Why can’t any government in the world aim to tax ultra rich more whilst making easier for small to medium large businesses to thrive. And policies on property supply rather than property buyers like all sorts of first time buyers programs.
Why are only same old policies keep being peddled when the world is still going to shit?
That doesn’t involve reducing the government size and budget entirely or subscribing to any extreme left or right?
Because our governments are largely bought and paid for.
It’s really easy to convince a huge number of poor people that the elites are the only ones defending them from poor people they aren’t personally familiar with. This trick has worked for 10,000 years at least.
These are separate questions, so I’ll answer them in order.
Why aren’t any governments focusing on wealth inequality and property supply-centered policies?
There are governments that focus on reducing wealth inequality and increasing the overall property supply. Socialist countries, like the PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. They still have some lesser degree of inequality, of course, as well as their own struggles and issues from standing against the broader Capitalist hegemony, but there is a concerted effort in Socialist countries to address the needs of the working class through their structures, reflected in improved metrics in areas sensitive to their Working Class, such as China’s directed and planned efforts at successfully eliminating extreme poverty at a breakneck pace, or Cuba’s advanced healthcare system. China in particular does focus on supply a lot, that’s why they are endlessly building new cities to anticipate future necessity, the famous “ghost cities” that in reality are sound planning and help increase employment. They also have some of the most advanced automation and manufacturing, their strategy in the long run depends on rapidly increasing the productive forces.
As for small and medium-sized businesses, these disappear over time in favor of larger firms, and either grow or fail to be capable of influencing the system like the large firms do. In all countries, regardless of economic model, as long as markets persist there will be a gradual increase in proportion of production held by large firms compared to smaller firms, as competition forces growth and centralization. This is actually one of Marx’s most important observations, and forms the basis of Marxism’s scientific view of Socialism compared to earlier Utopian Socialist types like Robert Owen and Saint-Simon. The earlier Utopian Socialists thought that if you could picture in your head a good society, you could implement it directly, through fiat, simply by convincing others to follow suit. This ended up being wrong, of course.
Why can’t any government in the world aim to tax ultra rich more whilst making easier for small to medium large businesses to thrive? And policies on property supply rather than property buyers like all sorts of first time buyers programs?
The “ultra rich,” in Capitalist countries, control the government through mechanisms such as lobbying. In order to truly tax the rich and provide large safety nets, the working class needs to have control of the State. This is far easier said than done, however, even Capitalist democracies aren’t genuinely democratic. If you look at US policy polling, systems like Single Payer healthcare are extremely popular across the board, yet that isn’t seen as a genuine possibility despite being proven in many other countries in various forms. Revolution is necessary, and this requires working class organization.
The Nordic Countries that, on the surface, seem to have the best of all worlds in this respect on the outside hide that they fund these nets through international usury, large IMF loans and the like. They function as landlords in country form, essentially, so their working class is just as exploited internally, yet bribed using much larger exploitation globally. The US, of course, is the largest Empire and consequently its Imperialism is on a far larger scale, but that doesn’t mean the Nordic model would “work” for the US, as the profits of Imperialism to a greater extent go to the US bourgeoisie as compared to the Nordics, where comparatively stronger labor organizing gives the Nordic working class more of a bargaining edge. Perhaps temporarily, but Capitalists in the US hold enourmous power and organization of labor is weak, ergo this is certainly an uphill battle to begin with and still leaves open the necessity of overcoming US Imperialism.
Why are only same old policies keep being peddled when the world is still going to shit?
Old policies rise as the contradictions within Capitalism, ie wealth inequality, concentration of Capital into fewer and fewer hands, and so forth, sharpen. Fascism in particular is like a self-defense system for Capitalism against rising Leftist organization, generally. As Gramsci said, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.”
Look to Socialist countries to see where new ground is being tread. It isn’t all sunshine and roses, but progress is coming steadily. The CPC describes its process as “crossing the river by feeling for the stones,” you test for footing and pivot direction if it doesn’t work, gradually, and iteratively and continuously focus on refinement and improvement.
That doesn’t involve reducing the government size and budget entirely or subscribing to any extreme left or right?
The policies you ask for aren’t extreme anything, really. They are easy to think of, and easy to question why they aren’t seen as a priority. The part where this shifts dramatically to the Left, is translating those ideas into reality. Just like you cannot simply ask a banker to give you free money, Capitalist systems will not let you simply take from the dragon’s hoard, regardless of how that hoard was gained. The “right-wing,” liberal Capitalist answer is Imperialism in order to implement Social Democracy a la the Nordics, while the Left-wing answer is Socialism, as seen in previously mentioned countries like Cuba, the PRC, Vietnam, etc.
Being “extreme” in the sense of being a solution outside the overton window doesn’t mean the stance is wrong, either. Socialism is correct, despite being outside of the status quo in Western countries.
If you’re interested more in analysis along these lines, I keep an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list oriented towards absolute beginners to political theory.
Governments were formed and exist to protect property rights. As much as they can be said to have an underlying purpose, it’s to protect property rights, and those who own more property will always have a greater level of protection.
The thing the liberal revolutions of the 19th century, socialist revolutions of the 20th century, and the development of social democracies in the 20th century taught governments is that there comes a point where wealth inequality gets so extreme that it threatens the stability of government, which poses the largest possible threat to property rights. Governments learned that they need to have some form of wealth redistribution in order to prevent a violent revolution. To the degree that governments do address wealth inequality, it’s focused on doing it just enough to prevent the system from collapsing.
That’s why there’s really nobody focused on complete wealth equality. They don’t want that. They want to maintain status quo property rights.
If anyone wants to read up more on “Governments were formed and exist to protect property rights” you might want to read The State and Revolution. It is pretty short and very relevant to this discussion
10·4 days agoOther formats (the link is a PDF):
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Excellent rec, and one of Lenin’s best works, alongside Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism IMO
Well put.
Capitalism
huh?
90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes
Chinese household savings hit another record high in 2024 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jones-bank-earnings-01-12-2024/card/chinese-household-savings-hit-another-record-high-xqyky00IsIe357rtJb4j
People in China enjoy high levels of social mobility https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/china-social-mobility.html
The typical Chinese adult is now richer than the typical European adult https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-chinese-adult-now-richer-than-europeans-wealth-report-finds-2022-9
Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8SvK0E5dI
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China’s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4
From 2010 to 2019 (the most recent period for which uninterrupted data is available), the income of the poorest 20% in China increased even as a share of total income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20?end=2019&%3Blocations=CN&%3Bstart=2008
By the end of 2020, extreme poverty, defined as living on under a threshold of around $2 per day, had been eliminated in China. According to the World Bank, the Chinese government had spent $700 billion on poverty alleviation since 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/world/asia/china-poverty-xi-jinping.html
Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million. With this, China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience
None of these things happen in capitalist states, and we can make a direct comparison with India which follows capitalist path of development. In fact, without China there practically would be no poverty reduction happening in the world.
If we take just one country, China, out of the global poverty equation, then even under the $1.90 poverty standard we find that the extreme poverty headcount is the exact same as it was in 1981.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/07/5-myths-about-global-poverty
The $1.90/day (2011 PPP) line is not an adequate or in any way satisfactory level of consumption; it is explicitly an extreme measure. Some analysts suggest that around $7.40/day is the minimum necessary to achieve good nutrition and normal life expectancy, while others propose we use the US poverty line, which is $15.
https://www.cgdev.org/blog/12-things-we-can-agree-about-global-poverty
Yet, they lack the simple freedom to acknowledge the existence of a certain date in their country’s history. The recognition of which, will result in their arrest and potential disappearance. Freedom is not free if your acknowledgement of the truth is considered “wrong think.”
Libs refuse to read anything that isn’t young adult fiction and thus are confined to pretending the real world is literally 1984 or literally Voldemort or literally the Hunger Games.
Shit, the brainrot is so advanced we’re getting “literally like that marvel movie” more often than not nowadays bc y’all can’t even read kid books more.
You can talk about June 4th, 1989 in China. Chinese usually call it the “June 4th incident,” which is what the government uses when referencing it in official statements on the subject.
And they can talk about it on its own terms (that is, more truthfully) because they don’t have the obligatory ritual of painting the entire picture the CIA gave foreign media before they can talk about the actual facts.
Think you mean can talk, not can’t, correct? In which case, I agree.
Yes, sorry. I phrased it differently on the first write and forgot to cancel the negative before posting, thanks for pointing it out.
No worries!
Your joke wasn’t funny.
get some new material troll
Isn’t China taking some of these actions?
Yes. The property supply is a big one for them, that’s where the “ghost cities” narrative comes from, they intentionally build rapidly in anticipation for future demand. They do have wealth inequality, but they seem to be focusing more on directly combatting underdevelopment and poverty than making a point to punish their wealthiest, as they are wary of repeating some of the more dogmatic consequences of the Cultural Revolution, putting Class Struggle above the other foundations of Marxism, rather than alongside. Ie, you can’t just kill Capitalists or sieze their assets to turn a largely underdeveloped economy into a developed and complex publicly owned one, you have to develop into one, and that requires a more methodical approach that analyzes which firms are large or small, and which industries or sectors hold power over others.
If Marxism’s key observations of markets are “correct,” then centralization of markets are an almost assured bet, and as that happens, more and more industry can be publicly owned and planned directly, so the wealth inequality problem is one that almost fixes itself as long as the CPC continues to place a large emphasis on combatting corruption (which used to be a much bigger issue in the past) and directly appealing to the people via large programs like the Extreme Poverty Eradication Program.
because that goes against the concerns of the elites. the rich, who pay for the campaigns of most politicians (surely they pay for all of those who have a chance to win the post of president or prime minister), will try to squeeze every dime they can from everyone else, specially from the poor.
small to medium business won’t thrive because that would be another entrant in the market to split profits with the larger, more established business. they have already large advantages because they purchase raw materials and utilities in bulk, hence they can get a lower price and larger profit margins than the smaller, newer entrants to the market. still, they want to be sure that everything remains like that and therefore have politicians to keep things that way. the idea that new business will make a difference in well-established markets is an illusion.
as for property supply, well, land in our system is not a resource, but a commodity. take the real estate market for example: investors are buying property to serve as a financial asset, they buy houses when they’re cheap, rent them and sell for a profit when the market conditions are good for that. they don’t think of housing as something that should serve their primary purpose - as the place of living for families. they don’t want to lose value on their properties, and that’s why they have politicians to represent their interests and keep things the way they are. same logic applies in big cities where investors buy commercial buildings and don’t want to see them not valued enough - by not having people actually working on them. that’s why they’re so radically against remote jobs.
why don’t rulers see as clearly as you? are they stupid, these most powerful men in the world?
CGP grey made a pretty interesting video about this:
CGP Grey is bad ass!
Because there is no profit it helping the poor.
Brazil is currently fighting to increase the income tax of the top earners. I don’t expect it to pass because congress and senate are, by and large, protector of the interests of the wealthy.
Because the rich just pay politics to provide the law they want to have.
You know who has the government’s ear? Ultra rich people. And they feed the legislators the horror scenario that higher taxes would mean they take their money and all their business and all the jobs attached to those to somewhere with lower taxes. And then they won’t get more in tax revenue while at the same time increasing benefits spending. It’s the billionaires’ lose/lose scenario. It’s a powerful narrative. The only way to fix this is to have all countries adopt similar tax codes. And that is about as likely as Putin getting the Nobel Peace Prize.
Well, Putin is indeed very unlikely to get the Nobel Peace Price but not because war or not, Obama got it despite waging something like 13 wars including few blatant full-scale invasions.
Maybe he should try to bomb the Nobel comittee itself, who knows, maybe that would impress them.
Obama benefited from being barely in office in 2009 when he got the prize. I imagine the committee in Oslo regretted their decision later.
If my glib comparison is what you jump onto here, then have at it and virtue signal to your heart’s content.
It’s not really that powerful, nor is it likely what billionaires are peddling to the politicians. Where would the billionaires go with lower taxes and yet the same secure standard of living? What’s to stop the politicians from raising taxes to 0.1% lower than these mythical low-tax countries with the stability and infrastructure to support their companies? That’s just the bullshit story that is fed to the public.
In reality it’s just what Elon is doing, but historically has been done more privately. “Prop up my business with low taxes, lax regulations, and tasty government contracts or I’ll spend $100M supporting a primary opponent.” And the politicians say “Ok give my
wifespouse a board position or something and we can deal.”I would say the powerfulness of the narrative remains strong. The big corporations find ways to the cheapest way of doing business like most rivers find the sea. It doesn’t have to be switching from a developed country with socialist tax code going to a developing country where labor is cheap. You can see it in the microcosm of the EU. The Republic of Ireland has favorable taxes and a less harsh data security watchdog so big tech companies headquarter there. Amazon sits in Luxembourg for similar reasons. Wages are cheaper in the East so manufacturing jobs tend to move there (or, sadly, the workforce moves west and gets paid cents on the Euro working in Central and Western Europe). If a government increases labor costs by demanding more benefits for workers, you reach a tipping point where companies pack up and move. Not all at once but after a while the creek becomes a river. That’s the spectre haunting Europe these days. It’s not just about a billionaire wealth tax, it’s also about the levies in employment, etc. They all need to be similar in the tax codes for the equal playing field the EU apparatus idealizes. When they’re not you move the mountain range out of the way for the river to find the sea more directly.
Trump’s terrific tariffs are supposed to create a pull effect, making the US attractive to manufacturing jobs. I think he will fail because be will drive up the cost of living so much that market demand will not rise along with his expectations, making investing in factories in the US ultimately not enticing enough. Never mind the fact that corporations fear uncertainty more than the Beelzebub.
In the current pseudo-capitalist world economy, the rich do help in pushing a circular economy, in a variety of industries. If the rich are too taxed they’ll more easily leave the country and move elsewhere. Your country loses a lot of its GDP. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem, but it’s also how the government of today runs, where everything is run on credit and paid for later.
Lean-governments are possible, but in such a case a government can never spend more than its GDP produces. No government would go that way right now, mainly because people aren’t educated enough to make a decent argument for it, verbally or otherwise.
Your country either welcomes the rich, or answers to the IMF.
In summary//TL;DR: In a credit-based, credit-ran, loan-promised economy, greatly successful small and medium businesses are not enough to keep GDP high enough to pay off national debt.
