[Apreche]

In a K shaped economy, there is no success in making quality goods at reasonable prices. There’s no middle class to buy them. You can make luxury goods for wealthy customers who do not care about price, or you can make absolute garbage to sell to the masses in bulk.

If you want to bring back quality goods and services, end wealth inequality. Tax the rich.

[brk]

FWIW, I was with you until the "Tax the rich" bit. Considering how many people the average "rich" person employs, they are generating plenty of tax revenue.

[LastTrain]

So you are saying - make the poor pay taxes for the rich?

[brk]

Not quite sure how you got that out of my comment, but no. In the US at least, those classified as poor have a very low tax burden, in many cases they pay $0, or close to $0 in federal taxes after standard deductions.

[smallmancontrov]

US taxes are wildly regressive. Last time Elon's taxes came up, I calculated that he pays taxes at about 1% the rate that I do (and most of us here do). Crazy!

[LastTrain]

You said the rich already generate tax revenue by creating jobs, but now you are saying those job holders hardly pay any taxes at all?

[vjvjvjvjghv]

I think "Tax the rich" is the wrong slogan. What we need is to incentivize sharing the progress we are making in terms of productivity widely instead of all the benefits going to a few. For example some people are talking about giving company shares to all workers. This would align the incentives for all workers in the company to do better and then benefiting instead of just the top few percent.

I wonder if this could be achieved by changing the tax code.

[smallmancontrov]

The moment tax policy goes into a wonky side alley it can be bought and paid for. Frontal assault is the only strategy that can possibly work for this one.

[thesuitonym]

It'll trickle down this time for sure.

[smallmancontrov]

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a leather boot? I'm thinking brk here might just be able to tell us the answer!

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

Geez, the rich already take credit for the things their employees do...and now you want to give them credit for the taxes their employees paid too! Wild!

[vjvjvjvjghv]

It's kind of weird. There is a lot of propaganda that says

* rich people spending money==great investment into the economy and we need to give them more so they make the economy even better

* poor people spending money==mindless consumption, it's a bad idea to give them money because they are wasting it anyways

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

Yep, and you see a similar thing with government spending and presumption of waste.

Sure, government spending can be wasteful. But it's also generally going into the economy. It's buying stuff from companies who use the revenue to pay their employees and supply chains. It's paying government employees who spend their pay on places to live, food to eat, entertainment, etc. Some folks act like that money disappears. Waste or not, governments aren't generally hoarding cash, they're spending it.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

The problem is that a lot of the money doesn't go towards the people/causes it was intended to go but into the pockets of well connected middlemen.