Why do people feel they are entitled to the money of others?

03-11-2021 6:55pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118113961#Comment_118113961

Jmayo, better to say nothing and have people think you’re a fool, than speak and confirm it.

dublin49 · 04-11-2021 12:14am

Capitalism is undefendable and communism is unworkable,hence the inequality and oppression in the world.

04-11-2021 12:21am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118115917#Comment_118115917

Why would capitalism be indefensible?

jmayo · 04-11-2021 11:11am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118114250#Comment_118114250

Some might say the fool is the one that thinks they should pay their fair share and someone else in a much better position should pay fook all.

It always amazes me how many lickspittles and sycophants there are in the world to defend the indefensible decisions and actions of a few, just because of who they are and what they have.

dublin49 · 04-11-2021 11:42am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118115949#Comment_118115949

because we live in a world of finite resources and our operating system allows individuals accrue unlimited amounts of these resources for themselves.

04-11-2021 12:05pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118116959#Comment_118116959

It's not like the billionaires care about the little guys.

The idea that billionaires shouldn't be taxed is like people in the past believing that the Church shouldn't be taxed. And I don't think this ever happened but it is like peasants supporting being taxed while defending the right of Aristocrats not to be taxed.

04-11-2021 12:52pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118115143#Comment_118115143

Bit simplistic given CEOs who have reduced the value of their company have still gotten paid and got paid off handsomely. And CEOs in general are paid much more than they used to be relative to lower paid workers.

In any case I pay taxes, and high enough taxes too, at 50% marginal. I expect everybody earning the same above my level to pay at least the same, or higher.

04-11-2021 1:03pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118117134#Comment_118117134

Capitalism is based on property rights, and the right to sell property, in all its forms, physical and intellectual. In a world of finite resources, you want to make those resources available to everyone at the same time? Can you see the problem with that?

04-11-2021 1:07pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118116959#Comment_118116959

The decision to pay as much tax as legally required and avoid paying more than that is not the decision of the few, it is the decision of anyone with even the most basic understanding of how taxation works.

dublin49 · 04-11-2021 1:55pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118117536#Comment_118117536

Capitalism is the right to acquire as much resources as you can legally or at times illegally acquire without reference to the common good or whats best for society in general.Its a grotesque design that gets a free pass because it has the occasional poster boy that allows the major beneficiaries of the system to say that opportunity is available to all.I find its greatest supporters become socialist very quickly when the system works against them.

jmayo · 04-11-2021 2:07pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118117558#Comment_118117558

Ah yes the old legal argument again.

There is a bit of a difference between writing off things like your expenses, even ones that are a bit dubious and more personal than work related, your pension contributions, healthcare costs, etc and actively setting up mechanisms to make it look like the millions you earned were never earned at all.

And that is what the ultra rich have done.

Warren Buffet has made a big song and dance about how the tax system should be overhauled and how he should pay more than basic workers, yet between 2014 and 2018 his wealth grew by $24.3 billion, but he only paid $23.7 million in taxes, a rate of 0.1 percent, after reporting taxable income of $125 million.

That is tax rate of 18% on income.

According to OECD

The tax wedge for the average single worker in the United States decreased by 1.4 percentage points from 29.7% in 2019 to 28.3% in 2020.

Granted with child related benefits and tax provisions this tends to reduce the tax wedge for workers with children compared with the average single

worker.

I think old Warren's kids are now pretty grown up so can't see him availing of that break.

04-11-2021 2:13pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118117748#Comment_118117748

It contradicts your point that everybody gets paid what they deserve. And shareholders have very little power in reality. The management runs the company and the only shareholder revolt is when things go really badly.

04-11-2021 2:23pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118117812#Comment_118117812

I don’t want to get bogged down with this, but by removing capitalism, the right to own and sell property, you then allow people to more freely acquire goods regardless of what’s best for society, the principle is referred to as the “ tragedy of the commons”, which judging from what you posted above, is what you are misconstruing capitalism as. By doing away with capitalism, you allow people to acquire goods freely at will, which of course exhausts resources.

Sunny Disposition · 04-11-2021 2:27pm

I would say anyone with a bit of life experience knows that very wealthy people rarely deserve it, I'm sure there are exceptions, but that's generally the case. And I say that as someone who grew up in a type of poverty that was quite common in the West of Ireland, but was financially secure by the time I was 31.

The reasons people get rich are generally down to luck or an accident of birth. I became wealthy because I worked in construction because I had very little education, there was a huge housing boom in the south of England, and I was in the right place at the right time. Now I did work hard, but I had friends and family members who worked at least as hard in jobs where they would never see the same rewards.

Scratch the surface of almost all wealthy people and you'll see they had a lot of luck too. It's very unlikely you're going to make millions without it, it's not realistic. Wealthy people who are lauded in Ireland had heaps of luck, Roy Keane, Michael O'Leary, Pat McDonagh, they may have been resilient, hard working and clever, but they all had huge dollops of luck in life too. The importance of luck applies across nearly all areas of life, and unfortunately younger people rarely appreciate it. There tends to be a feeling that people get what they deserve, that people are successful because they made good choices etc.

I think it's one of the reasons a lot of people went wrong in the Celtic Tiger, they believed there was a formula for business success and didn't think they were taking risks, particularly as banks gave them money and endorsed their plans.

djan · 04-11-2021 2:37pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118117902#Comment_118117902

The concept of deserving things has no set definition and is a whimsical amount that is different to all. Unless there are government interventions such as minimum wages and fixed compensation structures, people are paid depending on how much value they bring. When easily replaceable this is low, the more scarcer the skillset/ability the higher the compensation.

Shareholders hold the ultimate power when it comes to a company. They can vote to remove management pretty swiftly if needed and will as a result have strong sway with the management that they agreed to appoint.

djan · 04-11-2021 2:40pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118117812#Comment_118117812

Something happening illegally within a system is not a fault of said system.

Capitalism gets some bashing even though it is not actually practiced fully anywhere. What alternative is there? Humans have been around a fair while and we are yet to find a more efficient system than capitalism to improve the well-being of humanity and speed-up of progress and efficiency.

04-11-2021 3:06pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118117996#Comment_118117996

I’ve already given examples of CEOs not getting paid depending on what “value” they bring. The shareholders meet once a year and are always very reluctant to oust existing management, not least because the options are often that board or nothing. Many shareholders are short term anyway, the reaction to a company losing money is often to sell the stock not to stay and oust the managers.

CEOs are often free to extract what they want as compensation via a compliant board.

(There are numerous other examples of course. People not adding value because of nepotism, favouritism or bad management).

anyway slightly off topic because billionaires are rarely employees. The argument against the OP is simple - he thinks taxing billionaires is bad, but he seems to think that taxing workers is ok.

Taxes are for the little people.

djan · 04-11-2021 3:29pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118118221#Comment_118118221

CEOs often get paid based on the value their appointment brings. Due to the nature of contracts they will be paid something even if they tank the company. The big shareholders such as funds tend to be on average more long-term orientated and as you say will see firing management as a last resort but will dangle this above their heads in order to push them a certain direction.

That's the thing about value, it's not always based on monetary terms. A child of a company owner being appointed a certain position may not bring great value to said company but is of value to the owner in a more personal way.

Agree that we are straying off topic and also agree that citizens should be taxed equally. While high tax stifles innovation and progress, it is wrong for any entity to be paying fractions of tax on income that an average earning person would.

TheRef · 04-11-2021 4:17pm

I believe the OPs question to be loaded and not a reflection of reality.

The question should not be about taking "money" from anyone, but expecting everyone to contribute "a fair share" towards developing and maintaining a fair and just society.

What is a fair share? Well, I'll explain by way of an apparently true story I was told years ago when a certain Irish media/telco magnate was playing golf with a more normal but "financially comfortable" person. The magnate wanted to bet €50 per hole which they did. After the magnate start doing well, he wanted to up the stake to €1,000 per hole. The normal gent knew it was crazy money they couldn't afford so instead countered and said "I'll tell you what. Let's play 18 holes and whoever wins has to give the other person 50% of everything they had". The magnate wouldn't agree.

The point is if Bezos was to give away 90% of his fortune, it would make little to no difference to him. However, it would, if used correctly, dramatically improve the lives of millions.

Their wealth was not just amassed out of nowhere - in the almost entirely "gained" from investors and speculators who drove the value of their companies to these incredible amounts. Bezos and Musk didn't really do anything to generate these "gains" - they just sat back as the people essentially gambled and drove the share price of their companies to crazy amounts.

So yes, there are many people (myself included to a much lesser extent) who are burdened less than many people who work harder and longer by the amount we are required to contribute to society.

04-11-2021 5:23pm

Ah here... I mean I'm not exactly leftwing economically. I thought this was gonna be about freeloaders, freeman on the land types, people who want everything for free, the anti everything crowd, etc... which I'd wholeheartedly agree on.

But this level of wealth? No way can it be accumulated ethically. There is nothing "begrudging" or resentful, lazy or lacking ambition to call this out for the obscene greed that it is. Amazon has a ferocious monopoly. Vendors can't choose not to do business via Amazon. These kinds of figures are at the expense of someone. Of course it's wrong that there is the scope for things to be that uneven. Capitalism means a number of things - it has its positives, but this is the negative side to it: uncontrolled, unfettered greed. It's completely sick that there are people struggling on crap wages in the same society.

04-11-2021 5:35pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118118986#Comment_118118986

Why can’t vendors choose not to do business via Amazon?

04-11-2021 6:21pm

Well obviously because people go straight to Amazon. Smaller businesses can't compete so they have to do business via Amazon. They're reliant on it.

04-11-2021 7:11pm

People go straight to Amazon because it is a marketplace resource, but not the only one. Many vendors appear cross platform on eBay, Alibaba etc. The benefit to vendors is that it reaches buyers in a way vendor websites alone do not. Saying a vendor has no choice but to use a resource that allows more buyers to see, and buy their products seems a unique viewpoint, considering the aim for vendors is usually to attract buyers and sell their products. But all that leads back to why Jeff Bezos is so rich, he built an online marketplace that allows buyers to source and buy products easily, which like it or not, is what people want when they look for an item online.

Why do people feel they are entitled to the money of others?

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