American Politics

[Real ale Madrid]

A bit of a spin off regarding the Fox news references in other current affairs threads

So, if Fox news are 'at it' again - post it here so we can all laugh.

I'll start with an interview that never made it to air this week on Tucker Carlson with a prominent Dutch journalist called Rutger Bregman.

Now the Dutch people have a history of being blunt but Mr Bregman took it to a new level and gained some notoriety a few weeks back when he made a mad point about Taxing the mega rich at an appropriate level. He made this point at Davos 2019 of all places which didn't go down too well with the Billionaires present! This 'discussion' with ole Tucker went down a predictable line when he repeated his opinion. Enjoy.

https://youtu.be/6_nFI2Zb7qE

[The Fly]

Apologies for taking the thread on a tangent with the first reply but...

Is Rutger Bregman a journalist, and what's the 'appropriate level' of taxation he's advocating?

[SkStu]

RAM - why limit our appreciation to Fox News? For every Tucker Carlson we have to enjoy, there is an equally entertaining Don Lemon.

Apologies for taking the thread on a tangent with the first reply but...

Is Rutger Bregman a journalist, and what's the 'appropriate level' of taxation he's advocating?

Never heard of him before RAM's post but his Wikipedia says it all really.

Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World promotes a more productive and equitable life based an three core ideas which include a universal and unconditional basic income paid to everybody, a short workweek of fifteen hours, and open borders worldwide with the free exchange of citizens between all nations. It was originally written as articles in Dutch for the online journal De Correspondent.

[Real ale Madrid]

Is Rutger Bregman a journalist, and what's the 'appropriate level' of taxation he's advocating?

Dutch Journalist / Historian - you will have to look at up yourself regarding his taxing policies - unfortunately Carlson didn't get too into specifics with him his brain was too small etc

Interesting that your default position is to discredit the source!

RAM - why limit our appreciation to Fox News? For every Tucker Carlson we have to enjoy, there is an equally entertaining Don Lemon.
.

Start your own thread you

[The Fly]

Dutch Journalist / Historian - you will have to look at up yourself regarding his taxing policies - unfortunately Carlson didn't get too into specifics with him his brain was too small etc

Interesting that your default position is to discredit the source!

Eh? Enquiring about a person's credentials is not 'discrediting the source'.

You said he made a point about wanting to tax the mega rich at an appropriate level. I then asked if he also stated what this appropriate level should be and you didn't know the answer...which is fair enough as that's not the main thrust of the thread.

Given what Stu just posted though I'd seriously question whether this 'appropriate level' maximises the tax revenue collected from these mega rich people.

Never heard of him before RAM's post but his Wikipedia says it all really.

Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World promotes a more productive and equitable life based an three core ideas which include a universal and unconditional basic income paid to everybody, a short workweek of fifteen hours, and open borders worldwide with the free exchange of citizens between all nations. It was originally written as articles in Dutch for the online journal De Correspondent.

Neither had I, and that sounds very realistic indeed.

[Real ale Madrid]

Given what Stu just posted though I'd seriously question whether this 'appropriate level' maximises the tax revenue collected from these mega rich people.

SkStu has clipped a small section of the text to make this highly respected author, historian and journalist look like a lunatic - I suggest you read the work referred to in the quote to get a full picture of what he is talking about. He is talking about aspirations for society in contrast to the fears that people like to promote. He's a fascinating author and the book that SkStu refers to is well worth a read even though you won't agree with any or all of it.

[SkStu]

Look, I don't know anything about this chap other than I would probably disagree with 95% of his book (Id likely agree to the details on the publishing page, table of contents and page count ), but I simply - honestly - copied what was the (likely his own) wiki summary of his most famous work/beliefs. It is not my faults these words make his beliefs out to be a lunatic (your words, not mine!).

But look, in my opinion, anyone who is for completely open borders deserves their place on the lunatic fringe of public discourse (edit: the Tucker Carlson show!).

[The Fly]

SkStu has clipped a small section of the text to make this highly respected author, historian and journalist look like a lunatic - I suggest you read the work referred to in the quote to get a full picture of what he is talking about. He is talking about aspirations for society in contrast to the fears that people like to promote. He's a fascinating author and the book that SkStu refers to is well worth a read even though you won't agree with any or all of it.

I may do but when the title refers to 'utopia' and 'an ideal world' I'm already getting a certain kind of flavour from it, which the Wiki snippet from Stu tends to confirm.

You've referred to him as prominent; highly respected and fascinating and then gone on to praise the book. I'm assuming then that you agree with his outlook and have read the book. If so, does he lay out the appropriate level of taxation?

Sorry for derailing your thread RAM.

[Real ale Madrid]

Sorry for derailing your thread RAM.

Era its grand - I tend to reply to everything or reply to nothing. I'm sure Fox news will be along with some fresh material soon.....

[pineapple stu]

But look, in my opinion, anyone who is for completely open borders deserves their place on the lunatic fringe of public discourse (edit: the Tucker Carlson show!).

Absolutely seconded. Look at the damage Merkel did when basically announcing Germany was "Open Gates"; a million economic migrants tramping across Europe, breaking national resources beyond coping point. Imagine if 100 million people converged on Europe? You'd have famine, mass starvation, destruction of national cultures, war and petty violence (including an inevitable proliferation of ISIS and the likes), breakdown of law and order, people likely getting dragged out of their homes so others could occupy them instead. It's the only logical conclusion of something happening for which society is quite simply unprepared for.

(Often the people who propose stuff like this are big advocates of diversity - not bothering about the fact that Europe has never been less diverse than it is now, and that mass immigration can only make it utterly uniform.)

Then of course if you've open borders, you've no countries really - so how do you tax people? How do you tax the mega-rich at an appropriate level? They'll just move to another tax jurisdiction. It's why Gerard Depardieu is Russian now. Taxing the mega-rich is always an easy populist agenda item because so few of us are mega-rich - but if you look at where tax contributions actually come from, it's massively skewed towards the mega-rich anyway. I don't see figures for Ireland - I presume a brief google will show them - but in America, the top 1% of earners pay 40% of all income taxes, while the bottom 60% paid 1.3% of income taxes. So the 60% are already in effect leeching off the rest.

The 15-hour week is similarly populist but impractical. The tax burden would be one issue - some very important services are required 24 hours a day, particularly hospitals and the gardaí, and to restrict working hours to 15 hours a week would mean you need three times as many people to do the same work. How do you fund that? Then there's the issue of people who want to work more than 15 hours a week - they'd steal a huge march on the 15-hour-a-week plebs. Are you going to regulate against that?

And finally, of course, our capitalist society is based on an ever-increasing provision of goods - this is obviously a huge problem as "ever-increasing" is basically calling for a perpetual motion machine, but to put in place such a drastic change as a 15-hour week could only cause the financial system to collapse and we'd likely enter a Great Depression period - which would cause people to work more hours.

I've never heard of the fella, but if those are two of those views are as prominent in his workings as they appear to be, then yeah, the guy's a lunatic.

[The Fly]

pineapple stu likes things in the long grass, except this stuff. ^

[pineapple stu]

I don't think you know what "In the long grass" means...

Anyway, over to the pro side for a cogent argument as to why this guy isn't a loony. "Have you read his book?" doesn't count

[The Fly]

I don't think you know what "In the long grass" means...

I should've been more specific. I'm referring to the migration and open borders stuff.

[peadar1987]

Absolutely seconded. Look at the damage Merkel did when basically announcing Germany was "Open Gates"; a million economic migrants tramping across Europe, breaking national resources beyond coping point. Imagine if 100 million people converged on Europe? You'd have famine, mass starvation, destruction of national cultures, war and petty violence (including an inevitable proliferation of ISIS and the likes), breakdown of law and order, people likely getting dragged out of their homes so others could occupy them instead. It's the only logical conclusion of something happening for which society is quite simply unprepared for.

I don't think it's fair to call Syrian, Afghan and Libyan refugees "economic migrants". I'm not in favour of completely open borders, but I think we have a moral obligation to help people whose lives have been destroyed by war, and I only wish other nations had been as generous as the Germans.

[pineapple stu]

Much of the evidence is that they are economic refugees though. If you look at documentaries which look at migrants, even in passing - Simon Reeve's Greece or Mediterranean, Michael Palin's Sahara, or Levison Wood's Walking the Americas for example, where they come across random migrants and talk to them about their stories - they're almost exclusively economic refugees. Escaping war is rarely mentioned.

I think we do have a duty to help - but the German way of doing it is absolutely the wrong way of doing it. First off, we've seen how encouraging migration can snowball out of control. It can also destabilise regions, leading to a further impetus to emigrate. There is no thought whatsoever about overrunning native cultures - there's always some nonsense spoken about how the native culture has a duty to bend immigrants to help them integrate, but in practice this doesn't happen, and in any event, this can only lead to native cultures being obliterated in the long run. Also, putting boats in the Med to rescue illegal migrants and bring them to their destination is a particularly daft thing to do as, again, it can only encourage more migration. Then when they arrive, most migrants are utterly unprepared for a western society - most prominently in the case of gender equality, but also in terms of getting jobs (high unemployment among illegal migrants), cultural integration, etc. In a matter of a couple of generations, you can only fundamentally change the diverse European landscape - literally what it means to be Dutch, Irish, French, etc, which will all morph closer and closer to being the same, all in the name of "diversity".

And there's also a high economic cost of all this, which is effectively a waste of money (if you ignore the virtue-signalling benefit, which by definition isn't really a benefit at all)

All of this is the exact opposite of what we want to do. We need to be encouraging stability in these regions, not destabilising them. German actions are the equivalent of giving a man a fish - you've fed him for a day, you feel a bit better yourself, but you've done nothing to help the root issue. And the next day, you'll have twice as many people looking to be given a fish.

We need to be teaching these people to fish instead - stop stymieing national economies, stop destablising areas politically in the way that the US in particular specialises in, stop strangling economies with unrepayable national debt, allow African and Middle Eastern economies in particular to grow. That's the only way to stability.