SnoringEarthworm comments on Probably not how it works

[–] SnoringEarthworm@sh.itjust.works 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (9 children)

Edit: That argument is just "trickle down economics" with extra steps.

I disagree.

Billionaires have outsize influence. They buy politicians to set public policies that affect the working class and divert billions of our dollars into their pockets.

If you put all of their money in a pit and set it on fire, it would have a greater impact than just taxing them 2% and spending all of it on public programs, because they would no longer be able to do harm on a billionaire scale.

The people could heal.

We'd still have other beasts to deal with, but the existence of billionaires is a cap on the lives of the working class.

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[–] damnedfurry@lemmy.world 1 point 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (8 children)

Edit: That argument is just “trickle down economics” with extra steps.

Trickle down economics is the argument that financial benefits given to the wealthiest will naturally make their way down to the rest, so there is no need to aid the impoverished directly.

There is literally nothing in what I said that suggests that course of action, at all. My talking about how taking direct action to eradicate poverty ought to be the top priority is literally the opposite of that. You're full of it.

the existence of billionaires is a cap on the lives of the working class.

Billionaires (inflation-adjusted, of course) per capita in the US increased by about 7x compared to 100 years ago, while the percentage of the population living in poverty is 4-6x lower today than it was 100 years ago, compared to what it is today.

The correlation is in literally the opposite direction as what you claim. How do you reconcile these facts with your assertion?

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[–] SnoringEarthworm@sh.itjust.works 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

Correlation is not causation.

Even if I had asserted that billionaires cap the lives of the working class to the poverty line (which I didn't), the poverty line is an outdated, unserious measure of how Americans are doing.

More about the FPL

My assertion is that billionaires are a cap on the lives of the working class, not that the cap is set at the federal poverty line.

I can't see your links (imgur says their servers are overloaded), but I'll use US figures for the sake of argument.

The [federal poverty line is] derived from the official poverty thresholds, which were originally developed in the 1960s based on the cost of a minimum food diet multiplied by three — reflecting the "fact" [quotations mine] that food makes up about one-third of a typical family’s budget. (What is the federal poverty level?)

Look up "average American monthly expenses", and you'll see that food consistently accounts for less than 15%. The FPL is outdated and has been for decades.

There's controversy about the right way to measure poverty, but no one serious on either side of the argument points at "the percentage of the population living in poverty" and calls it a day.

The majority of Americans support progressive policies. But whether or not a policy is passed depends on whether or not it has the support of the billionaire class.

More on the popularity of progressive policies and the impact of wealth on policy change

Over half of Americans say they lack the cash to cover a $1,000 unexpected emergency expense. Increased earnings — not lower spending — is main driver for boosting emergency funds. The most common cause of emergency expenses in the United States is a medical emergency. Regardless of whether or not they meet a 1960's definition of poverty, Americans are not, by and large, financially well.

The majority of Americans support progressive programs that address the causes of this precarity: paid maternity leave, childcare support, boosting the minimum wage, free college, and Medicare for All.

But what we want doesn't get passed.

When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy. ... When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

Working class Americans (and not just those at or below the federal poverty line) support policy changes that would materially improve their lives. When those policies conflict with the interests of billionaires, the billionaires stop them from passing.

In other words, they put a cap on it.

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[–] damnedfurry@lemmy.world 1 point 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Irrelevant, as I never claimed such. I pointed out the lack of correlation between billionaires per capita increasing over time, and poverty over the same period of time. Not all correlation is causally linked, but all causally linked things are also necessarily correlated. But if two things are not correlated, then they can't be causally linked, either (at least not to a statistically-significant degree that isn't wiped out by other factors), and that's what I pointed out.
So, by which financial measure would you say that working-class Americans in 1925 are doing better than they are in 2025, then? There must be at least one, if your assertion is correct.
Then that should make the question above, all the easier to answer.

Working class Americans (and not just those at or below the federal poverty line) support policy changes that would materially improve their lives. When those policies conflict with the interests of billionaires, the billionaires stop them from passing.

Are you seriously suggesting that legislation that is detrimental to billionaires never becomes law?

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, among other things, imposed an excise tax on stock buybacks, something that will literally never impact anyone who isn't significantly wealthy, and that passed. A year before, the Corporate Transparency Act passed, and basically struck the death knell for shell company schemes, (not a whole lot of that happening among the working class, lol) by requiring "Beneficial Owners" to be reported to FinCEN, so they know who the actual human beings who own them are. Billionaires lost the ability to hide assets and real estate within anonymous LLCs.

It's ridiculous to think that billionaires are all just smiting any and all legislation that would negatively impact them at will. You are clearly deep in some echo chambers.

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[–] SnoringEarthworm@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

A year before, the Corporate Transparency Act passed, and basically struck the death knell for shell company schemes... by requiring "Beneficial Owners" to be reported to FinCEN, so they know who the actual human beings who own them are. Billionaires lost the ability to hide assets and real estate within anonymous LLCs.

You mean the same Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) that Trump and Musk killed the enforcement of after a tweet? (Both billionaires, btw.)

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, among other things, imposed an excise tax on stock buybacks, something that will literally never impact anyone who isn't significantly wealthy, and that passed.

Are you arguing that a 1% excise tax limited to stock buybacks (even lower than the 2 and 3% I already argued won't change the status quo) in any way counters the well-documented fact that billionaires and corporations have dozens of ways to avoid paying taxes?

Corporations even managed to dodge the IRA's headline tax: the CAMT

(2022)

Part of the IRA was budgeted for hiring more tax auditors. Corporations underpay every chance they get and won't pay a penny more until an auditor can prove the difference.

(2023 through 2024)

The IRS repeatedly provided relief and from penalties due to underpayment.

(2025)

Under Trump (2025), the IRS has shrunk. In theory, the IRA should have led to increased taxes. In practice, corporations were able to stall until they had an administration that gutted the IRS' ability to collect.

Your headline of "we passed a law that says they'll pay" doesn't match the reality of "but not this year because they say it's too complicated, we don't have enough staff to audit them, and they have more accountants than we have people who specialize in legally hiding their assets and cooking the numbers."

For every legal loophole that is closed, the ultra-wealthy find or create two more.

Meanwhile, programs designed to serve the needs of the working class are pushed back with "how are you going to pay for it?"

Answer: With the money that billionaires and corporations should be paying, but aren't.

Are you seriously suggesting that legislation that is detrimental to billionaires never becomes law?

It would be convenient for you, if I were to suggest that, or any other argument you try to put in my mouth.

Once in a blue moon, a law will get passed (as you've demonstrated), that they will then ignore, delay, defang, or lobby into irrelevance (as I've demonstrated).

What I am saying (and have been since the beginning) is that the existence of billionaires is a cap on the lives of the working class.

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[–] damnedfurry@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 child)

You mean the same Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) that Trump and Musk killed the enforcement of after a tweet? (Both billionaires, btw.)

Goalpost move, you said billionaires prevent those laws from passing. They passed. You lied. The end.

Are you arguing that a 1% excise tax limited to stock buybacks (even lower than the 2 and 3% I already argued won’t change the status quo) in any way counters [anything]?

Nope. A new tax that applies only to the wealthiest demographic successfully passing is just another refutation of your assertion that billionaires prevent legislation that affects them negatively from passing, and that's the only reason I mentioned it. More desperate goalpost moves.

For every legal loophole that is closed

So you admit they do get closed. I thought billionaires never let detrimental legislation pass?

It would be convenient for you, if I were to suggest that, or any other argument you try to put in my mouth.

Behold, your words, verbatim:

When those policies conflict with the interests of billionaires, the billionaires stop them from passing.

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[–] SnoringEarthworm@sh.itjust.works 1 point 11 months ago

For anyone who's read this far, I hope you got something useful from it.

Hopefully you've seen enough evidence that billionaires and corporations consistently avoid paying the taxes they owe, and that counterclaims (like the assertion that the BOI ended their ability to hide their assets) often fall apart when you look into what's actually happening.

With the last response above, it has become clear that damnedfurry isn't interested in good faith argument, but in childishly scoring points by intentionally misinterpreting my words.

I'm done with damnedfurry, and I'll block them if their comments further devolve into childish sneers or personal attacks.

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[–] AlfredoJohn@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

The correlation is in literally the opposite direction as what you claim. How do you reconcile these facts with your assertion?

Its very easy to make an incorrect correlation like this when you are using faulty data like the FPL.

All it takes two seconds to find out the poverty line in the US is literally just 3 times the monthly minimum spend for food for one person. That doesnt factor in the extreme inflation on housing, medical, student debt, utilities, phone plan costs, taxes, etc. While food prices are inflated they are not nearly as inflated as the other areas critical to survival which are not calculated for the reporting of offical poverty figures. Once you actually account for all of this and look at what percentage of the population fails to meet basic needs you get to a more staggering 43% of the US living in poverty and even thats a rough estimate due to missing data points that might make it higher.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-many-are-in-need-in-the-us-the-poverty-rate-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/#%3A%7E%3Atext=Forty-three+percent+of+all+families+in+the%2Cfamily+budgets%2C+versus+37%25+of+white+families.

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[–] justaman123@lemmy.world 1 point 11 months ago

Yeah I was gonna say, that persons picture of two percentages wasn't very convincing.

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[–] damnedfurry@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Its very easy to make an incorrect correlation

I think you don't understand what "correlation" means. The correlation is clearly and inarguably what I showed it to be: billionaires per capita went up as poverty went down. That's a plain fact.

43% of the US living in poverty

I'm not going to bother examining how legitimate this stat is, because even if I just take this at face value, what is that compared to the 40-60% I cited? It still does nothing to support the point that billionaires are 'holding the working class down' to any statistically-significant degree. If we take the bottom of the range of the estimate I got, 40%, and took your figure as-is, 43%, then a 7x increase in billionaires per capita increased poverty by 3% total over 100 years! That stat takes "nothingburger" to a whole new level.

That doesn't do much of anything to support the assertion that billionaires are 'capping the lives of the working class', when there being seven times more of them makes no statistically-significant difference in the poverty rate.

Not to mention that 1925 is in the midst of the roaring twenties, before the Great Depression, and your article was written a few years after a global pandemic that wreaked havoc on the world's economy—two facts that both skew things in favor of your claim.

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