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RE: I don't owe you anything... You may form a gang and take it by force, but that still does not mean I OWED it.
These are all valid points but you should also discuss how employers tax their employees....
Employers come in many different forms. I ultimately don't care what goes on between them and their employees as long as it is VOLUNTARY meaning it did not require coercion.
If you and I want to work together we discuss and come up with an agreement/contract. As long as we stick to that contract it is between you and I.
Sure but that is where the root of the problem starts, everyone that earns an hourly wage pays a tax to their employer. If say you make $10 per hour but your hour of labor produces $30 of revenue for your employer. Your employer give you $10, pays for company expenses with the next $10 and the last $10 is profit he can do with whatever he wants. So right there he just taxed you $10 (or stole) per hour. That is how the 1% is created, that profit goes to owners/share holders of which some don't even work. They just collect money from others labor. That is no different from what the gov is doing...
It's very different. It is also not a tax. A tax is not voluntary. If you don't like how the employer is doing things don't work for them. If you don't like how the government is doing things the common strawman argument of "then move" is very unrealistic.
Your employer owes you NOTHING beyond what you agree to when agreeing to work for them. There is no tax of any kind there and it isn't even remotely the same thing. What you see there is envy and a person deciding they are being stolen from for their labor. Which is not even remotely true.
That extra revenue for the employer also "can" go to expanding the business and giving more people work. If there is a government involved the government is also going to be taking from that. Yet, regardless. NO ONE OWES YOU OR ME a damn thing. You have absolutely no right to decide what I do with my income, and I have no right to decide what you do.
If that employer didn't exist the employee wouldn't even have that opportunity. If the employer busted their asses for years to get to that point and an employee comes along they are not OWED from the employer an equal share in the profits UNLESS the employer and employee decide that case.
I am all for presenting people with opportunities. Presenting people with open doors. Yet it is not me or anyone elses job to pick up and carry people through those doors.
Sure its the same thing.
Giving up part of the revenue your labor creates to your employer is not voluntary either, you have to do it or else the employer would not give you a job.... I guess everyone could become self employed unfortunately that is not realistic in our current economy.... worker coops are a more realistic solution to this problem.
Your labor creates revenue. Your employers takes part of that revenue as profit for themselves.
You earn an income. The government takes part of that income for itself.
These are both forms of taxation/theft, the major difference is at least when the gov takes your money you know it will spend 100%+ of it back into the economy and create jobs. When your employer takes your money a lot of it will end up sitting in bank accounts not doing anything, and that is why we have the most unequal wealth distribution in human economic history http://fortune.com/2017/01/16/world-richest-men-income-equality/
Let's agree to disagree. I see a huge difference, you do not.
Ok, yep, there is no difference to me, I think the whole picture needs to be discussed of how money flows through the economy. The gov is not the only one who taxes/steals from people. Private corporations/employers do the same thing. If they did not our economy would not look as it does today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
Different people are skilled and motivated differently. I might be glad to go to work daily, with no responsibility to be sure the work was there to perform, rather to have a secure "job". Others are more motivated to take risk, or to develop skills that pay more. As a business owner, I had to make payroll to keep good employees, even when I had to do without pay for my family. My sales people did not have to worry if the product would be there, and my "producers" did not have to worry if I would find them useful work. Every year there was a dry period, and the only one who did not get paid was my family. I believed in my ideas, and I was blessed by Providence to make it through. Every man got paid what we agreed upon, dry season or not. Was that a tax???
My intention was not to rant against businesses. All businesses and business owners behave differently (some more successful than others). I was simply explaining how the economy works and how money flows through the economy. The reason the rich get richer is because the people who perform labor give up part of the revenue they generate to them. That is just the math behind how the economy works. If you look at the overall big picture of the state of the US economy today (not just USA many other countries also), you can see where most of the money that the Gov and the Federal Reserve (and banks) have created has ended up. The reason most of the money is at the top is because that is how the economy is designed to work. So complaining about gov taxes is only a part of the overall problem.
I see focusing on wealth equality as just kicking the can down the road. It is paying attention to the smoke and mirrors while ignoring the magician. There are issues of power and influence whether money is involved or not. Money just happens to be one of the easiest of tools to express that, but it is certainly not the only one.
Though I do think the way money is used needs to be explored. I don't give a shit about WEALTH equality. I only care about equality of opportunity. The only issue I have with wealth is when it is used for undue influence. Yet when I get around to tackling my perspective on how I think we could attack this that'll give you more meat to latch onto and talk about. I'm still thinking about it at the moment.
In my opinion the way our economy works and the distribution of wealth is the reason our gov works the way it does. The US gov is completely corrupt (not just US many gov around the world) because when a small group of the population has all the money they buy and influence politicians with money to create laws/regulations that benefit them...
I thought I'd add. I don't see employers being able to FORCE employees to do anything without the backing of government. In a voluntary society the employer and employee would decide whether they wanted to work together. They would not have to worry about government demands. They would not be FORCED to work for the employer.
There is the idea that they could be struggling and the mear struggle could be a form of coercion. Yet if you truly study such things, and particular bad monopolies I doubt you'll find any cases where that was not made possible and sustained due to government. I've been looking and haven't found any cases yet where that is not the case.