It's how jobs get created. And it's being painted like it's greed. The wealth exists in having built all these opportunities for people to work toward things others want.
@@juancilliers8710 There is no limit to how much wealth can be created. A business that uses land, labour, materials and resources is worth multiple times the sum of all it's parts. If you stripped out all the 'Good Will' value and just valued the land, materials and machinery then you would have a more balanced distribution of 'wealth.' The Wealthy are those that create these efficient use of existing resources and have them valued on the stock markets at 20-50 times the base cost. Yes, there are loads of elites living off government contracts and this should be stopped but blaming creators from creating more wealth is collectivist nonsense. Do the vast majority of people have access to more real world resources today than yesterday. If the answer is yes, then the system is working, if no, then the system is hoarding the resources. The numbers are a misdirection at best used by toxic ideologies to create a state of FEAR by creating the illusion that we live in scarcity rather than unlimited abundance that is only limited by peoples lack of imagination and creativity to make things with the resources around them. Govern-Minds (mentis=Mind) control the masses via FEAR, False Evidence Appearing Real. You can only control what you Create - 10 Rules of Commerce
It's also just how math works. If you break it down into percentiles the lowest 1% would have to own at least a little less than the 2nd lowest percentile, so on and so forth. If you had to now assign numbers to this what percent of the wealth should the poorest 1% own to make this work? Is it going to be something like 0.5% of the wealth? Then the next 1% own 0.51%? If you end that sequence with the top 1% owning 2% of the wealth then it becomes you can only become 4 times as rich as your poorest citizen (kind of). These also need to be adjusted for age. Because I think people that worked for 40 years should be at least 40 times as wealthy as someone that has only worked 1 year. (a 65 year old vs a 19 year old)
I dislike taxes for one main reason: the government requires individuals to calculate their own taxes and imposes heavy penalties for mistakes. While I have no problem paying taxes as a US citizen, it seems strange to me that I have to do the paperwork when the government already has all the necessary information.
I don't regret the financial mistakes I've made in the past, as they've all taught me valuable lessons. However, my biggest misstep was planning my finances without consulting a licensed financial advisor.
I sought the guidance of a financial counselor, and as I near retirement, their advice has proven invaluable. I was initially concerned that compound interest on index funds wouldn’t suffice since I started investing later. It's quite amusing to realize that I’ve outperformed colleagues with more investment experience, having gained over $186k tax-free.
@@williamDonaldson432 This is definitely significant! Do you have any recommendations for professionals or advisors I could contact? I really need guidance on proper portfolio allocation.
Rebecca Lynne Buie is the coach who guides me. With years of experience in the financial markets, her strategies have worked well for me and contributed to my success. She offers clear entry and exit points for the securities I focus on
Thank you for the tip. I found your coach online and conducted my due diligence before scheduling a call. Based on her resume, she appears to be highly proficient.
I am not swedish , But came across your video about Private equity So I explored your channel. I love the content and quality of your videos. I hope you will achieve success very soon here on youtube, Just give some of your focus on going viral and figure out to beat the algorithm. Regards, Your new loyal subscriber.
@@edheldude yet the ability of people to move upwards through the wealth categories is less then ever before, so competencies aren't the deciding factor. It's harder and harder than previous recent decades to make a lot of money if you don't start out with a lot of money already.
@@Ocker3 I think people are just more passive, less autonomous, more mentally and physically sick, and many businesses require more intellect and character. Left and old money are also building more obstacles for people but in reality most people don't try to be financially autonomous and try to build a business. On the flipside, this also means there's less compentent competition. I'm on my third business and it feels like the bar is super low.
@@Ocker3 Are you basing your wealth mobility claim on actual data, or just vibes? This stuff is hard to measure anyways because ability to build wealth is more a measure of time preferences than anything else. You can build wealth off of $50k/year if you're willing to lower your standard of living to the point where you can save, and if you invest those savings, that wealth will build surprisingly quickly. Look up a DCA S&P 500 calculator and plug in a modest amount invested per month over the last 20-30 years, I think you'll be surprised how little it takes to build wealth.
Great Video ! BUT . . .Sweden's wealth inequality is tiny compared to the United States where the top 1% essentially own the Government and funnel the massive Federal Budget directly into their coffers !
Same goes for my country Denmark, where your LEGO comes from. 80% middle class country (I think the UK only 39% and the US only 50%). We pay high taxes, but our roads and infrastructure look nice and the population is very satisfied. Breaking up private income and outcome, Danes don't pay more in the end in a life circle. And you don't finance through living in debts. Your kids education doesn't depend on your income. Universal healthcare. Less pressure due to social security nets, -happier populations in Scandinavia.
Sweden's wealth inequality is the result of old money. Money that has been in the hands of the same families for hundreds of years goes back to Feudalism. America's wealth is largely new money that has arisen in the last few decades bringing with it technological breakthroughs such as smart phones and electric cars. Not really a fair comparison.
@@zombi3lif3 being that it is now becoming normalized in mainstream thought, I think we are on our way to progress. However, it does rely on people waking up to the fact that THEY have to get organized, because their leaders will not handle this task for them.
I don t want to break it to you, but if we distribute billionnaire money it will just create an inflation. Money doesn t magically solve everything. The problem in society aren t billionnaires, but millionnaires who hold airbnbs and profit from them.
True. The top 1% are responsible for 45% of the tax revenue, which is already proportionately higher than the wealth percentage they own. When the fuck will it be considered "fair"? But it gets worse because heavy taxation is absolutely trickled down into the prices of the goods and services their companies provide, which effectively makes the poor poorer by making the things they need to buy more expensive. Taxation is a tool of incentive, and when you tax the people who are better off, you are literally saying as a nation that you don't want your people to be better off. It is as simple as that. I dare say that a country with zero taxes for the rich would have no poverty within a generation.
@@matheusdardenne in what universe does the absence of tax becomes a more prominent incentive to be rich other than, you know, wanting to have a decent livelihood and not wanting to live in poverty? The richest people pays more tax by percentage than the poorest and it should be that way. Just for a very crude analogy, do you expect two persons making $10k/year and $10M/year to both pay 1% tax? The first one would barely have any left to have a decent living while the other still have so much more to spend for a luxurious life. And I agree with your point that heavy tax for corporations could negatively impact the poor. But that's where wealth tax could be effectively used to put the burden more on personal wealth rather than companies
@rexygama7697 Taxation is the government taking away your money and giving NOTHING worthwhile in return, not that a return would justify the theft in the first place. It makes it harder for poor people to rise above their status because taxes are progressive, meaning that the more they climb the wealth brackets, the harder it becomes to keep climbing because rates increase. The progressive tax system, thus, creates this "thermal equilibrium" where the majority of people are stuck just below the middle class. First of all, both are currently paying over 80% of what they earn in direct or indirect taxation in my country. Second, I want both of them to pay fucking NOTHING, because there is NOTHING being provided back with that money being stolen from them. Third, if taxation is impossible to abolish, then yes, a 1% rate would be FAIR, because who makes 10k a year will be paying 100, and who makes 100k a year will be paying 1000, I think even you can understand that 1000 is more than 100.
@@rexygama7697 Why, instead of creating a wealth tax, don't you force your government to reduce their spending and to live within its means? Why, instead of stealing money from the poor, squandering half of it in corruption and inefficiencies, to only then provide mediocre services back to the people, don't you let people keep their money so they won't be poor in the first place?
@@matheusdardenne tax revenue contributes to a substantial amount of share in countries GDP. In Sweden it's around 41% in 2022. It goes to public healthcare, infrastructure, military, government officials that keeps the country running, etc. You can say it's a subscription for being a citizen of a country, where in return, you get all the benefits of citizenship. I can see where you are headed with "stuck in the middle class" argument, but it's kinda the "intended" side effect that taxation aims. Tax will indirectly distribute wealth among populations and reduce economic inequalities. Of course too much of it can be harmless and even hinder economic progress. As for your last point, I would argue that both should NOT be taxed the same (by percentage). Tax exemption, for example in income tax, should be applied so that people earning below a certain threshold pay less or zero percentage of their income for taxes. Progressive income tax is necessary so that the lower middle class people don't have to be burdened as much since they would still have to struggle to meet basic needs. Living on 99k/year is way more comfortable than 9,9k/year. So why not just make it so that one person gets 98,9k/year while the other gets 10k/year (no taxes). In both cases, the government collect 1,1k. I bet the first person would barely notice the difference while the second one would be very graceful to have an extra 100 to buy some groceries :)
Watched two videos and subbed. Nice videos, although not exactly new information, but very professionally done. There cannot be enough channels spreading the information you talk about and you do a great job in making it easy to digest and understand. Only one little addition. Consumption tax, which you glossed over pretty much, is also a deeply unfair tax. A single person who is extremely wealthy will never ever use much of their wealth to actually consume (if they even do it at all and do not circumvent it by covering their expenses through companies they own). So any consumption tax is, like income tax, a tax that hits the poor much harder then the wealthy in relation to the respective overal wealth and in regards to the disposable income that is left after taxation.
Was looking through the comments to see if someone else had already made that point! Many people think of flat taxes like consumption tax as "fair", when the exact opposite is true. And I think it's quite universally accepted among economists that giving money to poor people is great for the economy, since they (have to) spend most of it, while money that goes to/stays with rich people is MUCH more likely to get transferred abroad or - best case - sit in a bank account/property where it accrues minimal tax revenue.
@@ChocookieMonster It is also a big difference in the economy. Money given to the poor ends up almost entirely in domestic businesses usually. So it is an indirect investment into small businesses in your own country, strengthening the domestic economy. Which is the actual backbone for everything else.
you forget that taxes are imposed to provide and maintain common services like roads etc. These services are used more than 90% by the 90% class you mention. So your notion of taxation is just another Marxist poppycock idea. Taxation without consent is tantamount to robbery. it funds kleptocracy, corruption, and government fascism. your rather simpleminded notion that the rich somehow can be taxed to make society fairer is just another idiotic argument made by Marxists. Hasn't 100 years of failure taught you something? One gets better results by restricting government power and reinventing the imposition of forced levies like taxes.
@@ChocookieMonsterMany jurisdictions don't apply consumption taxes to the basic necessities of life (food, shelter, etc.). The poor tend to spend a lot higher per centage of their income on the necessities of life and thus pay much less in consumption taxes. Also, at least some jurisdictions have "luxury taxes" on higher ticket items. If you study macroeconomics, you find that consumption taxes is one of the better ways of taxing, as income taxes tend to discourage people from working harder and earning more.
it's the same here in austria. we had a pretty good tax system up until 1990. but right now, if you work for a company with a good income you'll easily pay 40% of your income in taxes. if you instead own said company you can hoard all your income in a holding company and pay 0%. only when you take money out of the holding you pay a meager 25%. if you also happen to own another company abroad you can shuffle that money around and pay 0% taxes in total.
Yes and we used to have an inheritance tax, but now whenever it gets proposed (even when the proposal is for a progressive tax rate with no tax on the first million (!!)) people freak out because they irrationally fear they might be affected if they manage to save up another 990.000€ and die - stoked by the tabloid press, of course
This is not exactly accurate. Corporations in Austria pay 25 % on all their gains (business tax "KöSt"), and another 27,5 % on all money that is taken out of the companies (capital gains tax "KeSt"), so business owners in Austria pay more than half of their profits in taxes.
@@123jakob1234 except if they don't make gains because you pay the gains into a holding which owns the company. then you don't pay KöSt at all, becaue your company doesn't make any profit, instead you only pay KeSt when you take your money out of your holding. therefore you can accumulate massive amounts of money and assets tax free if you keep everything in your holding. you can use the profits in the holding to buy real estate or stocks or whatever (or pay back loans) and don't pay a single cent in tax because your holding owns all those things instead of you as a person. oh, and KöSt has been lowered to 23% since 2024. and we're not even talking about Gruppenbesteuerung yet.
@@123jakob1234 The money taken out of a company doesn't have to be a gain though. The company can just grow and invest it's income, so it doesn't have to pay the 25%. This leaves only the 27,5% if the assets have stayed in Sweden.
Love the production quality and clear explanations! Only one thjnf stops me from linking and subscribing: Please add *sources* in the description! I believe its a dangerous trend that there are so many video essays on youtube doing great stuff, but not providing the evidence for their claims. Thanks!
@@germancat429 Only an American would make such an ignorant statement less than a month after a fascist on par with Hitler was elected as president. And no, I'm not using hyperbole. Trump is as bad as if not worse than Hitler. He just hasn't had enough time yet to cause the same amount of damage. Time that he has now been given as a result of the last election. The US was the laughing stock of the world in 2016. It would have continued to be the laughing stock of the world if the US still had checks and balances in place. Instead, we're now worried that Trumps disregard for rights, justice and human life will impact the rest of the world. Not to mention the platform he has given to fascists that have more than a few years left in them.
no, if politicians worked for the rich they wouldnt win elections, most politicians (especially the left) work for themselves, thank God trump won who will work for all americans
@@Grandude77You do understand they _create_ wealth through their businesses? It benefits everyone. Government and taxes just destroy wealth and produce nothing.
People lose track of how BIG a billion is. If dollars were grains of salt, then avg. lifetime earnings in the US (~$2 mil) will fill a coffee mug. A billion fills a bathtub.
@@tj92834 ... also... Just because the economic structures of the 21st century make billionares a stochastic inevitability that's no reason to think they are "worth" more than anyone else. Financializing human value (also known as "treating people like objects") is fundamentally immoral. ... and the current economic structures are subject to change.
@@tj92834 The economic structures of the 21st century make billionares a stochastic inevitability. There's no reason to think they are "worth" more than anyone else. Financializing human value (also known as "treating people like objects") is fundamentally immoral. ... and the economic structures are subject to change.
@tj92834 almost true, but not quite. I can name a few companies that have been highly successful, without making any single person super rich. Some of the wolds leading companies in their field are cooperatives, some are state owned. Area, Danish Crown, Orsted, DSV, and Wattenfalla, just to name a few. Other leading companies are owned by shareholders without any single owner becoming super rich.
Why do content creators never mention the absolute amount of tax paid by the billionaires. Or the total amount of tax share paid by billionaires. I suspect the rich pay more than their fair share in absolute amount. Maybe 1% of billionaires pay 30 % of total tax paid? Do better research please.
@beerharmien Because A) if you got 10 billion, paying 1 billion in taxes has no impact on you. If you got 100 bucks, paying 10 means you go hungry. And B) if you got 10 billion, your money makes money. After paying 1 billion in taxes, next year you'll still have 11. If you only got 100 bucks, losing 10 takes away from your ability to invest in the future. That's why poverty is a vicious circle and inequality increases.
@@ericdane7769 That’s not my question. For fair reporting, content creators should also present how much taxes are paid by the top 1% compared to the 99%. In my country, only 3% of people pay income taxes, and people are still complaining.
@@ericdane7769 Now to address your points. For A) Are we talking about wealth or income? If you are taxing wealth, that's a communist system. The rich will have to start selling assets when they reach $1mil, $10mil or $100mil? They will never become rich in the first place. No Spotify, no Tesla, no free Google or TH-cam because nobody will bother. If we are talking income then yes, 10% is nothing but nobody makes 10B a year income consistently. And B) That's the whole point of amassing wealth right? Your money makes money and your capital doesn't get shrunk by inflation. That's the whole point of retirement planning also. I agree, poverty is a vicious cycle. Everyone must be given an "opportunity" to escape poverty but only if they act on it. Or else, you are just creating handout nation.
Very interesting video - thanks for the insight. I have recently moved to Sweden and just got approved for f-tax as a sole trader. I am absolutely not a wealthy person, but Skattevrket wants me to pay 65% tax altogether haha, utter madness!
hear hear. The least you could expect when you have to pay 65% tax is that extremely wealthy have to pay at least as much taxes as you. Unfortunately, that's not the case in Sweden
Don't do business as a sole trader, unless you'll bring in less than roughly 612 000 SEK per year. Anything above that and a limited company (aktiebolag) is the way to go. Also, as a sole trader you're unlimited liable as your own person for any fuck ups, tax problems etc, you as a trader might run into.
The part about the 1990s tax reforms benefitting the bourgeoisie at the expense of the salaried folk is interestingly basically identical to what happened here in Finland around the same time. The same trends in terms of income and wealth inequality can be observed here as well. I suppose these reforms were meant to harmonise our (Finland's and Sweden's) tax regimes as we joined the EU. Maybe someone else could shed some light on this...
Sweden was doing economically very poorly between 1970-1990, when the tax system was distributing a lot, and standard of living was growing very slowly compared to other western nations. This is a really important fact that was completely ignored in the video.
@@Andre-ct4fq Many countries removed similar tax systems in the same period, basicly when one country started, this forced other countries to follow or they'ld lose a lot of money moving to those countries.
Maybe if Sweden stopped supporting comunist regimes they could have focused on dealing with their tax reforms. Angola is still suffering from the communism that Sweden helped to implement there.
Its called neoliberalism and it came to europe after the fall of iron curtian and all ex socialist countries were basically forced onto them Same thing happened in 91 in croatia People call it homeland war, i call it bourgoise revolution
@@psychic8872 well the answer to that varies, but our history is filled with oligarchs, dictatore in perpetuo, aristocrats and monarchs getting murdered, assassinated and overthrown over exactly just this question. Societies have always been most stable when wealth inequality was at it's lowest, but some people will always accumulate wealth and capital, leveraging it to steer society in their favour until it becomes unsustainable, leading to their death or exile as the country collapses on itself.
Great video for sure, the only criticism I have is one missed opportunity in the lego bricks as money analogy: stacking the bricks on top of each other to show the actual height difference of each group's wealth would help to illustrate the issue even further
Love the video! I am Swedish and learned a lot but I would love to hear more factors in the equations, more details about taxing the upper class, the methods used by companies to reduce their tax rates and how it actually works now that we know what the results are. I've heard about Ikea for example making every store as the separate company, then lending money to said companies and taking the resulting revenue from them as interest for the loan (making it look like they have no revenue). Stuff like these and more depth overall about the technicalities might not really sell on TH-cam but would be very educational! Love the channel, keep it up!
Snälla, gör denna video på Svenska också. Svenskar behöver förstå detta om vårt eget land, hur de ändrar på saker och vad som hänt de senaste åren. Folk har ingen koll och det gör saken ännu värre varje val. ❤🇸🇪 (Såg din kanal första gången nu. jättebra video! 👍)
Great video again! You should look into Pillar 2 tax framework this is basically the idea to have a global minimum tax which would prevent these billionaires from threatening what they do to get tax breaks
How about what percentage of taxes are paid by each group? I assume, as in most countries, 80% of tax income is from the top 10%. Most in the bottom 50% recieve more than they pay in many countries like france. Need to paint the whole picture. Love your videos btw!
Yep, they always say they want taxes to be fair, they don't realize it would mean their taxes would have to go up. They also don't realize how at least in the us, half of your income tax is paid by your employer, which is on top of the many other ways a company pays tax. Just because a billionaire doesn't pay income tax, does not mean they don't pay tax.
Love the videos too, but I was really wanting to see the same thing in the infographics- what percentage and or $$ amount is paid by each group. I guess I could look it up myself, but it would make this video more complete if it were included.
the problem is that would kill the ideia he is trying to display, I fail to always understand why should group A or B have more tax when it should be why can't have group A or B less tax...
@@rui518 The video clearly is claiming the rich don't pay enough taxes. But yes we should all be focused on how we can increase benefits, decrease taxes, and pay off the debt, which can be done if everyone votes for trump and elon.
Bra jobbat, bra video kvalité och intressant innehåll, jag har prenumererat! Det är sjukt hur Sverige har blivit en skatteparadis för de rika, vi måste fixa det!
Same in Belgium. Employers are moving out to countries where they gave to pay less tax and and where salary costs are lower. Many self employed people (like myself) have to quit. We pay a lot of social security and taxes.... while getting almost nothing in return. Other people, normal salary workers, have more benefits.
Big bourgeoise consolidating small bourgeoise... classic
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if you have a company, you can be a normal salary worker for that company and have the same benefits as the others... didn't get your point... whilst keeping the company benefits (car discounts, copany credit card, etc etc).
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@@tj92834 off course not... But paying with company card lowers the company profits, and you can get back the VAT from those expenses... So double advantage. Off course this is not for everything... But the law is sufficiently broad to include almost anything.
@@GrimdarkKing It harms savers, yes. Their currency loses value. Inverstors NO! Inflation literally is inflating the money supply. the extra currency typically goes into the property market (Money created for loans) and share markets. The value of those go UP because of inflation.
Bra video, men hur är det med beloppen i nominella termer? Och varför ligger fokus på att omfördela resurser alternativt öka skattetrycket, snarare än att få så mycket valuta för de gemensamma skattepengarna som möjligt?
Naw, the algorithm is reasonably accepting of this kind of politics. It's not going to get wide distribution, but it also won't get suppressed like some other styles (not at all a left/right issue, for clarity).
It's very common for wealth to be divided up like this in basically every country under every type of government. Taxing will never be fair for everyone no matter how you do it, because you'll always be able to find a way to show a disparity. The solution is to find a better way to tax people other than based in income.
Taxes shouldn't be unfair but in too many countries they are. The middle class has to pay for everything while the rich nearly pay nothing and the corrupt politicians support them by getting richer and grow the hate against the poor and ill people... It's insane... Taxes are there to pay hospitals, streets, railways, healthcare, supporting poor people to get a life and paying workers that are important for society like police, fire fighters, nurses, teachers aso! But corrupt politicians pay with that the rich when they let their companies get bankrupt and "need" tax money to protect the jobs while the rich get richer... 2:02 and this problem so many countries have thanks to corruption. The irony: corruption is illegal for EU members but because the most corrupt German party, the CDU, controls most important parts of the EU it mostly gets ignored if no one reports to the EuGH... And also another Irony: the conservative party's may be against social politics but at the same time they do this politic system for themselves! Free train tickets, payed vacations, money without working aso... The ex politician Nico Semsrott made a comedy show about his time in the eu parliament... He showed a big scandal but no one is talking about it... That shows how much power the CDU has .. 8:51 they aren't scared of the rich they are scared to lose their corrupt benefits! Free luxury travels, luxury food, high class sex parties, contacts to have more money and power. That is what scares them! - that they would leave the country is bullshit! And even if they would do it in the end nothing would change because the middle class would still pay for everything else. But without those greedy rich people the country could change to be better...
The solution is to dissolve the overgrown socialist state, leaving only enough government to keep the rule of law, then simplify the tax code. Either get rid of all income/wealth taxes or make it a flat tax. Remove consumption tax on everyday necessities like food, and keep it for everything else. Being wealthy isn't the problem. Being poor is. You can help the poor without taking from the wealthy. Letting the poor keep more of their own money solves this equitably.
4:46 This distribution based on income tax and VAT is used because everybody consumes and most of people work, and if you're making a gov. budget for next year, you want the revenue to be *as stable and reliable as possible.* Sure you can try a model that relies more on wealth or corporate taxes, but these depend on the revenue of certain industry (and as a gov. probably you'll want more a stable revenue for your budget, that one that can be bigger on average, but lower during a recession... Exactly when you might need ot provide unemployment checks.)
In the Netherlands politicians protect the board room form tax, because the will one day be selected for these positions....the job carousel as we call it.
It makes a big difference talking about % or absolute numbers. When comparing a rich person and a normal income, the rich one pays more tax in % and very much more in absolute numbers. When comparing a extremely rich person and a normal income, the rich person may pay a lower % but still way more in absolute numbers.
Yeah, if someone makes a million dollars a year and pays 1% income tax that's $10k. If someone else makes fifty grand a year and pays 5% income tax it's $2.5k. if those two people were the whole tax base, the rich one is paying 80% of all paid income taxes, despite it being a lower nominal percentage, compared to the poorer one only paying 20% even though it has a higher given percentage of income. And we see in real life that the top few percentage of wealthiest people pay almost all the taxes, and the bottom half pay net nearly none. And then hear about how the people ALREADY PAYING ALMOST ALL OF THE TAXES didn't pay "their fair share", whatever that is. Because nobody can define what "fair share" is supposed to mean.
@@michaelsorensen7567 It's a cash grab. People desperately want to conflate income and wealth because that's the only way to squint and view the tax code as not being progressive. In the U.S. anyway. It's obscene for someone that pays no share (as you said nearly half of the US' tax units net out to negative liability) to feel like they have standing to complain about anyone paying any sort of share.
@@michaelsorensen7567 Well hang on. The only fair tax is an absolute one. Divide the total federal budget by the census number and your share is that number times the number of people in your household. Everyone pays the same thing in absolute terms. Don't like your share? Vote for less government. Want more government? Fine but it will cost you. Personally. Voting to spend or not should have individual consequences. All other arrangements create moral hazards one way or the other. A flat tax encourages the same moral hazard as a progressive tax. It induces people buying government for three cents on the dollar to vote for more government because hey, it only costs them three cents on the dollar. Meanwhile someone else is spending ten dollars on the dollar to pick up their slack. Reducing the number of tax bums is better but if we want to talk about fair we need to talk about everyone being responsible for the same dollar amount.
We don't expect, we know. Do we know evenly spread wealth is good for a society, we know. Do we know how to spread wealth, we know. Do I know why the population of sweden still uses spotify, I don't know?
Important caveat for the consumption taxes; they affect everyone, but *not equally*. Consumption does not scale linearly with income beyond a certain point; the wealthy can live very comfortably while only a relatively small portion of their income is spent on consumables. As such, general taxes on consumption have a relatively slight impact on the rich, and such taxes are generally regressive in nature (unless targeted at specific luxury goods, eg. yachts).
So what? They affect everyone equally: according to their consumption. You are effectively saying that because the wealthy don't consume as much as you in proportion to their income, they should be punished. Thus you don't even want a consumption tax but something completely else?
@@edheldude This is a video about the impact of the tax system on wealth inequality. That the wealthy consume less is very relevant to how consumption taxes feed into wealth inequality, and I thus felt it to be an important caveat to the claim within the video that consumption taxes are paid by 'everyone'. Alao yes, I am not fond of consumption taxes. They are one of the more regressive forms of taxation in place, and I favour taxation being progressive. Land value tax would be the best tax imo, but I favour most other forms of taxation over sales taxes. I do not seek to 'punish' the wealthy for spending less of their income; my cost of living is extremely low, so I also spend a much smaller share of my income than most. Consumption taxes are thus quite favourable to my personal finances relative to most other forms of taxation. I just separately recognise that they do not have desirable effects if you are seeking to reduce wealth inequality, as it impacts the wealthy less than the poor.
@@edheldude If the wealthy decided that to make it fair everyone should pay 10 000€ monthly, as it reduces their taxes overall, what would you do? It makes it fair, right? Everyone is paying the same.
@@justdonika4357 Life's easier if you drop the notion of equality or striving toward it. It's never gonna happen and there's people who are 10,000x more productive, better positioned, and effectively smarter etc. than you and I. They move things around the world because they can. I'd be more interested in keeping the game fair, i.e. attempting to have equality in law and its enforcement more than anything else. Life's a competition, and resources are limited. Usain Bolt is the fastest runner, and nobody remembers who got silver. That's how it goes. Most people go through different income brackets in their lives, but those perpetually poor are usually so because _they chose it, and deserve it_ i.e. they don't take the actions that would get them out of there. It's a mindset, not bug in the system that should be ironed out. All that extra wealth will go to investments and building wealth which all of us, even the so-called poor will benefit from. Handing it out to people who clearly can't manage it doesn't help.
@@goncalocarneiro3043 You mean everyone would pay 10k as monthly tax? I mean certain countries do have that option, or their taxes stop after a certain contribution. Sounds very fair to me if it's an option. If it was mandatory, everyone would move away or demand something else. In most countries the top 20% typically pay most of the taxes and thus uphold the whole country already. Because the productive people are a minority, they will never ever get that kind of tax system through. I'm more on the side of flat tax + negative income tax to replace the social systems right now. A simple tax system will remove barriers from working and value creation. That's the only thing that should matter. Poverty is the natural state of humanity, and how we get out of it is the relevant bit. It only happens through creation of wealth, not by taxing or redistributing it.
Sweedish: top 1% owns 36% America: top 1% owns +66% One of these has a happy population, the other has rich slave owners that complain about their slaves not being able to live
Not for long. As with any pyramid scheme, eventually the music stops and someone gets stuck with the bill (‘someone’ is read: same person who is getting the bad end of deal now). The main difference b/w US and Sweden is the Swedes can have a conversation (and likely correction) before the pitchforks come out. Here in the US, it is the opposite.
@@MegaLokopoI think that the total tax revenue is the wrong denominator. The inequality of gains of the top 1%, benefitting from the society and economy overseen by the government, is much larger than the ratio of taxes paid. A tax based on all forms of income and wealth gains, with a progressive increase above some standard of living, would be much more fair. At least in the US, so many forms of gains are taxed at a low rate that the very wealthy pay a much lower effective rate than the middle class.
”totally legal tax evasion” (used in an onscreen text label) is a contradiction in terms. What defines tax evasion is that it is unlawful. If it’s legal, it’s tax avoidance. The material here is strong enough as it is and is undermined by using unnecessarily hyperbolic language.
The idea that there is exactly one meaning of “tax evasion” can only be valid within the context of a legal system based on stare decesis. Even then, the meaning is only shared by subordinate courts. In short, your reasoning is only valid within the context of U.S. statutory law and even then I wouldn’t be surprised if precedent was sufficiently general so as to allow local judges to interpret that meaning with some degree of flexibility… Not to mention that if it came to a jury trial, jurors effectively possess the de jure right to say what the law is via jury nullification, even if in practice juries are selected only on their willingness and/or ignorance to enforce statutory law.
You guys!! The way lawyers keep finding and solving problems no one else had never ceases to amaze me. I was like "OMG the whole video fell apart" and then "Phew, we are save again." 😅
That's it. That's why old money and big companies love the Left. They are destroying competition and creating the society they think they're complaining about.
It's really oppression of the poorest. Look, if the gov gets more money from rich people by having lower taxes for them so they don't flee, then by all means, get more money. However... the working-class should get lower taxes too, it's abhorrent that working-class get a punch in the gut from tax-costs just because they can't "flee" like the rich ones may. Instead of fearing that wealth will "flee", why not give more to literally everyone by backing-off the income taxes? Literal cash distribution to everyone that works is so much better at creating equality than some extra tax income for the gov.
That’s why new money right and old money vote left: tradizional american capistalist is to get more richer and social democracy is to mantain your welth from a rick people viewpoint.
Bra video och har själv sett detta under senaste åren. Du borde göra en video på isk konton och vem det gynnar mest. Har inte hört några andra länder som har det eller något liknade (kan ha på tok fel)
It is tragic that the Swedish parliament allows itself to be threatened by someone who lives solely on the work of others without giving very much in return. Spotify does not support the music industry but is another parasitic company that does not contribute to the creative side. This kind of business does not create very many jobs. It is only in the development of the software that there is work. After that, quite a few have to be spent on maintenance and support functions. Of course, they pay no further tax. The company structure and the tax rules let them off the hook. Spotify makes sure to run at a loss all the time and reinvest the earnings so they don't have to pay. Sweden should just let him and Spotify go to hell!
Okay, but companies generally only pay tax on their profits and it simply isn't possible to run at a loss forever. The more usual scam is to claim the company operates from some other location and therefore their profits are taxable there instead. Apple was recently penalised for operating this particular scam. One way to crack down on this sort of thing is simply to deem a company to be operating within any country in which it sells its products and tax that money. The real problem in the music industry has been the majority of record labels. They had a stranglehold and still do. With the advent of streaming they strongarmed the companies offering the service.
@@loganmedia1142 That's not a scam. You can set a legal structure like an LLC pretty much anywhere you want. As an EU citizen you can easily start your company in any member state. If you're running e.g. an online business, why not have it in Bulgaria where you only pay 10% flat tax.
@@edheldude No not everyone does it! There are a lot of people in this that is part of a production. Free market has nothing to do with being a parasite!
So, I get that the percentages are unequal, I've the lower 90% pay a higher percentage of their income, but what about the hard numbers? Would you rather have 35% of $70,000 or 10% of $700,000? So, if you add together the amount of money that the top 10% pay in, and compare it to the sum total the 90% pay in, how do the LEGO piles compare?
Unfortunately, your discussion of wealth tax completely misses the most important point: the difference between wealth that the owner has produced by his own efforts and wealth that is produced by government and the community, but the private owner is legally entitled to take for himself, especially the unimproved value of land. Taxing the former is unjust; not taxing the latter is unjust. As the Henry George Theorem shows, all government spending on desirable services and infrastructure is a subsidy to landowners. The entire unimproved value of land is NOTHING BUT the market's estimate of how much the owner will be legally entitled to steal from the community by owning the land.
"...and wealth that is produced by government..." ... the government don't product any wealth... only steal... and steal... and steal... the goals, the target, the objective of the government is only steal... through feigning good... thats everybody know what government is not...
I read "1% owning the 36%" as very society oriented, as it's far from 50% (math in the ps). If you have so many rich maybe it means you produce good minds. This doesn't make the tax policies any better but this kind of deterioration is common across all Europe. Beautiful channel! PS: with three "nested" Pareto distributions I take as "mean" the case where the 20%x20%x20%~1% owns the 80%x80%x80%~50%.
No, we do not live in a society where everyone has the same chance to become wealthy. We live in a society where wealth begets wealth. This is just how a world works where money is how you survive and how much your opinion matters. Learn how compound interest works - then try to imagine if everyone were able to take advantage of it equally. This would simply impact the rate of inflation. Everyone would be just as wealthy in relation to everyone else and the prices would rise at an equal rate. No more or less wealth would be generated. It only works because not everyone is able to take advantage of it equally and 98% of the world is losing. This is why you’re seeing a new two classes emerge. The “ownership” class and the “renter” class.
This isn’t a video about success or outcomes. It’s a video about how people are taxed. Get your head out of your ass and stop repeating whatever you hear political pundits say.
The problem with blanket statements like this is that it doesn’t account for the people who START at the bottom and work their asses off to earn wealth. They just get clumped together with “the wealthy”. Likewise, it doesn’t account for the people who actively make financially irresponsible decisions that KEEP them at “the bottom”. They get clumped in with the people who are actually trying to succeed and are unsuccessful. The wealth issue in pretty much every country doesn’t “boil down” so simply. Every solution offered by people who complain about the wealthy breaks down once you put any reasonable thought into it.
If we all have the same opportunities then I should be able to make my own Dell without issues but Dell already exists so I can't. We don't have the same opportunities
Actually tax evasion is not a problem, if you implement a wealth tax correctly because most of the wealth that the super rich own is concentrated in assets, that are local (like companies, real estate or land) and cannot be moved anywhere. And getting to that wealth also seems entirely possible as we have seen during the russian invasion in ukraine, when governments all over europe confiscated the assets of russion oligarchs. The problem is currently that most people don't know about this important issue and there are no democratic majorities pushing for wealth taxes. And one more thing the Bengt Jonnson guy likely does not need to work at all, because if he invests his wealth of for example €50mio at a market rate of 5%, he will be making his €2.5mio a year without doing anything. This gets even worse with billionares, with €1bn you make a €1mio every week just by investing conservatively into the markets, but likely you can invest very differently with those kind of sums and get even higher returns. Very good visualizations again in this video ; )
Doing nothing = providing liquidity for investments and carrying the risk? You do understand people need reinvested money for new businesses and development?
@@edheldude Yes investments are always necessary and can be extremely helpful. However if you look at how billionaires invest, the problems reveal themselves. Very little of the money will be used to push small startups without any personal strategy to increase the billionaires power. Instead it is just way less risky to crush smaller companies or influence entire markets because as long as the authorities don't step in (and they rarely can) you can create revenue very predictably. And if authorities step in it is rather in not allowing certain transactions than actually punishing behavior that is very harmful. Even the authorities are through political leadership at their mercy and can be pressured at any time with job losses or local investment stops. I recommend watching the channel how money works for some examples of how billionaires invest. Once you have very large sums of money investments can work very differently. So there might be very little risk to carry and the investments very often harm the society at large.
@@edheldude In the case of just investing broadly into markets to get the 5% interest, you'd also just buy stocks that have likely IPOed a long time ago. So there is no liquidity provided directly and it would not change the markets overall. But this obviously does not use the power the billionaire has optimally, so it's not really a good investment strategy for them to just invest broadly. This would be literally doing nothing and watching the money increase
@@pericvlor Most big entrepreneurs just want to solve big problems of humanity and create something cool. Money is just a tool, and an energy to make things happen.
@@edheldude Ideally yes, in practice this is sadly often not the case. But humans have a tendency to improve things so maybe we can solve these problems one day.
The biggest problem with wealth inequality in my view is the influence that a minority can have in society. That said it seems to be impossible to tax the wealthy effectively
The wealthy are just massively more productive than the average person. Who's more productive, the 130 IQ chemical engineer who innovates and founds his own company, or a horde of average people? And more intelligent people increase productivity enough to free the intelligent from less productive labor before anyone jumps on the "you didn't build that" argument. Wealth per se is not the problem rather it's rent-seeking from bad actors particularly in the political class which will not be solved by giving government bureaucracy more money. Money going into the government is a sure sign the social issues the programs ostensibly address will never be solved and the economic multiplier is less than 1
@TheThreatenedSwan hedgefund managers and Wallstreet types aren't productive at all for humanity. Don't assume someone who's wealthy is automatically brilliant. Sure a chemical engineer with a high iq contributes a great deal more to humanity than the average person but a significant amount of people who collect capital gains are not at all
@@TheThreatenedSwanyou have it completely backwards. The wealthy aren't productive at all, as the video describes, they gain wealth from investing their already existing wealth. They do nothing and gain money. It's an incredibly dumb system and taxing them until they can't do this is a good solution. The government can provide goods and services without needing profits which in itself is an inefficiency in the system because it pools wealth in the hands of those that already have everything. We need to take their wealth until they can't buy rules in their favour which is what we have now.
@@TheThreatenedSwan That is such a silly take. To equate wealth with productivity is just outright idiotic. The highly productive may generally tend to become more wealthy, but the opposite is FAR from true. Much wealth is generational, as another commenter pointed out, the worth of your run-of-the-mill hedgefund managers / speculators to society is close to zero, or in most cases, actually negative.
For that to be true the tax would have to be levied in absolute terms as well. Like a medieval "head tax." Welcome to the future, we have maths here. 🙃
This is what a lot of analysis misses. The percentage of tax burden doesn't matter when you want to find out who pays the most. The total amount of money from each group matters here.
Very interesting video. But a bit misleading. Take that example of Asa and Bengt, let's assume that there was a flat income tax of 10%, Bengt would pay 250k€/year, while Asa only paid 3.6k€/year, which is 70x less than what Bengt paid (just the opposite perspective of what's shown in the video). That was assuming a flat rate, but actually it's progressive, so Bengt pays a lot more. I'm not defending the rich but not all rich were born rich and not all of them have plans to own/run the world.
So, there is only one issue, and this is the issue with all progressive tax ideals. They confuse Income Tax with wealth, which are totally diferent things. In this video, he says that bengst earns 2500K/year and Asa 36K/year. This is completely misleading. What actually happens is that Bengt earns a substantial amount of his money from shares and investements, not cold hard cash. So even though his wealth increases 2500K, he only pays incime taxes for 300K, because the rest of the money is from non liquid assets like shares and investments. This wealth is extremely difficult to tax. The problem lies in the fact the assets value changes based on the amount sold If we tax all billionaires based on their wealth, they would be forced to sell their assets to pay the 2200K difference. The socialist would be quite happy to have enforced their egualitarian society, but they forget that if the market is flooded with shares of billionaires that need the money to pay 250K in taxes, those shares will sharply drop in value, forcing them to sell even more, droping the value further. The first most immediate result would be a crash in every company stock price, followed by massive layoffs (so now Asa is out of a job, Yay!). The second result is a great disdain for all investment opporunities. Because since you'll be taxed based on the wealth instead of wether or not the product generates value, things like owing homes would be economically inviable (imagine you had to pay 10% of your home value every year). This would again force people to sell their homes, lowering the value, crashing the house prices. You then have the issue that now that owing a home is essentially the same as paying rent, most people would end up paying rent. This would make rent prices go up Eventually, the rent prices would up as high or higher than the property taxes. This would make the few wealthy people that remain to keep owning and renting their property, to first cover the wealth tax, then make a profit for their own home. Congratulations. Now Bengt instead of living in a mansion lives in Asa's home, and Asa rents a smaller property to Bengt, at a realitively higher percentage than the tax cost to maintain that house.Yay! I made the example with homes, but this would also apply to any other investment like a startup, so no new jobs will be created. This is why wealth were pushed to be abolished. The alternative is capital gains tax, but the problem again is that its a tax that applies once the asset is sold, meaning if he doesnt sell them, he isnt taxed. That makes it so he looks like he earns 2500K, but pays just 30K in taxes instead of 250K. But I dont think there is any other to prevent this that doesn invokve destroying the investmeny market, and by proxy, millions of jobs.
@figueiredomike did you not understand that Bengt doesn’t only pay income taxes? his income is not the same as his salary due to his capital income which is taxed lower than salary. so he ends up paying a smaller share of his income in taxes - it is that easy.
Capital tax and wealth tax are an additional tax on something paid for by income that was already taxed. It is a "tax on a tax" and is foundationally unfair and penalizes people who saved, worked hard, were entrepreurial, took risks with investment, and were financially successful. These people, when treated unfairly by the state, have the means to leave and take their businesses, innovation, and capital with them. When that happens, the state spirals into economic turmoil and then decays into social turmoil. Just look at the catastrophic decline of California and New York in the United States. In this video, it would be interesting to use gross $ paid instead of % . At 30% income tax the ceo with annual $2.5 million income pays $750,000 in tax while the $36,000 secretary is usually taxed at a lower rate (say 20%) pays $7,200. They both use the same roads and infrastructure. Most countries tiered tax systems are not even close to "fair" imo.
In a stable society, rich folks benefit massively because they 'use' the wealth spread by the government. Nice to be an entrepreneur but what without educated workers and infrastructure (from internet access to the public transport your workers use to get to work)? Not even to mention cultural diversity and a peaceful environment where nobody needs to do crime to survive. All I want to say is, if all the money is concentrated in a few hands, rich people suffer as well. Don't let me even start about the advantages of social mobility...
Non-salary income is *not* money earned through hard work, literally by definition. Why is it fair to let people earn income on top of income at the expense of everyone else, but not tax on top of tax to keep that money circulating? If you're stuck on an island and one guy hoards all the food, you're obviously going demand that they share. Money is an essential resource that modern society can't function without. Edit: wtf multipost, I hate touchscreens.
@@2koi516you are fundamentally misunderstanding money. Money is more of a measurement. It is a measurement of how much someone has benefited society at large. Non salary income represents payment for risk taking. I put some money forward with no guarantee of seeing any of it back. Whatever profit comes from that is the social benefit that came out of that risk. Because we have free markets no one can be forced to take risks but those risks are necessary for an economy to function so those who take those risks and are successful greatly benefit society as they create jobs for people unwilling to take risks and create products that society finds useful. Someone who earns a salary also benefits society as their labor makes the product that benefits society but this is of less social value than coming up with the product and taking the risk to find is production so they get less money.
Capital taxes do not tax the item that was already taxed. Capital taxes tax the income made on the item. When a house appreciates in value, upon selling the house you are not taxed on the entire worth (most of which you were already taxed on at the time of purchase). However the variance/increase in worth is taxed - again not the full amount.
The tax system changed over the years because the country was going bankrupt. The problem is when you tax the over achievers they just go somewhere else. The middle class in Northern Europe pay high tax because they choose to give up some of their freedoms to depend on the government.
Totally agree my friend, I just wrote a similar message. If taxes get so bad that you get tought in school that the US is good for corporation for example then most of people wanting to make big businesses would move out in the US to try there
You forget it's possible to impose a law taxing money moved offshore. Nobody becomes wealthy in a bubble. those looking out only for themselves and doing everything to avoid helping the counties that made them wealthy are just greedy traitors.
Rich people are not overachiever. They just feed more on the society and need less equality too keep it that way. Show any scientific data, backed up by a consensus saying rich people do more than anybody else, you'll find none. Stop spreading faire tales that fuel a US way of seeing society.
Don't even try. They just want to hate on the rich and the capitalist, not realizing there will be nothing without them. Wealth redistribution has been tried so many times, and every single time it has failed. People are fixated on the idea that their form of Socialism is going to work. Let me break it to you, it's not going to work.
How do you define wealth? Do you include value of pensions? Do you reduce value of assets by taxes due if sold? Or taxes due on income from assets? And how do you determine amount of wealth? Are there government filings on wealth? In US stats are wealth tend to overstate wealth as are based on "papers" by collage professors wanting to prove point. How are government revenues spent? Is more spent on poor? And any thoughts on what happens to economic growth with more equal policies?
Great video! Now I just wish we had the same data (current status quo and list recent decades' changes) presented as nicely for other countries as well. :D
Great video. I suggest putting subtitles in English (though I'm Brazilian) when you highlight text or play a video clip, just showing the gist of the information, in order to keep the audience engaged in those sections.
I’ve been saying it for years now, “Here in the United States it is unconstitutional for the taxation of income. It states that income is not supposed to be taxed and yet we’ve been illegally taxed for more than a century. The IRS is illegal.”
@ That’s my point of it being illegal. It took away our rights and the only reason for the tax in the first place was because of a war. After that war was over it was illegally kept in place and the government just keeps justifying it by making illegal changes to our constitution.
@@andrewprine6406 That’s my point of it being illegal. The only reason for the tax in the first place was to fund a war and when that war was over they illegally kept it in place and to justify it the government illegally changed our constitution and took away our rights. I don’t approve of that in any way.
That’s my point of why it’s illegal. The only reason for the tax in the first place was to fund a war and when that war was over they illegally kept it in place and changed our constitution to take away our rights. Every new amendment is a crime on our rights and freedoms of our country.
I think you are missing one most important part is that the income tax in Sweden is way TOO high in the first place. If it had a reasonable income tax, then everyone would benefit from having little / no capital gains tax and no wealth tax. Because having a low income tax would allow people to invest residual money into real estate and stock market and retire early. The fight should be not against the billionaire, but against the system which punishes hard work by taxing the crap out of your income
@@Danny-bd1ch You don't need money to unjustly influence democracy. If people aren't allowed to make as much money as they want, why would anyone work harder than they have to in order to max out their pay? If I can make that maximum amount of money in 6 months why should I work the other 6 months of the year?
Wealth tax: you own a copy of Jupiter Ascending on DVD, it's valued at $5, so you owe us 25 cents for hoarding your wealth. And this happens every year, so within a few decades you have given the entire value of your property as a tax. And it extends indefinitely beyond the point where you have given the government $100,000,000 for your own dvd collection. If you are in favor of a "wealth tax" know that I am your enemy.
Wealth taxes should not be (and I would argue are not being) levied on assets that do not appreciate in value. You tax tangible, personal property, such as real estate, which grows in value over time. If you pay a portion of that increase in value, you end up with two diverging lines. You will *never* pay the entire value of your investment to the government, as you describe, because the thing you are paying based on grows in value faster than your tax payments can deplete. Even if you tax it all, every sensible tax system allows you to write off depreciation, such as you would experience on a luxury vehicle or yacht. And other forms of wealth tax? An inheritance tax only gets charged once. Again, defying your absurd assertion that you pay the government more than the value of your assets. You've described a fantasy world. A straw man. Your scenario simply is not true.
Good point except that what you described is not in any way a wealth tax. Nobody will tax your shitty DVD collection. If you own property or equities or other APPRECIATING assets, you will be taxed, yes, but ONLY on the net gains for each asset for the previous year. House is valued at a million at the beginning of the year and is appraised at 1.1 million at the end of the year? You pay wealth tax on that 100,000 gained. It doesn’t appreciate at all? No tax that year. It goes down in value to 900,000? You can carry forward that 100k loss to offset the tax on future years’ gains. It would also very likely only apply to very high net worth individuals. And there are tax free and tax advantaged investment accounts you can use for stocks and bonds. And if you have maxed out every possible taxed advantaged investment account? Well then you can CERTAINLY afford a wealth tax on anything you earn beyond that (not to mention that your tax advantaged accounts gain more room every tax year)
Most wealth tax would apply in wealth in excess of an amount, not to all your assets. And it typically will not affect the bottom 90% of people because they don't have enough to cross that threshold to begin with. No one is going after your DVD but they will be after your fifth yacht and fourth mansion.
It seems everyone is getting hung up on the label I attached, so I'll rephrase: wealth (and property) tax = you have ownership of a thing the government decides to say it's more valuable now than it was before and (wouldn't you know it) you now owe them money because of that. And if they could get away with it they absolutely would include your home video collection as a taxable asset.
This is a world wide trait, that exists almost everywhere, but this system and way of control, is not sustainable and is on verge of collapse, simply because the money that's being created, or printed is in excess, of the actual natural resources that are available, which of course are not shared evenly. Also everything taken from nature by force, will have to be paid back, at some future time, which is already starting happen, in the form of natural and environmental disasters.
You'd have to define what you mean by taking from nature by force. The current system that is expanding inequality is definitely not sustainable, but we probably cannot simply let it collapse. Undoubtedly if it gets that far the ultra-wealthy will actually still be alright and everyone else will bear the brunt of the chaos. An example would be the 2008 crisis. The majority of wealthy people didn't just walk away from that unscathed, but used their wealth and market manipulation to get even richer while ordinary people suffered the consequences.
Sweden's wealth tax was ludicrous. My father used to work there and because his house in the USA hadn't sold, he got taxed on ASSETS OWNED ABROAD with the result that his tax bill came out as higher than his salary.
Person A starts an engineering business, machining parts for numerous applications like cars, aircraft, motors, etc. He eventually employs 40 people and assists in country's defense and transport infrastructure. Person B just enjoys PlayStation, living with parents and working local jobs like waiter, gas station, etc. Should they make the same money?
It’s almost like wealthy people got that way by creating companies and products and jobs, something governments cannot do. Shocking that they prefer to invest their money in their companies and themselves rather than the black hole of government. In the United States the top 5% of income earners pay 66% of all income taxes. What is your “fair share” of the money they earned?
I am in the top 3% of earners in my country. Almost all of my income comes from trading options on the US market. Why should i pay more in taxes because I generate more income? And why is my productivity demonized? And then when I save and reinvest the large majority of my money, increasing my wealth, and I taxed and demonized for that?
“Almost all of my income comes from trading options” You don’t work and aren’t productive. You aren’t collecting trash, growing food, curing diseases, optimizing existing technologies- nothing. You buy and sell securities. That’s neither innovative nor productive. People like you should be in a 91% tax bracket again.
This is a lovely presented video. Just a tip though, the video is presented in English but there were no English translations of any written or spoken Swedish during the video. Thank you for sharing the interesting state of affairs in your country brother.
@@asandax6Not at all.. having more means more concerns.. People who had realized that.. procure a balanced easy life. You cam bet that 2 out of 3 individuals would rather have just enough resources without issues.. than a lot with the included target on their backs.
@@asandax6 "Everyone wants more and more" Nonsense. Many just want enough to be able to provide a reasonably comfortable and worry-free life for themselves and their family.
This story needs to be re-told in every country. Great video. Any chance of turning the music volume a little lower? It is both distracting and hell for people with hearing difficulties. Thanks for the great video.
Obviously. You really think 90% of the population is so dumb they don't realize that? I have 3 degrees served in Iraq. I came home and applied for thousands of jobs. In ten years I got 3 interviews. I'm done chasing the carrot. Fuck capitalism. The harder you work the more you pay, until you get to the 10%. The you get paid.
The question what is left to spend in asset. For some negligible nothing. You always spend the first 1500€ (or Swedish krone equivalent) o necessities, also a billionaire.
how can people like such a write and like such a comment?! people need to pay rent food water. many have not much money left, the time and knowledge to invest whats left over, saving a bit is also no bad idea and having made some money by never spending beyond the absolute necessary won’t make you happy in the end. not everyone has so much access money lol
Rich people will always play the money game smarter than everyone else. It’s a good thing they general provide tons of value which is why people use their products and such
@@RextheRebel then stop using all their products. if they don't provide value or improve your life in some way then you don't need to buy their products nor use their services and then guess what! they wont be rich anymore!
@@RextheRebel the labor theory of value is bollocks. It presupposes the existence of the means of production, while either providing no incentive to create it, or placing that responsibility in the hands of a powerful government which is both necessarily underinformed (see the economic calculation problem) and funded by people who didn't consent to the risk of developing new means of production that often don't pan out. Let me put it in terms someone who subscribes to the labor theory of value will understand: You have people working at a factory making $product (let's say shoes). In order for the organization to continue for any length of time, the sale of the shoes produced must exceed the cost of the raw materials to produce those shoes, and any wear and tear on the factory that happens while producing those shoes. This surplus value must then be distributed. Your insistence is presumably that the organization be run as a democratic coop made up entirely of the laborers, and 100% of the surplus value go either directly to them, or (perhaps) back into the business in a way that they collectively agree upon. Let me be clear: as long as no property was seized through the use of force, I have 0 qualms with a group of people choosing to run a business this way. However, in practice, it doesn't happen very often. Why? The main issue is that the existence and availability of the factory is presupposed. How does the factory come about? "Easy to answer", you will certainly say, "laborers built it". Ah, but how are *those* laborers paid? Unlike the factory staff, they produce 1 large good over a long period of time (probably multiple years), rather than many goods over a shorter period of time, so their natural flow of surplus value is *far* less smooth than that of the factory workers, yet their rate of consumption is probably roughly the same. They also aren't likely to be the same group of people, since working in a factory requires different skills than building a factory, and at least the latter likely requires significant specialization, so demanding that all prospective factory workers build their own factories is almost certainly a non-starter. So, with that framing, now you have 3 problems: 1. The factory builders need to feed their families during the time before anything they've built actually has the capacity to deliver any value to anyone. This requires them to either receive a salary from *someone*, or to have a substantial savings built up. 2. The factory staff need to somehow collectively pay for the factory, either in the form of salary for the workers while it's being built, or as a lump sum once it's complete. This requires them to have a substantial savings built up, or at least be making collectively significantly more than the factory builder staff requires as total salary, in order to be able to spare the money to pay them -- all before getting access to the factory in which they presumably expect to end up making more than their current salary (there are of course others, but this is the most likely reason they'd want to make the switch from whatever previous labor was funding them). 3. *Most importantly* the success of the whole venture of building and operating the factory *is not guaranteed*. Whoever pays for its construction before it's operational and successfully selling produced goods is taking on a *substantial* risk *and* opportunity cost (e.g. they could spend their money on things they desire *now* instead). If you can solve all 3 problems without reaching out for external funding, good for you! Run a coop, make all decisions democratically, etc. Knock yourself out. But that's not terribly common, because there are usually more people with ideas and wants around how to use resources than there are resources to use (i.e., scarcity is natural). Capitalism (by which I mean the economic system of private property and free markets, not the "worship of profit" or "source of scarcity" or whatever fearmongering garbage you think I mean by it) and the marginal/subjective theory of value (i.e. value is created and determined only when A and B agree to a trade, since for this to happen voluntarily A must subjectively value B's good above A's good, and vice versa, so overall subjective value increases in that moment) solve these conundrums by giving the following option: a third party (could be one or several agents), with funds to spare and an appetite for risk, provides the funds necessary to pay the factory builders. Why would they do this? Because in exchange they get ownership of the factory if and when it's complete, and thus control over how it's operated and how surplus value from its operation is distributed -- presumably, a significant portion will go to them. Call this unjust if you will, but if you want (a) development beyond our current state of technology, (b) any significant adaptation to the future, and (c) even any *sustenance* of the current level of development of mankind (due to the inevitable decay of all things currently built), *you need an answer to these conundrums*. Perhaps your answer is that all such development (or all such development where the 3 conundrums are magically resolved without outside help) ought to be resolved by the government rather than by the free market. Setting aside the massive increase in government power this creates, this is essentially placing the burden (finance and risk) on all taxpayers of said government, rather than on individual agents who choose to provide the capital. I understand there are a couple reasons this option is alluring (feel free to tell me more, honestly! I'm obviously biased in the other direction, and I appreciate any information that helps me refine and develop my own understanding). First off, democratic governments are (ostensibly) made up of public servants who are sworn to work in the public interest, whereas the capitalist has made no such oath and (I agree) seeks only profit. Secondly, *if* the venture *does* turn out to be successful, in many cases society at large will benefit, including people who don't purchase the products of said factory and thus won't pay in any way -- even indirectly -- for its production under the capitalist model (this is aka the "free rider" problem). By taxing all citizens for the production of the factory, the free rider problem is avoided on some level. On getting to the downsides, I'm going to steelman this approach as much as possible and continue to *assume a benevolent and non-corrupt government*. Why such an assumption is, to put it lightly, foolish, seems hardly worth getting into. That said, the above benefits are, by my estimation, spectacularly dwarfed only by the fact that such an arrangement requires that all citizens be significant party to economic risk to which they never -- at least not at the individual level -- consented. An individual might know for absolute certain that the factory would never be a success, and might scream this from the hilltops, but the government could still well fund it with her money, and any resistance on her part to paying said taxes would eventually be met with force. Nor are any payment for damages in the event of failure realistically possible -- since the government can only pay taxpayers back with those taxpayer's own money. *At best*, this means such a government would be extremely careful about the projects it funds, demanding extreme levels of confidence from anyone proposing a project for funding. This is obviously not an entirely bad thing, but it has 2 major problems: (1) confidence itself is *extremely* costly -- this is a big part of why current government projects take *forever* and have *exorbitant* monetary costs when compared with private ventures for the same things -- and (2) significant technological progress requires taking on substantial risk. If you declare private funding illegal (or remove all incentive to do it by declaring private ownership of capital goods illegal), you strangle technological progress. If you have any other ideas for how to solve those conundrums, I'd love to hear them. But by my current estimation, you're either a primitivist, a tankie, or a capitalist, and I know which one of those options I prefer.
@@RextheRebel Forgot one thing in that text wall. If your response is that capitalists often don't actually assume risk in many scenarios because they get bailed out by the government, *I wholeheartedly agree with you that that's awful and needs to never ever happen*. I (and anyone who can honestly claim to be in favor of capitalism as an economic system) am *pro-market, not pro-corporation*. When a corporation's utility ceases to exceed its costs, it *must* die and thereby release its resources for use by higher-utility agents. Part of the function of the market is to make that happen, and state intervention in that process is absolutely perverse. On a principles level, I almost certainly hate that dynamic more than you do.
@@ILikeCrunchyWater corporations will rise and will concentrate market power regardless of government intervention. Every competition needs rules that everyone must abide by to participate in the game. The market is no different.
Sure, women like me who have worked, saved, invested, and delayed our family planning well into our mid-30s to mid-40s, who are good citizens, good spouses, good mothers should just be forced to give EVEN MORE of our money to chronically unemployed single moms who have three children with three different men, who regularly smoke cigarettes and have sex in front of their children. That sounds fair and reasonable, right? Like it’s not providing any perverse incentives to encourage more bad choices and actions, right?
This issue is oversimplified. Tax rates look great if you already have an established business that one isn't putting money into, however, for someone who is about to take taxed earned income and then invest that, the capital gain taxes look insane.
What people don't understand it's a global issue it's not just one country like it's not just the US.
What people don't understand is the economy and don't bother to learn.
It's how jobs get created. And it's being painted like it's greed. The wealth exists in having built all these opportunities for people to work toward things others want.
So you think trickledown economics has worked?
@@juancilliers8710 There is no limit to how much wealth can be created. A business that uses land, labour, materials and resources is worth multiple times the sum of all it's parts. If you stripped out all the 'Good Will' value and just valued the land, materials and machinery then you would have a more balanced distribution of 'wealth.' The Wealthy are those that create these efficient use of existing resources and have them valued on the stock markets at 20-50 times the base cost. Yes, there are loads of elites living off government contracts and this should be stopped but blaming creators from creating more wealth is collectivist nonsense. Do the vast majority of people have access to more real world resources today than yesterday. If the answer is yes, then the system is working, if no, then the system is hoarding the resources. The numbers are a misdirection at best used by toxic ideologies to create a state of FEAR by creating the illusion that we live in scarcity rather than unlimited abundance that is only limited by peoples lack of imagination and creativity to make things with the resources around them. Govern-Minds (mentis=Mind) control the masses via FEAR, False Evidence Appearing Real. You can only control what you Create - 10 Rules of Commerce
It's also just how math works. If you break it down into percentiles the lowest 1% would have to own at least a little less than the 2nd lowest percentile, so on and so forth. If you had to now assign numbers to this what percent of the wealth should the poorest 1% own to make this work? Is it going to be something like 0.5% of the wealth? Then the next 1% own 0.51%? If you end that sequence with the top 1% owning 2% of the wealth then it becomes you can only become 4 times as rich as your poorest citizen (kind of).
These also need to be adjusted for age. Because I think people that worked for 40 years should be at least 40 times as wealthy as someone that has only worked 1 year. (a 65 year old vs a 19 year old)
I dislike taxes for one main reason: the government requires individuals to calculate their own taxes and imposes heavy penalties for mistakes. While I have no problem paying taxes as a US citizen, it seems strange to me that I have to do the paperwork when the government already has all the necessary information.
I don't regret the financial mistakes I've made in the past, as they've all taught me valuable lessons. However, my biggest misstep was planning my finances without consulting a licensed financial advisor.
I sought the guidance of a financial counselor, and as I near retirement, their advice has proven invaluable. I was initially concerned that compound interest on index funds wouldn’t suffice since I started investing later. It's quite amusing to realize that I’ve outperformed colleagues with more investment experience, having gained over $186k tax-free.
@@williamDonaldson432 This is definitely significant! Do you have any recommendations for professionals or advisors I could contact? I really need guidance on proper portfolio allocation.
Rebecca Lynne Buie is the coach who guides me. With years of experience in the financial markets, her strategies have worked well for me and contributed to my success. She offers clear entry and exit points for the securities I focus on
Thank you for the tip. I found your coach online and conducted my due diligence before scheduling a call. Based on her resume, she appears to be highly proficient.
I am not swedish , But came across your video about Private equity So I explored your channel. I love the content and quality of your videos. I hope you will achieve success very soon here on youtube, Just give some of your focus on going viral and figure out to beat the algorithm.
Regards,
Your new loyal subscriber.
Thank you very much for the kind comment!🙏
And, you're right, I probably should try to be "smarter" with the algorithm etc.
Cheers!
Absolutely. This channel is great!
Another new subscriber and loving your content and productions🤗
All taxation is theft!
Were you wishing him to be rich?? What a bad person you are...
Great visualisation! I really think the Lego figures make the problem so much more concrete.
Plastic.
There's no problem. This is how system work, and people's disparate competencies result in unequal wealth.
@@edheldude yet the ability of people to move upwards through the wealth categories is less then ever before, so competencies aren't the deciding factor. It's harder and harder than previous recent decades to make a lot of money if you don't start out with a lot of money already.
@@Ocker3 I think people are just more passive, less autonomous, more mentally and physically sick, and many businesses require more intellect and character. Left and old money are also building more obstacles for people but in reality most people don't try to be financially autonomous and try to build a business.
On the flipside, this also means there's less compentent competition. I'm on my third business and it feels like the bar is super low.
@@Ocker3 Are you basing your wealth mobility claim on actual data, or just vibes?
This stuff is hard to measure anyways because ability to build wealth is more a measure of time preferences than anything else. You can build wealth off of $50k/year if you're willing to lower your standard of living to the point where you can save, and if you invest those savings, that wealth will build surprisingly quickly. Look up a DCA S&P 500 calculator and plug in a modest amount invested per month over the last 20-30 years, I think you'll be surprised how little it takes to build wealth.
Great Video ! BUT . . .Sweden's wealth inequality is tiny compared to the United States where the top 1% essentially own the Government and funnel the massive Federal Budget directly into their coffers !
Depending on the region and date 4profit orgs either own the gov or are the gov.
Same goes for my country Denmark, where your LEGO comes from. 80% middle class country (I think the UK only 39% and the US only 50%). We pay high taxes, but our roads and infrastructure look nice and the population is very satisfied. Breaking up private income and outcome, Danes don't pay more in the end in a life circle. And you don't finance through living in debts. Your kids education doesn't depend on your income. Universal healthcare. Less pressure due to social security nets, -happier populations in Scandinavia.
Wrong. Sweden's wealth inequality is higher than the USA. If you don't believe me look up the GINI wealth equality by country.
@@stevo728822thanks for making me look this up, you might want to look into this for yourself.
Sweden's wealth inequality is the result of old money. Money that has been in the hands of the same families for hundreds of years goes back to Feudalism.
America's wealth is largely new money that has arisen in the last few decades bringing with it technological breakthroughs such as smart phones and electric cars.
Not really a fair comparison.
People against unjust wealth is a global effort.
It should be, but because of rich peoples successful propaganda, the issue is getting worse
@@zombi3lif3 being that it is now becoming normalized in mainstream thought, I think we are on our way to progress. However, it does rely on people waking up to the fact that THEY have to get organized, because their leaders will not handle this task for them.
Quit your job, oh wait they pay for them, guess you cant.
I don t want to break it to you, but if we distribute billionnaire money it will just create an inflation. Money doesn t magically solve everything. The problem in society aren t billionnaires, but millionnaires who hold airbnbs and profit from them.
@@thatundeadlegacy2985so you like being a billionaire’s b**ch?
You forgot to include the Lego graphic of who pays what percentage of tax revenues collected.
True. The top 1% are responsible for 45% of the tax revenue, which is already proportionately higher than the wealth percentage they own. When the fuck will it be considered "fair"?
But it gets worse because heavy taxation is absolutely trickled down into the prices of the goods and services their companies provide, which effectively makes the poor poorer by making the things they need to buy more expensive.
Taxation is a tool of incentive, and when you tax the people who are better off, you are literally saying as a nation that you don't want your people to be better off. It is as simple as that.
I dare say that a country with zero taxes for the rich would have no poverty within a generation.
@@matheusdardenne in what universe does the absence of tax becomes a more prominent incentive to be rich other than, you know, wanting to have a decent livelihood and not wanting to live in poverty?
The richest people pays more tax by percentage than the poorest and it should be that way. Just for a very crude analogy, do you expect two persons making $10k/year and $10M/year to both pay 1% tax? The first one would barely have any left to have a decent living while the other still have so much more to spend for a luxurious life.
And I agree with your point that heavy tax for corporations could negatively impact the poor. But that's where wealth tax could be effectively used to put the burden more on personal wealth rather than companies
@rexygama7697
Taxation is the government taking away your money and giving NOTHING worthwhile in return, not that a return would justify the theft in the first place. It makes it harder for poor people to rise above their status because taxes are progressive, meaning that the more they climb the wealth brackets, the harder it becomes to keep climbing because rates increase. The progressive tax system, thus, creates this "thermal equilibrium" where the majority of people are stuck just below the middle class.
First of all, both are currently paying over 80% of what they earn in direct or indirect taxation in my country. Second, I want both of them to pay fucking NOTHING, because there is NOTHING being provided back with that money being stolen from them. Third, if taxation is impossible to abolish, then yes, a 1% rate would be FAIR, because who makes 10k a year will be paying 100, and who makes 100k a year will be paying 1000, I think even you can understand that 1000 is more than 100.
@@rexygama7697
Why, instead of creating a wealth tax, don't you force your government to reduce their spending and to live within its means?
Why, instead of stealing money from the poor, squandering half of it in corruption and inefficiencies, to only then provide mediocre services back to the people, don't you let people keep their money so they won't be poor in the first place?
@@matheusdardenne tax revenue contributes to a substantial amount of share in countries GDP. In Sweden it's around 41% in 2022. It goes to public healthcare, infrastructure, military, government officials that keeps the country running, etc. You can say it's a subscription for being a citizen of a country, where in return, you get all the benefits of citizenship.
I can see where you are headed with "stuck in the middle class" argument, but it's kinda the "intended" side effect that taxation aims. Tax will indirectly distribute wealth among populations and reduce economic inequalities. Of course too much of it can be harmless and even hinder economic progress.
As for your last point, I would argue that both should NOT be taxed the same (by percentage). Tax exemption, for example in income tax, should be applied so that people earning below a certain threshold pay less or zero percentage of their income for taxes. Progressive income tax is necessary so that the lower middle class people don't have to be burdened as much since they would still have to struggle to meet basic needs. Living on 99k/year is way more comfortable than 9,9k/year. So why not just make it so that one person gets 98,9k/year while the other gets 10k/year (no taxes). In both cases, the government collect 1,1k. I bet the first person would barely notice the difference while the second one would be very graceful to have an extra 100 to buy some groceries :)
Watched two videos and subbed. Nice videos, although not exactly new information, but very professionally done. There cannot be enough channels spreading the information you talk about and you do a great job in making it easy to digest and understand.
Only one little addition. Consumption tax, which you glossed over pretty much, is also a deeply unfair tax. A single person who is extremely wealthy will never ever use much of their wealth to actually consume (if they even do it at all and do not circumvent it by covering their expenses through companies they own). So any consumption tax is, like income tax, a tax that hits the poor much harder then the wealthy in relation to the respective overal wealth and in regards to the disposable income that is left after taxation.
Was looking through the comments to see if someone else had already made that point! Many people think of flat taxes like consumption tax as "fair", when the exact opposite is true. And I think it's quite universally accepted among economists that giving money to poor people is great for the economy, since they (have to) spend most of it, while money that goes to/stays with rich people is MUCH more likely to get transferred abroad or - best case - sit in a bank account/property where it accrues minimal tax revenue.
@@ChocookieMonster It is also a big difference in the economy. Money given to the poor ends up almost entirely in domestic businesses usually. So it is an indirect investment into small businesses in your own country, strengthening the domestic economy. Which is the actual backbone for everything else.
you forget that taxes are imposed to provide and maintain common services like roads etc. These services are used more than 90% by the 90% class you mention. So your notion of taxation is just another Marxist poppycock idea. Taxation without consent is tantamount to robbery. it funds kleptocracy, corruption, and government fascism. your rather simpleminded notion that the rich somehow can be taxed to make society fairer is just another idiotic argument made by Marxists. Hasn't 100 years of failure taught you something? One gets better results by restricting government power and reinventing the imposition of forced levies like taxes.
@@manfredkandlbinder3752Only if you consider Amazon to be local.
@@ChocookieMonsterMany jurisdictions don't apply consumption taxes to the basic necessities of life (food, shelter, etc.). The poor tend to spend a lot higher per centage of their income on the necessities of life and thus pay much less in consumption taxes. Also, at least some jurisdictions have "luxury taxes" on higher ticket items.
If you study macroeconomics, you find that consumption taxes is one of the better ways of taxing, as income taxes tend to discourage people from working harder and earning more.
Love the quality content. Hope your stuff will gain traction.
I'm not optimistic.
it's the same here in austria. we had a pretty good tax system up until 1990. but right now, if you work for a company with a good income you'll easily pay 40% of your income in taxes. if you instead own said company you can hoard all your income in a holding company and pay 0%. only when you take money out of the holding you pay a meager 25%. if you also happen to own another company abroad you can shuffle that money around and pay 0% taxes in total.
wow
Yes and we used to have an inheritance tax, but now whenever it gets proposed (even when the proposal is for a progressive tax rate with no tax on the first million (!!)) people freak out because they irrationally fear they might be affected if they manage to save up another 990.000€ and die - stoked by the tabloid press, of course
This is not exactly accurate. Corporations in Austria pay 25 % on all their gains (business tax "KöSt"), and another 27,5 % on all money that is taken out of the companies (capital gains tax "KeSt"), so business owners in Austria pay more than half of their profits in taxes.
@@123jakob1234 except if they don't make gains because you pay the gains into a holding which owns the company. then you don't pay KöSt at all, becaue your company doesn't make any profit, instead you only pay KeSt when you take your money out of your holding. therefore you can accumulate massive amounts of money and assets tax free if you keep everything in your holding. you can use the profits in the holding to buy real estate or stocks or whatever (or pay back loans) and don't pay a single cent in tax because your holding owns all those things instead of you as a person.
oh, and KöSt has been lowered to 23% since 2024.
and we're not even talking about Gruppenbesteuerung yet.
@@123jakob1234 The money taken out of a company doesn't have to be a gain though.
The company can just grow and invest it's income, so it doesn't have to pay the 25%.
This leaves only the 27,5% if the assets have stayed in Sweden.
Love the production quality and clear explanations! Only one thjnf stops me from linking and subscribing: Please add *sources* in the description! I believe its a dangerous trend that there are so many video essays on youtube doing great stuff, but not providing the evidence for their claims. Thanks!
It sucks that it's not just our economy, our whole culture is becoming more Americanized 😴
no its good, america is the best country
@@germancat429 Only an American would make such an ignorant statement less than a month after a fascist on par with Hitler was elected as president. And no, I'm not using hyperbole. Trump is as bad as if not worse than Hitler. He just hasn't had enough time yet to cause the same amount of damage. Time that he has now been given as a result of the last election.
The US was the laughing stock of the world in 2016. It would have continued to be the laughing stock of the world if the US still had checks and balances in place. Instead, we're now worried that Trumps disregard for rights, justice and human life will impact the rest of the world. Not to mention the platform he has given to fascists that have more than a few years left in them.
@@germancat429 Lol
Politicians that work for the rich and not the people ... what a shocker
And by this with rich donations they ultimately support themselves
Ergo, your vote doesn't matter
no, if politicians worked for the rich they wouldnt win elections, most politicians (especially the left) work for themselves, thank God trump won who will work for all americans
Bro, this video was very well put together. solid work. thanks for the visualization. you make it so easy to understand.
Thank you for including English translations in the subs at 8:25.
I wanted to see the breakdown of how much taxes is collected from each group using the Legos
Yes, but that would make his point void!
That's be great!
@@mikatuI bet it wouldn't. You think they are paying 74% of the tax burden? I'd be surprised if it was over 20%.
@@Grandude77You do understand they _create_ wealth through their businesses? It benefits everyone. Government and taxes just destroy wealth and produce nothing.
It would show that the wealthiest people pay most of the taxes
People lose track of how BIG a billion is. If dollars were grains of salt, then avg. lifetime earnings in the US (~$2 mil) will fill a coffee mug. A billion fills a bathtub.
@@tj92834 "that is either private owners or it's the government"
Worker Co-Ops: [has entered the chat]
🙃
@@tj92834 ... also... Just because the economic structures of the 21st century make billionares a stochastic inevitability that's no reason to think they are "worth" more than anyone else.
Financializing human value (also known as "treating people like objects") is fundamentally immoral.
... and the current economic structures are subject to change.
A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years.
@@tj92834 The economic structures of the 21st century make billionares a stochastic inevitability. There's no reason to think they are "worth" more than anyone else.
Financializing human value (also known as "treating people like objects") is fundamentally immoral.
... and the economic structures are subject to change.
@tj92834 almost true, but not quite. I can name a few companies that have been highly successful, without making any single person super rich. Some of the wolds leading companies in their field are cooperatives, some are state owned. Area, Danish Crown, Orsted, DSV, and Wattenfalla, just to name a few.
Other leading companies are owned by shareholders without any single owner becoming super rich.
Expertly produced, you deserve more traction.
Like Moskou's nuclear blackmail, we should also not give in to threats for a race to the bottom.
Thanks!
Why do content creators never mention the absolute amount of tax paid by the billionaires. Or the total amount of tax share paid by billionaires. I suspect the rich pay more than their fair share in absolute amount. Maybe 1% of billionaires pay 30 % of total tax paid? Do better research please.
@beerharmien Because A) if you got 10 billion, paying 1 billion in taxes has no impact on you. If you got 100 bucks, paying 10 means you go hungry.
And B) if you got 10 billion, your money makes money. After paying 1 billion in taxes, next year you'll still have 11. If you only got 100 bucks, losing 10 takes away from your ability to invest in the future. That's why poverty is a vicious circle and inequality increases.
@@ericdane7769 That’s not my question. For fair reporting, content creators should also present how much taxes are paid by the top 1% compared to the 99%. In my country, only 3% of people pay income taxes, and people are still complaining.
@@ericdane7769 Now to address your points.
For A)
Are we talking about wealth or income?
If you are taxing wealth, that's a communist system. The rich will have to start selling assets when they reach $1mil, $10mil or $100mil? They will never become rich in the first place. No Spotify, no Tesla, no free Google or TH-cam because nobody will bother.
If we are talking income then yes, 10% is nothing but nobody makes 10B a year income consistently.
And B)
That's the whole point of amassing wealth right? Your money makes money and your capital doesn't get shrunk by inflation. That's the whole point of retirement planning also.
I agree, poverty is a vicious cycle. Everyone must be given an "opportunity" to escape poverty but only if they act on it. Or else, you are just creating handout nation.
Very interesting video - thanks for the insight.
I have recently moved to Sweden and just got approved for f-tax as a sole trader. I am absolutely not a wealthy person, but Skattevrket wants me to pay 65% tax altogether haha, utter madness!
hear hear. The least you could expect when you have to pay 65% tax is that extremely wealthy have to pay at least as much taxes as you. Unfortunately, that's not the case in Sweden
Don't do business as a sole trader, unless you'll bring in less than roughly 612 000 SEK per year. Anything above that and a limited company (aktiebolag) is the way to go. Also, as a sole trader you're unlimited liable as your own person for any fuck ups, tax problems etc, you as a trader might run into.
Why trading in Sweden if you can become a millionaire by holding Bitcoin tax-free??
The part about the 1990s tax reforms benefitting the bourgeoisie at the expense of the salaried folk is interestingly basically identical to what happened here in Finland around the same time. The same trends in terms of income and wealth inequality can be observed here as well. I suppose these reforms were meant to harmonise our (Finland's and Sweden's) tax regimes as we joined the EU. Maybe someone else could shed some light on this...
Sweden was doing economically very poorly between 1970-1990, when the tax system was distributing a lot, and standard of living was growing very slowly compared to other western nations. This is a really important fact that was completely ignored in the video.
@@Andre-ct4fq Many countries removed similar tax systems in the same period, basicly when one country started, this forced other countries to follow or they'ld lose a lot of money moving to those countries.
Maybe if Sweden stopped supporting comunist regimes they could have focused on dealing with their tax reforms. Angola is still suffering from the communism that Sweden helped to implement there.
Its called neoliberalism and it came to europe after the fall of iron curtian and all ex socialist countries were basically forced onto them
Same thing happened in 91 in croatia
People call it homeland war, i call it bourgoise revolution
@@mikatubro you didnt take your meds again, stop getting your news from qanon and fox news
0:56 so you’re telling me that people with more money have more money than people with less money?
....and it will shift towards more inequality over time
@@MrZauberelefantno?
@@germancat429yes!
The real question is how much inequality of income is sustainable.
@@psychic8872 well the answer to that varies, but our history is filled with oligarchs, dictatore in perpetuo, aristocrats and monarchs getting murdered, assassinated and overthrown over exactly just this question. Societies have always been most stable when wealth inequality was at it's lowest, but some people will always accumulate wealth and capital, leveraging it to steer society in their favour until it becomes unsustainable, leading to their death or exile as the country collapses on itself.
5:45 - How about scrapping the progressive tax on income and also make it a flat rate?
did you not watch the video?
Great video for sure, the only criticism I have is one missed opportunity in the lego bricks as money analogy: stacking the bricks on top of each other to show the actual height difference of each group's wealth would help to illustrate the issue even further
This guy deserves way more views, great fcking content
Thank you Henry!
Love the video! I am Swedish and learned a lot but I would love to hear more factors in the equations, more details about taxing the upper class, the methods used by companies to reduce their tax rates and how it actually works now that we know what the results are. I've heard about Ikea for example making every store as the separate company, then lending money to said companies and taking the resulting revenue from them as interest for the loan (making it look like they have no revenue). Stuff like these and more depth overall about the technicalities might not really sell on TH-cam but would be very educational! Love the channel, keep it up!
You don't need many billionaires in a country, to have parliament bow to them...
if parliament bowed to them they wouldn’t win elections
Money is power so that means even if 90% of us become unhappy with the 10% we can t do anything
What's the portion of tax being paid by each group? In the US, the top 10% pay for 70% of the income taxes.
Could i ask you where you found this information? I am interested in this statistic.
Snälla, gör denna video på Svenska också. Svenskar behöver förstå detta om vårt eget land, hur de ändrar på saker och vad som hänt de senaste åren. Folk har ingen koll och det gör saken ännu värre varje val. ❤🇸🇪
(Såg din kanal första gången nu. jättebra video! 👍)
Great video again! You should look into Pillar 2 tax framework this is basically the idea to have a global minimum tax which would prevent these billionaires from threatening what they do to get tax breaks
How about what percentage of taxes are paid by each group? I assume, as in most countries, 80% of tax income is from the top 10%. Most in the bottom 50% recieve more than they pay in many countries like france.
Need to paint the whole picture.
Love your videos btw!
Yep, they always say they want taxes to be fair, they don't realize it would mean their taxes would have to go up. They also don't realize how at least in the us, half of your income tax is paid by your employer, which is on top of the many other ways a company pays tax. Just because a billionaire doesn't pay income tax, does not mean they don't pay tax.
Love the videos too, but I was really wanting to see the same thing in the infographics- what percentage and or $$ amount is paid by each group. I guess I could look it up myself, but it would make this video more complete if it were included.
I think it would go counter to his biased view point.
the problem is that would kill the ideia he is trying to display, I fail to always understand why should group A or B have more tax when it should be why can't have group A or B less tax...
@@rui518 The video clearly is claiming the rich don't pay enough taxes. But yes we should all be focused on how we can increase benefits, decrease taxes, and pay off the debt, which can be done if everyone votes for trump and elon.
It’s a problem that’s been ”solved” many times throughout history. Can we all agree to do it peacefully this time?
Or just revolutionize it by turning it to crowd funding
Bra jobbat, bra video kvalité och intressant innehåll, jag har prenumererat!
Det är sjukt hur Sverige har blivit en skatteparadis för de rika, vi måste fixa det!
Stort tack! 🙏
Håller med dig, det blir allt dyrare att vara fattig i Sverige
Same in Belgium. Employers are moving out to countries where they gave to pay less tax and and where salary costs are lower. Many self employed people (like myself) have to quit. We pay a lot of social security and taxes.... while getting almost nothing in return. Other people, normal salary workers, have more benefits.
Big bourgeoise consolidating small bourgeoise... classic
if you have a company, you can be a normal salary worker for that company and have the same benefits as the others... didn't get your point... whilst keeping the company benefits (car discounts, copany credit card, etc etc).
@@tj92834 off course not... But paying with company card lowers the company profits, and you can get back the VAT from those expenses... So double advantage. Off course this is not for everything... But the law is sufficiently broad to include almost anything.
Same in the Netherlands. Companies threaten to move so the government gives more tax cuts.
Thanks!
Wow, thank you! :)
Not even gonna consider inflation as one way to extract capital from the citizens?
Yeah big misstep by them
Taxation is theft and inflation is taxation. They're all the same
And another form of inflation tax: capital gains taxes.
What are you talking about? Inflation primarily harms those who save and invest.
@@GrimdarkKing It harms savers, yes. Their currency loses value. Inverstors NO! Inflation literally is inflating the money supply. the extra currency typically goes into the property market (Money created for loans) and share markets. The value of those go UP because of inflation.
Bra video, men hur är det med beloppen i nominella termer? Och varför ligger fokus på att omfördela resurser alternativt öka skattetrycket, snarare än att få så mycket valuta för de gemensamma skattepengarna som möjligt?
Indeed, or is government even needed in the areas where it uses power?
Your videos are great, it's unfortunate that there's no chance the algorithm will let you get too popular.
Thank you. I hope that's not the case :) I'll keep making videos anyhow.
Naw, the algorithm is reasonably accepting of this kind of politics. It's not going to get wide distribution, but it also won't get suppressed like some other styles (not at all a left/right issue, for clarity).
It's very common for wealth to be divided up like this in basically every country under every type of government. Taxing will never be fair for everyone no matter how you do it, because you'll always be able to find a way to show a disparity. The solution is to find a better way to tax people other than based in income.
Taxes shouldn't be unfair but in too many countries they are. The middle class has to pay for everything while the rich nearly pay nothing and the corrupt politicians support them by getting richer and grow the hate against the poor and ill people... It's insane... Taxes are there to pay hospitals, streets, railways, healthcare, supporting poor people to get a life and paying workers that are important for society like police, fire fighters, nurses, teachers aso! But corrupt politicians pay with that the rich when they let their companies get bankrupt and "need" tax money to protect the jobs while the rich get richer...
2:02 and this problem so many countries have thanks to corruption. The irony: corruption is illegal for EU members but because the most corrupt German party, the CDU, controls most important parts of the EU it mostly gets ignored if no one reports to the EuGH... And also another Irony: the conservative party's may be against social politics but at the same time they do this politic system for themselves! Free train tickets, payed vacations, money without working aso... The ex politician Nico Semsrott made a comedy show about his time in the eu parliament... He showed a big scandal but no one is talking about it... That shows how much power the CDU has ..
8:51 they aren't scared of the rich they are scared to lose their corrupt benefits! Free luxury travels, luxury food, high class sex parties, contacts to have more money and power. That is what scares them!
- that they would leave the country is bullshit! And even if they would do it in the end nothing would change because the middle class would still pay for everything else. But without those greedy rich people the country could change to be better...
Fantastic video!
This is first ive seen of this channel.
Youre doing excellent and inportant work! Never stop!
So what is the solution? I was waiting for that part😢
100% tax above a certain income
The solution is to dissolve the overgrown socialist state, leaving only enough government to keep the rule of law, then simplify the tax code. Either get rid of all income/wealth taxes or make it a flat tax. Remove consumption tax on everyday necessities like food, and keep it for everything else.
Being wealthy isn't the problem. Being poor is. You can help the poor without taking from the wealthy. Letting the poor keep more of their own money solves this equitably.
Eat the rich.
4:46 This distribution based on income tax and VAT is used because everybody consumes and most of people work, and if you're making a gov. budget for next year, you want the revenue to be *as stable and reliable as possible.*
Sure you can try a model that relies more on wealth or corporate taxes, but these depend on the revenue of certain industry (and as a gov. probably you'll want more a stable revenue for your budget, that one that can be bigger on average, but lower during a recession... Exactly when you might need ot provide unemployment checks.)
In the Netherlands politicians protect the board room form tax, because the will one day be selected for these positions....the job carousel as we call it.
Not gonna lie, this genuinely helped me understand some things I already knew but couldn’t articulately put together. 👍🏻👍🏻
It makes a big difference talking about % or absolute numbers. When comparing a rich person and a normal income, the rich one pays more tax in % and very much more in absolute numbers. When comparing a extremely rich person and a normal income, the rich person may pay a lower % but still way more in absolute numbers.
Yeah, if someone makes a million dollars a year and pays 1% income tax that's $10k. If someone else makes fifty grand a year and pays 5% income tax it's $2.5k. if those two people were the whole tax base, the rich one is paying 80% of all paid income taxes, despite it being a lower nominal percentage, compared to the poorer one only paying 20% even though it has a higher given percentage of income.
And we see in real life that the top few percentage of wealthiest people pay almost all the taxes, and the bottom half pay net nearly none. And then hear about how the people ALREADY PAYING ALMOST ALL OF THE TAXES didn't pay "their fair share", whatever that is. Because nobody can define what "fair share" is supposed to mean.
@@michaelsorensen7567 It's a cash grab. People desperately want to conflate income and wealth because that's the only way to squint and view the tax code as not being progressive. In the U.S. anyway.
It's obscene for someone that pays no share (as you said nearly half of the US' tax units net out to negative liability) to feel like they have standing to complain about anyone paying any sort of share.
@@BTrain-is8ch and it's all the people crying about "fair share" who refuse flat tax with no deductions, which seems counterintuitive
@@michaelsorensen7567 Well hang on. The only fair tax is an absolute one. Divide the total federal budget by the census number and your share is that number times the number of people in your household. Everyone pays the same thing in absolute terms. Don't like your share? Vote for less government. Want more government? Fine but it will cost you. Personally. Voting to spend or not should have individual consequences.
All other arrangements create moral hazards one way or the other. A flat tax encourages the same moral hazard as a progressive tax. It induces people buying government for three cents on the dollar to vote for more government because hey, it only costs them three cents on the dollar. Meanwhile someone else is spending ten dollars on the dollar to pick up their slack.
Reducing the number of tax bums is better but if we want to talk about fair we need to talk about everyone being responsible for the same dollar amount.
@@BTrain-is8chhaving a say is an inherent right void of wealth or input.
Fantastic video with straightforward visuals
It is a game of monopoly, what did you expect?
We don't expect, we know. Do we know evenly spread wealth is good for a society, we know. Do we know how to spread wealth, we know. Do I know why the population of sweden still uses spotify, I don't know?
Jeez people know nothing of how money and economy works. And they vote for policies that prevent their own economic mobility.
@@edheldude Especially economists, they're impressively bad at economics.
@@tj92834 I don't think you understand, whoever has the money has the power.
Tack! Detta behöver folk bli medvetna om. :)
Important caveat for the consumption taxes; they affect everyone, but *not equally*. Consumption does not scale linearly with income beyond a certain point; the wealthy can live very comfortably while only a relatively small portion of their income is spent on consumables. As such, general taxes on consumption have a relatively slight impact on the rich, and such taxes are generally regressive in nature (unless targeted at specific luxury goods, eg. yachts).
So what? They affect everyone equally: according to their consumption.
You are effectively saying that because the wealthy don't consume as much as you in proportion to their income, they should be punished. Thus you don't even want a consumption tax but something completely else?
@@edheldude This is a video about the impact of the tax system on wealth inequality. That the wealthy consume less is very relevant to how consumption taxes feed into wealth inequality, and I thus felt it to be an important caveat to the claim within the video that consumption taxes are paid by 'everyone'.
Alao yes, I am not fond of consumption taxes. They are one of the more regressive forms of taxation in place, and I favour taxation being progressive. Land value tax would be the best tax imo, but I favour most other forms of taxation over sales taxes.
I do not seek to 'punish' the wealthy for spending less of their income; my cost of living is extremely low, so I also spend a much smaller share of my income than most. Consumption taxes are thus quite favourable to my personal finances relative to most other forms of taxation. I just separately recognise that they do not have desirable effects if you are seeking to reduce wealth inequality, as it impacts the wealthy less than the poor.
@@edheldude If the wealthy decided that to make it fair everyone should pay 10 000€ monthly, as it reduces their taxes overall, what would you do? It makes it fair, right? Everyone is paying the same.
@@justdonika4357 Life's easier if you drop the notion of equality or striving toward it. It's never gonna happen and there's people who are 10,000x more productive, better positioned, and effectively smarter etc. than you and I. They move things around the world because they can. I'd be more interested in keeping the game fair, i.e. attempting to have equality in law and its enforcement more than anything else.
Life's a competition, and resources are limited. Usain Bolt is the fastest runner, and nobody remembers who got silver. That's how it goes.
Most people go through different income brackets in their lives, but those perpetually poor are usually so because _they chose it, and deserve it_ i.e. they don't take the actions that would get them out of there. It's a mindset, not bug in the system that should be ironed out.
All that extra wealth will go to investments and building wealth which all of us, even the so-called poor will benefit from. Handing it out to people who clearly can't manage it doesn't help.
@@goncalocarneiro3043 You mean everyone would pay 10k as monthly tax? I mean certain countries do have that option, or their taxes stop after a certain contribution. Sounds very fair to me if it's an option. If it was mandatory, everyone would move away or demand something else. In most countries the top 20% typically pay most of the taxes and thus uphold the whole country already. Because the productive people are a minority, they will never ever get that kind of tax system through.
I'm more on the side of flat tax + negative income tax to replace the social systems right now. A simple tax system will remove barriers from working and value creation. That's the only thing that should matter. Poverty is the natural state of humanity, and how we get out of it is the relevant bit. It only happens through creation of wealth, not by taxing or redistributing it.
Sweedish: top 1% owns 36%
America: top 1% owns +66%
One of these has a happy population, the other has rich slave owners that complain about their slaves not being able to live
So what? You also have the biggest pie.
Sweden has a higher GINI wealth inequality value than the USA.
Not for long. As with any pyramid scheme, eventually the music stops and someone gets stuck with the bill (‘someone’ is read: same person who is getting the bad end of deal now). The main difference b/w US and Sweden is the Swedes can have a conversation (and likely correction) before the pitchforks come out. Here in the US, it is the opposite.
The top 75% pay 100% of net taxes. What would be fair?
@@MegaLokopoI think that the total tax revenue is the wrong denominator. The inequality of gains of the top 1%, benefitting from the society and economy overseen by the government, is much larger than the ratio of taxes paid. A tax based on all forms of income and wealth gains, with a progressive increase above some standard of living, would be much more fair. At least in the US, so many forms of gains are taxed at a low rate that the very wealthy pay a much lower effective rate than the middle class.
”totally legal tax evasion” (used in an onscreen text label) is a contradiction in terms. What defines tax evasion is that it is unlawful. If it’s legal, it’s tax avoidance. The material here is strong enough as it is and is undermined by using unnecessarily hyperbolic language.
How about you don't apply USA technical law vocabulary to Swedish law, yeah?
The idea that there is exactly one meaning of “tax evasion” can only be valid within the context of a legal system based on stare decesis. Even then, the meaning is only shared by subordinate courts.
In short, your reasoning is only valid within the context of U.S. statutory law and even then I wouldn’t be surprised if precedent was sufficiently general so as to allow local judges to interpret that meaning with some degree of flexibility…
Not to mention that if it came to a jury trial, jurors effectively possess the de jure right to say what the law is via jury nullification, even if in practice juries are selected only on their willingness and/or ignorance to enforce statutory law.
Just like usury is redefined, you mean? What are you Gods chosen people?
Yeshua condemns you!
You guys!!
The way lawyers keep finding and solving problems no one else had never ceases to amaze me.
I was like "OMG the whole video fell apart" and then "Phew, we are save again."
😅
Tax Evasion is defined as a crime but it also describes the simple fact.
Is it not just that wealth is pareto distributed 80/20 (about)?
High taxes means that the old rich group get protected from poor people getting rich while holding onto their own wealth
That's it. That's why old money and big companies love the Left. They are destroying competition and creating the society they think they're complaining about.
It's really oppression of the poorest. Look, if the gov gets more money from rich people by having lower taxes for them so they don't flee, then by all means, get more money. However... the working-class should get lower taxes too, it's abhorrent that working-class get a punch in the gut from tax-costs just because they can't "flee" like the rich ones may.
Instead of fearing that wealth will "flee", why not give more to literally everyone by backing-off the income taxes? Literal cash distribution to everyone that works is so much better at creating equality than some extra tax income for the gov.
That’s why new money right and old money vote left: tradizional american capistalist is to get more richer and social democracy is to mantain your welth from a rick people viewpoint.
That is without questiom part of it.
B-but muh Jeff Bezos!!!
Bra video och har själv sett detta under senaste åren. Du borde göra en video på isk konton och vem det gynnar mest. Har inte hört några andra länder som har det eller något liknade (kan ha på tok fel)
tack för din kommentar och bra idé, ska kolla om jag ska göra nåt om ISK
ISK är ju det folkligaste vi har. Tycker reglerna gott kan behållas.
It is tragic that the Swedish parliament allows itself to be threatened by someone who lives solely on the work of others without giving very much in return. Spotify does not support the music industry but is another parasitic company that does not contribute to the creative side. This kind of business does not create very many jobs. It is only in the development of the software that there is work. After that, quite a few have to be spent on maintenance and support functions. Of course, they pay no further tax. The company structure and the tax rules let them off the hook. Spotify makes sure to run at a loss all the time and reinvest the earnings so they don't have to pay. Sweden should just let him and Spotify go to hell!
You live on the work of others. Everyone does! It's called the free market.
@@edheldude Most people is part of a production. Others are just parasiites.
So no, not everyone does it!
Okay, but companies generally only pay tax on their profits and it simply isn't possible to run at a loss forever. The more usual scam is to claim the company operates from some other location and therefore their profits are taxable there instead. Apple was recently penalised for operating this particular scam. One way to crack down on this sort of thing is simply to deem a company to be operating within any country in which it sells its products and tax that money.
The real problem in the music industry has been the majority of record labels. They had a stranglehold and still do. With the advent of streaming they strongarmed the companies offering the service.
@@loganmedia1142 That's not a scam. You can set a legal structure like an LLC pretty much anywhere you want.
As an EU citizen you can easily start your company in any member state. If you're running e.g. an online business, why not have it in Bulgaria where you only pay 10% flat tax.
@@edheldude No not everyone does it! There are a lot of people in this that is part of a production. Free market has nothing to do with being a parasite!
So, I get that the percentages are unequal, I've the lower 90% pay a higher percentage of their income, but what about the hard numbers?
Would you rather have 35% of $70,000 or 10% of $700,000? So, if you add together the amount of money that the top 10% pay in, and compare it to the sum total the 90% pay in, how do the LEGO piles compare?
Unfortunately, your discussion of wealth tax completely misses the most important point: the difference between wealth that the owner has produced by his own efforts and wealth that is produced by government and the community, but the private owner is legally entitled to take for himself, especially the unimproved value of land. Taxing the former is unjust; not taxing the latter is unjust. As the Henry George Theorem shows, all government spending on desirable services and infrastructure is a subsidy to landowners. The entire unimproved value of land is NOTHING BUT the market's estimate of how much the owner will be legally entitled to steal from the community by owning the land.
"...and wealth that is produced by government..." ... the government don't product any wealth... only steal... and steal... and steal... the goals, the target, the objective of the government is only steal... through feigning good... thats everybody know what government is not...
I read "1% owning the 36%" as very society oriented, as it's far from 50% (math in the ps). If you have so many rich maybe it means you produce good minds. This doesn't make the tax policies any better but this kind of deterioration is common across all Europe. Beautiful channel!
PS: with three "nested" Pareto distributions I take as "mean" the case where the 20%x20%x20%~1% owns the 80%x80%x80%~50%.
equality does not mean that everyone makes the same money. it means that everyone has the same OPPORTUNITY to succeed.
Yep, people still don’t understand the difference between equality and equity
No, we do not live in a society where everyone has the same chance to become wealthy. We live in a society where wealth begets wealth. This is just how a world works where money is how you survive and how much your opinion matters.
Learn how compound interest works - then try to imagine if everyone were able to take advantage of it equally. This would simply impact the rate of inflation. Everyone would be just as wealthy in relation to everyone else and the prices would rise at an equal rate. No more or less wealth would be generated. It only works because not everyone is able to take advantage of it equally and 98% of the world is losing. This is why you’re seeing a new two classes emerge. The “ownership” class and the “renter” class.
This isn’t a video about success or outcomes. It’s a video about how people are taxed. Get your head out of your ass and stop repeating whatever you hear political pundits say.
The problem with blanket statements like this is that it doesn’t account for the people who START at the bottom and work their asses off to earn wealth. They just get clumped together with “the wealthy”. Likewise, it doesn’t account for the people who actively make financially irresponsible decisions that KEEP them at “the bottom”. They get clumped in with the people who are actually trying to succeed and are unsuccessful.
The wealth issue in pretty much every country doesn’t “boil down” so simply. Every solution offered by people who complain about the wealthy breaks down once you put any reasonable thought into it.
If we all have the same opportunities then I should be able to make my own Dell without issues but Dell already exists so I can't. We don't have the same opportunities
Incredible Presentation
Actually tax evasion is not a problem, if you implement a wealth tax correctly because most of the wealth that the super rich own is concentrated in assets, that are local (like companies, real estate or land) and cannot be moved anywhere. And getting to that wealth also seems entirely possible as we have seen during the russian invasion in ukraine, when governments all over europe confiscated the assets of russion oligarchs. The problem is currently that most people don't know about this important issue and there are no democratic majorities pushing for wealth taxes.
And one more thing the Bengt Jonnson guy likely does not need to work at all, because if he invests his wealth of for example €50mio at a market rate of 5%, he will be making his €2.5mio a year without doing anything. This gets even worse with billionares, with €1bn you make a €1mio every week just by investing conservatively into the markets, but likely you can invest very differently with those kind of sums and get even higher returns.
Very good visualizations again in this video ; )
Doing nothing = providing liquidity for investments and carrying the risk? You do understand people need reinvested money for new businesses and development?
@@edheldude Yes investments are always necessary and can be extremely helpful. However if you look at how billionaires invest, the problems reveal themselves. Very little of the money will be used to push small startups without any personal strategy to increase the billionaires power. Instead it is just way less risky to crush smaller companies or influence entire markets because as long as the authorities don't step in (and they rarely can) you can create revenue very predictably. And if authorities step in it is rather in not allowing certain transactions than actually punishing behavior that is very harmful. Even the authorities are through political leadership at their mercy and can be pressured at any time with job losses or local investment stops. I recommend watching the channel how money works for some examples of how billionaires invest. Once you have very large sums of money investments can work very differently. So there might be very little risk to carry and the investments very often harm the society at large.
@@edheldude In the case of just investing broadly into markets to get the 5% interest, you'd also just buy stocks that have likely IPOed a long time ago. So there is no liquidity provided directly and it would not change the markets overall. But this obviously does not use the power the billionaire has optimally, so it's not really a good investment strategy for them to just invest broadly. This would be literally doing nothing and watching the money increase
@@pericvlor Most big entrepreneurs just want to solve big problems of humanity and create something cool. Money is just a tool, and an energy to make things happen.
@@edheldude Ideally yes, in practice this is sadly often not the case. But humans have a tendency to improve things so maybe we can solve these problems one day.
Absolutely wonderful video!!
The biggest problem with wealth inequality in my view is the influence that a minority can have in society. That said it seems to be impossible to tax the wealthy effectively
I agree with you!
The wealthy are just massively more productive than the average person. Who's more productive, the 130 IQ chemical engineer who innovates and founds his own company, or a horde of average people? And more intelligent people increase productivity enough to free the intelligent from less productive labor before anyone jumps on the "you didn't build that" argument. Wealth per se is not the problem rather it's rent-seeking from bad actors particularly in the political class which will not be solved by giving government bureaucracy more money. Money going into the government is a sure sign the social issues the programs ostensibly address will never be solved and the economic multiplier is less than 1
@TheThreatenedSwan hedgefund managers and Wallstreet types aren't productive at all for humanity. Don't assume someone who's wealthy is automatically brilliant. Sure a chemical engineer with a high iq contributes a great deal more to humanity than the average person but a significant amount of people who collect capital gains are not at all
@@TheThreatenedSwanyou have it completely backwards. The wealthy aren't productive at all, as the video describes, they gain wealth from investing their already existing wealth. They do nothing and gain money. It's an incredibly dumb system and taxing them until they can't do this is a good solution. The government can provide goods and services without needing profits which in itself is an inefficiency in the system because it pools wealth in the hands of those that already have everything. We need to take their wealth until they can't buy rules in their favour which is what we have now.
@@TheThreatenedSwan That is such a silly take. To equate wealth with productivity is just outright idiotic. The highly productive may generally tend to become more wealthy, but the opposite is FAR from true. Much wealth is generational, as another commenter pointed out, the worth of your run-of-the-mill hedgefund managers / speculators to society is close to zero, or in most cases, actually negative.
One of the best editing I've seen, I was looking at an action movie lol
Taxes must be counted in SEK not % to see who pays most taxes.
1 SEK for someone who makes a 100 is much more than 1 SEK for someone who makes 1000😅
For that to be true the tax would have to be levied in absolute terms as well. Like a medieval "head tax." Welcome to the future, we have maths here. 🙃
This is what a lot of analysis misses. The percentage of tax burden doesn't matter when you want to find out who pays the most. The total amount of money from each group matters here.
Väldigt intressant 👍
tack!
Very interesting video. But a bit misleading. Take that example of Asa and Bengt, let's assume that there was a flat income tax of 10%, Bengt would pay 250k€/year, while Asa only paid 3.6k€/year, which is 70x less than what Bengt paid (just the opposite perspective of what's shown in the video). That was assuming a flat rate, but actually it's progressive, so Bengt pays a lot more. I'm not defending the rich but not all rich were born rich and not all of them have plans to own/run the world.
You would want someone who knows what they're doing to run big money investing ideas. The layman can't do that. They buy toys and alcohol.
@@ckckck12 true, funny and sad at the same time.
So, there is only one issue, and this is the issue with all progressive tax ideals.
They confuse Income Tax with wealth, which are totally diferent things.
In this video, he says that bengst earns 2500K/year and Asa 36K/year. This is completely misleading. What actually happens is that Bengt earns a substantial amount of his money from shares and investements, not cold hard cash.
So even though his wealth increases 2500K, he only pays incime taxes for 300K, because the rest of the money is from non liquid assets like shares and investments.
This wealth is extremely difficult to tax. The problem lies in the fact the assets value changes based on the amount sold
If we tax all billionaires based on their wealth, they would be forced to sell their assets to pay the 2200K difference. The socialist would be quite happy to have enforced their egualitarian society, but they forget that if the market is flooded with shares of billionaires that need the money to pay 250K in taxes, those shares will sharply drop in value, forcing them to sell even more, droping the value further.
The first most immediate result would be a crash in every company stock price, followed by massive layoffs (so now Asa is out of a job, Yay!).
The second result is a great disdain for all investment opporunities. Because since you'll be taxed based on the wealth instead of wether or not the product generates value, things like owing homes would be economically inviable (imagine you had to pay 10% of your home value every year). This would again force people to sell their homes, lowering the value, crashing the house prices.
You then have the issue that now that owing a home is essentially the same as paying rent, most people would end up paying rent. This would make rent prices go up
Eventually, the rent prices would up as high or higher than the property taxes. This would make the few wealthy people that remain to keep owning and renting their property, to first cover the wealth tax, then make a profit for their own home.
Congratulations. Now Bengt instead of living in a mansion lives in Asa's home, and Asa rents a smaller property to Bengt, at a realitively higher percentage than the tax cost to maintain that house.Yay!
I made the example with homes, but this would also apply to any other investment like a startup, so no new jobs will be created.
This is why wealth were pushed to be abolished.
The alternative is capital gains tax, but the problem again is that its a tax that applies once the asset is sold, meaning if he doesnt sell them, he isnt taxed.
That makes it so he looks like he earns 2500K, but pays just 30K in taxes instead of 250K.
But I dont think there is any other to prevent this that doesn invokve destroying the investmeny market, and by proxy, millions of jobs.
@@federicocaputo9966 Bro stop spitting facts otherwise people will start to cry
@figueiredomike did you not understand that Bengt doesn’t only pay income taxes? his income is not the same as his salary due to his capital income which is taxed lower than salary. so he ends up paying a smaller share of his income in taxes - it is that easy.
You've earned a subscription 😊🎉
Capital tax and wealth tax are an additional tax on something paid for by income that was already taxed. It is a "tax on a tax" and is foundationally unfair and penalizes people who saved, worked hard, were entrepreurial, took risks with investment, and were financially successful. These people, when treated unfairly by the state, have the means to leave and take their businesses, innovation, and capital with them. When that happens, the state spirals into economic turmoil and then decays into social turmoil. Just look at the catastrophic decline of California and New York in the United States. In this video, it would be interesting to use gross $ paid instead of % . At 30% income tax the ceo with annual $2.5 million income pays $750,000 in tax while the $36,000 secretary is usually taxed at a lower rate (say 20%) pays $7,200. They both use the same roads and infrastructure. Most countries tiered tax systems are not even close to "fair" imo.
In a stable society, rich folks benefit massively because they 'use' the wealth spread by the government. Nice to be an entrepreneur but what without educated workers and infrastructure (from internet access to the public transport your workers use to get to work)? Not even to mention cultural diversity and a peaceful environment where nobody needs to do crime to survive.
All I want to say is, if all the money is concentrated in a few hands, rich people suffer as well. Don't let me even start about the advantages of social mobility...
Non-salary income is *not* money earned through hard work, literally by definition. Why is it fair to let people earn income on top of income at the expense of everyone else, but not tax on top of tax to keep that money circulating? If you're stuck on an island and one guy hoards all the food, you're obviously going demand that they share. Money is an essential resource that modern society can't function without.
Edit: wtf multipost, I hate touchscreens.
@@2koi516you are fundamentally misunderstanding money. Money is more of a measurement. It is a measurement of how much someone has benefited society at large. Non salary income represents payment for risk taking. I put some money forward with no guarantee of seeing any of it back. Whatever profit comes from that is the social benefit that came out of that risk. Because we have free markets no one can be forced to take risks but those risks are necessary for an economy to function so those who take those risks and are successful greatly benefit society as they create jobs for people unwilling to take risks and create products that society finds useful. Someone who earns a salary also benefits society as their labor makes the product that benefits society but this is of less social value than coming up with the product and taking the risk to find is production so they get less money.
Capital taxes do not tax the item that was already taxed. Capital taxes tax the income made on the item. When a house appreciates in value, upon selling the house you are not taxed on the entire worth (most of which you were already taxed on at the time of purchase). However the variance/increase in worth is taxed - again not the full amount.
Great content! Clearly a lot of effort.
The tax system changed over the years because the country was going bankrupt. The problem is when you tax the over achievers they just go somewhere else. The middle class in Northern Europe pay high tax because they choose to give up some of their freedoms to depend on the government.
Shh. They don't want to hear the truth.
Totally agree my friend, I just wrote a similar message. If taxes get so bad that you get tought in school that the US is good for corporation for example then most of people wanting to make big businesses would move out in the US to try there
You forget it's possible to impose a law taxing money moved offshore. Nobody becomes wealthy in a bubble. those looking out only for themselves and doing everything to avoid helping the counties that made them wealthy are just greedy traitors.
Rich people are not overachiever. They just feed more on the society and need less equality too keep it that way.
Show any scientific data, backed up by a consensus saying rich people do more than anybody else, you'll find none.
Stop spreading faire tales that fuel a US way of seeing society.
Don't even try. They just want to hate on the rich and the capitalist, not realizing there will be nothing without them. Wealth redistribution has been tried so many times, and every single time it has failed. People are fixated on the idea that their form of Socialism is going to work. Let me break it to you, it's not going to work.
How do you define wealth? Do you include value of pensions? Do you reduce value of assets by taxes due if sold? Or taxes due on income from assets? And how do you determine amount of wealth? Are there government filings on wealth? In US stats are wealth tend to overstate wealth as are based on "papers" by collage professors wanting to prove point. How are government revenues spent? Is more spent on poor? And any thoughts on what happens to economic growth with more equal policies?
Worst part: austerity measures lead to a rise of the far right
Great video!
Now I just wish we had the same data (current status quo and list recent decades' changes) presented as nicely for other countries as well. :D
Sweden is the Scandinavian Italy 😅
Great video. I suggest putting subtitles in English (though I'm Brazilian) when you highlight text or play a video clip, just showing the gist of the information, in order to keep the audience engaged in those sections.
Can you do this experiment again but for the USA instead of Sweden?
Your viewership would explode....
It's essentially the same
@@jasonpauda4204it's much worse :)
Us to Sweden: “Hold my beer!”
I’ve been saying it for years now, “Here in the United States it is unconstitutional for the taxation of income. It states that income is not supposed to be taxed and yet we’ve been illegally taxed for more than a century. The IRS is illegal.”
16th amendment dude
Was illegal until the 16th amendment
@ That’s my point of it being illegal. It took away our rights and the only reason for the tax in the first place was because of a war. After that war was over it was illegally kept in place and the government just keeps justifying it by making illegal changes to our constitution.
@@andrewprine6406 That’s my point of it being illegal. The only reason for the tax in the first place was to fund a war and when that war was over they illegally kept it in place and to justify it the government illegally changed our constitution and took away our rights. I don’t approve of that in any way.
That’s my point of why it’s illegal. The only reason for the tax in the first place was to fund a war and when that war was over they illegally kept it in place and changed our constitution to take away our rights. Every new amendment is a crime on our rights and freedoms of our country.
❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤎 Great video and Lego explanation.
I think you are missing one most important part is that the income tax in Sweden is way TOO high in the first place. If it had a reasonable income tax, then everyone would benefit from having little / no capital gains tax and no wealth tax. Because having a low income tax would allow people to invest residual money into real estate and stock market and retire early. The fight should be not against the billionaire, but against the system which punishes hard work by taxing the crap out of your income
No one should be able to accumulate large amounts of wealth, to were you can unjustly influence democracy(Unilaterally make the rules).
That would drive up realestate prices making them less attainable for the average person. Basic economics.
@@Danny-bd1ch You don't need money to unjustly influence democracy. If people aren't allowed to make as much money as they want, why would anyone work harder than they have to in order to max out their pay? If I can make that maximum amount of money in 6 months why should I work the other 6 months of the year?
@@MegaLokopo But it helps immensely.
@@Danny-bd1chwhy? Give a good reason? You have 1% of the population that is much smarter than 90% why should you cap them?
The editing on this video is incredible!
Wealth tax: you own a copy of Jupiter Ascending on DVD, it's valued at $5, so you owe us 25 cents for hoarding your wealth. And this happens every year, so within a few decades you have given the entire value of your property as a tax. And it extends indefinitely beyond the point where you have given the government $100,000,000 for your own dvd collection.
If you are in favor of a "wealth tax" know that I am your enemy.
Wealth taxes should not be (and I would argue are not being) levied on assets that do not appreciate in value.
You tax tangible, personal property, such as real estate, which grows in value over time. If you pay a portion of that increase in value, you end up with two diverging lines. You will *never* pay the entire value of your investment to the government, as you describe, because the thing you are paying based on grows in value faster than your tax payments can deplete.
Even if you tax it all, every sensible tax system allows you to write off depreciation, such as you would experience on a luxury vehicle or yacht.
And other forms of wealth tax? An inheritance tax only gets charged once. Again, defying your absurd assertion that you pay the government more than the value of your assets.
You've described a fantasy world. A straw man. Your scenario simply is not true.
Good point except that what you described is not in any way a wealth tax. Nobody will tax your shitty DVD collection. If you own property or equities or other APPRECIATING assets, you will be taxed, yes, but ONLY on the net gains for each asset for the previous year. House is valued at a million at the beginning of the year and is appraised at 1.1 million at the end of the year? You pay wealth tax on that 100,000 gained. It doesn’t appreciate at all? No tax that year. It goes down in value to 900,000? You can carry forward that 100k loss to offset the tax on future years’ gains. It would also very likely only apply to very high net worth individuals. And there are tax free and tax advantaged investment accounts you can use for stocks and bonds. And if you have maxed out every possible taxed advantaged investment account? Well then you can CERTAINLY afford a wealth tax on anything you earn beyond that (not to mention that your tax advantaged accounts gain more room every tax year)
Most wealth tax would apply in wealth in excess of an amount, not to all your assets. And it typically will not affect the bottom 90% of people because they don't have enough to cross that threshold to begin with. No one is going after your DVD but they will be after your fifth yacht and fourth mansion.
It seems everyone is getting hung up on the label I attached, so I'll rephrase: wealth (and property) tax = you have ownership of a thing the government decides to say it's more valuable now than it was before and (wouldn't you know it) you now owe them money because of that. And if they could get away with it they absolutely would include your home video collection as a taxable asset.
Thank you for your excellent report.
This is a world wide trait, that exists almost everywhere, but this system and way of control, is not sustainable and is on verge of collapse, simply because the money that's being created, or printed is in excess, of the actual natural resources that are available, which of course are not shared evenly. Also everything taken from nature by force, will have to be paid back, at some future time, which is already starting happen, in the form of natural and environmental disasters.
Wtf are you on about? We live in abundance of resources. How do you "pay back" for wood, grown food, or even oil?
You'd have to define what you mean by taking from nature by force.
The current system that is expanding inequality is definitely not sustainable, but we probably cannot simply let it collapse. Undoubtedly if it gets that far the ultra-wealthy will actually still be alright and everyone else will bear the brunt of the chaos. An example would be the 2008 crisis. The majority of wealthy people didn't just walk away from that unscathed, but used their wealth and market manipulation to get even richer while ordinary people suffered the consequences.
Please can you do the same analysis for the UK?
I'd be surprised if the UK wasn't much worse.
Sweden's wealth tax was ludicrous. My father used to work there and because his house in the USA hadn't sold, he got taxed on ASSETS OWNED ABROAD with the result that his tax bill came out as higher than his salary.
I'd say it is working as intended: he is being forced to liquidate his assets and reduce his wealth.
I bet he never worried about where he was going to live and what he was going to eat. I'm happy that he and all rich people pay taxes.
Respectfully, your father should not be allowed to own property in the USA. Only Americans should be able to own property in the USA
I bet he cried so much it sank his yacht.
So your expat worker dad got taxed like everyone else. How is that ludicrous?
Brilliant video.. nice efforts..👊
Person A starts an engineering business, machining parts for numerous applications like cars, aircraft, motors, etc. He eventually employs 40 people and assists in country's defense and transport infrastructure. Person B just enjoys PlayStation, living with parents and working local jobs like waiter, gas station, etc. Should they make the same money?
You are the best, man! Top! 🔝🙏
It’s almost like wealthy people got that way by creating companies and products and jobs, something governments cannot do. Shocking that they prefer to invest their money in their companies and themselves rather than the black hole of government.
In the United States the top 5% of income earners pay 66% of all income taxes. What is your “fair share” of the money they earned?
"earned" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence 😂
The government is the largest employer...they literally make millions of jobs.
I am in the top 3% of earners in my country. Almost all of my income comes from trading options on the US market. Why should i pay more in taxes because I generate more income? And why is my productivity demonized? And then when I save and reinvest the large majority of my money, increasing my wealth, and I taxed and demonized for that?
“Almost all of my income comes from trading options”
You don’t work and aren’t productive. You aren’t collecting trash, growing food, curing diseases, optimizing existing technologies- nothing. You buy and sell securities. That’s neither innovative nor productive.
People like you should be in a 91% tax bracket again.
This is a lovely presented video. Just a tip though, the video is presented in English but there were no English translations of any written or spoken Swedish during the video. Thank you for sharing the interesting state of affairs in your country brother.
Billionaires are never satisfied with what they have. They always want more, more, and more.
Everyone wants more and more
@@asandax6Not at all.. having more means more concerns..
People who had realized that.. procure a balanced easy life.
You cam bet that 2 out of 3 individuals would rather have just enough resources without issues.. than a lot with the included target on their backs.
@@asandax6 "Everyone wants more and more"
Nonsense. Many just want enough to be able to provide a reasonably comfortable and worry-free life for themselves and their family.
@@antred11 Do you know anyone that would give up a job promotion or give away all their winnings if they won the lottery?
There is something truly bizarre about the ultra-wealthy complaining about paying tax. They're like spoilt children.
This story needs to be re-told in every country.
Great video.
Any chance of turning the music volume a little lower? It is both distracting and hell for people with hearing difficulties.
Thanks for the great video.
When you spend all your money on liabilities rather than on assests, you end up in the 90% group
Obviously. You really think 90% of the population is so dumb they don't realize that?
I have 3 degrees served in Iraq. I came home and applied for thousands of jobs. In ten years I got 3 interviews.
I'm done chasing the carrot. Fuck capitalism. The harder you work the more you pay, until you get to the 10%. The you get paid.
The question what is left to spend in asset. For some negligible nothing. You always spend the first 1500€ (or Swedish krone equivalent) o necessities, also a billionaire.
how can people like such a write and like such a comment?!
people need to pay rent food water. many have not much money left, the time and knowledge to invest whats left over, saving a bit is also no bad idea and having made some money by never spending beyond the absolute necessary won’t make you happy in the end.
not everyone has so much access money lol
Rich people will always play the money game smarter than everyone else. It’s a good thing they general provide tons of value which is why people use their products and such
They don't provide tons of anything. They accumulate value made by workers.
@@RextheRebel then stop using all their products. if they don't provide value or improve your life in some way then you don't need to buy their products nor use their services and then guess what! they wont be rich anymore!
@@RextheRebel the labor theory of value is bollocks. It presupposes the existence of the means of production, while either providing no incentive to create it, or placing that responsibility in the hands of a powerful government which is both necessarily underinformed (see the economic calculation problem) and funded by people who didn't consent to the risk of developing new means of production that often don't pan out. Let me put it in terms someone who subscribes to the labor theory of value will understand:
You have people working at a factory making $product (let's say shoes). In order for the organization to continue for any length of time, the sale of the shoes produced must exceed the cost of the raw materials to produce those shoes, and any wear and tear on the factory that happens while producing those shoes. This surplus value must then be distributed. Your insistence is presumably that the organization be run as a democratic coop made up entirely of the laborers, and 100% of the surplus value go either directly to them, or (perhaps) back into the business in a way that they collectively agree upon. Let me be clear: as long as no property was seized through the use of force, I have 0 qualms with a group of people choosing to run a business this way. However, in practice, it doesn't happen very often. Why?
The main issue is that the existence and availability of the factory is presupposed. How does the factory come about? "Easy to answer", you will certainly say, "laborers built it". Ah, but how are *those* laborers paid? Unlike the factory staff, they produce 1 large good over a long period of time (probably multiple years), rather than many goods over a shorter period of time, so their natural flow of surplus value is *far* less smooth than that of the factory workers, yet their rate of consumption is probably roughly the same. They also aren't likely to be the same group of people, since working in a factory requires different skills than building a factory, and at least the latter likely requires significant specialization, so demanding that all prospective factory workers build their own factories is almost certainly a non-starter.
So, with that framing, now you have 3 problems:
1. The factory builders need to feed their families during the time before anything they've built actually has the capacity to deliver any value to anyone. This requires them to either receive a salary from *someone*, or to have a substantial savings built up.
2. The factory staff need to somehow collectively pay for the factory, either in the form of salary for the workers while it's being built, or as a lump sum once it's complete. This requires them to have a substantial savings built up, or at least be making collectively significantly more than the factory builder staff requires as total salary, in order to be able to spare the money to pay them -- all before getting access to the factory in which they presumably expect to end up making more than their current salary (there are of course others, but this is the most likely reason they'd want to make the switch from whatever previous labor was funding them).
3. *Most importantly* the success of the whole venture of building and operating the factory *is not guaranteed*. Whoever pays for its construction before it's operational and successfully selling produced goods is taking on a *substantial* risk *and* opportunity cost (e.g. they could spend their money on things they desire *now* instead).
If you can solve all 3 problems without reaching out for external funding, good for you! Run a coop, make all decisions democratically, etc. Knock yourself out. But that's not terribly common, because there are usually more people with ideas and wants around how to use resources than there are resources to use (i.e., scarcity is natural).
Capitalism (by which I mean the economic system of private property and free markets, not the "worship of profit" or "source of scarcity" or whatever fearmongering garbage you think I mean by it) and the marginal/subjective theory of value (i.e. value is created and determined only when A and B agree to a trade, since for this to happen voluntarily A must subjectively value B's good above A's good, and vice versa, so overall subjective value increases in that moment) solve these conundrums by giving the following option: a third party (could be one or several agents), with funds to spare and an appetite for risk, provides the funds necessary to pay the factory builders. Why would they do this? Because in exchange they get ownership of the factory if and when it's complete, and thus control over how it's operated and how surplus value from its operation is distributed -- presumably, a significant portion will go to them.
Call this unjust if you will, but if you want (a) development beyond our current state of technology, (b) any significant adaptation to the future, and (c) even any *sustenance* of the current level of development of mankind (due to the inevitable decay of all things currently built), *you need an answer to these conundrums*.
Perhaps your answer is that all such development (or all such development where the 3 conundrums are magically resolved without outside help) ought to be resolved by the government rather than by the free market. Setting aside the massive increase in government power this creates, this is essentially placing the burden (finance and risk) on all taxpayers of said government, rather than on individual agents who choose to provide the capital. I understand there are a couple reasons this option is alluring (feel free to tell me more, honestly! I'm obviously biased in the other direction, and I appreciate any information that helps me refine and develop my own understanding). First off, democratic governments are (ostensibly) made up of public servants who are sworn to work in the public interest, whereas the capitalist has made no such oath and (I agree) seeks only profit. Secondly, *if* the venture *does* turn out to be successful, in many cases society at large will benefit, including people who don't purchase the products of said factory and thus won't pay in any way -- even indirectly -- for its production under the capitalist model (this is aka the "free rider" problem). By taxing all citizens for the production of the factory, the free rider problem is avoided on some level.
On getting to the downsides, I'm going to steelman this approach as much as possible and continue to *assume a benevolent and non-corrupt government*. Why such an assumption is, to put it lightly, foolish, seems hardly worth getting into. That said, the above benefits are, by my estimation, spectacularly dwarfed only by the fact that such an arrangement requires that all citizens be significant party to economic risk to which they never -- at least not at the individual level -- consented. An individual might know for absolute certain that the factory would never be a success, and might scream this from the hilltops, but the government could still well fund it with her money, and any resistance on her part to paying said taxes would eventually be met with force. Nor are any payment for damages in the event of failure realistically possible -- since the government can only pay taxpayers back with those taxpayer's own money.
*At best*, this means such a government would be extremely careful about the projects it funds, demanding extreme levels of confidence from anyone proposing a project for funding. This is obviously not an entirely bad thing, but it has 2 major problems: (1) confidence itself is *extremely* costly -- this is a big part of why current government projects take *forever* and have *exorbitant* monetary costs when compared with private ventures for the same things -- and (2) significant technological progress requires taking on substantial risk. If you declare private funding illegal (or remove all incentive to do it by declaring private ownership of capital goods illegal), you strangle technological progress.
If you have any other ideas for how to solve those conundrums, I'd love to hear them. But by my current estimation, you're either a primitivist, a tankie, or a capitalist, and I know which one of those options I prefer.
@@RextheRebel Forgot one thing in that text wall. If your response is that capitalists often don't actually assume risk in many scenarios because they get bailed out by the government, *I wholeheartedly agree with you that that's awful and needs to never ever happen*. I (and anyone who can honestly claim to be in favor of capitalism as an economic system) am *pro-market, not pro-corporation*. When a corporation's utility ceases to exceed its costs, it *must* die and thereby release its resources for use by higher-utility agents. Part of the function of the market is to make that happen, and state intervention in that process is absolutely perverse. On a principles level, I almost certainly hate that dynamic more than you do.
@@ILikeCrunchyWater corporations will rise and will concentrate market power regardless of government intervention. Every competition needs rules that everyone must abide by to participate in the game. The market is no different.
Sure, women like me who have worked, saved, invested, and delayed our family planning well into our mid-30s to mid-40s, who are good citizens, good spouses, good mothers should just be forced to give EVEN MORE of our money to chronically unemployed single moms who have three children with three different men, who regularly smoke cigarettes and have sex in front of their children. That sounds fair and reasonable, right? Like it’s not providing any perverse incentives to encourage more bad choices and actions, right?
Hi,
Can you post a link to the article (s) you based this video on please?
Thanks
This issue is oversimplified. Tax rates look great if you already have an established business that one isn't putting money into, however, for someone who is about to take taxed earned income and then invest that, the capital gain taxes look insane.