this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
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Late Stage Capitalism

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[–] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 8 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I recognize what taxes pay for and I recognize even I get something from them. I dont mind that I live in one of the most taxed countries in the world because I'm not afraid of getting mugged every day, see no trash on the streets, have access to free healthcare and schools etc. Yeah, sure, the state is not an efficient way of doing things and it could be better but I also recognize that not everything is perfect. I don't see the reason to completely gut the state, have no taxes and hope a for profit, privatized, system will be better just because the state is inefficient or theres some corruption. Not a good enough reason imo. I'd think differently if the problems were more dire, but they just arent. Not here at least.

Profit? What does that get me? Companies find ways to evade paying taxes on them, then invest into ventures that extract more money from its populace (like real-estate). I recognize profit is kind of the driving force of the economy... I mean money needs to flow to other companies in form of investments which creates jobs but this isn't strictly a necessity. More often than not, its just hoarded by the top class. More often than not, its just theft. Profit is theft.

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Personally, I've been trying to reduce both the green and the red to make my yellow bigger. This is possible because in my country, I can pay myself a moderate salary and still get health insurance. Then eventually I can pay myself dividends on the last year's profit when doing the annual financial report, and I can buy some things as business expenses (which makes them cost me about 60% less of my time compared to buying them as a private individual from post-tax income).

On the green front, I'm reducing it by 1) charging quite a bit of money for an hour of my time, definitely more than I got paid as a full-time employee 2) also having some foreign contracts where I can charge even more money and as a bonus, bring more money into my country

Now since all this still leaves me SIGNIFICANTLY less well-off than a lot of people who most certainly don't work 10, 100 or 100000 times harder than I do, this has actually turned me even more against capitalism than ever before (despite the fact that I literally make more money than I ever have before). I'm doing moderate tax optimization, about as much as I can do while still considering it ethical, work 200+ hours a month, and at the end of the day, while I might retire a millionaire, I'll never make it to a hundred million. Even 10 million is only possible with lucky breaks in investments.

[–] RockBottom@feddit.org 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

How does it scale to include the whole working class?

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 2 points 10 hours ago

It doesn't. The rest of the working class is even more screwed. That's why being just slightly more well off at the cost of a lot more work is making me hate the economic system even more.

Without owning my own company, I had an effective tax rate of about 50% on my income before you even consider that nearly all goods and services also have 22% VAT and my income was capped by my salary as I worked full time. Now I'm paying about 30% effectively and my income potential itself is higher. But you look at the people who own companies where their source of income isn't their own labor and they pay way less tax (company lambo, completely tax-free daily allowance on "business trips", etc) while earning at least 10x more than I do... And that's before you get to the oligarch class, people earning 100000x what I do, maybe 1000000x. Luckily we don't have many billionaires in my country, maybe none? But we certainly have too many millionaires and a lot of them got wealthy off the privatization of industries in the 90s.

[–] Flipper@feddit.org 6 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

In a company you always have people that don't generate value itself, but are needed so you can freely work, like the IT.

The green part should still be smaller. However you can seize that part by going freelance.

[–] rekabis@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

In a company you always have people that don't generate value itself, but are needed so you can freely work, like the IT.

Treating IT like a cost centre instead of a revenue centre is why companies cut them to the bone and then go all SurprisedPikachu.gif when something important breaks or when hackers tear the company apart and hold them for ransom.

IT can absolutely be a revenue centre, providing value along with the rest of the company. But most leadership simply cannot think like this. They don’t have the capability. In fact, the tired joke in IT goes something like this:

Everything is working. “What do we pay you guys for?”
Everything is on fire. “What do we pay you guys for?”

No, you’re thinking of the C-Suite at the top: the Parasite Class that Hoovers up the vast majority of the value created by the employees, while providing of themselves almost nothing of value to the company. Most of them can be trivially replaced by any average Joe off of the street which no material impact on the company itself. A large minority of them are so abysmally bad at their jobs that they leave behind a trail of broken or defunct companies while getting obscene “golden parachutes” with every departure that are larger than any worker’s entire lifetime earnings potential.

That's not what Proffitt is.

[–] RockBottom@feddit.org 1 points 13 hours ago

I don‘t know where to start. Everything wrong :(

[–] letsgo@lemm.ee 13 points 22 hours ago (6 children)

So how do we unlock the green part for ourselves instead of giving it all to a rich twat?

[–] Glytch@lemmy.world 15 points 21 hours ago

Seize. The. Means.

Force will be required.

[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 5 points 20 hours ago

Ask them nicely and then vote for someone who will ask them nicely surely they will give it up without a problem.

[–] NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)
[–] iii@mander.xyz -1 points 9 hours ago

I also envy the average Russian's life

[–] toastmeister@lemmy.ca 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Deflationary currency, where they have to give you specific demotion in pay to stay at the same purchasing power. Also housing appreciation needs to be readded to the CPI so that it raises interest rates when it gets too high.

[–] iii@mander.xyz 0 points 12 hours ago

Become self employed

[–] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

You become the thing you hate. Start a business.

Edit: I just want to clarify that this is supposed to be mostly an outrageous thing to be said. I did that on purpose. I may have forgotten a "/s" to make that clear. Not everyone has the aptitude, willingness, or care to create their own business. Depending on your line of work, it may be a neat impossibility to do so, as others have articulated already.

I'm trying to make a social comment on the absurdity of our current capitalistic systems. While it's true that you can keep 100% of what you produce as profit for yourself if you are independent, that doesn't make the prospect any more viable as a course of action. However, having the "opportunity" to start a business and keep 100% of the profits is the excuse any capitalist would provide in this situation.

I suppose, saying "become the thing you hate" didn't make it clear enough to everyone that this is supposed to be a mockery of capitalists.

[–] CrowAirbrush@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago

Good luck being succesfull, everyone can start one...not everyone can pick something that works and/or make it work

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Great idea. What kind of business, I wonder? Telecoms company? Bank? Train network? Carmaker? Steel refiner? Power plant? Newspaper? Mobile phone manufacturer? Television? Oh wait, all of those industries are already heavily rigged in favour of the status quo.

Or by "start a business" did you mean buy a van and hire a local school leaver to help you do some landscaping and HVAC?

[–] iii@mander.xyz -1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Make something new, instead of trying to copy-cat?

[–] rekabis@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

We desperately need “copycats”. There are many industries that are moribund and are in desperate need for a shake-up, but the incumbents have worked hard over the last half a century to deny almost all new entrants in an attempt to protect the status quo. They have even worked things such that any competitive threat to these incumbents are seen as a national threat to be legislatively and legally opposed.

The American ISP landscape (Internet & communication providers) being an absolutely stellar exhibit № 1. In many places it’s illegal to create your own private or municipal ISP.

[–] Hupf@feddit.org 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Joke's on you, I'm just slacking off on company time.

[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

no joke, but i had a VERY well paying job where nothing happened, so i'd just go on reddit all day

[–] Hupf@feddit.org 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Security inspector at the local nucular power plant?

[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 13 hours ago

I like the cut of your jib

[–] OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 7 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

My father feels that it is injust to say that because

  1. They hired you
  2. You need the job
  3. How would they (the company) make any money if they gave the workers whatever wage they wanted

his response to people asking for better wages actively and talking about their value being stolen is 'why did you look/choose this job'

his idea of an union is essentially a single legal union, which can only strike when in agreement with the company (???)

and he is a landlord and was the factory manager, and would likely think differently if he didn't get the benefit of rent money from both the apartments and a shop downtown

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[–] CyberTailor@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

Yellow vs green circle proportions are the results of class struggle

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