by hayst4ck | 2025-05-10 07:29:30+00:00
Stock buybacks are a theft from the future. That's money not being spent on R&D, so it's another clear example of short term-ism. You see problems, but who do you think is going to solve those with what resources?

> 5% where all real income gains have gone.

Yes that's because wages are proportional to power, not output, and because poor people are getting poorer and rich getting richer, the power gap is widening resulting in fewer captured gains by those actually doing the work.

> I do not want redistribution; America is equality of opportunity not outcomes.

The problem with being against wealth distribution is two fold. One, and the more important part, is that you have to stop people from having too much, because having too much creates "too big to fail" situations which allow single individuals to compromise the government and be above the law. This was the age of robber barrons. Are you arguing we should support robber barrons?

The second, less important reason, is that people who have a better start early in life are able to contribute more taxes/more to the economy later in life. Today's poor people are tomorrows drug addicts and criminals or potentially entrepreneurs and scientists and money can influence that significantly. Many anti wealth redistribution people are pro nuclear family people, but money issues and overwork/stress break up families. Jesus, which many of those people also claim to be followers of, was very pro wealth redistribution.

Public schools are literally wealth redistribution, the most important kind. Do you really want to be in a country where it's the rule rather than the exception that people who cant do basic algebra can vote on tax policy?

> It's politically unsellable smacking of far left politics.

So it's wrong because it's left politics, but not wrong because it's a bad idea? Do you see how your description of it being wrong shows you're playing team sports. For you left and wrong are so close semantically that they're basically the same word which is why you don't realize how intellectually bankrupt that statement is. Everything conservatives claim to love, the teachings of Jesus and the constitution are extremely left ideals. Freedom isn't free is born out of left philosophy even though right wing people tend to be the ones saying it.

> I could not care less that some guy has $10M or $10B.

You really really really should. If a congress person costs 10M to compromise/primary/bribe/etc, the the guy with 10M guy can at most compromise one, while the 10B guy can compromise 1,000 of them. The 10B guy can buy a news Channel, the 10M guy can buy a commercial... The 10B guy can start a surveillance company in Palo Alto that makes use of all the pervasive surveillance collected from virtually everywhere and use it to support the politicians they prefer. The 10B guy can buy a social media company that algorithmically controls the political content people are exposed to.

> I damn sure want the upper 15% + all corporations to pay the same percentage of taxes per dollar I do.

The military, police, and social programs all contribute vastly disproportionately to their wealth.

> I'm near the top end

Well at least your point of view makes sense.

> Apple was Irish in some sense for tax purposes

But you have trouble connecting the dots that it's because they are an extremely rich corporation that they are able to buy or otherwise coerce themselves into being above the law?

> Congress is going to have to get off its butt and do something

Yet if they do, those 10B dollar citizens decide to devote their resources to primary-ing them in order to ensure a climate of de-regulation. Trump is literally in power to enact a policy written by the heritage foundation meant to "put government workers in trauma to prevent them from enacting regulation against oil companies." Literally stated like that. That's literally what the head of the OMB said.

The whole last statement alone doesn't make any sense and ignores America's history.