this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025
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My favorite thing about dumb as free market / neoliberal dumb asses don't understand is that nations that actually invest in their population will win in the long term. Taking the money and running, while pulling up the ladder behind you will always have this result. We were doomed the moment the tax rate dropped below 90% for the top 10% of income.
Truth. Back in the 2008/2009 bailout discussions, I thought the best thing we could have done was a program that covered living expenses and cost to go to a technical college. By 2010, you've got a new batch of American workers with modernized skills.
Which still sounds like a pretty good idea.
Whenever a company is bailed out it should be handed over to the government/the people. We bail out these companies for them to turn around and do the same dumb stuff that tanked our economy. The top three American banks should be owned by us because they've screwed up everything. GM and Ford should be owned by the people because their vehicles suck and they give us a bad rap. We bail them out just for them to continue making below average cars?! Boeing as well.
Just as a matter of accuracy, the US government didn't have to bail out Ford in 2008/09, at least not directly. They bailed out GM and Chrysler. Ford was an indirect beneficiary, though. If one of the other two collapsed, the supply chain hit would have dragged down Ford, too.
Mind you, Chrysler has been stumbling from one government bailout to the next for my entire life, and I ain't that young anymore.
Oh ya I'm guessing the Ford family had enough money to not have to suck the blood from tax payers. But they get enough subsidies in counting it.
Ford wanted his employees to be able to buy the cars they make. Also, the US gov made money off of GM. Tesla is the one that has always been a leech propped up by taxpayers.
Ford also hated jews and black people. He's not a person worth looking up to.
I agree but I want to add, every American needs to maximize their knowledge and education levels. Just because someone is a plumber doesn't mean they should have a college level understanding of core subjects! This is why we are so dumb as a nation. Many Americans don't even understand the contracts they signing nor can they effectively communicate with individuals from other nations because other nations want their population to be as smart and educated as possible. We are so far behind mentally it's staggering. The reason we had to bring in South Korea workers is because our American works couldn't do basic math, computer, and engineering to set up car manufacturing plant.
Anything short of 100% tax rate above ~$50 million isn't enough, since with that 90% rate, the ultra wealthy were still able to buy the government and buy influence among the populace.
The Red Scare didn't come out of just one guy's ideas.
That's an intriguing thought. My kneejerk reaction was the desire to reply that a 99% max rate is enough because why put a hard cap on individual success. But after as moment's thought I believe you're right. 1% of billions of dollars is still more than enough wealth to snowball the accumulation of wealth and power over time in a manner that allows the most successful people in the system to pull the rug out from under that system. Without a hard cap, at best you just stave off that eventual erosion.
The irony of ancaps is that what they want is a fundamental contradiction. Capitalism requires a powerful centralized nation state because it falls apart without one. I think that most ancaps do understand this and are being disingenuous on some level, either with others or themselves, and merely fantasize about collecting power in the chaotic years between disenfranchisement and the crash.
Slightly related but on my mind, this reminds me of anthropological studies on the origins of money. The story that money arose as a way to lubricate otherwise rigid and incompatible exchanges in so-called "barter markets" is a myth. In reality it seems that in all instances money actually arose as a punitive system of legal account in order to avoid the violence of blood libels (eg Alice killed Bob's cow, to avoid Bob killing Alice the elders decree that one cow is worth 12 chickens and order Alice to give Bob 12 chickens. The elders write down these equivalent exchanges for future conflict resolution and a unit of account is the obvious next step). Ironically when modern anthropologists have gone looking for examples of barter markets they find none in antiquity or ancient times, they find them only in modern times and places where formerly capitalist or mercantilst populations got shut out of the wider economy for various reasons and suddenly had to make due without money. Rather than money arising from barter, barter is merely just what people who know money do when they suddenly have no money. TL;DR: Barter systems are largely a modern capitalist myth.
Even in a hierarchical community materially established well beyond immediate concern for survival, if everyone knows everyone else and society isn't structured around a pursuit of upward mobility then mutual aid kind of runs the show as an unspoken matter of fact. You give a cow to your neighbor because he's always there for you and you want to support that fact. Or viewed cynically, your involvement in those social exchanges (Because absent money, material exchanges are just social exchanges) is important for maintaining your social standing.
I've never read of money being invented primarily to do remote trade. I have however read of money being foisted upon communities by distant traders, seeking to create new trade partners (We do that today too, the IMF calls it "Lifting people out of poverty"). And in all cases I know of where distant trade wasn't monetary it was either 1) People who already knew money but didn't have a common currency (Like the silk road) or 2) They viewed it as a diplomatic gift exchange (Like indigenous Americans making contact with Europeans).
Yup, people can't even imagine a world where people are treated like humans without needing an entry fee. We have the means right now to end all human suffering (not over night of course) but we don't because fuck you. The next evolution of humanity is ultra collectivism. There's not a problem we can't solve of we work together. It's the wealthy and powerful willing to drive humanity to self destruction all for luxury houses and sex abuse islands.
Ancaps are to economics what flat earth is to physics
The problem is that, with enough money, it really does look like one can have enough to never face consequences. That makes puling stunts like too good to pass up.