I am far from an expert in the practical aspects of calculating wealth, but seems doable by the fact that wealth tax exists in countries today.

I too think it would be nice to tax capital gains higher than labour, but I am unsure how it would impact pension savers - both those who save by owning a home and those who invest in equities and bonds. I think I could only accept a very high capital gains tax if state funded retirement would cover full costs of living in cities, and reasonable lower bounds on retirement age. But this seems impossible with large shares of private ownership of homes in cities - they would likely be able to charge exorbitant prices for living if every old person had a comfortable pension. So I guess we shouldn’t have private ownership of homes. But I dunno.

Speaking of a one time wealth tax, would a 100% inheritance tax accomplish what you want? Just curious about how you see the redistribution of wealth happening, as I am myself unsure how it should happen in practice.

When you say we don’t need the rich, do you mean that we don’t need those particular individuals, or that we don’t need them having their wealth? Is getting rid of them achievable by getting rid of their wealth and the means to hoard?

Well put. A nice follow-up to the post, I think. Thanks

After skimming through the Country section of the Wikipedia article on capital gains tax, it seems that the rate of capital gains tax is commonly lower than that of labour. Quite a few places also had capital gains tax removed in favour of a total tax rate on income + capital gains.

Personally, I think it’s important to tax capital gains closer to labour tax rates, to better distribute wealth. But a more efficient way is maybe by wealth tax. I would even consider lowering taxes on businesses for a wealth tax (as to not cause exodus of the rich - the point is not to get rid of them, just their massive wealth and means of hoarding too much).

You’re probably right about fast food not being cheap nor fast anymore, but I don’t think this is the reason sales are down. That would imply

1. more chains are experiencing the same drop; and
2. this happened globally too.

Perhaps I misunderstood you, and you meant only Wendy’s and only in USA (or there’s other sources saying sales are down for other vendors and/or other countries).

What are some other reasons sales are down in the US? I’ve heard that the economy is turning K-shaped, and I imagine that’s bad news for fast food chains like Wendy’s, as a minority of rich people can only buy so much food. But this would again mean other chains experience slowdowns. So I’m not really sure

What are examples of indignities caused by social hierarchical structures I might experience but dismiss due to habit?

Edit: thanks, all! Were some examples I thought of before, but many “novel” ones too. Definitely nice to try to be explicit about it, I think

In the region of the world I’m from, waiter unions themselves are against tipping. The reasons I have heard are that

1. wage negotiations should not happen between customers and employees
2. the principle of everyone’s salary being enough to cover all costs of living
3. neither customer nor employee will benefit from service staff having too low wages
4. worker’s rights cannot practically be built using funds from tipping
5. normalising tipping will be used by the employer as an argument to pay below liveable wages

That being said, waiters are given a liveable wage here. And locals also sometimes tip for great service. But that’s just a bonus for the waiter, not the expectation.

I would personally suggest you reevaluate your pro-tipping stance given the above, but I don’t know where in the world you’re from, nor how waiters are treated or paid there

This is amazing! Thank you so much:) will look into these!

Yeah what you’re explaining is what I want to experience. If I want to know where to go, it would help to know where I came from.

Any books you recommend from the non-west?

Thanks for the thoughtful response!

I am an avid but slow reader. I think the main appeal for me to read many of the classic (western) books is so that I can get a better understanding of each author’s inspirations, which would hopefully finally help explain how we got to where we are today. But I think your answer is pulling me in the direction of starting with the books I want, and moving backwards in time for each book I want to delve further into, and then moving forwards when questions can’t be answered by the past.

I read more about HTRB today and it seems totally fine to just skim a full book briefly, and decide it’s not for me. So I think I’ll use that as well.

Thanks for mentioning HTRB!

But why is it this way? Why wouldn’t they want to charge both groups more for a higher profit margin?

Have you tried reading the books from the list recommended by Adler? I am just starting to get (deeper) into classic literature, and have looked for recommendations regarding book chronology.

I mostly see 2 camps:

1. read what you enjoy, which I find hard to determine beforehand; and
2. read some specified list in some order, which seems doable - there’s just so many different lists one could start with…

Any insight is appreciated!

Link to table numbers (not original source, as was a bit cumbersome to find the table there with a phone at 96 pages) if anyone wants to make a bar chart instead:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil_reserves