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Comment by farseer | Hacker News Reader

That is the way of the world, capitalism specifically. The only way to counter is a fair tax system and good spending on education up to college level.

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Counter-example: All the European, and world countries who have implemented the various inheritance, wealth taxes and heavy redistribution yet the inequality is still widening. Take France, Norway or Sweden as the ideal social democracies.

Argentina (the end game of social democracy) pre-Milei had a huge array of taxes and regulations which lead to the state misusing that money to actually enrich a small elite of politically aligned. Similar things and arrangements (under the form of subsidies to companies) will happen under Trump and levying more taxes will just give more opportunity for corruption.

Sweden has no inheritance or wealth tax.

There was one until 2007, many countries had wealth taxes. Also in 2005 inheritance tax was repealed.

In France wealth tax was repealed in 2017 I think but will be soon reintroduced under a new form.

Specifically because those don't work at all. Not because some evil rich people decided to scrap them.

Unlike people, capital has no nation. It can just move effortlessly from France to Switzerland to the Cayman Islands. That's why single-country initiatives to e.g. tax wealth (or even tax extremely profitable companies) are doomed to failure: those assets are easy to transfer and hide; if the UK passes a progressive wealth tax, all those global billionaires will just sell their empty houses in London and buy empty houses somewhere else.

Hence the proposal by many economists that the only solution is a broad agreement on a global progressive wealth tax, with at least the major blocs of the US and EU on board. See e.g. "A Brief History of Inequality".

This is basically a prisoner dilemma on a global scale where the incentives are for single marginalised nations to leverage the fact of being tax havens to survive globalisation. The dream of a single global tax is as possible as making China/US respect any of the agreements they have signed regarding trade and environment.

The same proposal is also criticized by many economists too, who argue that inequality has not risen as sharply as Piketty's crew claims, or that the bulk of that inequality is linked to the real estate, for which the only solution is build more houses and destroy the capital accumulation of older generation to the profit on newer ones.

1: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/deciphering-the-fall-and-...

Re real estate: indeed an LVT would go a long way to ameliorate the unsustainable situation regarding housing across Europe. It's a simple and efficient solution, and can be applied at the country level.

But I would argue that the situation in housing is actually a consequence, and not a separate phenomenon, of the broader issue of inequality-driven asset price inflation.

Fuly agree, LVT seems to be a good incentive. As well as de-regulating, easing or digitilazing all the bureaucratic processus related to building so that the time between wanting to build and actually built nears 0. Also introduce anti-democratic laws that push the will of the group over the individual house owners who are motivated to block new contructions to see their number go up.

Does all of this capital really do anything for a country if it's just being parked? Would we miss it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expatriation_tax

Selling empty homes in London will increase supply of housing in London and lowering the price of housing, allowing less than wealthy people to accumulate wealth.

The problem with countries like UK is that real estate is the only way of obtaining, growing and keeping wealth there. And I mean the only.

100% agree with you.

Capitalism creates inequality, but in a socialism/communism economy there would be either no money or no goods. Everyone would be equally poor, not just some.

This is the argument made by people who would not work without getting paid for it.

If this were universally the case, open source would not exist.

And yet unpaid internships are still a thing as the point is education, not direct financial compensation.

Why would there be no money under socialism?

No money is a bit of hyperbole, but fundamentally, nobody really wants to work hard for the exclusive benefit of everybody else.

Greed is an innate human trait.

So there would be money, it would just be less efficient. That's a fair enough claim, but I don't understand why I was downvoted for asking.

Socialism is not communism and isn't anarchism.

Those are not the same, but too many don't know what's the differrence.

Money only works when there is a base level of trust that later, money accepted will have some similar utility.

Because it would be stolen by the government. Ask people in post-Soviet countries about how Soviet governments were stealing money from their bank accounts, from all citizens collectively. No one believed in money under socialism in the USSR. The government could always pull a funny trick called "and now... it's gone". Be happy, comrade, that only your money is gone, you could also be in prison.

USSR operated under state capitalism, nothing like what any of the communists or socialists ever imagined. But I guess that is what USSR made socialism mean as a result.

BTW: Most of the world lives under state capitalism, not capitalism, not socialism, not any other form of economic system. The state has an unrestricted claim to any and all of your wealth.

Social democracy is Socialism[1].

European social democracies are among the top of the wealthiest countries in the world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy

European countries did not get wealthy just because of their social democracy system. There is a lot of very painful history as well.

Interestingly enough, when detractors like to point out countries where communism "failed", it's always countries that did not have a rich history of colonialism and exploitation of cheap labor forces around the world.

Just a thought.

It's almost as if countries, companies and super rich people are adored by the people in group 1 for their wealth by people while simultaneously are despised by the people in group 2 for the tactics they used to get that wealth. Some peope are both members of group 1 and group 2 which makes it even more strange.

I was unlucky to see and live in socialism. European democracies are not socialism by a mile. They are capitalist countries with some socialist elements. Yes, it makes sense.

Social democracy is a Socialist philosophy and has been ever since the spring revolutions of 1848.

You seem to confuse capitalism with market economy. Germany's social market economy was conceived as an alternative to capitalism; a market economy with strong focus on unions and social fairness/justice. In other European countries is very similar.

Socialism core principles have always been égalite, solidarity and democracy. It's pretty silly to think that a highly hierarchical, unjust and undemocratic system has anything to do with Socialism.

Hint; it doesn't. It might say so on the marketing material ("Socialist Republic!") but that's just that - marketing to fool the numbnuts.

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