[woot482]

My theory is that inequality is simply the result of globalization and it's not necessarily a bad thing.

If you had build the most successful retail business, in 1900 you would own the market in your town; in 1950 in your country; in 2020 you'd own the world (or a big part of it). The opportunity is just a lot bigger now than 50 years ago and that trickles down.

Also technology enables goods and services to be produced from everywhere; that means countries compete globally. Many 0.1%ers had to overcome global competition to make the money they're making. In addition, more and more of them can do it from anywhere (def true for entrepreneurs starting fully remote startups, for instance).

So there is both value and necessity in having to compete globally to attract the entrepreneurs and highest producers / best talent. Does it mean 0 tax? No. But it does mean you have to have reasonable taxes and offer a good product (security, laws, culture, talent, whatever it may be).

It also means you don't offend your best 'customers' all the time. All this talk about how 0.1% people essentially unfairly stole their way to their success won't want to make anyone pay more or stick around to higher tax place (city/state/country).

As a government you first want to be efficient with tax money; be reasonable with taxes, even if higher than average (but within the competitive ballpark); show appreciation for the people that end up paying most of your taxes; and stop talking about inequality as being exclusively a bad thing and a result of tax policy.

[macrael]

You might enjoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...

[aeternum]

Interesting, I think there is some truth to this. Making more from investments than you make at a day job is pretty demotivating.

Wouldn't raising the corporate tax rate further reduce economic growth though, making things worse instead of better?

[woot482]

I know the book and it's an interesting theory. I guess most of the 'rich' people I know / know of are entrepreneurs and they didn't get rich from capital returns but by building a company that created an unthinkable amount of value and also many jobs and success for a lot of people.

In my mind also, the best antidote to that is not taxes but anti-trust (make sure companies don't unfairly stay dominant) and low interest rates (which has been the case for a while) so that people without capital can borrow at reasonable cost.

Taxing a company doesn't make it less dominant. it can be argued that it makes it more dominant because the cost to compete with the dominant company will be higher if corp taxes are higher.

[pessimizer]

This is how imperialism works.

> If you had build the most successful retail business, in 1900 you would own the market in your town; in 1950 in your country; in 2020 you'd own the world (or a big part of it). The opportunity is just a lot bigger now than 50 years ago and that trickles down.

In 1900, thousands would own the markets in their respective towns, in 1950 dozens would own the the markets in their countries, and in 2020 one person would own the entire market. This is not trickling down, this is flooding up.

It's no different than being the big man in your small island culture before the British navy rolls in. If there are no protections in place to preserve you, you will disappear and the Empire will expand.

[woot482]

If you believe that, then your answer is anti-trust -- not taxes. You also need to cut all red tape for small businesses which right now are enormous especially in places like NYC (property taxes alone are a travesty).

All taxes do is make the government a business partner of the 'imperialist' entrepreneur. It won't bring back the small town businesses or anything else about the past that you idealize.

[Nullabillity]

Antitrust is an intended outcome, progressive taxation is one way to (try to) accomplish it.

[nicoburns]

What about progressive taxation: taxing larger companies more?

[tootie]

Inequality is simply inherent to capitalism. The free flow of capital, goods and labor will always see concentration happening. The issue is that it should be very possible to eliminate true poverty with reasonable redistribution policy. Capitalism (and Industrialization) have gotten us tantalizing close to a post-scarcity economy. We still need the last 1/3 or so of the world to get on the trolley while addressing our growing ecological crises. Both of which are hard problems to solve, but at this point we actually probably have all the ammunition we need if we can just summon the will. We can reach a point where we still have some absurdly wealthy people, but everyone else down the ladder has food, shelter, health care and dignity available at all times.

[elliekelly]

> Inequality is simply inherent to capitalism.

I can’t say for certain whether or not this is true but I really don’t think it is. The entire premise of capitalism is that we’re all better off through specialization and trade. It’s the _very_first_thing Adam Smith writes in The Wealth of Nations.

We use the word “inequality” a lot at the moment but I think, in some ways, it’s a bit of a misnomer because the true issue the term “inequality” attempts to describe is that people aren’t getting the “better off” end of the deal that capitalism promises. For a lot of people participating in capitalism there isn’t any action in their set of available actions where they’re economically better off than they were before.

[godelski]

It sounds like you're just saying "pareto happens in any resource allocation scheme" which isn't specifically inherit to capitalism and is kinda just what happens when people have resources. I'm not convinced that people can live without resources. Sure, there are concerns when the distribution becomes too long tailed, but what you're describing is inherit to any system (we haven't seen a system where this hasn't happened). Stop creating a boogieman, let's have a good faith conversation instead.

[tootie]

I did not at any point imply that inequality was unique to Capitalism. And I'm not sure what you mean "live without resources". My point is that we have enough resources for everyone to live well even if some people have much more than others. I'm not trying to blame Capitalism for anything. I'm actually trying to say that we can achieve stability and social justice without having to abandon it. We just need a modicum of Socialist policy sprinkled in.

[godelski]

In the current climate the way you phrased things comes off very similarly to the common "capitalism bad, socialism good" argument that lacks a lot of nuance between those opinions. The specificity of capitalism in your statement seems fairly irrelevant to what you have expanded upon, and this likely will just lead to fighting (and I suspect is the reason for your downvotes). It definitely comes off as if you are trying to blame capitalism for the problem, but that may not have been your intent and just that I (many of us?) am primed this way. So I'm trying to pull the conversation away from this "Capitalism v Socialism" argument because it is difficult to have a real conversation when we even approach this framing, even on HN these conversations divulge to a race to the bottom really quickly.

FWIW I don't think the majority of people reject the idea that we need some amounts of regulation, some amounts of social policy/protection, etc. The argument is how much, but we use bad terms to discuss this and definitions people refuse to agree on nor recognize that others are using different definitions.