this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Lefty Memes
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
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Were you not suggesting we require all the tax breaks over the last however many years be paid back in full? If not I just have been mixing you up with one of the other dozens of far left crazies I've been chatting with.
If you just want to repeal tax breaks that didn't have a guaranteed life that hasn't been reached yet, then that's fine I would probably agree to it depending on the side effects it might cause the middle and lower classes.
You realize your ideas that are also being suggested by most people here are radical, right? Radical left is a thing, and this place is overflowing with it.
It's one thing to suggest doing something about the cuts, but most here don't think that's nearly enough, proposing literal theft and preventing movement outside the country. I would argue it's just as insane here as it is in far right circles, just a different kind of insane.
Radical according to basically the whole country of the USA.
I mean we are talking about a US issue, so yeah it does matter what the US thinks on US issues, and it really doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks.
There aren't many countries out there who don't have a history of that stuff, I don't see why the issues of the past matter at all in this scenario.
It is radical though, especially given the context.
Nobody is actually suggesting income tax brackets here, they are suggesting taxing loans and taxing wealth. The things being suggested here have never been done, and yes they are radical because nobody had been crazy enough to implement these ideas ever in the whole history of the US.
Most of the wealth these billionaires have is ownership in their own companies, to take away that ownership because it's worth too much according to the stock market is insane
Why do you think stock has value? It's because it's a piece of ownership of the company. Yes it's a way for the company to get some capital, but it's also the way for private company owners to cash in on their company being successful.
Why is being paid in ownership insane? It's directly tied to the performance of the company, if the company does well the stock does well, and it's incentive to drive the company in the right direction to reward employees of all levels with stock.
It's insane to tax this ownership, it's not worth the amount it looks like. If an owner had to sell their stock, the stock value would plummet not only because of the huge uptick in supply of stock available to trade, but because the person running the company now has little to no stake in the success of the company.
You know who this also screws over? All the middle class people trying to retire on their stock values going up. You tax wealth, stock values will plummet, and there goes the middle class retirement, no thanks!
Of course I know what hedge funds are, and that people manage them. It's all about actively buying and selling stocks, bonds, and options.
You can call it a terrible retirement vehicle if you want, but it's literally how the middle class is able to retire. From 401k, to Roth IRA, to other much every other retirement account available to the middle class, it's based on stocks, and it's worked well for a ton of people.
It only bankrupts idiots like those on /r/wallstreetbets or those who put all their money into one stock. Yes the market may go down, and it may go down a lot, but that's not going to make you bankrupt unless you make extremely dumb choices.
Luckily most retirement plans come with a target date fund, which is an easy way to diversify and get basically guaranteed gains.
Also, it's the only retirement the middle class has, so you can't destroy it.