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.
this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025
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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.
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.
I don't support authoritarianism, regardless of how close to communism it is. But at least China invests in its people.
I really wish they didn't do mass surveillance and have political prisoners. And all that other bad stuff. Being a homosexual is illegal and not socially acceptable (per a lesbian from China I was in grad school with who told me this).
But you gott a give China credit for investing in their people.
The thing is, China is still capitalist.
It's just regulated a bit better and the government officials are more educated and see that innovation and investment will make them more wealthy in the long run.
I guess their system is a bit of a hybrid. Capitalism and socialism.
But it's not full communism no matter what they say. The workers don't own the companies.
China invests in its people
Like a slave owner invests into his slaves. Chinese people don't even have the right to relocate within their own country. This sort of investment is not what anyone should want.
Chinese people don’t even have the right to relocate within their own country
Technically, they sort of do. Sometime after Deng Xiaoping's reforms, they eventually relaxed the restrictions on movements. My parents are from villages in Taishan, they moved to Guangzhou, have a small apartment unit in some slum neighborhood, but even though I was born in Guangzhou, I didn't get Guangzhou Hukou. Therefore, denied access to Guangzhou public schools. The school I went to was privately-run for migrant children, its worse than public schools.
Right. Reminds me of the book watership down. You know what I'm talking about?
China invests in its people
Except if you have Rural Hukou and can't go to public school in the city, even though you were born in the City, basically spend most of your early childhood in the city, and you parents live and work there, and its either go to a privately-run school or rural schools, both of which are shitty and don't have proper funding, you get subpar teachers and subpar education. (Privately-run schools are worse btw, its different from the west, these are typically only for children of migrant workers, or those without a legal papers, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heihaizi, these school don't have public funding.) I mean, even the US, prior to 2025, allowed undocumented immigrant children to enroll in public school, wtf is China doing, they're punishing children for arbitrary internal borders. Imagine if you go to another state and oopsie your kids can't go to public school. ?!?
I was born in Guangzhou, and had Taishan Hukou, they denied access to Guangzhou public schools. Thanks a lot, government!
Thanks for the info. As an American. I'm not really very knowledgeable about other countries education systems.
I can definitely see your perspective.
We have the same issues with poor quality public schools in rural areas because school funding is based on property taxes. You live in a poor neighborhood, you go to a poor school.
But you are right that at least everyone can attend public school. Or at least they could. Special education cuts are going to hurt a lot of kids.
And I was not aware that they were restricting immigrant kids now. That's pretty sad.
The only cheap private schools we have here are Christians backwoods schools.
Not a good place to send your kids. Not even taught by educated people.
Kind of sounds like the private schools you mention in China but minus the Christians.
And I was not aware that they were restricting immigrant kids now.
That I'm not certain about.
They might still be allowed to enroll (federal government does not run schools), but what I'm saying is that ICE policies used to ban raids in schools, but now this admin changed the rules, so its now unsafe for undocumented children to go to school because ICE could raid their classroom and take them away.
China is capitalist and authoritarian. Their investment in their people is done with the goal of neo-colonialism as they use their wealth and influence to indebt growing nations to China. They invest in their people, but only enough to stave off mass protests. We see a lot of wealth come out of China, but remember that we could witness China uplift an equivalent amount of people to the entire population of the U.S. and they would still be oppressing a larger percentage of their population.
It looks like it's working in contrast to the U.S. right now because we are currently crashing out as a nation, rewarding cash-grabbing opportunists even more than we have for all of U.S. history. Idk, there is a chance we fully burn up in this shit show going on right now and that would de-facto make China's system technically better, but I think that's the only way. I mean the atrocities China has committed against its own people and people around the world in recent decades is ridiculous. I know you weren't going to bat for China don't worry.
Yeah I mean you could make an argument it's a hybrid socialist capitalism. But I'm kinda with you. It's still capitalist at its core.
But at least China invests in its people.
They are investing in solar system exploration and space exploration in general too. We just rarely hear about how much progress they've made in the US because that stuff is pretty embarrassing for the US.
Or maybe just because they, you know, speak an entirely different language? Not everything has to be a conspiracy
I've been following space science for years, and I have traveled the world, there very much are "firewalls" of news and information we get between different countries. It's not "conspiratorial" it's just normal geopolitics. It would be a conspiracy if anyone was trying to hide the fact that they do this.
All that said, I see a LOT more news and information in mainstream media outlets about ESA than I do CNSA domestically. It's not a conspiracy and not a coincidence that we get information about our political and economic rivals downplayed.
Wat
...and using US taxpayer money to sell Argentina to China.
Both of these guys suck
right isn't communist, just state capitalist
Big brain move by America. Get China to invest all this money. Still take over the companies as soon as a war starts between the nations. Oh wait. They moved all the manufacturing? Well we have the HR and IT Support. They’ll never survive!
on the left, frodo baggins on coke, on the right, commie scum called winnie the pooh