth we had across the United States into the hands of a few very powerful figures.

Don’t let the other comments fool you. Redistribution of wealth doesn’t mean the absolute end of wealth. We’re not talking communism.

Redistribution of wealth works just fine, AND IS ALREADY HAPPENING in the form of corporate welfare and companies paying Zero taxes.

Fixing/reversing that redistribution can mean anything from taxing billionaires - redistributing those taxes to jobs and services where that money is needed or more benefits going the poorest (yes, taxes, especially in a fair and progressive tax system IS a form of redistributing wealth). Redistribution could even be as simple as raising the minimum wage.

ALL SOCIETIES ALREADY HAVE REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH systems it’s not something you have to fear monger over. Drop that programming.

Don’t be like those other commenters, reflexively protecting against the possibility of absolute re-equalization of wealth, or extreme near absolute redistribution of wealth. There’s almost ZERO chance of them giving that to you. Their warnings come from paranoia (an unreasonable fear). The Truth is, most societies ALREADY HAVE redistribution of wealth, but it’s to the wrong people and not enough of it goes to downwards.

Shoot for the moon on redistribution, you don’t have to be worried that "well ACTSHULLY it doesn’t work" because they’re NEVER going to give you an equal system. So don’t obcessively guard against it with your cultural programming - instead say: We already have wealth redistribution. It’s just going to the wealthiest, and nowhere near enough of their wealth is going via taxes, wage distribution, and public funding of community services (Social work, public health care, public education, neighborhood improvement program) to those in need!!!

…."ackshully Communism doesn’t work in the long run" <—- SHUT THE FUCK UP. THAT’S NOT THE TOPIC! We’re talking about things that already happen just in the wrong direction.

Taxes, taxes are how we redistribute wealth.

But it’s true. Redistribution of wealth doesn’t work. At least, not in the long term. What works are policies which prevent the wealth from being so unevenly distributed in the first place, by ensuring that most of the wealth generated by workers goes back to those who created it. Proactive policies vs reactive.

Technically they’re right…

Widescale redistribution of wealth demonstrably doesn’t work, but the thing is right now the problem has been redistributed into the hands of a select few and it’s killing everyone else.

A normal distribution of wealth would be everyone having enough by default, and people being able to earn extra through labor/services.

With a rigid tax system to ensure no one can control an oversized proportion of wealth to the detrement of everyone else.

Don’t let them trick you into thinking the current reality is the norm or a standard. We can go the other direction even faster than we got here.

It really matters what we are taking about. If we distribute ask the mansions and boats nothing if value is really gained for the general population.

If we take all the stocks, nothing if value is really gained either, because liquidating then to run programs would be virtually impossible, and the trade is is everyone’s 401ks vanishes.

If we try to take the cash, we will find out that the cash doesn’t exist, and this would cause a m2 shrinkage the sameas a bank run.

What other don’t raise is for example elon doesn’t have a trillion dollars. He was stocks that would be worth a trillion in an infinite liquidate market, which doesn’t exist, and his stocks trade at 300+ p/e. A liquidation would immediately remove 90% of the wealth instantly. What he has done is expanded the m2 because it’s the wealth generated and other can loan out against this and add to the money supply though fractional reserve lending. Remove this, and you vaporize the money that never existed anyways.

It’s very hard to extract cash from something that has no cash.