The Mythical Recovery, Redux (UrbanSurv)

[katty]

more: http://www.urbansurvival.com/blog/

EXCERPT: “Who really got bailed out”? The workers, or the machine owners?

The reason this is so critically important to start thinking about is that ever since the Industrial Revolution got underway, there’s been this notion that humans ought to be taxed, but not only should machines be taxed at lower rates, companies are allowed under tax laws to write down a machines’ value over time to zero (in as little as one year under IRS Section 179, LOL).

But human capital is not treated the same way. In fact, if humans were treated like most machines, they’d be written off in 10-year or less. I suppose the wholesale firings that accompany depressions, like the one we’re arguably now in, may be the functional equivalent.

But it brings me to the larger question of “Shouldn’t we be ,taking the machine output, which would be a form of production tax on machine owners so that workers who are displaced may be provided for?”

Howard & I started a conversation yesterday about how far the tax rate (on humans) could be pushed as we make the difficult transition to what could be a democratic socialist middle ground between outright communism and runway world-wreck irresponsible free traders who are only in it for the thing that matters most to them: Money in their pockets so that their culture of Elitism may flourish. After all, no point being uber-rich if everyone is…they actually need the downtrodden and oppressed so they can claim superiority and some God-given “divine right to rule” crap when the truth of the matter is their on a hopeless ego trip featuring an inability to share and share alike and so forth. But again, I digress.