We are all links in an infinite chain going backwards to the first single cell amoeba, and in ways that we can't even understand we are connected with all of these bits of alien life that nonetheless are our ancestors, and moving forward into the future that could be equally infinite. Looking at it in this way, it helps you understand how trivial your existence is, like a single Link in a chain is trivial in terms of the whole length, but deeply important in the sense that once the chain breaks it cannot continue. It is sad watching an entire generation talked into cutting their own chain.
Some people might think that the metaphor of a chain doesn't work because we aren't really that connected to the single-celled amoeba that eventually formed a multicellular life and eventually turned into everything else, but there is far more of that single-celled amoeba in us then you might think. There are so many things that are just fundamentally a part of us that we don't even realize is there. Although our ticket to the future is blank and we choose where to go, we are not a blank slate. A child who is never met another human being knows how to be hungry, knows how to be thirsty, knows how to be tired and go to sleep, a child who has never been around another human being has many things that will just happen because it's written into their blood. And that blood itself can tell stories. The sort of creature we are is a symbiosis with a mitochondria, mitochondria that we share with many organisms including single-celled organisms that exist today. There is nothing inherently or uniquely human about the symbiosis going on in every single one of our cells, it is something we inherited from long before we were anything remotely like a human. In ways we can't even see, we are just a link in an immense chain.
Beyond our own chain, in some ways each of us represents a chain of ecosystems. In the same way that we share our bodies with the mitochondria, our bodies contain a microbiome with many organisms that co-evolved with multicellular life, and also became symbiots with us. We continue the chain for ourselves, and at the same time we continue the chains for all of these other organisms that are fundamentally inhuman but a part of us. It goes to show that we aren't just pollutants in the world, we are a part of the world and any decision we make is going to impact the world, and choosing what is worse for humanity is not necessarily choosing what is best for every other species that is not humanity. If we choose to go extinct, I suspect that many of our symbiotes will also go extinct.
Some people are concerned that the chain that they are a part of may be used to bind the innocent, but chains can be used for many purposes. They can be used to bind monsters, they can be used to more ships, they can be used to keep things together that will become destructive if they are unleashed, and unlike an inanimate piece of chain, each link of our chain can subtly help choose what it is used for. As long as the chain continues. Prior to mass-produced chain of the industrialized world, one would not cut a piece of chain without a very good reason, and one would not cut a piece of rope without a very good reason, because once it is cut it is forever cut.
Imagine whispering to each link in the chain, telling it that it is the most important, and that it is morally wrong to expect it to support the chains that come ahead of it, or that it is morally wrong to continue the length of chain. And you convince that link that it is the most important thing in its world, and the chain breaks never to be reattached. The story for that length of chain which began in the primordial ooze ends, those links feeling full of self-righteous pride at the incomparable sin they have committed against all of the other links in that chain.
The people who think that they are doing the world a favor by refusing to continue the chain, perhaps they think that because the chain in the future could be strained, or because they think that the chain by continuing to exist will necessarily be harmful, or perhaps they think that the chain in the past has been used to bind the innocent in such a way that it can never be redeemed and must be cut, but what they don't realize is that when you cut the chain because of the bad you also cut the chain for the good. For those who were so enlightened that they finally understood the damage that the chains had caused as they dragged on the ground in the past, they think that the only answer is to cut the chain. In reality, if you cut every chain that has come to the realization that the past is imperfect and the future uncertain, then all you're going to be left with are chains that believe that their past is perfect and their future certain to be perfect as well. Is that really the future that such people are aiming at? In this way, such enlightened chains break, and they're enlightenment ends with them. it is a small-minded enlightenment but only cares about what they see and not the vast expanse in front of them. It's ironic, wanting to end something so Grand because of the sins of the past and not realizing the sin it commits against the future.
Imagine also what would happen if every chain used to moor ships, every chain used to secure heavy loads, every chain used to restrain a monster were convinced to break itself apart? All that would be left is the chains that bind the innocent.
Some people might look at this and start asking about people who are physically incapable of continuing chain. I have nothing but sympathy for such people because I thought I was going to be one of them. My wife was infertile through most of my marriage, and it wasn't until we were granted a miracle that my son was born and I was given the opportunity to forge a strong link in the chain that will go forward and bring together a better future. Such people who cannot because they are physically incapable they face a tragedy, but they are not facing a moral choice. You cannot choose to do that which you cannot do.
The same could easily be said of people who have failed to form the next Link in the chain. I also have nothing but sympathy for such people, because it was never a sure thing that I was going to get married. I grew up a colossal nerd, and a virgin who hadn't even held a girl's hand for years. A lot of people like me were never able to find a woman to have kids with, and a lot of people unlike me -- a lot of women, wish that they had found a good man but they just couldn't for whatever reason. It's tragedy, but not a moral failing.
I'm sure that there are many other situations where people can't have kids of their own, and that's fine. The specific conversation I'm having here is about people who had every opportunity and chose not to, and act as if their choice is nothing but positive morally. I think it's a lot more complicated than that, and people can talk about how happy they are with their choices, but at the end of the day I don't think it matters how happy that choice makes you.
Further investigating this metaphor of chains in the way that I have is really made me think about other forms of chains, and the fact that many people think that breaking societal or cultural chains necessarily means releasing the innocent, it can also mean releasing monsters, or in the case of a moored ship, it can release the forces of nature. Chains have never been only produced as something to bind the innocent, and if you destroy all chains without regard for their purpose, you are going to unbind everything regardless of whether that was innocent or not, helpful or harmful.
Some people might think that the metaphor of a chain doesn't work because we aren't really that connected to the single-celled amoeba that eventually formed a multicellular life and eventually turned into everything else, but there is far more of that single-celled amoeba in us then you might think. There are so many things that are just fundamentally a part of us that we don't even realize is there. Although our ticket to the future is blank and we choose where to go, we are not a blank slate. A child who is never met another human being knows how to be hungry, knows how to be thirsty, knows how to be tired and go to sleep, a child who has never been around another human being has many things that will just happen because it's written into their blood. And that blood itself can tell stories. The sort of creature we are is a symbiosis with a mitochondria, mitochondria that we share with many organisms including single-celled organisms that exist today. There is nothing inherently or uniquely human about the symbiosis going on in every single one of our cells, it is something we inherited from long before we were anything remotely like a human. In ways we can't even see, we are just a link in an immense chain.
Beyond our own chain, in some ways each of us represents a chain of ecosystems. In the same way that we share our bodies with the mitochondria, our bodies contain a microbiome with many organisms that co-evolved with multicellular life, and also became symbiots with us. We continue the chain for ourselves, and at the same time we continue the chains for all of these other organisms that are fundamentally inhuman but a part of us. It goes to show that we aren't just pollutants in the world, we are a part of the world and any decision we make is going to impact the world, and choosing what is worse for humanity is not necessarily choosing what is best for every other species that is not humanity. If we choose to go extinct, I suspect that many of our symbiotes will also go extinct.
Some people are concerned that the chain that they are a part of may be used to bind the innocent, but chains can be used for many purposes. They can be used to bind monsters, they can be used to more ships, they can be used to keep things together that will become destructive if they are unleashed, and unlike an inanimate piece of chain, each link of our chain can subtly help choose what it is used for. As long as the chain continues. Prior to mass-produced chain of the industrialized world, one would not cut a piece of chain without a very good reason, and one would not cut a piece of rope without a very good reason, because once it is cut it is forever cut.
Imagine whispering to each link in the chain, telling it that it is the most important, and that it is morally wrong to expect it to support the chains that come ahead of it, or that it is morally wrong to continue the length of chain. And you convince that link that it is the most important thing in its world, and the chain breaks never to be reattached. The story for that length of chain which began in the primordial ooze ends, those links feeling full of self-righteous pride at the incomparable sin they have committed against all of the other links in that chain.
The people who think that they are doing the world a favor by refusing to continue the chain, perhaps they think that because the chain in the future could be strained, or because they think that the chain by continuing to exist will necessarily be harmful, or perhaps they think that the chain in the past has been used to bind the innocent in such a way that it can never be redeemed and must be cut, but what they don't realize is that when you cut the chain because of the bad you also cut the chain for the good. For those who were so enlightened that they finally understood the damage that the chains had caused as they dragged on the ground in the past, they think that the only answer is to cut the chain. In reality, if you cut every chain that has come to the realization that the past is imperfect and the future uncertain, then all you're going to be left with are chains that believe that their past is perfect and their future certain to be perfect as well. Is that really the future that such people are aiming at? In this way, such enlightened chains break, and they're enlightenment ends with them. it is a small-minded enlightenment but only cares about what they see and not the vast expanse in front of them. It's ironic, wanting to end something so Grand because of the sins of the past and not realizing the sin it commits against the future.
Imagine also what would happen if every chain used to moor ships, every chain used to secure heavy loads, every chain used to restrain a monster were convinced to break itself apart? All that would be left is the chains that bind the innocent.
Some people might look at this and start asking about people who are physically incapable of continuing chain. I have nothing but sympathy for such people because I thought I was going to be one of them. My wife was infertile through most of my marriage, and it wasn't until we were granted a miracle that my son was born and I was given the opportunity to forge a strong link in the chain that will go forward and bring together a better future. Such people who cannot because they are physically incapable they face a tragedy, but they are not facing a moral choice. You cannot choose to do that which you cannot do.
The same could easily be said of people who have failed to form the next Link in the chain. I also have nothing but sympathy for such people, because it was never a sure thing that I was going to get married. I grew up a colossal nerd, and a virgin who hadn't even held a girl's hand for years. A lot of people like me were never able to find a woman to have kids with, and a lot of people unlike me -- a lot of women, wish that they had found a good man but they just couldn't for whatever reason. It's tragedy, but not a moral failing.
I'm sure that there are many other situations where people can't have kids of their own, and that's fine. The specific conversation I'm having here is about people who had every opportunity and chose not to, and act as if their choice is nothing but positive morally. I think it's a lot more complicated than that, and people can talk about how happy they are with their choices, but at the end of the day I don't think it matters how happy that choice makes you.
Further investigating this metaphor of chains in the way that I have is really made me think about other forms of chains, and the fact that many people think that breaking societal or cultural chains necessarily means releasing the innocent, it can also mean releasing monsters, or in the case of a moored ship, it can release the forces of nature. Chains have never been only produced as something to bind the innocent, and if you destroy all chains without regard for their purpose, you are going to unbind everything regardless of whether that was innocent or not, helpful or harmful.
I'm no big city doctor, but I'm pretty sure that the English empire ended and other than scotland, ireland, and Wales England doesn't really do the empire thing anymore.
It's like being an anti-hitler activist in 1947. Thanks bro but your little late
It's like being an anti-hitler activist in 1947. Thanks bro but your little late
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zUCh7qh_uI
"Just watch, this idiot will watch someone repair tires for 20 minutes!"
Well.... They were right......
"Just watch, this idiot will watch someone repair tires for 20 minutes!"
Well.... They were right......
Honestly, a small group can have an outsized impact by voting for a third party. If a party got 5-10% and it wasn't one of the big two, that'd be where they start doing some soul searching trying to figure out why they didn't get their share of those votes since 5-10% would be enough to change most American elections.
Honestly, I've got a somewhat nuanced opinion on Project Warpspeed and the jab. At the time a lot of people thought covid was actually a big deal, and it makes sense under such circumstances to fast-track whatever you can that might make things better. In that sense, it makes sense to try to make an untested experimental vaccine available.
The difference is when you drop the level of scrutiny on the jab, but then mandate it for a bunch of people. Trump didn't do that second part, as far as I recall. He certainly didn't do it in the rest of the world that decided that authoritarianism was the order of the day.
Of course then it turned out that covid was kinda bullshit all along, but hindsight is 20/20
The difference is when you drop the level of scrutiny on the jab, but then mandate it for a bunch of people. Trump didn't do that second part, as far as I recall. He certainly didn't do it in the rest of the world that decided that authoritarianism was the order of the day.
Of course then it turned out that covid was kinda bullshit all along, but hindsight is 20/20
I think it's safe to say that if you have to choose between a giant douche and a turd sandwich the obvious choice is the giant douche, but it's still a giant douche and not a good political candidate.
Eventually you actually do have to question questioning things.
What a lot of people will do is if you don't come up with the answer that they want you to, they'll just keep on trying to get you to question it, hoping to spend the roulette wheel enough times that eventually it lands on the answer they want and then once you've arrived at the answer that they want they'll throw a padlock on that roulette wheel and it's no longer acceptable to question anything.
So that's why you question things until you've come up with answers that you are satisfied with, but once you have some answers at your satisfied with you don't really need to go back and relitigate everything constantly. In some ways, that's why spinster exists -- the powers that be asked you to keep an open mind and question everything right up until they reached the answer they wanted, and now in a lot of places around the world they want to make it illegal to question the new doctrine that they impose.
In modern Western philosophy the skeptics questioned even the idea that we exist. Eventually, skepticism was defeated to a degree by the famous phrase "I think, therefore I am". The idea being that simply being a thing that can think for itself proves that that thing must exist. Exufficiently skeptical person could continue to be skeptical, but this answer was considered good enough that then those same modern philosophers could move on to different questions.
One of the criticisms of Western postmodern philosophy is the fact that postmodernism effectively acts to smash down all Grand narratives without ever intending to rebuild those narratives. Regardless of what answers you come up with you just keep on questioning and deconstructing. This is one reason why for philosophers they moved on from postmodernism to other ideas such as metamodernism which tries to keep a degree of the skepticism of postmodernism while returning to at least accepting the concept of a grand narrative from modernism, or entirely different philosophies which actually try to solve The world's questions rather than just ask more questions.
What a lot of people will do is if you don't come up with the answer that they want you to, they'll just keep on trying to get you to question it, hoping to spend the roulette wheel enough times that eventually it lands on the answer they want and then once you've arrived at the answer that they want they'll throw a padlock on that roulette wheel and it's no longer acceptable to question anything.
So that's why you question things until you've come up with answers that you are satisfied with, but once you have some answers at your satisfied with you don't really need to go back and relitigate everything constantly. In some ways, that's why spinster exists -- the powers that be asked you to keep an open mind and question everything right up until they reached the answer they wanted, and now in a lot of places around the world they want to make it illegal to question the new doctrine that they impose.
In modern Western philosophy the skeptics questioned even the idea that we exist. Eventually, skepticism was defeated to a degree by the famous phrase "I think, therefore I am". The idea being that simply being a thing that can think for itself proves that that thing must exist. Exufficiently skeptical person could continue to be skeptical, but this answer was considered good enough that then those same modern philosophers could move on to different questions.
One of the criticisms of Western postmodern philosophy is the fact that postmodernism effectively acts to smash down all Grand narratives without ever intending to rebuild those narratives. Regardless of what answers you come up with you just keep on questioning and deconstructing. This is one reason why for philosophers they moved on from postmodernism to other ideas such as metamodernism which tries to keep a degree of the skepticism of postmodernism while returning to at least accepting the concept of a grand narrative from modernism, or entirely different philosophies which actually try to solve The world's questions rather than just ask more questions.
Certain people get all worked up when they see parking, in a bad way. Like "oh this is terrible we could be using this land for so many other things!" -- that might be an argument in Europe where everyone is crammed into a relatively tiny piece of land, but in the United States and Canada land is not at a premium! We can have parking lots so that you can go and park your car and go to the event or the store or whatever it is. People who don't like having parking can always just move to Europe. I hear they love migrants there.
If this is the story that I looked up, first of all it doesn't look like Microsoft is going to own that power plant, it is going to continue to be owned by the current owner. Microsoft is going to invest in the Three Mile Island facility to get it back up and running, and then we'll have a 20 year agreement to purchase energy from them. According to the article, that would add 800 megawatts to the grid. By my account, that would add 672 gigawatt-hours to the grid assuming that it runs 24/7.
Unless there is another story somewhere else that has them investing in nuclear power...
Unless there is another story somewhere else that has them investing in nuclear power...
A completely random observation: it seems to me that bubbles tend to have a color, and that color seems to suggest the lifespan of the bubble. The ones that I can see seems to start with a dark blue, followed by purple, followed by yellow, and then it becomes sort of a clear white with no particular color, and then it pops. The mechanics of each bubble seem to change with the color as well, yellow or clear ones seem to be generally more buoyant than blue or purple ones.
I think what's going on is there's a certain amount of liquid in each bubble, and over time the water making up the bubble evaporates. The different amount of liquid in the bubble forms thicker bubble walls which have a prism effect, which is why the color spectrum changes, and as the water evaporates there's less Mass so wind currents can pick up more easily.
I can think of absolutely no practical application of this information, but I thought it was interesting to observe.
I think what's going on is there's a certain amount of liquid in each bubble, and over time the water making up the bubble evaporates. The different amount of liquid in the bubble forms thicker bubble walls which have a prism effect, which is why the color spectrum changes, and as the water evaporates there's less Mass so wind currents can pick up more easily.
I can think of absolutely no practical application of this information, but I thought it was interesting to observe.
You're goddamn right.
I basically lived off of these at work during the pandemic. I just bring a big box of them, three of them a day and don't think too hard about the nutrition information.
I basically lived off of these at work during the pandemic. I just bring a big box of them, three of them a day and don't think too hard about the nutrition information.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy8kmNEo1i8
When people are like "these gen z kids with their skibidi" it's just an indication that a lot of people don't understand the culture that they grew up in.
I'm not even a big pop culture guy, but of course I know scatman. It's not even a big deal...
When people are like "these gen z kids with their skibidi" it's just an indication that a lot of people don't understand the culture that they grew up in.
I'm not even a big pop culture guy, but of course I know scatman. It's not even a big deal...
Lots of people make fake posts about their 2 year old giving opinions about politics that either never happened or the kid was just parroting what they've been told by an adult.
Honestly, even if a child says something I agree with, that's unimportant. Even if *my* child says something I agree with, that's unimportant. Kids aren't particularly wise, the best they can do is imperfectly reflect what they've been raised in.
But something happened both times I took my son to the park today, and I'm proud of what I saw: He saw litter on the ground, picked it up, and put it in the garbage. He did it a bunch of times, too. It wasn't a fluke.
I think that's a good habit to be in at the age of 2. If he's reflecting service to the community, then I'm not just proud of him, I'm proud of myself for presenting an image where he mimics doing something like that. It reflects a growing virtue in him, and potentially virtue within myself that he sees.
And to be real for a minute, kids are a lot of different things. I was just about to hit "send" on this message, and I hear him giggling, and I'm like "aww hehehe....wait a minute, I know that giggle", and sure enough he was taking a mouthful of water from his bottle and spitting it all over himself making a huge mess so I had to go clean it up. He's still 2, after all!
Honestly, even if a child says something I agree with, that's unimportant. Even if *my* child says something I agree with, that's unimportant. Kids aren't particularly wise, the best they can do is imperfectly reflect what they've been raised in.
But something happened both times I took my son to the park today, and I'm proud of what I saw: He saw litter on the ground, picked it up, and put it in the garbage. He did it a bunch of times, too. It wasn't a fluke.
I think that's a good habit to be in at the age of 2. If he's reflecting service to the community, then I'm not just proud of him, I'm proud of myself for presenting an image where he mimics doing something like that. It reflects a growing virtue in him, and potentially virtue within myself that he sees.
And to be real for a minute, kids are a lot of different things. I was just about to hit "send" on this message, and I hear him giggling, and I'm like "aww hehehe....wait a minute, I know that giggle", and sure enough he was taking a mouthful of water from his bottle and spitting it all over himself making a huge mess so I had to go clean it up. He's still 2, after all!
I'm probably one of the earlier people to ever want a modern electric car, but no matter how much you want a thing you still have to be able to live with it and a lot of the trade offs of electric are only acceptable if you are rich enough to buy a new car every few years or a Hollywood actor who doesn't really need to be anywhere most of the time.
One thing to keep in mind even with these numbers is that a lot of people call it the CPLie because if anyone runs the numbers they immediately find out it's totally fake.
For example, anyone who pays rent knows that rent is up hundreds of percent compared to the past. They mess with that number as they mess with all these numbers.
As for an example of what might look like a more representative number, if you go back to the 1980s they measured inflation one way, probably a more correct way back when they were actually trying to find out what that was, in the 1990s they switched to a slightly different way, and in the 2000s they went whole hog with a third Way. Websites like Shadow stats show what inflation would be based on those previous methodologies and they're overwhelmingly higher. Going by those previous methodologies, the world has been in a Great depression for decades.
For example, anyone who pays rent knows that rent is up hundreds of percent compared to the past. They mess with that number as they mess with all these numbers.
As for an example of what might look like a more representative number, if you go back to the 1980s they measured inflation one way, probably a more correct way back when they were actually trying to find out what that was, in the 1990s they switched to a slightly different way, and in the 2000s they went whole hog with a third Way. Websites like Shadow stats show what inflation would be based on those previous methodologies and they're overwhelmingly higher. Going by those previous methodologies, the world has been in a Great depression for decades.
It isn't really possible per se.
The moment you have a share in a company you are affected by it. Typically, you have to sell your time to somebody else, and then those hours of your life become money which then you invest in stocks. So just from that point, those stocks represent an investment of time that you had to take to make the money to invest in the company. If the value of those stocks go up, then investing that time as it paying off, if the value of those stocks goes down, then investing that time did not pay off. If the stock pays a dividend, you will get it and if it doesn't then you will not. It's even possible for the stock to go to zero, and then you lose your entire investment of time in that company.
Anyone who works for publicly traded company has the option to turn the money that they make doing work for the company and equity. It's entirely possible for someone who works at McDonald's for example to take a chunk of their earnings and invest it back into mcdonald's, and then they own the company that they work for in part. Often people don't want to do this because they just want to make their wage, and they don't want to have to worry about the ups and downs of the market or to have money tied up in investments when they could just spend it.
Now I'm more complex thing would be the topic of limited liability, and that's something that I would be a little bit more grayscale on because I wonder if it's really okay that if you own shares in a company that kills a bunch of innocent people all you can lose are those shares. If you own a share in a company that is worth a dollar and it feels the Grand canyon with toxic sewage, it doesn't really seem just that if they had made millions of dollars filling the Grand canyon with toxic sewage you would have gotten a share of that, but if they were caught you'd only be on the line for your investment. It's asymmetrical. Unlimited upside, only 100% downside. That's one of the reasons why in the past I've talked about the idea of eliminating limited liability as a legal concept, and so anyone who invests in a company is putting themselves on the line if that company commits a crime heinous enough. It would certainly change the equation when companies decide to break the law.
The moment you have a share in a company you are affected by it. Typically, you have to sell your time to somebody else, and then those hours of your life become money which then you invest in stocks. So just from that point, those stocks represent an investment of time that you had to take to make the money to invest in the company. If the value of those stocks go up, then investing that time as it paying off, if the value of those stocks goes down, then investing that time did not pay off. If the stock pays a dividend, you will get it and if it doesn't then you will not. It's even possible for the stock to go to zero, and then you lose your entire investment of time in that company.
Anyone who works for publicly traded company has the option to turn the money that they make doing work for the company and equity. It's entirely possible for someone who works at McDonald's for example to take a chunk of their earnings and invest it back into mcdonald's, and then they own the company that they work for in part. Often people don't want to do this because they just want to make their wage, and they don't want to have to worry about the ups and downs of the market or to have money tied up in investments when they could just spend it.
Now I'm more complex thing would be the topic of limited liability, and that's something that I would be a little bit more grayscale on because I wonder if it's really okay that if you own shares in a company that kills a bunch of innocent people all you can lose are those shares. If you own a share in a company that is worth a dollar and it feels the Grand canyon with toxic sewage, it doesn't really seem just that if they had made millions of dollars filling the Grand canyon with toxic sewage you would have gotten a share of that, but if they were caught you'd only be on the line for your investment. It's asymmetrical. Unlimited upside, only 100% downside. That's one of the reasons why in the past I've talked about the idea of eliminating limited liability as a legal concept, and so anyone who invests in a company is putting themselves on the line if that company commits a crime heinous enough. It would certainly change the equation when companies decide to break the law.
Consider a few things:
1. The dollar has lost 97% of its buying power since 1970 due to inflation, which some economists consider to be a tax. After all, it means that if you had $1 in 1970, it is lost 87% of its buying power. If that dollar had maintained its buying power, it would be the same as 8.11 today (and that's assuming th CPLie is right). To be taxed on the unrealized games on this, you would end up paying overwhelming taxes on that dollar in spite of the fact that the buying power hasn't gone up or down -- the only thing that happened is the government printed up a bunch of money through the central banks to fund what has become half the economy.
2. The income tax itself began as a tax on people who were the equivalent of multimillionaires today. "Don't worry, we're just taxing the richest people so that they can pay their fair share" they said. How's it working out for you?
3. A lot of people who aren't the richest people in the world are going to end up getting hurt. Your Boomer parents? They are planning on retiring based on the market not permanently collapsing. As well, debt is such as loans or even government debt rely on people being willing to invest in america, and if prices drop every year because the richest people in the world need to drop a significant chunk of their portfolios to pay some arbitrary and capricious tax on money that they don't have in their hands, who's going to want to invest in that?
4. The law of unintended consequences is often surprising. There's no reason to think that rich people couldn't just find ways to suppress their apparent wealth. Or what those might be or what the consequences might be of those ways. Let's say a lot of the rich cash out entirely while they can and move their wealth to countries that will never implement a tax like this. What happens next? Well, it isn't good for the country that suddenly might not just have its money and stuff leave, but have it's talent leave because smart talented people end up chasing the money to wherever it ends up. Ask South American countries which thought they could become rich by having the government take all the wealth. Protip: it didn't end well. The rich stayed rich, the poor don't get to eat anymore.
1. The dollar has lost 97% of its buying power since 1970 due to inflation, which some economists consider to be a tax. After all, it means that if you had $1 in 1970, it is lost 87% of its buying power. If that dollar had maintained its buying power, it would be the same as 8.11 today (and that's assuming th CPLie is right). To be taxed on the unrealized games on this, you would end up paying overwhelming taxes on that dollar in spite of the fact that the buying power hasn't gone up or down -- the only thing that happened is the government printed up a bunch of money through the central banks to fund what has become half the economy.
2. The income tax itself began as a tax on people who were the equivalent of multimillionaires today. "Don't worry, we're just taxing the richest people so that they can pay their fair share" they said. How's it working out for you?
3. A lot of people who aren't the richest people in the world are going to end up getting hurt. Your Boomer parents? They are planning on retiring based on the market not permanently collapsing. As well, debt is such as loans or even government debt rely on people being willing to invest in america, and if prices drop every year because the richest people in the world need to drop a significant chunk of their portfolios to pay some arbitrary and capricious tax on money that they don't have in their hands, who's going to want to invest in that?
4. The law of unintended consequences is often surprising. There's no reason to think that rich people couldn't just find ways to suppress their apparent wealth. Or what those might be or what the consequences might be of those ways. Let's say a lot of the rich cash out entirely while they can and move their wealth to countries that will never implement a tax like this. What happens next? Well, it isn't good for the country that suddenly might not just have its money and stuff leave, but have it's talent leave because smart talented people end up chasing the money to wherever it ends up. Ask South American countries which thought they could become rich by having the government take all the wealth. Protip: it didn't end well. The rich stayed rich, the poor don't get to eat anymore.