Truth To Power wrote:I did. It provides further support for my position. As land became concentrated in fewer hands, the tax burden did, too.
It doesn't. Nothing in the paragraph indicates this. Please quote where it said it if I missed it.
Think please.
Scathing.
You incorrectly claimed that wealth is access to resources. It isn't. It is OWNERSHIP.
It's about both. Otherwise you'd be basically be claiming that having money isn't a form of wealth.
No it isn't, and access doesn't necessarily confer ownership anyway.
It is. If you don't have money, how are you supposed to obtain resources? It's a simple concept really.
And technically you'd be owning the money but the money is worthless in it of itself. It's the fact that the money is redeemable for resources which gives it it's value.
Necessary but not sufficient condition. Logic 101 (which you either never took or flunked).
Prove that it isn't a sufficient condition. Prove that you don't need access to resources to get resources. Because to say this is a paradox. I'm sure that you'd know this since you've taken Logic 101.
Affirming the Consequent fallacy.
? ? ?
I'm just telling you the logical conclusion of your argument.
Nope.
Yup.
The Sparta example proves me right (Athens too, where taxes fell almost exclusively on the wealthy)
It didn't. Nothing in the paragraph indicated your claim. Athens also didn't have most of the tax burden on the wealth. It was
ruled by the wealthy for God's sake!
The USSR became oligarchic after it fell and turned capitalist, but was not before.
Oh it most certainly was oligarchic. Especially during Stalin's regime.
If $100K is taken from A and given to B, it shows having wealth is not the same as political power.
No it doesn't. In a capitalist society, whether you like it or not, wealth is power because capitalist societies are all about accumulation of resources. The more resources you have or the higher access to resources you have, the more powerful you are.
Wealth is not the problem. Wealth SOLVES the problem of scarcity. INJUSTICE is the problem.
Wealth does the direct opposite of solving scarcity. It puts a majority of resources in the hands of a minority while the majority which works to maintain and create those exact resources get very little of the pie.
Wealth is injustice.
No, the USSR failed because socialism cannot be as productive as capitalism.
The USSR industrialized quicker than the US. I'm sure @ingliz can back me up on this.
There is a very simple and indisputable reason for this: when socialists steal factories, there are fewer factories available for production; but when capitalists steal land, the amount of land available for production stays exactly the same.
That literally makes zero sense. This isn't an economics mistake, it's just simple math.
Debating me? Is that what you think you are doing?
Well I guess it's more like dealing with someone screaming at you with their fingers in their ears rather than a debate. At least that's what you're doing.
With you, I am trying to be gentle.
Which is why you screw up basic math. Because you're going "easy on me" lol.
They prove you wrong: the state destroyed the wealthy.
The state? There was a revolution, they fought
against the state.
And they didn't destroy the wealthy, they just handed that wealth to someone else.
The wealthy lost all political power, proving that wealth is not political power.
The former established aristocracy fell but a new aristocracy rose in it's abscene.
Already refuted.
You haven't done a good job of it then.
Yes, actually, it is when those revolutions dispossess and exterminate the wealthy.
Do you know anything about those revolutions? Like, anything about what happened after?
It's false whether you like it or not, and I have PROVED it is false.
Screwing up basic math and screaming "no!" is not "PROVING" anything.
Yes it does.
No it doesn't. See? We can do this all day.
Yes, you can, which is why the rich devote so much effort and money to controlling the tax system.
They don't control the tax system, they just avoid it. That's what the current tax system is supposed to do; make it easier for the rich to avoid them.
Yes, it was, as already proved.
No, it wasn't, as already proved.
That is absurd, ahistorical nonsense. In Egypt's Old Kingdom, taxes on landownership provided almost all state revenue.
Egypt was an exception in many ways. It was basically akin to China in how centralized it's government was.
The fact that the CURRENT tax system favors the rich does not imply that taxes MUST favor the rich. Logic 101 (which you either never took or flunked).
Well looks like you haven't taken Logic 101 either if you think the rich won't avoid taxes just as easily as they did before.
And you can't force them because they're too powerful to punish. Epstein is the biggest example of this.
And the reason why they can do this is because money is power. Shouldn't it be obvious that, in a system like
capitalism,
capital gives you power?