People who have already made their money love to call for this sort of thing. They're rich enough to be insulated from it; it hits those who might actually try to get rich in the future.
So, if you're poor and criticise capitalism (or some particular implementation of it), you're just a sore loser, and if you're rich and criticise it, you're a hypocrite?
What do you mean people who have already made their money love to call for this thing? The author is a billionaire who is is proposing for the wealthy to be taxed more, how is he insulated by paying more taxes? Those who want to get rich in the future might be helped by measures to create more income equality thus creating more social mobility. Equality doesn't mean everybody makes a same amount of money, but more like the ability for everyone to make more. When the mega rich own everything this is not possible.
Or perhaps, you dream of being mega rich yourself and want things to stay the way they are now so you can make it?
Ray Dalio has taken his chunk, is retiring, but senses the social and political winds are changing. Being a billionaire is no longer something people "respect", and is very rarely "earned". I'm sure he doesn't want the Proletariat knocking on his door in his old age.
There's an important nuance between income and wealth here. Income tax takes money from the people who are still going to work to build their fortunes (and those who are just getting by). The ones who have already made a fortune are only worried about the capital gains rate.
Billionaires who advocate for higher income tax, but not a higher capital gains rate, are just pulling up the ladder behind them. The article isn't explicit with what Dalio is advocating for here.
You’re adding an incredibly relevant layer of nuance. Dallio’s plan is vague so his true intentions are illegible. People ascribing positive AND negative sentiments to him need to actually understand the policy changes he’s proposing (I.e. higher income rate vs capital gains rate) before passing judgement — and since he specifically has left it vague, I don’t see how anyone can judge his plan either positively or negatively: he has not even presented a specific plan!
Raising the highest tax bracket has historically resulted in less tax being paid by the rich. This is because it increases the demand for services and banking instruments that lower tax liability. Because higher taxes mean more rich people are seeking to shelter their assets, businesses can start to offer these services which are typically not very profitable because there are larged fixed costs and not enough market demand. However, increasing demand for tsx shelters by raising the rates make these businesses profitable. Thus, a rational billionaire seeking to shelter their assets via companies catering to the rich has it in his or her best interests to call for higher rates.
It is clear that these people are uninterested in paying higher taxes as it is completely legal to pay more taxes without any legislation. Thr website pay.gov accepts money for those who would like to contribute to the operations and debt costs of the united states government.
Until buffett and others make actual extra tax contributions to the government (as opposed to their own private charity), I'll continue to ignore them
People who are very rich usually want to be clubby with other people who are very rich. The super rich who talk in concrete ways about how to tackle the failures of capitalism are relatively rare.
They realize that if the whole house of cards collapses they're loosing the most. If the house of cards (the system) is stable they're better off as well.
This seems to be the deeper reason why many wealthy people begin leaning left publicly after amassing their fortune. The very same people can often be seen years earlier making statements that could come out of an Ayn Rand book, but when they’ve beaten the game, the risk-mitigating option is to become “the people’s billionaire.” Im afraid it’s not a change of heart, it’s simply the most logical decision for someone whose wealth is locked up in institutions governed by a democracy.
Are you sure about that? Well... for Dalio, he's an investor that is always looking both forward and backwards. He's looking backwards to see what's happend in the past and how economy/society has reacted. He's looking in the future to see how he could best take advantage of signals he sees.
If you flip it around, it I think it's also entirely reasonable that many of these people only feel like they can criticize things after they've made their money. Or they know we wouldn't listen to them beforehand.
I'm not sure what you're criticizing but Dalio's post is explicitly about economic mobility, i.e. reducing barriers preventing more people from getting rich in the future.
Then Dalio should put his money where his mouth is and support political candidates who champion public policy that mitigate the inequality issues he draws attention to.
Nobody positioned this as a 'freedom of speech' issue, except you. He's entitled to his words. The public is entitled to see said words as the hypocritical doublespeak they are.
And many don't want these changes because they also want to make money before things change. This is one reason such change is not going to happen any sooner unless money stops mattering anymore.
If we're going to err, we should err on the side of taking the guy at his word. He wants to raise taxes on himself to provide for better distribution of income and educational opportunity. Where's the problem with that?
Where did you read that? Tax policy is ludicrously complex by design. Simply saying "we should pay higher taxes" is broad enough to be meaningless. Increasing income tax for example would barely make a dent in their take-home, because the majority of their wealth comes through capital gains tax.
Not to mention the numerous documented loopholes in the tax system that allow people in Dalio/Buffet's position to move money around the world at a moment's notice and pay nothing in federal tax.
The loopholes are there, but they never get fixed, thanks to lobbying from the big 4 audit firms that depend on blue chip clients like him to fatten their paycheques.
Just because Dalio has an arms-length connection to the dysfunctional tax system doesn't mean he;s ignorant as to why the system is the way it is.
Who was it that said no one in America is poor, they're just "temporarily embarrassed millionaires"? This comment is a pretty good representation of that sentiment.
This is solved by taxing very high wealth, not just very high income.
> it hits those who might actually try to get rich in the future.
Not those who try, just those who actually get very rich. None of the current tax increase proposals target the wealth or income of even slightly rich people (low millions of net worth or low 100ks of income), just the very rich (> 50mil net worth).
That still leaves a ton of room for incentivizing getting rich below that number.
> it hits those who might actually try to get rich in the future.
How does it do that? These are just words. Dalio and his hand-wringing clique have no issue speaking platitudes about economic justice, and turning right around and lobbying politicians for more tax cuts, less regulation and fewer consumer protections.
How are you going to get rich in the future when real wages for consumers haven't budged in 4 decades? Do you plan on delivering a product people can actually afford, or simply engage in the financial chicanery that made the 2008 recession possible?
His fund's political donations don't align with what he's proposing[0]. His firm's largest 2018 donations were to Tom Cotton(R-AR) of AR and Tim Kane(R-OH), neither of whom would dare support these ideas.
He can stand up and talk like a leader, but until he's willing to financially back candidates who are genuinely interested in solving these problems (which likely means backing a candidate against his own financial interests), this is all hot air.
I think things are more complicated than what you've said. There may be good reasons to donate to a candidate who wouldn't support these ideas if that donation could nevertheless help sway their views on the issue. Opposition isn't the only strategy in politics. Sometimes you need to donate a nominal amount just to keep your foot in the door and the conversation open.
That's... not how politics work in America. That course of action leads to you giving money to someone who's not going to change their policies instead of giving it to someone who is actually campaigning for change.
So you're essentially arguing that Dalio's logic is this:
"I'm donating money to you, fiscally conservative senator Cotton, because I disagree with your policy and think you should adopt a more progressive policy, even though it's against the fundamental tenants of your party. Despite the fact that your fiscally conservative policy greatly benefits me financially, I hope you change your position and adopt a more progressive policy, even if it hurts me financially."
If this were truly his state of mind, why not back a progressive instead, that he knows is going support these reforms? This makes no sense to me.
I replied in a sibling comment. But I'll say it again: Dalio did not donate any money to Cotton. Two of his employees did. The OP was misinterpreting the data.
> "I'm donating money to you, fiscally conservative senator Cotton, because I disagree with your policy and think you should adopt a more progressive policy, even though it's against the fundamental tenants of your party. Despite the fact that your fiscally conservative policy greatly benefits me financially, I hope you change your position and adopt a more progressive policy, even if it hurts me financially."
Precisely! It's similar to how Hillary Clinton's biggest donor was Goldman Sachs. They don't agree ideologically, but that's why it's important to donate and build favor in order to sway their views.
> If this were truly his state of mind, why not back a progressive instead, that he knows is going support these reforms? This makes no sense to me.
It's a good question! Imagine you align with the Democrats, and you have a lot of money to put behind your vote. When you look at the voting districts of America, you can see three types of races:
Democrat-ensured, Close, Republican-ensured
Democrat-ensured: Now if you want to maximize the impact of your money, there's no point in donating to Democrat-ensured races. Geoff Diehl had no way of beating Elizabeth Warren, for example, and we could argue that giving Warren a large war chest won't be that impactful for her Senate race.
Close: In these districts, you should clearly back the Democrat, and offer financial support. It will have an impact, and possibly contribute to a win.
Republican-ensured: In these districts, where people overwhelmingly vote Republican, you're not going to get anywhere by backing a Democrat who shares all of your views. It would be a waste. Politicians are always looking to fundraise, however, and are willing to budge on one or two issues for enough funding.
In a world where Republican-ensured is a large percentage of districts, and Democrats need votes from across the aisle to get something passed, you _need_ cooperation, and a Democrat donating to a Republican is often where it can come from.
This makes no sense to me. Tom Cotton is one of the most fiscally conservative members of the Republican Caucus, a $5k donation by a billionaire hedge fund manager isn't going to sway his opinion on progressive tax reform. He voted to cut taxes in 2017 and has voted consistently against bills that either closely or somewhat align with what Dalio is proposing.
Dalio clearly benefits financially from conservative fiscal policy, which senators like Cotton support. It's a big stretch to argue that Dalio might be trying to sway Cotton on his fiscal policy while also benefiting financially from it.
To be clear, what you are saying is incredibly disingenuous. The link you give shows that individuals and PACs associated with Bridgewater Associates gave $5,400 to Tom Cotton. That's not in millions or thousands. That's literally $5,400. Tom Cotton raised $17,454,785 in that election cycle.
And keep in mind that isn't even his firm giving the money. Also, giving more than $2,700 to a candidate is illegal anyway, so "financially backing a candidate" is kind of a nonsense standard to hold a person to.
Money in politics is a problem, to be sure, but one that is commonly overstated in this sort of light, and what you are saying here is that he should be giving more money, which is kind of the opposite of what we should be thinking of things.
Plus people rarely back a candidate for single issues.
It's entirely possible that Ray Dalio has some views on the tax code reform that may not align with mainstream republicans, but that doesn't mean the other 90% of policies the other politician supports align with his views. Or even that the other camp has the same tax reform policies in mind as he does.
I've seen many people who want to reform the tax code, which would involve a greater relative share of taxes for the top end, who wouldn't identify as democrats.
>Plus people rarely back a candidate for single issues.
Tell that to all the black gun owners who vote R because they don't want wake up one day and find out they're felons or all the fiscal conservatives who vote D because they believe healthcare and the climate are bigger short term issues.
I generally agree with you that people back whoever pushes policy they like most but people also have deal-breakers that will cause them to back the other guy even if they don't like his platform.
I'm perfectly aware of that. Whether the policy crafters at the DNC realize that is a different story. A lot of people seem to take for granted that only whites vote R so I figured there was no harm in challenging that assumption for the point of my example.
I think the point was that any cohort with a strong voting record for one party will still have members that vote for another party based on a single issue.
It's not unreasonable to think that someone might agree with the bulk of a party's platform, but disagree on a single issue that's most important to them and can't bring themselves to vote for anyone in that party because of it.
I can imagine guns, abortion, the military, taxes, etc. might fit that bill as someone's single most important issue.
The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals may include subsidiaries and affiliates.
The data you cite are rather misleading. Those are not contributions from his firm, Bridgewater. They are contributions from employees of Bridgewater. For Tom Cotton, from 2007 to present, the only donations were from two Bridgewater employees:
Did you not read the very first line? "...capitalism has become so broken that it's going to either be abandoned or left to continue as it is."
It is not, as you imply that he says capitalism is failing America, it is that the broken state of capitalism, essentially that capitalism does not exist is failing America.
It must just be a misunderstanding on your part that you think his donation history does not very well aligns with what he is saying. The Republican party, in spite of also being heavily influenced by the elite who will naturally try to consolidate power, have always been about actual free, fair capitalism and free markets within the jurisdiction and for its citizens. There is absolutely nothing inconsistent with him saying that the corruption of capitalism is what is failing the USA, because it is, just as it is failing everyone else on the whole planet. Even China, the totalitarian evil communist regime is highly dependent on the USA even with its corrupt and rotten form of capitalism that has dominated the US economy since starting in the 60s ... as most corruption and depravity and degeneracy started around that time.
I actually think it would be great if people started donating to people on the other side of the political spectrum. Can you imagine if a large percentage of climate change interested donors flooded republican climate deniers with donations, became a large share of their campaign funds and sought to influence them rather than people that already agree?
What stops that is the likelihood that the climate deniers "take the money and run"? Believe it or not, it has happened to donors in the past. That's why the system is so intricate today. People want to be sure they "get what they pay for" so to speak.
Which is just a terrible thing to say, but it's unfortunately our political reality right now.
"The problem is that capitalists typically don't know how to divide the pie well and socialists typically don't know how to grow it well," Dalio wrote. He wants to avoid both the status quo and socialism, and he's hoping that the elections in both the US and Europe that happen over the next few years result in a reformed capitalism."
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I really don't see how this could happen, but even if there's some kind of accommodation, it's simply a band-aid to the underlying problem.
Which is that the 'means of production' needs to be OWNED by the people producing. Not a corporate owner (or even an 'entrepreneur'), and not 'the state', but the collective that actually does the work, commensurate with their overall contribution.
There's also a huge issue around land ownership, and the rents that derive from it. Currently, simply owning land in a fast-developing city gives you a share in the bounty that others are creating, and also taxes those generating it.
Land itself is a common inheritance. Should air or water also be subject to such 'ownership'?
>Which is that the 'means of production' needs to be OWNED by the people producing. Not a corporate owner (or even an 'entrepreneur'), and not 'the state', but the collective that actually does the work, commensurate with their overall contribution.
You sound similar to an anarcho-syndicalist, which is a position I've never understood well. Let me ask a question in the form of example.
Bob, Ted, and Jim want to start a pin factory. All three want to work for it. So they pool their capital, contributing $250k, 300k, and 350k respectively, receiving proportional equity, invest in equipment, and all three go to work making pins after 2 months. They hire other workers. The contract for all workers gives a vesting schedule that gives them equity over time as well.
The fact that CAPEX has to be provided by employees is not a good feature of this. Should shareholders that have never held a job with the firm not be allowed to invest in it? That is exceedingly restrictive.
Outside investors can be allowed I would think, but not given shares. For example, a credit union could give a loan and collect their interest. The credit union wouldn't get any equity.
That sounds like a pretty good deal—for the credit union. They get paid their fixed share no matter how poorly the firm performs (short of bankruptcy). The firm and its employees are taking almost all of the risk.
Selling equity would allow the firm to raise capital while splitting the risk with the investor(s). It makes the investor a partner in the firm's success or failure.
I think there's probably a middle ground here where there is a meaningful percentage of the ownership stake that is set aside for the workforce as a whole, with rebalancing as the company grows, and internally as people gain seniority or leave the company.
> Which is that the 'means of production' needs to be OWNED by the people producing
I would tend to agree except that it's an awful way to diversify risk and a comically bad way to allocate capital. Even if you were to exploit resources to their maximum, I'd give you at most two generations before you'd need to use force to keep the system working.
And this isn't a defence of capitalism, especially not modern US capitalism. That's pretty shitty too but it does scale and is mostly stable.
And while we're here. So water is a common inheritance and can't be owned. Water treatment is owned by the water treaters. There's no state or corporations to sub them. How do you get clean water given no-one is going to be stupid enough to starve to death as a water treater?
All complex organisms have some level of resource-intensive, executive control - civilizations are no different. Most people wouldn’t even know what to do with the means of production, other than in aggregate by buying stuff in a semi-free market with healthy regulations.
I would agree though that right now the brain is eating the fingers as it puts food in the mouth. But shooting the brain doesn’t fix the problem.
I disagree: Beheading the brain worked pretty damn well for Revolutionary France, and revolting against the brain worked damn well for Revolutionary America.
"Most people wouldn’t even know what to do with the means of production" I feel like this should be put in some kind of "shit capitalists say" hall of fame!
I have respect for successful managers like Dalio and Soros because you can’t reach their level of success while deluding yourself about how the world economy works. And anyone who has invested/speculated with a lot of their own money knows how emotionally hard it is to make the right decisions day in and day out. For that reason, when Dalio talks about the economy, it’s worth considering what he’s saying. Moreso than politicians or economists.
I guess a prayer at the demonic altar of Soros could get your startup funded. It can't hurt, can it.
Soros along with all the tech tyrants that have been emerging from hades itself are all disassembling and deconstructing the whole basis of the civilized world and the most core concepts of self-governance, freedom of speech, freedom from tyranny, and the most fundamental and core, basic concepts and necessities for any form of democracy, let alone the middle class; yet you laud Soros?
But I guess as long as you see yourself benefitting from the plunder and pillaging, you will support such depravity and degeneracy.
I have stumbled upon a number of these types of texts recently and while I think it is generally a good thing I can't help noticing that they are quite... basic. Most of his concerns have been solved by mixed market economies, that overall deliver superior results. But even that discussion is probably a couple of decades too late.
Another way to look at it... With thousands of people playing the game, some are bound to be the luckiest. It doesn't necessarily mean they have more insight.
If you are in the industry you will realize that it is extremely difficult to be consistently right. His success is not attributable to pure luck only.
If you have enough people guessing coin flips, one of them will be consistently right... and then claim credit for how difficult it was. Just look at all the people who failed!
Taleb is big on this idea applying widely in the finance sphere.
That is really not the case here. Look at Jim Simmons for example. And also Taleb is a brat who thinks he is the greatest investor ever to live just because he knows what martingale is.
Crony Capitalism is failing America. Capitalism is succeeding the Globe.
It is responsible for the most prosperity, the lifting up of poverty, and improvement in living conditions and life expectancy in the history of literal history.
I hate how capitalism has become a political boogeyman now. Fortunately, it has actually served to unite some of the left-wing and right-wing thinkers and forge some unlikely alliances.
Probably completely off-topic, but having listened to many of his interviews, it's also one of the main reasons why Howard Schultz chose to run as an independent instead of a democrat.
Crony capitalism is capitalism. And capitalism hits poor countries harder then the U.S. doesn't it? I'd say people working in sweatshops have it worse then most poor Americans.
What a terrible comparison. Why don't you compare how those people were doing before and after enterprise entered their countries? Their standards of living are drastically better with sweatshop work than without it, and continues to increase.
Their standards of living are better due to improvements in technology, not capitalism. Unless you think that the technological improvements we have today are only due to capitalism, but I'm not so sure that's the case.
Statism breeds cronyism in proportion to the power the state has over the market. Politicians need to get their dirty hands off the throat of the market.
This is wrong for a variety reasons. Ranging from the way money and power are intimately linked (even if you exclude cronyism as a mechanism). To the way that concentrated money can create its own markets or overrule existing ones by force (see heavily subsidized "startups" like Uber driving taxis out of business).
But let's assume you're right.
The problem then is that the purpose of society is not to create efficient markets, it's the purpose of efficient markets to maintains and support a functional society. Markets are a means not an ends. On their own they have no moral compass, they're simply a distributed genetic algorithm seeking supply/demand maxima. There's nothing intrinsic about the structure of capitalism that suggests it tends towards a fair and equitable society. Indeed, large companies have a long history of supporting and co-operating with some of the worst dictators in history.
The state, when it works, can be a means of directing market forces - either through taxation or regulation - towards ends that society thinks are beneficial. I don't get a vote in how IBM or Microsoft or Facebook operate. I do get to vote for representatives who I think will keep these companies in check and, for example, stop Facebook from surveilling me everywhere I go. I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in solutions to cronyism that mean I have even less power over my environment.
My best interpretation is in impoverished nations, a key economic bottleneck is lack of sufficient capital to improve their economy. Capitalism works pretty well in that stage to improve everybody's lot. Economic growth in this stage is great, double digit growth or high single digits is common.
In more advanced nations, access to capital isn't an overall issue. However, economic growth is low single digits in a "good" year. And if you shift to other measures of people's security, as shown in Dalio's collection of data, the improvements are slowing or even reversing.
This isn't making capitalism a boogeyman. It's a serious criticism of a phenomena that we need to understand, or, as Dalio points out, we're in for a lot of serious chaos ahead.
I like to think of capitalism we have today like a football game where you can deflate the ball, punch the opponent, have 20 men on the field, etc. with a ref that turns a blind eye.
It's odd that we as a society get so riled up over the smallest allegation of cheating in a sports game or get upset when a ref does not see the smallest thing that should be flagged, thus potentially changing the outcome of the game, but we live in a society where cheating, gaming, deflating, etc. happens all day every day and we don't bat an eye.
This is structural. I'm reminded of what Matt Levine often says about insider trading rules: they are not about fairness, they are about theft. Apparently our legal system is better at protecting property than at fairness (which isn't even well defined).
There's a great book on pretty much this topic in political philosophy, called Justice as Fairness by John Rawls. [0]
In the vein of this conversation, he does not argue against inequality, and breaks out of the capitalism/communist spectrum. Instead he proposed the strictures under which inequality should be allowed to persist in what he calls the Difference Principle:
Social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged persons, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of equality of opportunity.
The corporate tax cuts in the US led to a temporary stock market boom, while changing absolutely nothing in terms of underlying economic fundamentals. Those who benefited were those who already have money in a portfolio, which eliminates the majority of Americans.
Companies like Bridgewater gain when policy changes like this happen. Regular people lose because tax cuts are paid for by cutting public services, and pushing part of the cost on to the next generation.
What's Mr. Dalio doing to remedy that imbalance, aside from writing a self-serving Buffet-style "I should be taxed more" essay?
At least he's saying something. You can be cynical and argue he's just trying to get out ahead before the poor decide to eat the rich. But either way, the US needs more people with a platform to be saying this kind of stuff, whatever their motives are.
EDIT: I would also like to point out that he's calling for a national state of emergency to be declared and for the government to step in and try and do something about the worsening inequality problem. A person with massive personal wealth who is able to enact things with their own resources calling for the problem to be tackled in the public sphere is a good thing too, I think.
When you're Ray Dalio, the standard for "doing something" is much higher than writing a pithy blog post. We have seen many examples of rich people penning mea culpas after profiting off of the same economic system they now claim as being rigged against the commoners. Buffet does it at least once every couple of years.
Because he's rich and influential, Dalio will get a few column inches, but after that, the levers of power, pulled by the rich and influential, go about their daily business.
Regardless of your political opinion on Andrew Yang and his proposed policies, I think it is worth hearing him out on his (and many other's) perspective on modern capitalism.
The way our society define and value ourselves primarily on a couple of economic metrics seems misguided. These metrics are not representative of people's well being in our modern, more technological advanced society.
I think our definition of capitalism needs to evolve (like Andrew Yang says).
Dalio is now out with Part 2 ("My Diagnosis of Why Capitalism Is Now Not Working Well for the Majority of People", "What I Think Should Be Done", "Looking Ahead")
Dalio seems to be aiming for the political center. Howard Schultz is doing the same thing. I wonder if Dalio is hoping for some sort of poltical appointment.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] threadOr perhaps, you dream of being mega rich yourself and want things to stay the way they are now so you can make it?
Is this a serious question?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers
Ray Dalio has taken his chunk, is retiring, but senses the social and political winds are changing. Being a billionaire is no longer something people "respect", and is very rarely "earned". I'm sure he doesn't want the Proletariat knocking on his door in his old age.
Billionaires who advocate for higher income tax, but not a higher capital gains rate, are just pulling up the ladder behind them. The article isn't explicit with what Dalio is advocating for here.
Maybe it’s in his proposal but I didn’t see any mention of bringing back the estate (death) tax on the rich or increasing capital gains.
It is clear that these people are uninterested in paying higher taxes as it is completely legal to pay more taxes without any legislation. Thr website pay.gov accepts money for those who would like to contribute to the operations and debt costs of the united states government.
Until buffett and others make actual extra tax contributions to the government (as opposed to their own private charity), I'll continue to ignore them
I'm not sure what you're criticizing but Dalio's post is explicitly about economic mobility, i.e. reducing barriers preventing more people from getting rich in the future.
Talk is cheap.
Does anyone know if there is a term for this? It's a bit reminiscent of 'regulatory capture' but that doesn't seem quite right.
Where did you read that? Tax policy is ludicrously complex by design. Simply saying "we should pay higher taxes" is broad enough to be meaningless. Increasing income tax for example would barely make a dent in their take-home, because the majority of their wealth comes through capital gains tax.
Not to mention the numerous documented loopholes in the tax system that allow people in Dalio/Buffet's position to move money around the world at a moment's notice and pay nothing in federal tax.
The loopholes are there, but they never get fixed, thanks to lobbying from the big 4 audit firms that depend on blue chip clients like him to fatten their paycheques.
Just because Dalio has an arms-length connection to the dysfunctional tax system doesn't mean he;s ignorant as to why the system is the way it is.
This is solved by taxing very high wealth, not just very high income.
> it hits those who might actually try to get rich in the future.
Not those who try, just those who actually get very rich. None of the current tax increase proposals target the wealth or income of even slightly rich people (low millions of net worth or low 100ks of income), just the very rich (> 50mil net worth).
That still leaves a ton of room for incentivizing getting rich below that number.
IMO, calling for higher taxes is the same thing to do, rather than performing some sort of empty virtue signaling.
How does it do that? These are just words. Dalio and his hand-wringing clique have no issue speaking platitudes about economic justice, and turning right around and lobbying politicians for more tax cuts, less regulation and fewer consumer protections.
How are you going to get rich in the future when real wages for consumers haven't budged in 4 decades? Do you plan on delivering a product people can actually afford, or simply engage in the financial chicanery that made the 2008 recession possible?
He can stand up and talk like a leader, but until he's willing to financially back candidates who are genuinely interested in solving these problems (which likely means backing a candidate against his own financial interests), this is all hot air.
[0]: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toprecips.php?id=D000032123...
I think things are more complicated than what you've said. There may be good reasons to donate to a candidate who wouldn't support these ideas if that donation could nevertheless help sway their views on the issue. Opposition isn't the only strategy in politics. Sometimes you need to donate a nominal amount just to keep your foot in the door and the conversation open.
It's very different, however, for those who can donate enough to meet with politicians, and leverage their money into changing the politician's views.
"I'm donating money to you, fiscally conservative senator Cotton, because I disagree with your policy and think you should adopt a more progressive policy, even though it's against the fundamental tenants of your party. Despite the fact that your fiscally conservative policy greatly benefits me financially, I hope you change your position and adopt a more progressive policy, even if it hurts me financially."
If this were truly his state of mind, why not back a progressive instead, that he knows is going support these reforms? This makes no sense to me.
Precisely! It's similar to how Hillary Clinton's biggest donor was Goldman Sachs. They don't agree ideologically, but that's why it's important to donate and build favor in order to sway their views.
> If this were truly his state of mind, why not back a progressive instead, that he knows is going support these reforms? This makes no sense to me.
It's a good question! Imagine you align with the Democrats, and you have a lot of money to put behind your vote. When you look at the voting districts of America, you can see three types of races:
Democrat-ensured, Close, Republican-ensured
Democrat-ensured: Now if you want to maximize the impact of your money, there's no point in donating to Democrat-ensured races. Geoff Diehl had no way of beating Elizabeth Warren, for example, and we could argue that giving Warren a large war chest won't be that impactful for her Senate race.
Close: In these districts, you should clearly back the Democrat, and offer financial support. It will have an impact, and possibly contribute to a win.
Republican-ensured: In these districts, where people overwhelmingly vote Republican, you're not going to get anywhere by backing a Democrat who shares all of your views. It would be a waste. Politicians are always looking to fundraise, however, and are willing to budge on one or two issues for enough funding.
In a world where Republican-ensured is a large percentage of districts, and Democrats need votes from across the aisle to get something passed, you _need_ cooperation, and a Democrat donating to a Republican is often where it can come from.
Dalio clearly benefits financially from conservative fiscal policy, which senators like Cotton support. It's a big stretch to argue that Dalio might be trying to sway Cotton on his fiscal policy while also benefiting financially from it.
Here is the link (original on linked in) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-refo...
And keep in mind that isn't even his firm giving the money. Also, giving more than $2,700 to a candidate is illegal anyway, so "financially backing a candidate" is kind of a nonsense standard to hold a person to.
Money in politics is a problem, to be sure, but one that is commonly overstated in this sort of light, and what you are saying here is that he should be giving more money, which is kind of the opposite of what we should be thinking of things.
It's entirely possible that Ray Dalio has some views on the tax code reform that may not align with mainstream republicans, but that doesn't mean the other 90% of policies the other politician supports align with his views. Or even that the other camp has the same tax reform policies in mind as he does.
I've seen many people who want to reform the tax code, which would involve a greater relative share of taxes for the top end, who wouldn't identify as democrats.
Tell that to all the black gun owners who vote R because they don't want wake up one day and find out they're felons or all the fiscal conservatives who vote D because they believe healthcare and the climate are bigger short term issues.
I generally agree with you that people back whoever pushes policy they like most but people also have deal-breakers that will cause them to back the other guy even if they don't like his platform.
It's not unreasonable to think that someone might agree with the bulk of a party's platform, but disagree on a single issue that's most important to them and can't bring themselves to vote for anyone in that party because of it.
I can imagine guns, abortion, the military, taxes, etc. might fit that bill as someone's single most important issue.
The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals may include subsidiaries and affiliates.
Mccormick, David Mr $13780
Halvey, John K Mr $7458
https://search.maplight.org/contributions/?candidate_name=Th...
Over the same time period, Dalio himself has given to:
John McCain $10200 Mitt Romney $2300 Rudolph Giuliani $2300
https://search.maplight.org/contributions/?donor_organizatio...
It is not, as you imply that he says capitalism is failing America, it is that the broken state of capitalism, essentially that capitalism does not exist is failing America.
It must just be a misunderstanding on your part that you think his donation history does not very well aligns with what he is saying. The Republican party, in spite of also being heavily influenced by the elite who will naturally try to consolidate power, have always been about actual free, fair capitalism and free markets within the jurisdiction and for its citizens. There is absolutely nothing inconsistent with him saying that the corruption of capitalism is what is failing the USA, because it is, just as it is failing everyone else on the whole planet. Even China, the totalitarian evil communist regime is highly dependent on the USA even with its corrupt and rotten form of capitalism that has dominated the US economy since starting in the 60s ... as most corruption and depravity and degeneracy started around that time.
Which is just a terrible thing to say, but it's unfortunately our political reality right now.
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I really don't see how this could happen, but even if there's some kind of accommodation, it's simply a band-aid to the underlying problem.
Which is that the 'means of production' needs to be OWNED by the people producing. Not a corporate owner (or even an 'entrepreneur'), and not 'the state', but the collective that actually does the work, commensurate with their overall contribution.
There's also a huge issue around land ownership, and the rents that derive from it. Currently, simply owning land in a fast-developing city gives you a share in the bounty that others are creating, and also taxes those generating it.
Land itself is a common inheritance. Should air or water also be subject to such 'ownership'?
You sound similar to an anarcho-syndicalist, which is a position I've never understood well. Let me ask a question in the form of example.
Bob, Ted, and Jim want to start a pin factory. All three want to work for it. So they pool their capital, contributing $250k, 300k, and 350k respectively, receiving proportional equity, invest in equipment, and all three go to work making pins after 2 months. They hire other workers. The contract for all workers gives a vesting schedule that gives them equity over time as well.
The fact that CAPEX has to be provided by employees is not a good feature of this. Should shareholders that have never held a job with the firm not be allowed to invest in it? That is exceedingly restrictive.
Selling equity would allow the firm to raise capital while splitting the risk with the investor(s). It makes the investor a partner in the firm's success or failure.
I would tend to agree except that it's an awful way to diversify risk and a comically bad way to allocate capital. Even if you were to exploit resources to their maximum, I'd give you at most two generations before you'd need to use force to keep the system working.
And this isn't a defence of capitalism, especially not modern US capitalism. That's pretty shitty too but it does scale and is mostly stable.
And while we're here. So water is a common inheritance and can't be owned. Water treatment is owned by the water treaters. There's no state or corporations to sub them. How do you get clean water given no-one is going to be stupid enough to starve to death as a water treater?
I would agree though that right now the brain is eating the fingers as it puts food in the mouth. But shooting the brain doesn’t fix the problem.
Soros along with all the tech tyrants that have been emerging from hades itself are all disassembling and deconstructing the whole basis of the civilized world and the most core concepts of self-governance, freedom of speech, freedom from tyranny, and the most fundamental and core, basic concepts and necessities for any form of democracy, let alone the middle class; yet you laud Soros?
But I guess as long as you see yourself benefitting from the plunder and pillaging, you will support such depravity and degeneracy.
Taleb is big on this idea applying widely in the finance sphere.
It is responsible for the most prosperity, the lifting up of poverty, and improvement in living conditions and life expectancy in the history of literal history.
I hate how capitalism has become a political boogeyman now. Fortunately, it has actually served to unite some of the left-wing and right-wing thinkers and forge some unlikely alliances.
Probably completely off-topic, but having listened to many of his interviews, it's also one of the main reasons why Howard Schultz chose to run as an independent instead of a democrat.
The rest of this comment is beyond ridiculous.
But let's assume you're right.
The problem then is that the purpose of society is not to create efficient markets, it's the purpose of efficient markets to maintains and support a functional society. Markets are a means not an ends. On their own they have no moral compass, they're simply a distributed genetic algorithm seeking supply/demand maxima. There's nothing intrinsic about the structure of capitalism that suggests it tends towards a fair and equitable society. Indeed, large companies have a long history of supporting and co-operating with some of the worst dictators in history.
The state, when it works, can be a means of directing market forces - either through taxation or regulation - towards ends that society thinks are beneficial. I don't get a vote in how IBM or Microsoft or Facebook operate. I do get to vote for representatives who I think will keep these companies in check and, for example, stop Facebook from surveilling me everywhere I go. I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in solutions to cronyism that mean I have even less power over my environment.
In more advanced nations, access to capital isn't an overall issue. However, economic growth is low single digits in a "good" year. And if you shift to other measures of people's security, as shown in Dalio's collection of data, the improvements are slowing or even reversing.
This isn't making capitalism a boogeyman. It's a serious criticism of a phenomena that we need to understand, or, as Dalio points out, we're in for a lot of serious chaos ahead.
Conscious Capitalism, With a New Preface by the Authors: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business https://www.amazon.com/dp/1625271751/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_lu...
It's odd that we as a society get so riled up over the smallest allegation of cheating in a sports game or get upset when a ref does not see the smallest thing that should be flagged, thus potentially changing the outcome of the game, but we live in a society where cheating, gaming, deflating, etc. happens all day every day and we don't bat an eye.
In the vein of this conversation, he does not argue against inequality, and breaks out of the capitalism/communist spectrum. Instead he proposed the strictures under which inequality should be allowed to persist in what he calls the Difference Principle:
Social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged persons, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of equality of opportunity.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_as_Fairness:_A_Restate...
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
Companies like Bridgewater gain when policy changes like this happen. Regular people lose because tax cuts are paid for by cutting public services, and pushing part of the cost on to the next generation.
What's Mr. Dalio doing to remedy that imbalance, aside from writing a self-serving Buffet-style "I should be taxed more" essay?
EDIT: I would also like to point out that he's calling for a national state of emergency to be declared and for the government to step in and try and do something about the worsening inequality problem. A person with massive personal wealth who is able to enact things with their own resources calling for the problem to be tackled in the public sphere is a good thing too, I think.
Because he's rich and influential, Dalio will get a few column inches, but after that, the levers of power, pulled by the rich and influential, go about their daily business.
The way our society define and value ourselves primarily on a couple of economic metrics seems misguided. These metrics are not representative of people's well being in our modern, more technological advanced society.
I think our definition of capitalism needs to evolve (like Andrew Yang says).
Here is the new LinkedIn post -- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-refo...
And here is a link to PDF -- https://www.economicprinciples.org/downloads/Why-and-How-Cap...