Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Why I'm Not A Progressive (Sparked by a Dain (Mupetblast) Comment)

Culled From TGGP's comment section:


Dain (Mupetblast) Says:

October 11, 2011 at 12:54 am
Now there’s this.

According to a press release for the march, the targets were, “specifically chosen for their willingness to hoard wealth at the expense of the 99%.”

Death to the hoarders! This shit is as ancient as it is base.


Reply
Hopefully Anonymous Says:

October 11, 2011 at 1:09 am
Where does your aesthetic come from? On the one hand “rational” targeting of rentier elites seems astroturfy to me because the masses are too stupid to have that as a schelling point.

On the other hand, it’s comical to have a good faith pity party for people at the beneficial 1% tail of just about any distribution pattern.

I’m not a progressive because my focus isn’t on either the central tendency or the left tail of the distribution when it comes to resource control (outcomes and safety nets is a trickier question but my focus sure as hell isn’t on risking survival of the central tendency to protect welfare or egalitarian conditions for the left tail).

But the baseness claim I don’t really get. Policing against resource hoarding doesn’t seem base to me in and of itself. Then the discussion becomes technocratic.

3 comments:

  1. The question to me is whether these people are "hoarding resources" rather than "hoarding money". A consumption tax would handle resource consumption, but wouldn't necessarily do much about Warren Buffet.

    ReplyDelete
  2. TGGP,
    Lost on the comment either of old yglesias was a decent thread where we discussed wealth tax. Apparently a couple countries did it. Some commenter made a decent case for a 1 time modest wealth wealth tax to completely fix whatever debt problem we have -if and when actually necessary (their case was national "private" wealth way, way exceeds national public debt).

    I suppose a WSJ op-ed type conservative would claim that would be as terrible for the US financial reputation as a debt default -but they come across as anti-knowledge assholes to me these days (and by these days, I mean at least our entire lifetime).

    Hopefully Anonymous

    ReplyDelete
  3. A one-time wealth tax would be a surprise and have little effect if we were confident it would not recur. So the question is whether we can be credible about it being a one-time deal.

    ReplyDelete