This meme’s text has figures about “now” but doesn’t note that it is mostly a paraphrased quote from Deus Ex, a video game set in a fictional dystopian version of America in 2052. The speaker is not in fact talking about 2024 America. But even for the past figures, I would want citations.
The first part seems to be talking about tax sources as a portion of total taxes raised, which isn’t easy to search for. I did find a table that cited whitehouse.gov and recorded income collections compared to total GDP at least. It did peak in 1945, but only at 7.1%.
The US Bureau of Labor doesn’t seem to have records on self-employment before 1948. The only thing I could find talking about self-employment in 1900 was a blog post that said it was 50%. 90% self-employment sounds like a lot of subsistence farming and odd-jobs work, which isn’t exactly the ideal economic model.
The Deus Ex part is part of a longer conversation, but here is the relevant section:
<span style="color:#323232;">JC Denton: Just answer the question.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Leo Gold: Don’t believe me? It’s all in the numbers. For a hundred years, there’s been a conspiracy of plutocrats against ordinary people.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">JC Denton: Do you have a single fact to back that up?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Leo Gold: Number one: In 1945, corporations paid 50 percent of federal taxes. Now they pay about 5 percent. Number two: in 1900, 90 percent of Americans were self-employed; now it’s about two percent.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">JC Denton: So?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Leo Gold: It’s called consolidation. Strengthen governments and corporations, weaken individuals. With taxes, this can be done imperceptibly over time.
</span>
The fact that a worker who barely makes ends meet pays 10-20 times the taxes Amazon pays is… Fascinating in a dark way.
Similar to feudal peasants that used to pay up in the form of free labor and produce, while their noble overlords enjoyed massive privileges and zero taxes.
The west, so afraid of strong government, now has no government. Only financial power. Slogans such as “governments have limited power by design” come from well-paid researchers, think tanks funded by big businesses. It’s privately funded propaganda, like the Trilateral Commision in United States, for instance.
1945 is a really weird data point, because yk, WW2 was still going on, so at least for Americans, most of them were probably employed by the state or by the various enterprises that produced the weapons needed for the war effort
Strengthen governments? Corporations have been specifically sowing distrust in government so that they can convince voters to weaken regulations and vote against their own interests. How are corporations strengthening governments when they benefit from weak government?
Regulations help to protect large corporations from competition, and then the larger the government is the more contracts it gives out. Are you saying we need a bigger stronger government?
Regulations help protect people from corporations. This libertarian take is total nonsense. What makes competition difficult for new entrants is the overwhelming size of modern day multinational corporations and the capital investment required to wage any sort of real competition which is something that is only going to be fronted by other extremely wealthy interests. So, yes, we do need bigger, stronger governments in relation to those very powerful corporations, specifically strong enough to break them up. Or ideally nationalize them entirely.
People who say stuff like this have never tried. You’ll never hear a person who actually starts a business say anything of the sort. Usually insane tax rates is their gripe.
That is kind of true but it also protects corporations from small businesses. For example min wage harms small businesses much more than large corporations. You can like the “protection” but then you will get what you get with corporations and costs. If you opt for the bigger government then you will get things like unaffordable houses and inflation, so dont complain when you get what you asked for.
Ok but without regulation you get poverty wages, 12 hour shifts, 6 day work weeks, and food with no nutrition unless you think lead is a vital mineral.
Just among so many other things, like the lead poisoned baby food from March this year, you clown, the FDA was established in 1906, and Republicans are, right now, trying to abolish child labor laws and hiring 12 year olds in meat packing plants.
In fact, minimum wage earners tend to put a greater portion of their earnings back into the local economy vs. savings and increases help or at least don’t impact particularly negatively small business. Neoclassical economics is a joke.
Our current economic situation is the product of decades of regulation cutting supply side (aka neoclassical) economics championed by the likes of Thatcher and Reagan, which still dominates today. You know where housing is not unaffordable? Vienna, Austria. A place where better than half the residents live in social housing. The product of a strong government and regulation.
So your theory is that housing is so expensive because of less regulation? And if we had more regulations in how houses are built housing would be cheaper?
Yes, of course. Banning short term rentals for example is a regulation that would put downward pressure on housing prices. Banning investment companies such as Blackrock, Blackstone, etc from purchasing single family homes, duplexes, 4-plexes and the like would do the same. Whereas the lack of regulation around these things has contributed to home price inflation. The idea that people are unable to afford homes because there is too much regulation holds water like a sieve.
It’s really frustrating that you read the comment outlining the kind of regulation that would help, yet you somehow think the only kind of regulation possible is “make houses harder and more expensive to build” and dip out of the conversation with a “wow ur dumb lol”. It’s almost as if you’ve been arguing in bad faith and have no information to back up any of your takes.
I understand your frustration but what am I supposed to say to someone that just repeats and believes ANY propaganda that their side tells them? What he said is so so far off from what reality is, its literally turned into a cult at this point.
Wait, so this entire conversation you didn’t make a single, tangible point or statement, just sarcastically asked questions doubting the possibility of their being another opinion besides your own, and when they answer all of these questions with sources and examples you run away because they’re the ones repeating what their side tells them…? And accuse them of being in the cult…
ZING!!! The difference is that I know exactly why all the thing that are listed is mere propaganda, I have heard and seen the same bullshit talking points over and over. If you guys want to just do what your team says, that fine, just dont think you are are actually thinking for yourself.
The difference is that I know exactly why all the thing that are listed is mere propaganda
Think about this outside the context of this conversation. Do you understand how this is cyclical thinking? “I don’t have to look at the other side’s sources or perspective because I already know they’re wrong and I’m right.” This is the EXACT logic you used with your statement of, “can you convince an NPC of anything?” No, when they think like you, you absolutely cannot, because as you’ve just stated, you are not receptive to actual discussion, you think you know everything there is to know about both sides of the debate, and you’re not willing to engage in anything that you don’t already agree with.
You are so blatantly displaying all of the one sided brainwashed traits you think you’re so far above, in the same comments you accuse others of being one sided in. God help us.
Edit: also lol at the “if you just want to do what your side says then fine”. My guy showed examples of the regulations he’s talking about actually working and said, “here’s some sources of this working, we could do something similar”. Assumedly without reading anything, you blindly said it wouldn’t work and hur dur ur dumb lol. Which person is just doing what their side says again? Yeesh.
One big thing you are missing is that I think the other side you are talking about is wrong also.
I dont have a side here, I literally do housing, and I fully understand every aspect of why its expensive. I dont care about narratives, I care about actual facts about why housing is not getting built. You guys are just repeating propaganda that falls apart under the most basic scrutiny. The problem is that if you are not able or willing to do that scrutiny then I am not going to help you, you have made your decision.
If I’m understanding you correctly, when you say you do housing, you mean that you work on the construction side of things, either literally physically building homes or working with companies that do so.
How does this directly relate to, say, regulation on how many vacant homes a rental company can own? Or regulation on zoning / type of housing able to be built in certain areas?
“Housing not getting built” is not the only issue that needs to be addressed, and seeing as it’s the only issue you’ve given any insight on, it’s hard to believe that you, a single person in a country full of people trying to figure it out, “fully understand every aspect of why it’s expensive.” It doesn’t matter to the average homebuyer how much a house costs to build, if the company that paid to have it built is selling it for 3x that price, or they’re only renting, or they just want to let the house sit to drive supply lower.
There are reasons that houses are expensive to build, and there’s reason that houses are expensive to buy. There’s obviously a lot of overlap but they are not the same lists. There is regulation that exists that can mitigate the latter without exacerbating the former. You are simply refusing to look at examples.
I will give you the long and short of it; you guys are looking at the insignificant things that account for just a small amount of the problem (cue you googling and finding an alarmist article), the big problem is that its too expensive and hard to build. The reason it is too hard to build is 99% due to what the government does. More regulations will just make it worse.
Corporations benefit from Capitalist governments. Larger Capitalists benefit when it is more difficult to compete, such as with strong IP laws or high startup costs, giving them free reign for monopoly.
They also love large militaries, as the MIC makes a ton of money off the suffering of people worldwide.
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