this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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The common denominator is taxes. There is this unit circle visual that shows half of your work value taken from you directly by taxes, and prices are twice what they want to be (indirectly paying others taxes)... so an individual "feels" only 1/4 economic effectiveness, or 3/4 oppressed.
*Half of what is left after the CEO and shareholders take their cut. Taxes are a drop in the ocean compared to the excess labor value that is extracted before you even see a penny.
Yes, corporate overhead is quite real, but it is literally zero effect for the self-employed... so by your logic all would be or become so to be rich by avoiding a CEO altogether.
Are you seriously suggesting that all it should take to become rich is to do freelance work?
The way people actually get rich is by exploiting the labor of others. Freelance work is only practical in very specific niches, and even then you'll be forced to compete with conglomerates that have far greater resources.
Xia is failing to realize that the original post isn't about self owned businesses, so their point doesn't make sense in this context. Based on their other comments, they either don't understand how discussions, debates, or arguments work, or they're a troll, or they're overly saturated on capitalist propoganda.
If those are the only options then it is probably the last one, as I'm often not even sure what to call the unfamiliar positions I see others taking here, but it could be a bit of "can't debate" too as I find a tendency in myself to address the secondary or tertiary consequences of peoples arguments (assuming they are aware of [and already accept] the obvious primary consequences) which can be quite jarring and read like a string of non-sequitors, or like people arguing past each other.
I agree and do understand that the original post was not about self owned businesses, so I agree that it is a bit off topic here. I was only trying to point out the absurdity of the statement that "taxes are a drop in the ocean compared to [labor value theft]". As if that were true (or even a less-hyperbolic ratio of 1-to-99), then it would logically follow that freelance work would produce staggeringly higher yields, and we see that is not the case. The intent was an informal proof by contradiction, but that was not made clear.
I think it could also be shown by induction (as the more people/layers/intermediaries you add the more loss/expense is incurred) if you accept a profit motive and a steady state, but large businesses can and do temporarily sell products at a loss to kill competition in the short-term, so that would probably be less convincing.
Taxation doesn't take into account the fact that wages are stagnant, but corporations have posted record profits. Small businesses are impacted as well, due to the nature of supply chains, most people cannot create something from nothing.
I'd like to address something you said that is unrelated to economics. You said you address secondary or tertiary consequences of arguements. That doesn't seem like a non-sequitor or people arguing past eachother like some kind of verbal 4-D chess match, typed in this case. It seems to me that you're saying you assume what the other person might say, then you reply to that assumtion. Can you clarify?
Something akin to this?
I would generally agree that taxation as we normally use the term may not be adequate to describe this great squeezing effect, unless you stretch the definition of tax to include inflation too, as a hidden pervasive tax that is invisibly collecting value from everyone.
Supply chains have to start somewhere, and I tend to favor and think of bottom-up solutions very near people creating value from nothing to compete with the mega-corps (washing cars, mowing lawns, sewing, carpentry, metal-working, programming, gardening)... there is probably more business opportunities within the reach of the individual than we are trained to believe, and I wonder how much we automatically lose once we assume that we must be an employee.
Absolutely agree, it is way more disruptive than it could possibly be of strategic value, especially in verbal conversation. I would hazard to say it has never been useful outside of my family.
I'm sure I do that too, but to some degree one must make assumptions about what others are saying, as that is the nature of natural language communication.
An example would probably be best, but I skimmed over this thread's post and did not see an obvious example, so probably not in a time-effective manner... this aside might barely qualify (maybe when I mentioned this tendency I thought you were reacting to something not on this thread), or maybe my initial post could be an example (as I unconsciously skipped over the obvious answers of "inflation" and "greed" which are positions I knew others would consider and take, and therefor have little value in me harping on).
Cool, now how much of your work value is taken by people who did nothing but invest the generational wealth they got from their great great grandad laying claim to common natural resources? Surely that's the bigger concern since it goes to rich peoples' yachts instead of public services.
That depends on if you refer to banking or inflationary spending.
Both are spending appropriated by elected representatives in Congress. I'm referring to the portion of your work value that goes directly into the pockets of unelected capitalists.
Lmao, no. Not without sources.
Yes, the famous oppression of roads, schools, non-for-profit admin, and health care.
Insomuch as the power to tax is the power to destroy, yes.... But I'm sure there are better examples (military?), and the oppression is less caused by the ACTUAL cost of such things, and more the oppression of what is LOST in providing such things.
Isn't that a photo a perfect example of what happens when we let private institutions provide public services (which is what you're suggesting be done instead).
Are you trying to say that things would be better if elementary and High school also had to be paid for directly instead of being publicly funded?
lol... it did not even occur to me. I don't have a straight answer for you because I don't ordinarily consider bifurcating the problem along a public/private line.
It's such a blurry line, like in this case where you have public funding for private schools, or in other cases where you have private corporations that produce only for the public government; or tax-funded incentives to private products or private payment networks replacing government currency.
Instead, I usually consider the size of the political system or corporation in question with a heuristic of "smaller is better", and bias towards presuming enmeshment: like the whole system is one gigantic oppressive blob and the public/private labels are just superficial colorations.
I guess if I had any suggestion, it would be to somehow excise schooling from the blob, and find the smallest size where it works, and use the ones that work well as templates to repair or replace those that fail.
The first Lemming you replied to here.
I don't disagree with you in that post.
But I think that for that unemmeshment to work we'll have to end Capitalism first. Once that's done small scale local communities with large scale networks for sure could do a good job with education and roads.
I would love to see the math behind that. Typically it's a case where someone is effectively paying 25% of their income to taxes, but because they are too lazy to actually understand how taxes work they are easily convinced it's well over 50%
I recall my first exposure to this idea was via L. Neal Smith, so I tried to coax a breakdown out of GPT. Keeping in mind it could be hallucinated (and not his actual position or sourced values and math), so minimally just for your entertainment...
Certainly! Here's a more detailed breakdown of how L. Neil Smith might conceptualize the distribution of value:
12.5% Retained by the Individual: The portion of value that individuals actually keep for themselves after all deductions.
20% Income Taxes: The portion of value lost to federal, state, and local income taxes.
15% Social Security and Medicare Taxes: Contributions to social security and healthcare systems.
10% Sales Taxes: Taxes added to purchases of goods and services.
10% Property Taxes: Taxes on real estate and other property.
15% Regulatory Compliance Costs: Expenses related to meeting government regulations, such as environmental standards, labor laws, and safety requirements.
10% Corporate and Business Taxes: Taxes on business profits, which can indirectly affect individual income through reduced wages or higher prices.
7.5% Miscellaneous Fees and Other Taxes: Including tariffs, licensing fees, and other smaller taxes.
This breakdown illustrates how various forms of taxation and regulation can consume a large portion of the value generated by individual effort, aligning with Smith's perspective on government intervention.
Do you have an example that uses real income? All those percentage are relative to something, and that something is the most important part.
What province are we talking about and what salary are we talking about.
To be honest though, this sounds like some pie in the sky libertarian point of view where they are suggesting multiple things that are repeatedly proved false. Some of which include:
Which at that point I think you're argument is correct, if we stopped spending effectively around 40% of our income (thats on the high-end) on funding public services, then over 75% of our income would need to go towards paying to get those same services back.