The sovereign citizen movement rejects the legitimacy of the government. Its fast-growing popularity has had authorities scrambling to get a handle on how far its tentacles have reached.
Unfortunately, Mr Oxby was persuaded by this theory during the seminar, which I infer from his evidence, was presented in a persuasive and charismatic manner."
He was ultimately fined $14,000.
Okay, fine. If you tax the ultra-wealthy at 100% for example, then they have no incentive to work and therefore will no longer be ultra-wealthy and that will pay for what maybe 1% of what’s necessary to fund these services and now there are no more ultra-wealthy people so who are you going to tax? The middle class of course.
The key thing to recognise here is that we’re not talking about high income earners. We’re talking about people who are wealthy due to owning massive amounts of assets which generate passive wealth, and they acquire that wealth because they belong to wealthy families. They don’t contribute to the dynamism of the economy. These people don’t earn money from working, they suck up all the money from the productive workers. If you’re grinding it out and earning 200K that’s fine, more power to you. Those people aren’t the people I’m talking about.
Right, but the government is a very wasteful spender. As an example, the US government spends the market cap of Apple Incorporated every 100 days. If Apple did that, they would not exist in 100 days. But the government continues to exist. I completely understand that once you obtain a certain amount of wealth, you really don’t need any more. However, with that said, I think taxation is the wrong way to handle it and that using another service is the correct way to handle it.
The government spends money, and takes that money back through taxation. If the government spends money, incurs debt, and doesn’t get the money back, it’s due to a failure of taxation policy. Government money spent on services that are valuable to the public is not wasteful, which is the key point you are not understanding. They don’t need to generate a profit, like Apple does. They need to ensure that the wealth flows through the appropriate channels, which they have neglected to do since the advent of neoliberal policies. The government has no imperative to further technological innovation, like Apple does. It’s not their business. They are in the business of maintaining a basic quality of life for the population.
Okay, if the government is supposed to provide a basic quality of life, then they are failing at that job and need to be replaced.
Absolutely, and that sheds some light on the commonality between our countries, even if the politics are a bit different. Major parties have abandoned the working class. Which requires better political engagement so we can vote ourselves out of this situation to get a fair deal and avoid what looks like the inevitable rise of right wing populism, which won’t help progress the situation at all.
Exactly, which also shows the differences because I very firmly believe that we cannot vote hard enough to escape this situation. I and many others have lost complete trust in our institutions and we act accordingly. Why vote when it does no good? In fact, if anything else, I would be willing to vote for shit policies in order to watch the train wreck happen faster in order to get to a better place faster.
I love how you dont even understand the concept of a line of credit and everything is a zero sum game. You have a very broken outlook on life. Very toxic mindset.
Credit and the I must have it now mentality is most of the problem with people today. You don’t need credit when you actually have money.
The ‘asset wealthy’ being spoken of here use credit all the time as they arent in a liquid position to transact at that point, but provably do have the capital in assets to satisfy the transaction. And we all use credit, often in very reasonable situations.
For instance, a first home buyer borrowing when interest rates are low, locking in a low interest rate for a long period, can be very beneficial for the individual concerned, where house prices get higher for an extended period. Even if it does lead to some perceived realty market stickiness.
Widespread use of Credit is not the problem (in this regard), and in fact could be a sign of a more trusting global society beginning to establish itself.
Credit is also bot new. It is the OG, and has been with us since well before tokenised money. Read David Graeber’s ‘Debt’. And look up debt sticks, or the origin of the yin-yang symbol. The essence of David Graeber’s argument is tokenised money, uniquely gold, is used when you transact with someone you are unable to trust, credit is used when you can trust.
It’s of course more complicated now, the vendor is not so reliant on trusting the individual in front of them, and more reliant on the name on a bit of plastic in their pocket.