Taxes.
If these companies can afford $trillions, then the government can collect some dues that can fund retraining programs or whatever.
If these companies can afford $trillions, then the government can collect some dues that can fund retraining programs or whatever.
And what are you retraining to? We've long abandoned serious manufacturing and mining. Most people's job is the application of knowledge and communication and LLMs are coming for them all. From retail and call centres through to doctors and lawyers.
We can't all retrain as plumbers, waiters and surgeons.
Cool. Let's start with taxing those, or any other place where they bury or hide from taxes. Thanks for the suggestion.
We can also tax on the numbers of job losses vs capital expenditures. IE: if you spend a $Billion on stuff while firing tons of workers, you get taxed more.
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As far as retraining: easy solution. Whatever people want to retrain to. The details will work themselves out. The important tidbit is to have large scale mass retraining if this really is the future.
It's not like the government forced me into my current job. I'm more than capable of choosing a new field myself.
And if YOU can't see the possibilities, them you don't have to take the retraining program. But from my perspective, there's plenty of work needed in the USA to improve our country. Plenty of problems to solve.
Taxes definitely solved that problem. And it even brought about the golden age of post WW2 US economy.
The correct taxes in the correct areas serve as an incentive structure to help encourage businesses and individuals to make good decisions. At least, that's what we did 80 years ago.
The US Government is at present (without any chances of this being fixed ever again) about the least efficient entity that exists on the Planet Earth and giving it more money will not solve any problem. It will be used though but one of the two political parties to win election(s) and kill any tax law that was previously put in place
I asked what was the tax rate that got rid of our WW2 debt.
The golden age thing is an aside. Just a reminder that you can't call 1950s America weak on the world stage.
> The US Government is at present (without any chances of this being fixed ever again) about the least efficient entity that exists on the Planet Earth and giving it more money will not solve any problem
Taxes directly solve the debt and deficit problem. Period.
Let's start with things one step at a time. Now that we've had 40 years of trying to drown the budget in a bathtub (and only ballooning our debt), we should seriously start trying something different.
The 2008 crisis is on a long list of examples of how corporate efficiency harms me.
Governments have a mandate to benefit the public. Conversely, shareholder models encourage exploiting everything they possibly can (for shareholder benefit), corrupting government processes, harming the public and harming the corporation itself.
Instead of the Either Or fallacy, I suggest good-faith examination of actual harms and good. Governments (inc LEO) and corporations famously improve outcomes, when meaningful transparency is mandated, corrupt processes aren't hidden and ethical+competent overseers can pull the needed levers.
if your family is running a budget deficit, there are two ways to mitigate it
- make more money (drive uber and pizza (at the same time to make double money at night) or get a higher paying job
- stop spending so much fucking money
it seems politically, the left-leaning part of the countries and political party will make you believe that we just need to make more money, give that money to the Federal Government and all our problems will magically disappear.
the right-leaning part of the country and its politicians will make you believe that rich already pay a lot more than most (they do) and that taxing corporations makes no fucking sense (it doesn’t in general).
neither party actually gives a shit about the fact that country is drowning in debt which will eventually be its undoing (those who study history know this as absolute certainty), they are just looking for where more votes are there to be had
Yes, when one half of government intentionally choses to work against our country, and to STRUCTURALLY destroy our government via debt/financial distress, it results in debt and financial distress.
Complaining about anything other than Republicans INTENTIONAL POLICY OF DEBT when talking about US debt is nothing but an extension of that destructive policy.
I'm all in favor of this but part 1 has been made politically toxic for decades, and part 2 only seems to be taken seriously when the Other Guys are in power.
For example, in the US I simply cant take the Republican party's fiscal opinions seriously when they bleat about the debt on the one hand and yet dont blink when asked to fund another foreign war.
In order to be socialism, it has to be spending money specifically to help the people, and broadly to reduce inequality.
Republicans do not do that, by any stretch of the imagination.
The West saw its golden age when redistributive taxation was maximum. We have to get back to that, or the country will continue to agonize under crumbling infrastructure and failing institutions.