this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Lefty Memes

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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.

Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.

If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.

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0. Only post socialist memes

That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)

1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here

Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.

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as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.

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That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).

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The only dangerous minority is the rich.

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We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.

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Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.

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(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)

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fair share? (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 1 year ago by produnis@discuss.tchncs.de to c/leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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[โ€“] thebartermyth@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I may be dumb here, but how a real version of this tax would work? This example is basically pocket change and they'd pay cash (numbers on a computer} through some form of credit (against equity, etc}.

But if the tax left them with 1 million remaining for example, I assume that it'd basically be impossible to pay without changing the underlying ownership / means of production, no? The boring liquidity thing people say would actually apply because there wouldn't be enough cash (even as computer numbers) to pay the tax. So the gov would have to "print" the money for it. And then the rich would get a loan from the fed to pay the tax,(?) which seems circuitous, but also it seems circuitous even if they got a loan from a normal bank. The super-rich would essentially then just be constantly building this really large debt that would exceed the total amount of money. Because no underlying ownership or production would change, it would basically be the same as now, right? literally just numbers on a computer? Taking debt forever with unlimited credit to pay the people who gave you the money?

I'm sorta falling into a weird spot where:

  1. Taxes seem to not really be about funding government in the sense that the gov controls the money supply (unless that's not true actually?), so, uh, are taxes a very dull game that everyone has to play? Is this what people are talking about when they say "providing base demand for the currency"?
  2. All of these numbers seem much larger than they need to be...? In that you could only really buy 'investments' with them. Mostly being further means of production or scams. I get that there are markets for really expensive things (yachts come to mind), but honestly comparatively those don't really seem expensive. Is there some other use for money that I'm too poor to understand?
  3. Money does seem kinda fake as well tbh.

So am I being uncharitable and there is a way for a tax to actually un-rich billionaires? Would they have to sell shares/debt to the state eventually building state ownership? It all seems a bit difficult and roundabout, but maybe that's just my lack of understanding. Also please don't respond with something from an econ class.

[โ€“] Brahminman@iusearchlinux.fyi 5 points 1 year ago

Why wouldn't you want an educated response out of an econ class?

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