|
|
 Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan
This could be somewhat true, but it depends on your definition on what "contributed to society means." In your definition, it's clearly true. But in an absolute definition its pretty clearly false. How much money you make is directly correlated to the amount of value you provide to the people around you. The problem is people value pretty worthless and fucked up shit.
The correlation is tiny, often non-existent, and people don't value as fucked up of shit as many opinions claim. Attempting to explain status and value by equating them is getting into woo woo territory. It works only when you continually expand the definitions
In the real economy, we know for fact that financial status is determined by much more than how well you're valued, and sometimes has very little to do with value. Also, using a term like 'value' to broadly explain economics can be problematic because sometimes it can only account for a fraction of what actually happens, and sometimes misses the point. Many examples can be found in the myriad of circumstances where different values collide, some values are naturally or artificially propped up while others are depressed, etc
This in no way means that heavy taxes means everyone is better off. There are a very very large amount of factors that would contribute to shitty living conditions for everyone but the ruling powers. Taxes certainly don't have everything, if much, to do with it.
Taxes in modern democracies have a substantially higher return on the social and economic wellbeing of the populace than anything else, and it's not really even close. Corruption is possible, and history is rife with taxation by totalitarian regimes being massively burdensome, but we're not dealing with this sort of circumstance. The amount of oversight that goes into tax spending is much higher than in pretty much any private industry, and the amount of economic return our taxes provides the nation is much higher than the return on purchases from, say, the most prolific retail corporation on the planet.
This isn't that complicated, but it is made so by misunderstanding taxes, and misunderstanding how economics works in the first place. The reason taxes are so beneficial is because of how well they distribute wealth and activity through the classes, and how well they invest in things like infrastructure and education and all sorts of social services we take for granted. Through the history of the US, tax dollars have gone to investment and social wellbeing to a vastly greater degree than any corporation or any business enterprise. Taxes can get too high, but nobody knows where that point is, and we're not even remotely close to that area in the first place. The top tax rate was about 3x higher under Eisenhower than today, and that was when the US middle class was becoming a thing of legend
What's your definition of "do"? This seems completely untrue to me unless "doing" is physical labor. Would you argue that Bill Gates hasn't "done" much?
My point was that status tends to be self-perpetuating and often deflects from progression elsewhere. Bill Gates is arguably the most beneficial mega wealthy person to ever live, but I don't really care about specific examples here because then I'll just bring up how Kim Il-sung decimated more value and wealth and all things good in the history of his nation, yet had more status than anybody because of it. Or how the House of Saud massively oppresses their citizenry, exports much of the nations' wealth, yet they have the most power and "do" the most. Or how Walmart is ransacking a portion of US wealth by monopolizing and crunching wages while overflowing their executive accounts. Or how Wall Street annihilated trillions, yet are among the wealthiest and "do" oh so much.
|
Reply With Quote
