The many vague, and poorly thought up economic policies of the far left.

Gergar12

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Why are so many left-wing taxation policies so bad?

A universal or even rich-based unrealized gains tax would mean layoffs, a decrease in retirement funds for public employees, a decrease in 401K amounts, and a retirement dependent entirely on social security while fewer people are being born across the world, and in the US every year. Say your condo or starter house increases from 200K to 400K because of rising housing costs and you don’t want to rent because landlords are bad, We’ll have fun paying $50,000 if a 25% unrealized gains tax were to be passed. That is insane. Same with ETFs, 401ks, and mutual funds (you’re an idiot if you buy one; voluntary ETFs are better). Even if you constrain it to the top 1% or 100 million dollar net worth, which I doubt, the policy will just be the top 1% as income tax was originally meant for rich people, and now everyone, including people making 30 thousand dollars a year (me since my contract role ended, and I quit my toxic first job), has no insurance before Obamacare, a crappy bronze plan with Obamacare, and also no Medicaid because you make too much to qualify and have to pay for it. But for this argument, let’s say it’s limited to the top 1%. What do you think will happen to the economy, and the value of stocks when rich people sell them and buy paintings, watches, gold bars, or whatever? The stock values go down, people lose their retirement, and some lose their jobs. I have saved up around 7K, mostly in ETFs (VOO, SPY, JMOM, QQQ, etc.) at age 27. Yes, I know I should have invested more and spent less on video games. ETFs are my retirement plan, and I will add more to them as the years go on, not US social security, which depends on people making babies, and US immigration. US immigration gets cut after every Republican administration. How do I know that? Because my mom had longer waiting times for the family green card in the Bush administration vs. the Obama administration for my aunt. Bush and Trump’s Department of Homeland Security Security, plus Social Security, needed a congress willing to raise the cap on taxing income past a certain point from high earners to fund it, which is at 168,600.

A 44.6% capital gains tax has a few of the same problems. Due to the vagueness of Kamala Harris’s policy proposals, I don’t know the specifics. If it enables houses to be sold if that’s the only house you own, I and many Americans would be fine with it, if not, then the housing market gets worse, and no one sells their house, condo, townhouse, or home, and over 50% of Americans are homeowners. But I don’t know so let’s assume yes. Well, that just means no one will want to sell their stocks and take out their dividends, and the rich can still borrow against assets and have low interest rates to fund their lifestyle choices. A dumb move indeed.

A higher income tax bracket in a progressive income tax. It was a dumb idea since the ultra-rich again borrowed against their assets like stocks and real estate. You’re only going to be taxing upper middle-class doctors, lawyers, and software engineers, not the owners of companies that employ those people.

A ticket is based on a percentage of your income. Again, that doesn’t stop deaths. Everyone will still speed because people in a heated moment aren’t thinking well. If I speed up this amount, there’s x risk that I can tax my percentage of income. By the way, it didn’t work in Sweden, and people still speed.

Again, most of these would have no long-term or medium-term impact on me; however, some of you will find a way to personally attack me because I disagree with your political ideology, which holds that stocks are gambling, left-wing economics, and so on. Stocks are where you buy a share in a company, and ETFs are buying a fraction of a share in many companies.

A wealth tax, again vague, could apply to human capital, which means you have a college degree or other education; let’s tax you on it, personal belongings (taxing your PS5, PC, Book collection, comic book collection, and other goods). But for the sake of argument, let’s not go into that and assume it’s real estate minus your home, a car for each person, no boats, and no personal belongings. So painting, stocks, gold bars, personal businesses, more homes, additional cars, etc. And let’s say the US military strongarmed every country and made it global because, why not, let’s make it over 1 billion dollars in net worth to be taxed as if that wouldn’t be passed down to ordinary people like the income tax was. Great. This means the rich will have more consumption, more going to restaurants, more plane trips, chartered private jet planes, and if you do it to non-upper class people, good luck creating a savings-based country. Aaaaand theirs goes the 2050 climate goals due to increased consumption.

Luxury goods tax, guess which sectors will fall. Also, many luxury goods end up in the future and, due to economies of scale, turn into normal goods. So, I know many people are thinking communism, socialism, social democracy, or progressivism when there is no iPhone, but yeah. I want the AR glasses from Apple not to be 3000 dollars, and remote work technology to be better so we don’t have climate change killing people. Well, there goes the innovation for that.

Tips not being taxed; every company will then proceed to pay their employees ZERO dollars in salary, and 100% in tips. Or if you can’t do that, guess whose bonus will get paid in tips. Again, many tipped workers make more than those at the bottom of the economic totem pole in the US retail and cooking. Why not help those people?

Also, I do support universal single-payer healthcare (not the NHS, but a higher-funded Canadian model), universal higher education in public universities, trade schools, and community colleges (I went to OSU a public university, and a community college, which would mean more people competing against me, by the way), and universal pre-kindergarten, and childbirth subsidies.
 

tippy2k2

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Nobody has any money, companies are laying people off while making record profits, retirement funds are being slashed and cut (how many of you still get a pension at your job?), and nobody can afford to put money into their 401K (see the "nobody has any money" item).

All that shit is already happening (while we all get to sit here on the outside looking in as Bezos buys another $500,000,000,000 Yacht) so fuck it, let's at least try to do something different and see what happens, if for any other reason the novelty. Along with that, all that universal stuff you claim you're for has to be paid for somehow and what better way than to tax people with more money than some small countries GDPs?
 

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Also, I do support universal single-payer healthcare (not the NHS, but a higher-funded Canadian model), universal higher education in public universities, trade schools, and community colleges (I went to OSU a public university, and a community college, which would mean more people competing against me, by the way), and universal pre-kindergarten, and childbirth subsidies.
You have to cut the ridiculous healthcare costs for public healthcare. I would be fine with 2 years of post high school education, anything more than that really shouldn't be required, get rid of all the bogus college courses that you are forced to take to get a "well rounded" education. Similar to healthcare, the price for college is so inflated, that's the root cause, not that the fact that it's not "free". I don't understand pre-k or the point of it (besides people wanting school even earlier to act as daycare). When I went to school, kindergarten was optional. I say let kids be kids for the short time they can just be kids and play outside without much care in the world (before school starts). IIRC, I remember seeing something about how pre-k doesn't actually help kids grades/test scores anyway.
 

Gergar12

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Nobody has any money, companies are laying people off while making record profits, retirement funds are being slashed and cut (how many of you still get a pension at your job?), and nobody can afford to put money into their 401K (see the "nobody has any money" item).

All that shit is already happening (while we all get to sit here on the outside looking in as Bezos buys another $500,000,000,000 Yacht) so fuck it, let's at least try to do something different and see what happens, if for any other reason the novelty. Along with that, all that universal stuff you claim you're for has to be paid for somehow and what better way than to tax people with more money than some small countries GDPs?
Bro 24ish percent of Americans are millionaires by net worth. Companies are laying people off because of outsourcing to India, the Philippines, and other lower-income countries relative to the US, as well as low interest rates. Retirement funds are being slashed at private firms vs. public firms for teachers, civil servants, etc. You can just buy ETFs, and hunt for a job while you have one. Nobody can put money into 401Ks due to supply chains being disrupted, so higher grocery bills, higher interest rates which stop borrowing, etc.

As someone who is semi-frugal, I don't always go out to eat, and when I do, I don't go to the most expensive restaurants. When people get a raise, they should upgrade their lifestyles in terms of food, healthcare, education, and the necessities, but you don't need an expensive car or a mansion. As for working-class people, don't join retail unless you have been trained in a trade; don't join warehousing unless you have been trained in a trade, and don't join the restaurant cooking industry unless you have been trained. Those sectors are horrid. Go to community college, or do a trade if you can only work with your hands in things like HVAC. There are Pell Grants and subsidized loan programs for increased education.

Taxes for some of this could include a VAT tax, a smoking tax, an alcohol tax, and my favorite, the carbon tax.
 

tippy2k2

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Bro 24ish percent of Americans are millionaires by net worth. Companies are laying people off because of outsourcing to India, the Philippines, and other lower-income countries relative to the US, as well as low interest rates. Retirement funds are being slashed at private firms vs. public firms for teachers, civil servants, etc. You can just buy ETFs, and hunt for a job while you have one. Nobody can put money into 401Ks due to supply chains being disrupted, so higher grocery bills, higher interest rates which stop borrowing, etc.

As someone who is semi-frugal, I don't always go out to eat, and when I do, I don't go to the most expensive restaurants. When people get a raise, they should upgrade their lifestyles in terms of food, healthcare, education, and the necessities, but you don't need an expensive car or a mansion. As for working-class people, don't join retail unless you have been trained in a trade; don't join warehousing unless you have been trained in a trade, and don't join the restaurant cooking industry unless you have been trained. Those sectors are horrid. Go to community college, or do a trade if you can only work with your hands in things like HVAC. There are Pell Grants and subsidized loan programs for increased education.

Taxes for some of this could include a VAT tax, a smoking tax, an alcohol tax, and my favorite, the carbon tax.
Ooooooooooh

You're a "Why can't all these poor people just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, stop having so much avocado toast and stop being poor" kind of person

I suppose that should have been obvious in retrospect
 

Agema

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When I think of "many, vague and poorly thought up", it's an apt description of Gergar12's posts when he's in one of his more excitable moods.
 

Gergar12

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Ooooooooooh

You're a "Why can't all these poor people just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, stop having so much avocado toast and stop being poor" kind of person

I suppose that should have been obvious in retrospect
The democratization of finance in financial technology applications or apps on your phone, or fintech, is a good thing, and it means no one buys costly mutual funds anymore, and rich millennials tend to buy S&P500 ETFs or sector ETFs (VOO, SPY). Granted, I used my surplus money to buy crypto, assuming it would end up like Dogecoin in ten years (Shiba Inu coin), and I have never sold a stock and put it back into my bank account due to compound interest, and taxes. The rest is in individual stocks, and most of that is in ETFs.

With how much growth has been in the stock market, you have got to be insane not to invest in it if you have the means, and on Robinhood, you can put like 5 dollars and get a portion of VOO in your stock portfolio. Just a pro-tip as an IT guy too, do 2FA and use Bitwarden to create a complex password. It's what I do. And no I have not been paid for any of this.

Also, avocados are very cheap in the US (thanks to Mexico), just buy one, cut it in half, and use a spoon to spread it on bread.

Being poor is fixable through so many means, mental illnesses like mine have treatments and drugs; Medicaid covers most healthcare, and depression is being solved with transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS. Heck, we are about to get a radical life extension treatment. But you don't want to work in retail or make 15 dollars an hour or $30,000 a year since you don't get Medicaid.


What I am trying to get at is that you can Google query or prompt engineer ways to uplift yourself, Chatgpt-4o is even free at 10 uses per 4 hours if you want.

Also, with ETFs, if the S&P500 (VOO and SPY), or the total US stock market (VTI) fails, you have bigger problems to worry about than money.

The biggest obstacle is housing, skills, and maybe healthcare.

Edit: Also like raise the min wage.
 
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Gergar12

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Aaaaaand there are no concrete policy ideas. I don't like the idea of electing a president solely based on vibes. What do they stand for?
 

Agema

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The democratization of finance in financial technology applications or apps on your phone, or fintech, is a good thing, and it means no one buys costly mutual funds anymore, and rich millennials tend to buy S&P500 ETFs or sector ETFs (VOO, SPY).
Is it?

Research strongly suggests that the people who beat the market average trading are precisely those large, managed funds. They're exactly the people to go to to grow your savings. And then, if someone's beating the market average, other people are underperforming... and they are small investors. These guys are the sort of crypto bros who spend a few months boasting about how much they've made off Dogecoin or Ethereum on social media until the inevitable post where they bawl about how they're going to have to explain to their wife that they've lost a huge ton of the family savings in a market crash.

Effectively, this sort of trading is for small investors very close to gambling. Democratising it means more people gambling, from which more and more of them will - on balance - lose. Whilst big finance will be overjoyed to collect their winnings.
 
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Silvanus

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Why have you titled the thread referring to the "far left", then spent the post criticising a bunch of mild middle-of-the-road policies and Harris proposals?
 

Agema

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Why have you titled the thread referring to the "far left", then spent the post criticising a bunch of mild middle-of-the-road policies and Harris proposals?
Psychological self-preparation to vote Republican.
 
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Gergar12

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Is it?

Research strongly suggests that the people who beat the market average trading are precisely those large, managed funds. They're exactly the people to go to to grow your savings. And then, if someone's beating the market average, other people are underperforming... and they are small investors. These guys are the sort of crypto bros who spend a few months boasting about how much they've made off Dogecoin or Ethereum on social media until the inevitable post where they bawl about how they're going to have to explain to their wife that they've lost a huge ton of the family savings in a market crash.

Effectively, this sort of trading is for small investors very close to gambling. Democratising it means more people gambling, from which more and more of them will - on balance - lose. Whilst big finance will be overjoyed to collect their winnings.
Again, just buy the boring index funds if you want risk-free growth.

Why have you titled the thread referring to the "far left", then spent the post criticising a bunch of mild middle-of-the-road policies and Harris proposals?
I suspect these proposals come from her left-wing staffers, or at the very least were done to appease the far left, and they aren't in the in the in the middle of the road. Even a 44.6% capital gain would eventually mean layoffs. Also, an unrealized gains tax would trickle down to consumers like the income tax, it's moving the Overton window, and even if it doesn't it could crash the economy, and again mean layoffs, and retirements going down.

Psychological self-preparation to vote Republican.
I don't even think my vote matters, I am in Ohio for one, and that state is solidly red.
 

Bedinsis

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I don't even think my vote matters, I am in Ohio for one, and that state is solidly red.
The way I see it, my vote might just be a drop in the ocean, but the ocean consists of drops.
 
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Silvanus

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I suspect these proposals come from her left-wing staffers, or at the very least were done to appease the far left, and they aren't in the in the in the middle of the road. Even a 44.6% capital gain would eventually mean layoffs. Also, an unrealized gains tax would trickle down to consumers like the income tax, it's moving the Overton window, and even if it doesn't it could crash the economy, and again mean layoffs, and retirements going down.
The American Overton window is stuck obstinately far to the right, so moving it is well and good.

All these arguments are essentially around the idea that if the government raises money from corporate profit margins, then those corporations will take it out on their employees and consumers. But here's the thing: they lay people off and raise prices even when their profits soar. You cannot just leave them to hoard their wealth for fear that they'll abuse people if you try to tax them-- that's essentially self-blackmail.

The gov needs money to function. It needs a lot more of it if its to tackle the gigantic challenges to earthly life. And most of it is in the corporate pipeline-- billions upon billions benefitting a relatively tiny handful of people as they gamble and feather their nests. Fucking tap it, so it can actually contribute a damn thing. And if we fear the corpos abusing employees and consumers through price gouging or unfair layoffs, then legislate against that.
 
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Gergar12

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The American Overton window is stuck obstinately far to the right, so moving it is well and good.

All these arguments are essentially around the idea that if the government raises money from corporate profit margins, then those corporations will take it out on their employees and consumers. But here's the thing: they lay people off and raise prices even when their profits soar. You cannot just leave them to hoard their wealth for fear that they'll abuse people if you try to tax them-- that's essentially self-blackmail.

The gov needs money to function. It needs a lot more of it if its to tackle the gigantic challenges to earthly life. And most of it is in the corporate pipeline-- billions upon billions benefitting a relatively tiny handful of people as they gamble and feather their nests. Fucking tap it, so it can actually contribute a damn thing. And if we fear the corpos abusing employees and consumers through price gouging or unfair layoffs, then legislate against that.
60% of people have investments in the stock market, and 10% of the population owns 93% of the stocks, but only 66.3% of the wealth is controlled by the 10%. Which again means people should invest smarter. Also, I did mention carbon taxes.

The way I see it, my vote might just be a drop in the ocean, but the ocean consists of drops.
The US has an electoral college system. You have less voting power if you don't live in a swing state.
 

tippy2k2

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Which again means people should invest smarter.
Nobody has any money, companies are laying people off while making record profits, retirement funds are being slashed and cut (how many of you still get a pension at your job?), and nobody can afford to put money into their 401K (see the "nobody has any money" item).
Taps my own post
 

Gergar12

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Taps my own post
Well, you have to fight. You have to keep moving forward. No one is going to just give you 40–50K a year in living stipends unless you're already rich. I can tell you right now that every single member of my family, even those in China relative to my age, will outearn me, full-stop. Because they are neurotypical, and I am not. I am still going to fight to get a good-paying job. I just bombed an interview with an S&P500 company, I got the intro statement, and ending statement right for the interview, but my answers to the questions weren't good, and I likely won't pass into the next stage. Oh well, next interview, please.

Why would you want a life just staring at a phone, living in Section 8 housing, or just playing video games? That's not a life worth living.