Saw a post about this at !history@hexbear.net and was a bit confused by exactly how badly the people there were going at each others throats in the comments. Nobody seemed able to agree on what precisely happened in 1971. Suggested explanations included:

  • Neoliberalism being declared the state religion by Grand Moff Richard Nixon
  • The gold standard being abolished
  • The oil crisis
  • The Republican and Democrat parties becoming increasingly divided
  • Declining birthrates
  • Institutional Racism

If any of you could give some explanations with, like, sources that aren’t just 10 pages of graphs with arrows pointing at 1971, that would be pretty great.

  • count_dongulus@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    So you want to tax all companies a percent of their stock ownership every year? Good luck with that.

    You’re falling intro a trollhill. The point is the ultra-wealthy pay very smart people to work out loopholes. If some internet retard can run around your ideas and keep you busy, a team of full time financial experts will have a field day. This is not an easy problem to solve. Pretending like it is leads to support for crappy subpar legislation that doesn’t work.

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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      15 hours ago

      Not at all.

      Companies shouldn’t be owning stock.

      Companies issue their own stock. They don’t own it. The shareholders who buy it or otherwise acquire it are the owners. And if those owners have more than $10 million worth of it, they can afford to pay 1% of everything they own beyond that first $10 million.

      I won’t prohibit companies from owning other publicly traded companies, but they don’t get special status when they do. That status is reserved for natural persons, and only $10 million of the the stock owned by such a person is exempt from taxation.

      The point is the ultra-wealthy pay very smart people to work out loopholes.

      Correct. The securities tax I’m talking about is not the actual solution. The loopholes they use to avoid that securities tax is the solution. The actual solution is for them to actually spend their wealth and enjoy their lives, rather than treating the economy like some idle clicker.