imagine being dumb enough to be a Marxist in the 21st century.

That’s how democracy is supposed to work. You’re supposed to stand by your principles and vote for whoever thinks represents you best. Voting for the lesser of evils a divide and conquer tactic by the duopoly

Marxists are worse than fascists. Just as evil, just as retarded, just as violent, just as hateful. A failed murderous ideology has no place in modern times and it will never happen. You will never be a revolutionary and you will never, ever come to poewr… and for good reason too. All you can and ever will do is larp on the internet while swimming in a sea of willful ignorance. I, like most people, am glad that is the case.

The issue with this idea is that it doesn’t reflect how stocks work. Think about it like this: Owning a stock is like owning a block of gold. The value of the gold can go up or down. One year the value of your gold block could double and another year it could half. However, the actual value of your gold won’t be determined until you actually sell it. The tax your proposing isn’t a tax on wealth, but rather a tax on exchange rates. Besides if the stocks aren’t cashed then no harm is done. That money is being used and invested by the business.

I don’t think the issue is with the things we tax. We have good tax policy on that. The issue is that the system is flawed because corporations keep lobbying for new loopholes. If you want to see billionaires and corporations pay their faire share then we have to go after these loopholes. There should absolutely zero reason why individuals like you and me pay more in taxes than corporations like Salesforce, Nike, and FedEx. I’m not even talking about percentages here, we literally pay a larger monetary amount than they do. Actually some of these corporations get rebates for their profits. These are the type of things we should go after. We have to dig through the tax code, find every loophole, and hound our politicians to close them… And oh, not open new ones.

Stalking? This post is on the global page. Not everything is malicious or a conspiracy theory

There are loopholes to help them out. For example, they could take out loans against their wealth, and do whatever they need that way. The money isn’t taxed, and the terms of these loans are usually very favorable towards the billionaires since their connections go deep.

Okay, that makes more sense. With inflation over the past few years, a million dollar networth isn’t a lot, but a million dollar income definitely is.

Least economically illiterate hexbear user

That is actually the case. Billionaires aren’t swimming in a room full of cash and they don’t some some secret mega vault that holds $100 billion. Most of these guys are founders of very successful corporations, and so they naturally have a larger than average share. Bezos has most of his wealth in Amazon stocks, Zuckerberg in Meta, Musk in Tesla and SpaceX, Gates in Microsoft, and so on. Their wealth goes up and down depending on how well the company they’re most tied to is doing. In the US and most other places, stocks aren’t taxed until they’re sold. Once a transaction happens, there will be a tax. Usually tax rates go up with profits and income, and there are deductions for losses (to a degree). It’s an okay system, the issue is that it isn’t being enforced. Our system is full of loopholes that these billionaires exploit to pay way less than they should. But billionaires not paying taxes are nothing compared to corporations not paying ANY taxes on billions in annual profits. That’s what we should go after.

Being a millionaire isn’t really that much of an accomplishment anymore, unless you’re talking about hundreds of millions. For most people just owning a house, having a good retirement fund, and a couple of other assets/investments (cars, a small business, some stocks, etc) puts them over $1 million. A lot of middle class grandparents are in that tier, especially in Massachusetts.

Communism is a stateless classless moneyless society. what you described is none of those.

That’s communism the utopia, not communism the ideology. The communist utopia is just a part of the Marxist ideology, it isn’t the Marxist ideology. This like calling 100% direct democracy the one and only form of democracy and every attempt at democracy is not real democracy.

none of what you said is evidence to support your earlier claim that I contradicted.

You didn’t contradict shit. You just said “wrong” and provided NOTHING. No arguments, no explanations, no points, no evidence, literally nothing. That’s not contradiciton, that’s just denial. As for my previous comment, it proves my every claim and overwhelmingly. You made a fair statement that I didn’t provide evidence, and so I did just that. Then again, I don’t think you’re capable of actually providing anything more than whatever this is.

The new jobs you mentioned, social media managers and animators are unnecessary bullshit jobs.

That’s not up to you to decide. Your personal tastes on what a “real job” has no bearing on whether or not it is a job. There’s clearly a demand for it, there are people who get paid for doing it, and there are people specializing in it. It’s an actual job.

They’re trivial

Social media managers are basically the new generation of PR. They advertise, spread awareness, and do community outreach. These core responsibilities have been a part of jobs for a very long time, it’s just this job is adapted to a new medium where people gather.

there’s no reason for those jobs to be compulsory or high stress at all. Our treatment of those kinds of jobs is ridiculous.

If you want to argue for better working conditions, protections, and rights then I would actually agree with you. But this brainless idea that jobs aren’t necessary or that there will be a point where they’re all going away is stupid. Societies can only function when their members contribute, and the current wave of automation is NOT going to put everybody out of work. Old jobs will automated away, new jobs will be created, and people will adapt to the advancing economy. This is the same it has been for the past automation waves. The idea that automation will do all the work and people have nothing to do anymore is literally nothing more than a pop culture sci-fi idea.

It’s time for UBI, a decent baseline, and then good compensation for actual important work.

I’m not opposed to a UBI or better compensation. But this boomer mentality of “real jobs” is as myopic as it is ignorant.

People like yourself are responsible for the destruction of our life support system for trivial reasons.

I’m not responsible for shit. I’m merely pointing out that you’re delusional fantasies about what automation and the economy don’t actually reflect reality.

My comment got downvoted to all hell by a bunch of Marxists who don’t understand how an economy works… which is not surprising in the least.

Look, my point is fairly straightforward. The idea that automation will do all the jobs and people will just sit around and do nothing all day is nothing more than a thought experiment. It’s a sci-fi idea. Not in the sense that people will have to work no matter what, but in the sense that’s not how automation or society works. We will never reach a point where we max out on what kind of work can be done and therefore we can automate all of it away. There will always be a new chapter that’s slightly more advanced than the last. I think we can agree that new technology should be used to benefit society as a whole, but we’re not going to have an economy based on hobbies any time soon. While automation gets rid of jobs, it also creates opportunities for new jobs to take place. We’ve already gone through automation revolutions before. We already know how the cycle goes. New technologies get invented, those technologies get put to use immediately, the people who’s jobs it is replacing will get angry and riot/protest, they will end up losing and having to either find a new trade or elevate their skills to remain in their trade. Basically, the economy becomes more complex. We may not have lamplighters, human computers, or ice cutters anymore, but thanks to the advances in technology we do have brand new jobs like software engineers, social media managers, or animators. When we look at the past, we can see constant change. There’s no reason to think that will stop with this current wave of automation. I think the economy will just shift to a new phase.

I understand what you’re saying and I don’t necessarily disagree, but you don’t seem to understand my point. The idea of automation that you have is based on the sci-fi idea that robots will do all of the work for us and we wouldn’t have to work anymore. It’s just a thought experiment. This idea isn’t reflected in the real world. We’ve already been through automation revolutions before, and every time, the economy just shifts to something else.

For example, for a very long time, being a lamplighter was a popular job. A bunch of people would get hired to go around the city and make sure that the street lamps are lit and well maintained. However, via the magic of automation, the light bulb was invented. Lamplighters were no longer necessary. There were a lot of lamplighters who were angry at this new technology for stealing their jobs and many protested against, some even tried to ban it, but ultimately the convenience of technology won as it always has and always will. But thanks to this new technology there were new jobs created… like electricians who would look after these lightbulbs for example.

My point is that the current automation wave is not going to kill the economy. It’ll just simply shift and make it more complex. There will still be jobs, but they will either be entirely new or they’ll be an existing job but simply updated to address society’s new needs. There will still be people who will work on creating automation technology, people who maintain it, people who will manufacture it, scientists who will try to research improve it, and so on. There will also be jobs that haven’t been created yet. Just 20 years ago, Youtube wasn’t even a thing but now being a youtuber is an actual profession held by tens of thousands of people. What’s to say we’re not going to see something similar in the next 20 years? It’s silly to think that we’re going to have an economy of picnics and parties any time soon when all we have to support this notion is pop culture speculation. The reality is that the wheels of the economy are just going to keep on turning like they always have.

YES! Marxism is definitely solution. It generates weal… uh uhhh it is sustain… uh uhhh it is efficie… uhhh it is innova… uh uhhh it wor… uhhhhhh wait, Marxist doesn’t do shit because it’s failed ideology. Cry harder tankie.

Removed by mod

Such a powerful argument

There’s nothing wrong with a corporation profiting. Profit is a very powerful incentive and corporations are very effective legal entities for mass production. The issue arises when corporate executives aren’t held accountable. When you have corrupt, greedy, and soulless executives running companies by doing things that are harmful, illegal, or unethical AND they keep getting away with them then that’s a big problem. But if you have a system in place with strong institutions and strong legislation that makes sure that worker rights are respected, the markets are competitive, consumers are protected, the environment is protected, and illegal activity is hunted down and prosecuted then there isn’t an issue.

That’s stupid. Capitalism is the reason why humanity has advanced so quickly in such little time and why we have the technology that we do.

Personal hobbies aren’t valuable to a society, they’re valuable to individuals. A guy playing video games 6 hours a day is probably okay with it, but it’s not contributing anything to society. There’s an argument to be made for people to be guaranteed time to themselves for their well being, but the idea that an economy can function off of picnics and parties is stupid. Automation is not going to make work obsolete, it’ll just shift the economy in a different direction. Just like what happened in industrial revolution 200 years ago.