Foreign militaries investing in autonomous warfare does not assuage my concerns about my country investing in autonomous warfare.
Also, have you been paying attention to median wages vs median CEO wages since the 1960s? The benefits of computing really have gone to the captains of industry.
CEO pay isn’t a good proxy for “captains of industry.” What you want to look at is the labor versus capital share of income. That’s been very stable since the 1960s: https://taxfoundation.org/blog/labor-share-net-income-within....
> Ultimately, concerns over inequality should focus on differences within labor compensation rather than the split between labor and capital.
The main issues I can see are:
- This "labor share" includes multi-million dollar executive pay packages, so it's heavily skewed towards the 1%
- It also completely ignores unrealized capital gains and loans against them, which is how the ultra-wealthy actually fund their lifestyles tax-free, with a tiny income on paper
Similarly, what percentage of wealthy people take loans against their assets to fund their lifestyle? You should be able to quantify this if it’s happening at scale.
The income share of the top 1%—so including run of the mill doctors and lawyers—has grown from 15% in 1970 to 21% today: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-share-top-1-before.... There is no way that delta is enough to eat up all the income growth since then.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
"The income tax base captures 60 % of economic income of the top 1 % of wealth-holders.".
I would love if only 60% of my income was taxed. Heck I'm now even taxed on used junk I sell using Paypal (that I bought with taxed income dollars and paid sales tax on). But a tax that includes that other 40% of the top 1%'s economic income, guys, we can't do that. But don't forget to file your Paypal taxes or waves at threat of prison.
"Focusing on the top 1 %, while total borrowing is substantial, new borrowing each year is fairly small (1–2 % of economic income) compared to their new unrealized gains" "1 % of wealth-holders (above $14 million in 2022)"
1-2% of $14,000,000 is $140,000 to $280,000 a year. The median personal income is $45,140. They are benefiting untaxed to the tune of 3-6 times the median American income.
1-2% of 100 million is 1-2 million dollars a year untaxed benefit (44x median income). That is substantial.
I would love to benefit annually by that 'insignificant' amount goin untaxed. We should either exclude all economic income below $140,000 to $2,000,000 from taxation or change to tax this loan scheme that allows the top 1% to avoid their share on income 44x the median and even higher.
Today's CEOs get a gold-plated sky bus.
If you're going to spend a quarter of the day travelling, why not spend a third of the day and do it more comfortably?
The F-35 isn't the fastest jet; fighter jets aren't business jets; apples are not rutabagas.
After a short exploration you can reach the conclusion that nothing new is worth inventing any more.
Only by loosening those constraints can you make something that's meaningfully better.
Just look at GINI index: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=U... That's all you need to know
