this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 79 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Which economy? The lived economy of the general public or the artificial economy of finance?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Wouldn't both see a beneficial uptick from capital injection?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Capital isn't injected, it's hoarded.

The rich are already doing fine. They're doing better than they have since 1920. As a class, they have so much money that they're able to do stock buybacks because investing it doesn't give moneygasm-style returns. We're nearing the point where they can Scrooge McDuck-style swimming pools full of cash.

The problem with the current economy is very much not that the wealthy don't have enough free capital. Quite the opposite, really.

The problem is that they have so much free capital because they're addicted to non-productive methods growing their wealth.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Sure, but which business injects capital in te first?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Your comment seems reasonable until you actually question the details:

How would forgoing a capital gains tax benefit the working public? Any answer you give will basically be "trickle down" economics, which has been proven to not work. Giant corporations and obscenely wealthy individuals hoard capital like a greedy dragon, they certainly don't inject it!

EDIT: Of course they couldn't answer that one simple question...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I have no idea, but I'd like the powers that be to recognize that there are two economies and to prioritize the lived economy.

I first became aware of the difference when "the economy" was starting to boom in the 1980s even as we were busy returning to breadlines under the name of food banks.

I'm not sure we even need the finance economy. A pure stock market is one thing, but by the time you get to rents over profit on actual production, the financialization of housing, derivatives of derivatives and all the other distancing from actual production, it's just shell games with no benefit to society.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Precisely. What capitalism was supposed to do, it did long ago and now we're mostly dealing with mentally insecure people at the top who think more about money than actual human relations.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Capitalism is supposed to ensure that the people that own the factories have all of the power. The current behaviour is core, fundamental capitalism.

It serves the ownership class. It always has. It's its sole purpose. The rest of us have been supported by social programs that momentarily flared and, in the process, rescued the name of capitalism while workinf directly in opposition to it.