• Grail@multiverse.soulism.net
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    6 hours ago

    If you’ll permit Me to take this joke seriously for a moment…

    Good business men give money to charity, and bad business men don’t. This makes bad businessmen richer, and therefore more powerful. If we tax ALL the business men enough money to solve all the world’s problems, then we won’t need charity anymore. Then the good business men will be rich enough to stop the bad business men.

    Anyway that’s called social democracy and it’s… Well, it’s better than unregulated capitalism.

    • tetris11@feddit.uk
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      6 hours ago

      We can set all the taxes we want, but if we don’t enforce them by closing off the loopholes, then all we get are the bad ones at the top.

      Even in the high tax heyday of the 60s and 70s, you have to bear in mind that money wasn’t tracked at all and an individual could easily claim zero income and pay zero taxes whilst pocketing most of the cash under the table. Most transactions back then were cash only under-the-table type operations, with the exception of course being big businesses. I.e. Regulated at the top, and unregulated at the bottom was the prevailing tax model for much of the post-war economy