Expert prognosis for the planet

[Impureclient]

https://www.dailywire.com/news/democ...n-admin-report

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Impureclient

https://www.dailywire.com/news/democ...n-admin-report

That is the hardest thing to do is change human nature, especially from privilege. Most of them want the masses to change only.

Ask someone who is invested heavily in climate change, or who acts like they are heavily invested like Elon Musk, if they are vegan or if they have an animal based diet, or if they take private jets, or what they are personally doing to reduce their carbon footprint, and the answer you get is often not great. There is such a thing as leading by example, and if someone doesn't then it doesn't mean what they are saying is wrong. It is the classic: do as I say, not as I do. The reality is that the solutions we find for people will likely need to not change their standard of living, so we have large battery cars, or solar panels on roofs, sustainable construction materials, recycled products, or we try to create engineered meat, or whatever, because human nature is the hardest thing to change. If it was easier then everyone would be successful, fit, with basic needs, etc.

This guy pointed out the same thing you did. It is a good point:

[Irace86.2.0]

Full video:

[bfrank1972]

Originally Posted by Impureclient

https://www.dailywire.com/news/democ...n-admin-report

Yep world is full of them, but how does this apply to anything we're talking about? I don't believe John Kerry is posting in this thread unless.... Irace???

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

This guy pointed out the same thing you did. It is a good point:

I listened to the "long play" version. A lot of pontificating, some very good points on quality of work, etc. but not a lot of real solutions offered.

The "tax em" mantra always sounds good but it is never explained properly. Bregman keeps harping on Michael Dell for example. In 2020, Dell's taxable salary was around $3M. $995,000 was straight salary and he rest was bonuses paid out to him. Taxing that at 90% solves nothing, drop in the bucket, but it's a good talking point because Bregman, like most that support this, know the general population does not understand the difference between wealth and salary. They, for the most part, only understand salary not wealth gained from creating, building and retaining ownership of something.

By the way, from what I could find searching Bregman himself is a multimillionaire, primarily through book sales, and speaking fees. Maybe he gives it all away, I don't know.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by bfrank1972

Yep world is full of them, but how does this apply to anything we're talking about? I don't believe John Kerry is posting in this thread unless.... Irace???

I am not John Kerry.

It is a type of ad hominem attack. He tried to do the same thing to Al Gore, by suggesting his message must be false because Al Gore has financially gained from his message. He is trying to discredit the witness by attacking the person's character without really addressing the substance of what the person has said. If someone is falsely appealing to authority then some people try to discredit the authority, but no one is appealing to John Kerry or Al Gore, as an authority on climate change. I think that is why his posts seem to come off as non-sequiturs, out from left field.

On this one though, unlike his Al Gore attack, he makes a fair point, which is that we need our leaders to lead by example, and we should all look in the mirror at our own actions. Not an easy thing. Often though, people making this point, are calling for less action; "if he doesn't have to do it then I shouldn't have to do it".

A politician tried to make this analogy at Gretta Thunberg that "...it makes no sense to be doing it (investing in green technology) if we are simply watching increases from China". Her answer essentially was that if we use that logic then her country of Sweden should do nothing for green energy compared to the US or any country other than China. It doesn't matter if the US produces half the emissions as China because the US is still producing the 2nd most emissions of any country in the world at 15% of the total emissions when we are only 4.25% of the world's population. BTW, China produces 30% of the world's pollution, and China makes up 18.47% of the world's population, so China's contributing a less than double the emissions as a percentage of their population, but the US is contributing almost four times the emissions as a percentage of their population.





We are doing bad with polluting the oceans, but other places are bad at polluting the seas. We technically ship a lot of garbage to other countries including China, so I don't know how accurate this is for the US if we just ship our waste to other countries that mismanage it later.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

I listened to the "long play" version. A lot of pontificating, some very good points on quality of work, etc. but not a lot of real solutions offered.

The "tax em" mantra always sounds good but it is never explained properly. Bregman keeps harping on Michael Dell for example. In 2020, Dell's taxable salary was around $3M. $995,000 was straight salary and he rest was bonuses paid out to him. Taxing that at 90% solves nothing, drop in the bucket, but it's a good talking point because Bregman, like most that support this, know the general population does not understand the difference between wealth and salary. They, for the most part, only understand salary not wealth gained from creating, building and retaining ownership of something.

By the way, from what I could find searching Bregman himself is a multimillionaire, primarily through book sales, and speaking fees. Maybe he gives it all away, I don't know.

One woman talked about the banks, so people could have a better shot at making money, but I really don't think Dell is asking what philanthropy solutions will help to create wealth for others. He isn't calling for an increase in unions, an increase in wages, an increase in anti-trust regulations, an increase in tax break and incentives for small businesses, an increase in laws to protect small business against large corporations from pricing them out of market, etc. That was a panel talking about the issue of economic disparity, but in Dell's eyes, he doesn't want to give up his wealth and standard of living; he wants everyone else to try to raise their wealth, but it is clear to me that he fundamentally doesn't understand that it will be at the expense of his wealth, whether that means paying himself less and paying his employees more, or taxing him more. He doesn't want to deal with competition. He doesn't want his kids having to struggle to get into college because it is based solely on merit and intelligence; no, he wants to be able to send his kids to school using his money.

I agree people often confuse wealth and salary. Bezos and Musk might be jostling for having the highest net worth, but their annual, taxable income is quite low, relatively speaking. Just like a person adding wealth when the housing market goes up and their home appreciates, billionaires valuation appreciates all the time, but just like the average person doesn't claim income on the increased valuation on their home, these billionaires aren't seeing a rise in taxable income. This is why they mentioned other types of taxes like an inheritance tax or whatever.

Like I listed above, there are a number of ways we can structure taxes and the market to better distribute the wealth than to have a system that gives tax breaks to the wealth and a system that allows people to take a huge share of the profits.

Though they’ve promised to shed at least half of their wealth for the common good, many of the billionaires who have signed the Giving Pledge are richer than ever, the Institute for Policy Studies said; it added that, “while some pledgers earnestly intend to fulfill their promises, many are unable to because their assets are simply growing too fast.”

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/gi...ver-2020-08-08

[Captain Snooze]

Our lizard brains will doom us all.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Captain Snooze

Our lizard brains will doom us all.

Individually, we are much more selfish, but collectively, things change. When people add children and make a family, they look beyond themselves. Maybe it is the subconscious selfish desire to spread ones genes into the future, but regardless, as hierarchy increases from families to groups to towns to cities to states and countries, the perspective grows beyond just the self. For instance, individually a person may want to drive as fast as possible all the time, but when it becomes necessary to share the road with others, they recognize that everyone can't operate selfishly on the road, so even if their desire is to still be selfish, they conform and recognize that conformity to a set of rules is good.

Similarly, we only need to recognize and agree that conforming to a certain set of rules is in our best interest for people to conform to those rules. For instance, we recognize that throwing trash on the ground is more convenient than finding a trash can, but we recognize that if everyone did this then we all wouldn't like the outcome. Neighbors wouldn't be too happy if the other tossed their trash over their neighbor's fence, so we conform (for the most part) to not trashing society. We do this with the acceptance of limitations on car emissions, in favor of catalytic converters on cars, and so forth.

We can do the same if we can agree on the problem. Obviously, we have groups that are not interested in the masses agreeing on the problem. They would rather we blamed each other or blame some minority for our problems. They would rather we focused on squabbling amongst each other for the scraps than focus on who or what are the real problems. Their lizard brain want to maintain its power, wealth and stature.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

That was a panel talking about the issue of economic disparity, but in Dell's eyes, he doesn't want to give up his wealth and standard of living; he wants everyone else to try to raise their wealth, but it is clear to me that he fundamentally doesn't understand that it will be at the expense of his wealth, whether that means paying himself less and paying his employees more, or taxing him more. He doesn't want to deal with competition. He doesn't want his kids having to struggle to get into college because it is based solely on merit and intelligence; no, he wants to be able to send his kids to school using his money.

I don't know if these are Dell's opinions or not. He wasn't in the video segment.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

I don't know if these are Dell's opinions or not. He wasn't in the video segment.

Yeah, my bad. I saw you brought up Dell and forgot the CFO in the video is from Yahoo and just mixed up the two. My comments were directed generally at billionaires and really high earning millionaires and at Ken Goldman from the video, a man who made about $4.5 million a year, which isn't as much as his boss who was making $17 million a year. Crazy to think that someone earning $50-100k in the company is making 0.3-0.5% of her salary, or said another way, she is making 170-340x their salaries.

https://www.businessinsider.com/yaho...million-2012-9

[soundman98]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

I listened to the "long play" version. A lot of pontificating, some very good points on quality of work, etc. but not a lot of real solutions offered.

The "tax em" mantra always sounds good but it is never explained properly. Bregman keeps harping on Michael Dell for example. In 2020, Dell's taxable salary was around $3M. $995,000 was straight salary and he rest was bonuses paid out to him. Taxing that at 90% solves nothing, drop in the bucket, but it's a good talking point because Bregman, like most that support this, know the general population does not understand the difference between wealth and salary. They, for the most part, only understand salary not wealth gained from creating, building and retaining ownership of something.

By the way, from what I could find searching Bregman himself is a multimillionaire, primarily through book sales, and speaking fees. Maybe he gives it all away, I don't know.

not to mention, there comes a time where if taxes keep getting raised, it becomes more and more worthwhile to dodge taxes through a variety of legal and illegal methods.

aka, registering one's high end vehicle in south dakota so one doesn't need to pay local state vehicle taxes...

[IceFyre13th]

[Captain Snooze]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

Yeah, my bad. I saw you brought up Dell and forgot the CFO in the video is from Yahoo and just mixed up the two. My comments were directed generally at billionaires and really high earning millionaires and at Ken Goldman from the video, a man who made about $4.5 million a year, which isn't as much as his boss who was making $17 million a year. Crazy to think that someone earning $50-100k in the company is making 0.3-0.5% of her salary, or said another way, she is making 170-340x their salaries.

Here we go off topic. Come along for the ride.
I have read that past a certain level of wealth money no longer becomes a utility to be used. It becomes a measure to compare one's position to another.
There isn't much difference in utility between $100 million and $200 million but the the person with $200 million can I say am positioned higher than my neighbour who only has $100 million. That is, it becomes a purely measure of status. I have read this why CEOs demand so much money; not for what the money could do for them but as a means to be compared to their peers.