for the most part, "high earners" are not rich people; they are the upper-middle class. the richest people make the vast majority of their income from investment returns, and are often able to avoid having it count as "income". the very rich are quite happy to have taxes increased on high salaries in exchange for maintaining the status quo re investments.
> Instead, what we need is Democracy 2.0, where the people vote on individual packages, not parties. Switzerland may be the only country where that works out quite well.
this much I can agree on. why do I have to choose between guns and abortion?
Humans are bad at some things. Understanding complicated situations where they aren't experts is one of them - Statistics, safety, complicated systems, etc.
Also, reddit is in many ways democracy 2.0 and they upvote literal fake news all the time.
We need to do away with upvotes and downvotes. It’s manipulated everywhere it exists.
On that note, Congress has had a rider problem forever. It's unconscionable how legislation get clumped together to a) force a vote on some generally positive thing while b) avoiding accountability and c) sneaking all kinds of evil opposites into the same package.
in tax contexts, "income" means about 3 different things, but to angry people it means one thing: "everything you earn that year"
the reality is that "income" is a subset of earning types, and the rich people anyone actually cares about do not earn much "income" and are therefore continually exempted from the populist fury
taxing high income earners just hurts the upper middle class and business owners
it is entertaining but disheartening to see so much energy put toward the same result over and over
Or STV, approval, STAR, etc etc literally ANY kind of voting system besides FPTP.
We need to decentralise the system so that fewer majority votes are needed (ideally, zero) and politicians hold less power (ideally, zero).
Most state functions can be privatised trivially. Some are more complicated but it doesn't seem like we're moving in this direction at all.
Every year the government spends more of the money stolen from taxpayers and keeps getting bigger and more powerful (and probably more corrupt).
Because I only have negative examples, where after privatization prizes went up and quality went down.
https://bg.hbr.org/1997/05/can-business-really-do-business-w...
https://www.govtech.com/magazines/gt/Indianapolis-Mayor-Step...
The cost of public health care is staggering and the quality is abysmal. If you can afford it, if you have something serious and you don't want to wait for ages or get poor equipment or lack of testing, you'll go private even in Europe.
I'd say private health care in the states is very successful as well (high quality and research) but the prices are ridiculously inflated because of government / insurances.
I maintain my position though. I really have never come across a person in conversation who would take an absolutist position that government action is always going to be better than private enterprise, but the opposite absolutist position is somewhat common.
It say it’s an article of faith because the people I’ve spoken to are not up for discussion about it. They have established their belief and nothing will cast a shadow of doubt upon it.
You’re claiming that all these people you’ve met are anarcho-capitalists? Are you under the impression that cultural conservatism means anarcho-capitalism?
> but the opposite absolutist position is somewhat common
You’ve provided no evidence that it is more common. In my experience, the opposite is true.
Here in Europe, we believe that certain things should be public: education, roads, health care, social security, basic research, while other things should be private, like smartphones, cars, ...
And I think for most of the things we like public, there is a good evidence that it should be. I.e. Euro style health care systems spend less money per patient while achieving a higher average lifespan when compared to whatever system the US has.
In general, the argument for private systems is that since they have to make a profit, they will be more efficient. In reality, they have to make a profit, which public systems don't have to. Public systems however have the same price pressure than private systems, since people put this pressure up via democracy.
The biggest issues I see is that public systems are less capable of big innovation vs. small process improvements. This can be tackled via the basic research done at public universities + the private sectors work to bring these to market.
Also, if you follow Peter Thiele Line of thought on how every business should strive for monopoly, so they can take monopoly profits and "focus on the product instead of the competition" - a public service that has granted this monopoly by law would be perfect: they have no competition, so they can focus on making the best product, and they don't have to make a profit, which means they can operate at cost. Now, I don't think it's as easy as that, but in the end, if you stop being an extremist, you can mix and match all kinds of system to use what is best, instead of striving for something that is ideologically pure.
tl;dr: I want my smartphone from private companies competing for the best product, I want my water from a public utility.
I'm European and I think zero things should be public. I absolutely don't like the European Union and where it's going.
The problem is that if you don't have any incentive to make ends meet because you're spending someone else money, slowly but surely you'll have inefficiencies in the system.
Too many employees, someone making sure a public contract goes to a friend for more money than it should, politicians expensing flights right and left, a service being provided which nobody uses (think about some bus lines).
The same happens in large organizations where who's footing the money doesn't have visibility. The government is the ultimate giant corporation - with the added bonus of not having to make a profit!
We can't say for sure how much money we're wasting, but government spending always grows bigger and I don't see public services improving or providing more value over time.
The last pandemic highlighted how much worse public health got in many countries in Europe. How did that happen and where did the money go?
An inefficient government starts eroding public services, spending the same and offering less, until there's a big crash and then there is nothing.
We saw a bit of that in Greece, we'll probably hear more from Italy soon.
I think we're years away from a collapse similar to the one experienced by eastern European countries post Soviet Union.
Not at all. Far from it. This is a very naive view of voting and public choice systems. See for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice#Special_interest...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_failure#Political_s...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice#%22Expressive_in...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ignorance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_ir...
So in general I'd say I've seen government fail to run plenty of businesses. A more modern example would be PG&E which is in this weird situation where it's so regulated that it's almost government run but it's technically a private entity. There are also plenty of pure private entities that haven't run well (but at least, such entities end up being bankrupt, a healthy alternative for non-profitable private businesses).
So in my experience, seeing both private and publicly run companies fail, I've started to think that this aspect of it (being privately or publicly controlled) is not what makes the company run well but it's one of the many factors that can contribute to it. I think a more important factor are the interests, skills, will and agenda of those that control it, regardless of whom they answer to (voters or board).
And let's not discard the particularities of each business. Some enjoy a natural monopoly, others face tough competition. These are more important aspects contributing to efficient use of resources than, again, who the CEO answers to.
This is hard and inefficient in a large country with an underlying population that lacks critical thinking.
We could instead use a multi-party system where multiple voices are raised in the house and senate votes.
Most people only look at that tail end because the deliberation is dull, but if you want to know what it looks like, much of it is available to the public.
Which leads people to think, correctly, that independent-minded critical thinking is not determining those votes.
Most legislators have high approval ratings among their constituents, and practically unanimous among their party in their district. It's always other people's legislators who are the problem.
No. People are left voting for their representatives from a set of 2. With this, most people vote for one because they hate the other and not because they like their policies.
In terms of representative democracy, American two party system is just infantile.
This works terribly in CA, FYI.
I don't think there are any easy solutions to the political equilibrium we're in.
Proposition 13 putting a yearly property tax increase cap means that people who have owned property for a long time are basically not paying their fair share of local taxes. That tax advantage can be passed from generation to generation. It also has the perverse incentive to encourage cities to increase commercial and industrial zoning over residential zoning, with the effects on property prices one can see today.
Proposition 47 meant that many crimes under a 950$ threshold were considered misdemeanors instead of felonies. This is one likely factor for the large increase in the amount of car break-ins and shoplifting in some areas, such as San Francisco.
Why are people still thinking that taxing high earners is an option? The world is ruled by rich people, why would they tax themselves? Doesn't make any sense. Democracy is nice, until all the choices you have, exhibit the same underlying core values that you disagree with.
Normally all successful parties will aim for the middle, where there are most voters. The ones that don't, are marginalized and perhaps have some chance at succeeding during times where voters go astray and just vote some extremists out of sheer frustration (like it happened in Germany a couple of times). But that never lasts. This seriously limits democracy, as you can be sure that some values will never change, because there is no party with enough votes to make these changes.
Instead, what we need is Democracy 2.0, where the people vote on individual packages, not parties. Switzerland may be the only country where that works out quite well.