Should the richest 1% – who gained $42T/decade – be taxed more?
business-standard.com
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I don't want the ultra rich to have some special mega-tax to tax them for their obscene wealth. I want their effective income to be taxed the same as all these middle class people pay. As it keeps cropping up, they pay much less, via offshore wealth, accounting tricks etc.
I don't know enough about accounting to suggest how this should be done, but to me this ought to be the objective, not some punitive tax, referring to starving children in poor countries.
I have moved from a high tax society(Sweden) to a low tax society and I prefer it.
My point is rather that I want the millionaires to pay the same tax, not some special different one. We already have a social contract saying what people are supposed to pay.
(It's a bit more complicated, but this table is a baseline)
I would gladly pay 600k a year in taxes if it meant healthcare, education, housing, and food were secured for all.
Let me keep 20% of my work for luxuries I like, but the fact that I'm only paying like 20% is fucking criminal while people are starving in this country.
I recognize I'm differently wired and have different values than most, but like, there has to be a line between 20% and 80% tax rate that we can live with.
>I would gladly pay 600k a year in taxes if it meant healthcare, education, housing, and food were secured for all.
Don't be obtuse by saying "give it away".
It's also not mutually exclusive. I can and do give away huge sums until those taxes go up.
I'm buying land and putting it into conservation, giving to community land trusts, and other ways that essentially make permanent changes towards the world I want to live in.
This person is saying "I will cooperate in a prisoner's dilemma, if and only if I can arrange a binding agreement by which others cooperate too", and a bunch of people are replying "then go ahead and cooperate; let the rest of us be free to defect"!
(By the way... uh... what do you do to earn $750k? As someone earning about 1/20th of that amount, I'm curious for some pointers).
If some of it is assets (stock), I firmly believe that should be taxed differently than earned cash wages.
The sanest solution is to simply preserve cost bases for inherited assets.
I am very troubled when people who proclaim to be liberal move here—an area with high potential—to “strike it rich”, do so, and then immediately fuck off to another state where they can sell their vested shares without paying CA tax rates. CA does try to claw back avoided taxes from the worst offenders of this, but mostly they only go after people who move out on paper but still lead lives here.
One of the biggest problems though is that bumping marginal rates doesn’t affect the ultra-rich, who use tax-avoidance schemes like loans against invested assets to live off extreme wealth with nearly zero taxable income.
Losing out on a house bid as an American citizen to an undocumented migrant thanks to this policy, truly the type of stuff only a CA politician could come up with.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/california-democrats...
We shouldn't have to decide between which of two humans gets housing. House all my neighbors.
But I cannot house the thousands of unhoused people in my city alone. I can provide housing for 2-5 of them at any given time.
That said, do you know what offering housing for a couple hundred bucks a month does for a struggling family? It fundamentally changes their ability to establish themselves. Build savings, escape poverty.
Edit: I'm not trying to signal or whatever by posting this. I have ethical beliefs about supporting one's local community and try not to be hypocritical about it. When people challenge me, suggesting I might be hypocritical ("why don't you spend your own money on it!") I try to respond with, "I do. And I see the changes it makes in real human lives."
But always as a response to someone trying to call me out, never unprompted.
Any equity the trust holds is from me or others putting in funds that are held solely for the purposes of providing housing for the community at cost.
My personal mortgage I do pay for, and I will be ceding whatever land I hold to that trust upon my death so that it can provide housing in perpetuity.
The only reason the land is not currently in the trust's hands is because I need the ability to move freely. I could arrange to sell the house to the trust, and lease it from the trust, but because there's a bank involved with my mortgage that gets more complex.
I assure you, I am not profiting from housing.
I read about someone who paid all his tenant's rent back to them after he became an anarchist or whatever. I crunched the numbers, and found out that for like 15k I could pay back every penny I had collected over maintenance, plus the appreciation of the principal. I sent out checks with amounts between $1500 and $4500, along with a note saying I didn't believe in rent any more.
I saw someone else do it, so I did it. Maybe someone on Hacker News will see my posts and do it too. Odds are small, but non zero.
I can tell you it made a material positive change in the lives of those people. That's a much better legacy than, "I died $15k richer" or "I went on vacation at a resort an extra time".
Alternatively, search for a "community land trust" in your area and discuss with them how you can manage your property upon your death.
This drops about fifty tiers down the stack of things I can manage to get myself seriously worked up over by actually reading the article.
I’m finding it pretty hard to find a lot of outrage over “taxpayers now eligible for government services”.
More importantly, how exactly is an undocumented immigrant paying taxes? Do they somehow have a tax ID or SSN without documentation? Or are you just referring to things like sales and fuel taxes?
So the immigrants are paying into the SS/medicare system, but they don't receive any of the benefits.
I think the solution to the housing problem is to increase supply. Not to try to prevent a whole group of people from being able to buy homes.
That seems totally reasonable if there's demand for more houses and the ability to build more.
Phrasing it as though people who already can't to buy a home are being prevented simply by not providing government assistance is a big disingenuous though. Preventing them implies that they could otherwise buy the home, and if that were the case a government program wouldn't be needed.
Also have you talked to any Gen Z or millennial? Most cannot afford housing, why in the world would you introduce even more demand for scarce housing?
And supporting migrants isn't introducing new demand, it's just exposing the demand that's there. Like, the migrants are there and they need housing.
The us vs them attitude is an artificial division. We can, and should build housing for all.
Communism is more radical than that, meaning cut out the middle man - no private sector at all. The government, or more accurately the people, own the economy collectively. Or that's the idea, implementation varies especially when you sprinkle in dictatorship.
A fantastic system, just ask the Soviet Union.
Well you pay for this stuff, your money goes to semi-private institutions like universities (healthcare, education) instead of bouncing through taxes first. This is non-tax compulsory payments (NTCP), no?
> housing, ...
Real estate is California's #1 industry, biggest sector in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and according to everyone, community regulations and tax-adjacent policies like Prop 13 are the biggest influence on housing prices. So you kind of do pay taxes, you are obligated by law to play by the housing rules there.
> food, ...
Government subsidies are the #1 source of profits for agribusinesses. Similar to saying Tesla's main source of profit was carbon credits. Kind of a junk analysis by one interpretation, kind of central to the business by another.
Anyway my point is the average person, according to some people, pays closer to 40% like many Europeans do, when you include orthodox defined NTCP. If you think deeply about how much you are forced to pay for by law or similar mechanisms, maybe it's higher.
You live in the world you want right now. NTCPs go to regular people too. University health systems are many states #1 employers. They are socialized in a way that matters. Maybe it isn't funded through taxes but do you see how that's kind of a moot point?
But also, I'm posting here in recognition that my politics aren't exactly common here. And that's ok!
Granted our media knows fuck-all about politics, but we have close to zero socialist politicians in the US. Nationalizing industries is wildly, wildly unpopular - practically unheard of.
Every industry listed does, actually, turn a profit in our current system. They are, truly, private - although regulated.
They might not be monopolies, they might not be nationalized, but functionally, they are like really effective monopolized community corporations.
Think about it from the other side: define nationalized corporation. What would make it last a long time? What would make it provide services effectively and competitive against imported goods and services? You get something that looks like university hospital systems, state university education systems, the real estate lobby, etc.
Nationalization in some reductionist sense doesn't work in the US for these industries because of the open market we live in - you can, after all, drive to another place for medicine and educations, and many people do. But the levers that are used to incentivize people to choose their local semi-private provider, and the way the communities are themselves employed / derive income from the provider, is holistically nationalization.
Ah yes all of this provided to you by Big Government, who can at a whim withdraw these services if you are found to engage in WrongThink.
We already have seen Western governments like Canada financially banning grandmothers who donated to a trucker protest or the UK imprisoning people for tweets.
Do you really want a bunch of DC politicians to have the power of life and death, not to mention access to swaths of capital that they will inevitably use to engorge and enrich themselves?
Your 600k in taxes will go into the pockets of various interest groups that markup their goods and services because they know Uncle Sam will foot the bill.
Ideally, no, it would be centralized in neither the wealthy nor the government. But I think "raise taxes" is an easier path to net good than "let's seize the factories and run federations of democratically run industries in the interest of the wellbeing of all".
Taxes should be fair for everyone of course. The original question was whether billionaires should pay more, and they should. The amount of money they have allows them to dodge the amount of taxes they truly owe. This gives them an unfair advantage over the rest of us, which only increases over time.
Here's the criteria: Your wealth level isn't enough for you to have an oversized power over society. People like Musk have and they are not elected by the people. This threatens democracy itself.
Untrue.
Everyone who bought a Tesla voted, with their dollars, to give Musk this wealth. Everyone who owns Tesla stock voted, with their dollars, to give Tesla this wealth. And everyone who voted, with their votes, for representatives that gave EV tax breaks voted to give Musk this wealth.
The man is rich because of economic and political cause and effect. Don't pretend the world that made Musk eye-bleedingly wealthy is somehow disconnected from the world of our collective actions.
You, personally, you can provide these things for people in need.
For example, I am in a similar financial situation. My family took in a Ukrainian refugee. We house, feed, clothe, and educate this refugee to provide one individual with exactly the things you bemoan others not having.
In your and my income bracket, it takes only caring enough and the true will to do something tangible for others.
For $300K of otherwise unused income you could support 4 people. So go support 4 people. And keep your hands and your politicians' hands off my finances.
In these income brackets, time is the only true coin. If he doesn't spend his time then he doesn't value the outcome.
Pretending that amassing wealth to produce good societal outcomes is efficient is how we get shit like FTX.
Just jump in.
I'm also passionate about growing food and giving it away.
Don't say, this person doesn't care/doesn't actually believe until you have evidence of that.
Highly recommended.
If a corporation "moves" oversees to avoid taxes, they aren't allowed to reap the benefits of the country whose taxes they wished to avoid.
If a billionaire moves to avoid taxes, they and their assets are cut off from the system whose taxes they wished to avoid. Oh, you want to move overseas but keep your money in banking institutions propped up by the US government? Too bad. You want your corporations to keep the full protection of the US government (intellectual capital protection, copyright, etc...)? Too bad! You want your company to take full advantage of all the US has to offer (great education system, a large consumer base, secure capital markets, a relatively stable government)? Too bad!
Most of these folks are just greedy fucks who know how good they have it...but somehow they want more, yet expect that people with exponentially less wealth will pay for it. I don't like that.
Note - the government isn't always the best at allocating capital or resources...but neither are private citizens or corporations.
His most important point though is that things will not get better until a sufficient mass of public political pressure is brought to bear on the issue.
Now, granted, I don't know that I have ever seen it put forth that they were ideal levels or anything. I just have never heard the top end tax rate blamed for that. Biggest thing I have seen it blamed on would be employer tied insurance and the like.
There is nothing ironic unless you are living in the year 1995.
I think you can criticize wealth while having it.
Also, the unhoused have cell phones too.
You are hurling insults by intentionally misrepresenting the reasons people create new terminology.
There plenty, many, words you won't use because they've changed. That's how progress goes, it's always the way it's been. You can fight that, but it won't work. And then in 40 years you will sound like an insane person.
I'm not saying that "unhoused" is good or will be a largely used word. But I am saying that fake words are real and you will keep up or be left behind. We have people alive, right now, who have been left behind. Guess what, they sound insane.
It reflects poorly on you to choose the least relevant part of my comment to reply to, poorer still when doing so makes it clear you're missing the point.
That is the end game of extreme inequality.
The biggest 'challenge' is once you get to various echelons... of all places, I heard it best described on reddit; It's like the reverse of MMO mechanics; Rather than low levels giving you lots of growth and higher levels requiring a lot of 'grind', the farther you get the easier it is to make more money, even 'doing nothing'.
A -huge- factor nowadays is property values as well, which doesn't help.
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There is also the concern of 'other ways' people get into that echelon.
I think of those who exploit labor, flount the law, and honestly in some cases (maybe they aren't the 1% but) those who use their power of 'celebrity' to get people to spend waaaaaay too much money on 'signature' goods or whatever else they endorse (Air Jordans come to mind as an example.)
It's all kinda gross to me tbh.
All I know is that I, and also everyone else I know, would never let themselves have a billion dollars. That money would be long gone before they reach 1 billion. Impulsively spent on whatever they think is good for other people.
Could money be an addiction, like alcohol? Where some are predispositioned to want more and more and some don't care for it?
What patterns do you see and, more importantly, what actions would you take?
It's such a wild and obviously incorrect claim I don't know how you could possibly make it. I mean, even me - there are things in common between me and random people.
> what actions would you take
Nice try, but if I tell you you'll just use that to discredit anything I say. That's not relevant to the conversation so I won't be answering that. Feel free to speculate.
> I'm sure there's many patterns or things linking them together.
That's awfully confident. What knowledge do you have that inspires such confidence?
It's rather disgusting how we grid locked ourselves with regulations. There used to be thousands of ISPs, banks, grocery stores, etc and we added red tape after red tape to restrict and allowed them to be all bought by the company that did the best.
Now we got like 3 banks, 3 ISPs, and 3 grocery stores with different names.
The new money is mostly from tech/oil and exploiting globalization in smart ways.
There's something in Europe called VAT that addresses this.
It's important to come up with some kind of solution. When the current system reduces to a single purveyor for every product sector, which we're heading for at breakneck speed right now, there will be only a few people owning the whole shebang, and nobody to buy the products because nobody else is needed/has a job at all.
What is value-add? Selling something for more than it cost you to make it, "adding value" as measured by revenues minus costs.
What are other words for that? profit, income
What are taxes on that? income taxes.
from the point of view of the govt, the VAT is just an ordinary income tax.
but instead of being paid by the businesses, it's paid by the consumers, discouraging them from buying high margin items, encouraging them to buy low margin items.
Except of course there are gaping loopholes, for example businesses are effectively exempt from VAT, also you can buy stuff abroad where VAT is lower.
I wouldn't be surprised if a huge majority of that $42T wasn't realized gains (sold and attributed as a Capital Gain).
It's hugely unfair to tax non-Realized Gains ... because that would be like you having the pay Income taxes on the appreciation of your home - even though you still live in your home and haven't "realized" those gains (to pay the capital gain taxes)
Example
- Let's say you bough a home for $100k - Property taxes are 1% of home value
In Year 1, you owe $1k in property taxes.
Let's say (dramatically) that property values double in Year 2.
- Now, you're $100k home is worth $200k
So your property taxes in Year 2 are now $2k.
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With taxing your unrealized gains at the nominal Federal & State income tax bracket.
- Your Federal Income tax rate might be 30% (dependent upon your earnings) - Your State Income tax rate might be 10%
So you have a combined 40% tax rate on "earnings"
Now in that example of your home going from $100k to $200k in Unrealized gains, you'd have to cut a check for $40K!
That's huge and most people wouldn't even have that kind of cash to pay.
Consider someone who holds a lot of capital with unrealized gains but nonetheless needs cash flow. A common practice is to borrow against those unrealized gains, which itself doesn't count as income even though it nevertheless tends to result in a greater accession of wealth.
The play, hence, seems to be that we consider the borrowing against unrealized gains to be the taxable event, not a wholesale tax on all held assets.
If you want to be especially charitable, allow the stock owner to choose which of the two options to use when applying for the loan.
It sounds like you’re suggesting banking / society to operate like a Pawn Shop.
All the governments should agree and play along. As soon a few don't, the wealth will flow there. It's seems trivial, to just increase the tax from 7% to 8%, what's the big deal, just 1% more. But there is a country which for some reason thinks it can profit more from the wealthy moving their money there so they set their rate at 7.5%.
The critical part is that wealthy lobby (i.e. bribe) politicians and have enough resources to drum up support from the public via various interest groups and so on. In public they'll agree with the need for more taxes, and more environment protections, all the feel-good topics. But behind the scenes, they'll put the finger on the scale in their favor.
Not convinced there is either the collective willpower or ability to enforce this, never mind both in sufficient quantities spread across the globe in a manner to ensure coverage to prevent the wealth simply moving
Why take money from people who employ others and build businesses to waste on nothing?
$7.5 billion to build 8 ev charging stations? (Edit: I accidentally said 8 billion charging stations originally)
Billions to build a few miles of rail in California.
How many billions on wars?
And every year government spending just goes up with almost nothing to show for the average citizen
ev charging stations are under a dollar each? where can i get one?
Literally no private company will do it though because trains are too efficient. You make MUCH more money selling cars and gasoline, and then sprawling cities over decades. Trains make no sense if you're trying to make money. So the gov has to do it or it will never be done.
> How many billions on wars
Straight to defense contractors, who are purposefully lazy and incentivized to suck as much as possible. But they hire a lot of people.
> almost nothing to show for the average citizen
Yeah, besides your education that is the only reason you can even write this comment. Or the roads. Or the internet you're writing this on. But no, I'm sure if you were illiterate and banging rocks together that's fine.
I'm being a little hyperbolic but you get the point.
Your argument appears to be sure, the government spends a ton of money on useless things and overpays massively for the end result on the ok things but hey at least that's something?
Which is a fine argument I guess if you think that wasting tax payer money for poor quality outcomes is ok because its better than nothing.
Yeah, after enough people got blown up. Something something free market...
> wasting tax payer
Look, the entire point of government services is they are a COST. They are different from a business because they don't have to profit and often it's better if they DON'T profit. Businesses can't operate that way, which creates some perverse incentives for some domains.
For example, providing universal healthcare would only burn money. Nobody, except doctors and whatnot, makes money. There's no profit there. And, well, that's the entire draw! If there were a profit, which we have now, then there's some fucked up stuff that happens.
> because its better than nothing
yeah, it is better than nothing. No rail results in thousands of automobile deaths and unbelievable amounts of pollution. Companies won't do it because they can't profit, and also land is stupidly expensive, and automobiles are an obvious money maker. So somebody has to, to break this cycle of automobile abuse in the US. It was fine in the 70s. It's gotten really out of control now and everyone is pissed off at spending 2 hours a day in traffic and also driving 30 minutes for water. Also now everyone is obese and dying. So yes, it legitimately is better than nothing.
It’s a great way to prevent poor countries from enticing rich people to move there
These articles are always extremely obnoxious because they routinely mix up assets and income and have no idea how taxes actually work ignoring that dividends are already taxed once at the corporate level so it is extremely unfair to compare income tax paid on a dividend to income tax paid on income without looking at income tax paid by the corporation on those earnings and when you do that the total income tax is almost always higher than just earning the dollar as income.
Further, these initiatives distract from policy action that would actually improve the world, substituting policy action that will only grow government and make it even more wasteful without accomplishing much of anything beyond that. We need to stop talking about stealing more from the winners and instead look at how to ensure they are only winning up to the point where market power abuse becomes obvious and then are mitigated (likely through breaking up the company). We should be starting now with breaking up the myriad obvious oligopolies operating today (looking at you fang stocks, various agricultural conglomerates, various retail operations, etc. with large market shares)
First of all, the revenue generated from taxing the wealthy would be surprisingly small in comparison to the overall government budget. While some might argue that "every little bit helps," this ignores the negative consequences of increased taxes on high earners, a reality that many prefer to overlook. History has repeatedly shown that societies leaning too heavily on state control, as seen in failed communist experiments, suffer when individual initiative and enterprise are stifled.
Moreover, societal problems are complex, and simply throwing more money at them rarely yields meaningful results. Effective politics is about making informed choices and sound decisions, not resorting to oversimplified slogans. The hard left's reflexive call to "Tax the rich more!" as a catch-all solution is not just naïve—it's intellectually bankrupt.
On the other hand, I'd like to live in a society where more people feel bought in and live less stressful lives.
A lot of the proposals like unearned capital gains taxes or wealth taxes all come with a lot of downsides. Including not actually generating much revenue in practice.
The countries are at something of at a Nash Equilibrium. Everyone wants the golden eggs, nobody wants to kill the gooses. Nobody wants their billionaires' money to flight.
Next question.
So, while I am completely for capitalism and low taxes for everyone, including the wealthy, billionaires should be taxed out of existence. Basically, I think the tax rate curve should be like a hockey stick. Very flat and then suddenly all the way up to almost 100%. The old billionaires would still be able to live very comfortable lifes as millionaires.
No single country should be doing this by itself, though. It should be a coordinated effort.
And by the way, if you think that governments are accountable to the public you are sadly mistaken. They are accountable to that 1%.
Bottom 50% of taxpayers pay 2% of all taxes. The “poor” not only pay nothing, they’re given money via credits.
Not true. National defense is about 13% of our federal budget. Medicare, Medicaid, healthcare, and Social Security are 50%.
https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/where-does-all-the-m...
The 1% earn 26% of all income, but pay 46% of all income taxes. The bottom 50% of earners pay 2% of income taxes.
https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/do-the-rich-pay-thei...
But our system has a serious problem. We've increased the debt by $11 trillion in the past four years, which was our total debt for the first 200 years the country was around.
The only point here is the problem is significantly harder than you're making it sound, and that's if we had a straightforward way to just stop all the wars. Unfortunately, no one's been able to come up with a way to do this yet.
1. Descendants of really successful people tend to fritter away that wealth, thinking they're as gifted as their forebears. Look no further than the Vanderbilts;
2. Families have a tendency to die out over generations. The Roman Republican originally had 45 patrician families. By the time of Gaius Julius Caesar (who was from a patrician family), there were 15 IIRC; and
3. The ultimate form of wealth redistribution is war and revolution.
Most long-lasting family wealth tends to be monarchies of some kind.
Therea are a bunch of arguments you'll hear why taxing the rich more can't or shouldn't happen. They're all lies.
1. Capital flight. The rich will leave. Great. You lose the ability to sell to customers in our country then;
2. Taxing unrealized stock gains is impossible and/or unfair. We do this to property just fine. Companies produce tax statements of unrealized gains just fine;
3. The dreaded slippery slope arguments. "If they go after Bezos, next they'll come after me with my $42,000 a year job and 2011 Camry".
A stable society and political climate is completely necessary for this wealth to exist. Having the wealthy pay for the society that makes their wealth possible while avoiding their heads ending up on pikes or in guillotines is entirely just, possible and moral.
Wait till you find out what someone with a home nominally valued $2m in San Francisco pays on his property taxes compared to you.
Everyone thinks that redistribution is great, because they look at the wallets of those better off and cannot wait to get a slice, forgetting that below them there are many looking at their wallets...
My question for you is: why don't you vote in your interests? Instead, you're voting in Bezos's interests. You are not Jeff Bezos. You will never be Jeff Bezos. You will never benefit for the policies you seem to be defending.
But no, it's "if Bezos has to pay 10% taxes, they migh tcome next for my $120,000".
It's wild to me that the slippery slope argument manages to somehow trump arguments of both self-interest and morality.
Not the person you asked, but I can respond for myself.
I honestly, truly believe that limiting the size and reach of government is voting in my own self interest.
I'm completely uninterested in class warfare stuff. I admire very wealthy people, I hope to be one someday.
Meanwhile, increasing the size, scope and power of the federal government has nothing but negative consequences for me and my family.
I guess you don't like roads, bridges, courts, fire departments, GPS, the Internet, modern medicine or stable food prices then.
This whole "limited government" fantasy is such a uniquely American delusion. It's crazy. It's propaganda sold to you by wealthy people who want to be able to poison your drinking water because it increases their personal wealth from $30 billion to $31 billion.
It borders on libertarianism, which, if that's what you're talking about, is such an incredibly naive and ridiculous political philosophy.
I am actually curious though: how exactly is big government creating "negative consequences for [you] and your family"?
That's a pretty tired old straw-man you're dragging out. Like, because I believe in limited government I somehow hate bridges.
You can do better.
BTW, roads etc... account for about 6% of state budget, and states provide 3/4 of the total funding [1].
> ... libertarianism .. is such an incredibly naive and ridiculous political philosophy.
Why?
>how exactly is big government creating "negative consequences for [you] and your family"?
- Censoring social media [2]
- Driving up inflation and the cost of food [3]
- Poisoning my kids with junk at school lunches [4]
- Bankrupting the nation with debt [5]
- Permits for everything! I can't add a railing to my front porch or remove a dead tree from my yard without permits.
- Ruinous taxation
That's hardly an exhaustive list, just some things that come to mind.
[1] https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...
[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/26/zuckerberg-meta-whi...
[3] https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/federal-spendi...
[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/lunch...
I am... I just understand history, and you seem to either not, or pretend not to. Right now they promise to only steal from those worth over $100M (which sadly indeed does not affect me), it will be down to $10M within my lifetime, which would affect me. And thus my interest is to vote against it...
Why? Because it benefits me when other people have housing, can get around without cars, and aren't unnecessarily catching and spreading communicable diseases. These things aren't "worth" it on a purely financial basis, but they're absolutely worth it on a social basis.
How do you defeat the prisoner's dilemma? You make a binding, enforceable pact. How do you prevent the tragedy of the commons? You cap the amount people can graze their animals on public land, and remove privileges from those that violate the cap. How do you improve the quality of life of literally every person in the country? You make policy and infrastructure, and then you fund it and maintain it.