capital by karl marx.

[luka]

i dont understand a word you say when you are in intellectual mode but i like it. you should do more of it.

[thirdform]

i dont understand a word you say when you are in intellectual mode but i like it. you should do more of it.

i have to go to turkey and it's pissing me off i just want to get acid and for everything to go flash whiz whiz bang bang.

[luka]

yeah cant carry on like that all the time though. sometimes you have to give your brain a chance to catch up with itself.

[thirdform]

basically i am more interested in jobless nutters of the world unite these days.

[thirdform]

i am now street fighting man i like that.

[thirdform]

It's not a word I use, but isn't it basically objectification?

So women become objects for male gratification.

The products of people's labour, the things they create, become commodities.

im sure u know it but just ftr there is a distinction between labour and labour power.

[yyaldrin]

why are there no barricades on the streets, except in france? london is unaffordable, paris is unaffordable, amsterdam is unaffordable, renting prices in berlin are exploding. i can literally see the number of homeless people growing each year. aren't we close to a tipping point, where is the tipping point? or is everybody just gonna take a second and third job?

[yyaldrin]

they are literally laughing at us

[Leo]

I get your overall point but in this case, they're laughing at the absurdity of asking a billionaire if he's in favor of increasing taxes on billionaires.

but watch the entire video, the guy from MIT pushes back on the notion that higher taxes on the mega-wealthy stifles economic growth.

[firefinga]

why are there no barricades on the streets, except in france? london is unaffordable, paris is unaffordable, amsterdam is unaffordable, renting prices in berlin are exploding. i can literally see the number of homeless people growing each year. aren't we close to a tipping point, where is the tipping point? or is everybody just gonna take a second and third job?

Smartphones and social media killed any revolutionary intent. Those two things are now clearly agents of the reactionary forces.

[Mr. Tea]

but watch the entire video, the guy from MIT pushes back on the notion that higher taxes on the mega-wealthy stifles economic growth.

Well wasn't the period from roughly the end of WWII up to the early 70s an era of unprecedented economic growth as well as phenomenal cultural, scientific and technological innovation, when the top tax rate in many developed countries was at a level that sounds completely insane today?

[vimothy]

Well wasn't the period from roughly the end of WWII up to the early 70s an era of unprecedented economic growth as well as phenomenal cultural, scientific and technological innovation, when the top tax rate in many developed countries was at a level that sounds completely insane today?

Yes that's true. At the same time people can always point to the issue of causation which can't be definitely resolved. Perhaps you need that post war level of growth to sustain tax rates like that - which is why, is growth rates tailed off, so too did tax rates ...

[Mr. Tea]

Yes, I suppose there is that. Although of course those tax rates never returned to high levels even in the boom times of the late 80s, late 90s and most of the last decade until '08.

[firefinga]

Yes, I suppose there is that. Although of course those tax rates never returned to high levels even in the boom times of the late 80s, late 90s and most of the last decade until '08.

There is a trend within pretty much any OECD country though (going on for 20, 30 years) of the highest 5% icome the tax rates have been lowered, whereas the tax rates for "middle class" income has hardly ever been reduced. Resulting in the richest 5% getting richer faster in relative and absolute terms. Overall meager growth rates of the ecomonies in zhe OECD having very little to do with this.

[Mr. Tea]

There are so many ways for the very wealthy to get out of paying tax in the UK that people on middling incomes now pay on average a slightly higher overall rate of tax than high earners, I believe. And of course it's the interests of the very rich that are represented by the pressure group Taxpayers' Alliance - which probably ought to be called the Tax-avoider's Alliance - and not the middle classes who pay the bulk of the country's taxes (let alone the working class, obviously).