| > This is likely to be an outdated statistic at best. If you go back three or four genenerations, you will find yourself passing through a time when the US had very high inheritance taxes and a 90% top marginal tax rate. That period of time did likely prevent the formation of dynasties across it. However, those policies have since been repealed and current studies show very low social mobility and a significant increase in dynastic formation. [1, 2] How is it possible that you can dismiss my claims for being too long ago, and then cite claims on dynastic formation made today? Surely, in order to make the latter claim, you would need to wait equally long into the future as my claims were into the past? Would you look at my family, which has risen exponentially from poverty and claim we're forming a dynasty? How could you possible know it's a dynasty until I'm dead and my children inherit? I don't believe the tax policy argument is satisfying. The studies show that the wealth dissipates due to squandering, not taxation. Even with a 90% income tax, these heirs still get millions and millions (likely billions in todays dollars), and yet still lose it all. > The environmental degradation - in climate change - threatens to upend what gains there have been made in destitution and the current system is completely failing to respond appropriately to the threat. So the great likelihood is that if we stay with the same system on the same trendline, there's a cliff coming in our near future. Even the worst models of climate change do not predict the catastrophic ends you are attempting to paint. You're just distracting from the issue at this point. In general, I find doomsday predictions unvaluable. Nevertheless, i'm not going to fall for this change in goalposts. > Systems that haven't been tried in macro yet, but are working just fine in micro - for example the move to universal worker cooperatives funded by credit unions and crowd sourcing that I propose So... a free market? There is nothing incompatible with the system we have and worker's cooperatives. Although I will say credit unions have proven just as dangerous and capable of malfeasance as banks (Savings and Loans Crisis of the 80s, which everyone seems to forget for some reason). > We can always do better. Sure, we can improve some things in my hierarchy of needs by following down our current path, which, unlike your changes, is empirically shown to improve material conditions. This idea that because the current system hasn't made everyone's life better overnight, it must be replaced, is foolish. Some people have this constant drive to change things. Doing nothing is also a choice. And often a good one. |
Yes. Yes they do. [1] That, and climate reality has so far been worse than our worst case models in many respects. [2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/m...
[2] https://www.haaretz.com/science-and-health/global-warming-is...
Anyway, we could keep going, but we've been at this all morning so it's probably best to let it lie. I feel comfortable I've made my point well enough, and I think you've made yours. I think we're unlikely to make further progress in a low bandwidth media.
I dunno, maybe if/when I write the book I dream of I'll be able to address more of your points in more detail and with more data and you'll find that more convincing than I can be reactively writing forum posts. Until then, I've appreciated the dialog.