Dave JohnsonMay 18, 2023

Large numbers of people don't understand what a billionaire is.

If you, like most of us, ONLY make $1 million a year, it would take you 1,000 years to make $1 billion.

Or, if REALLY lie most of us, you make $50,000 a year, it would take you 20,000 years.

TWENTY THOUSAND YEARS!

If you tax someone who makes a billion a year at a 90% top rate, they would "only" take home $100 million a year.

#billionaires #taxes

Show threadWJJHMay 18, 2023

@dcjohnson George Bernard Shaw noted “ A govenment that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.”

Taxation was based on the logical principle payment should be equal for all citizen “equity before taxes” but today has been replaced by the abhorrent principle “equity through taxes,” making taxes a political and fiscal lever to force changes in society.

Altruism is not compatible with capitalism and personal achievements are not freely distributable.

Show threadAnton P. Nym (aka Steve)
@WJJH @dcjohnson If Randists don't have to care about me, I don't have to care about Randists. Fair exchange, after all.
May 18, 2023 at 4:25pmWeb
Show threadWJJHMay 20, 2023
@AntonPNym @dcjohnson Alice O'Connor, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, better known as Ayn Rand has been part of my library since the late 1960’s, an inspiration writer to many, grew up in Saint Petersburg under the collectivist ideology and watched how the communists turned Russia into a dictatorship and how this collectivist philosophy made this possible.
I appreciate Ayn Rand for her analysis about today’s central conflict, the individual versus the collective.
Show threadAnton P. Nym (aka Steve)May 20, 2023

@WJJH @dcjohnson So far as I can tell, the philosophy of Rand boils down to:

- Communism is bad
- Capitalism is the opposite of Communism
- The opposite of bad is good
- Therefor Capitalism is good
- Society should maximalize good
- Therefor society should maximalize Capitalism

The remainder appears to me as a series of tautologies intended to provide a veneer of philosophical justification for the above chain of reasoning.

Show threadWJJHMay 21, 2023

@AntonPNym @dcjohnson

Ayn Rand is a writer I can appreciate for her analysis and critique on collectivism, based on the postulation that the individual has a moral right to live for his/her own sake, to pursue their own personal identity, personal freedom and happiness based on self-reliance and self-responsibility, not in the name of the common good or the state.

https://wjjh.blog/2021/09/21/who-is-john-galt-and-what-would-alice-oconner-say/

“Who is John Galt” and what would Alice O’Conner say!

In what kind of world do we wish to live