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1. cjd (cjd@pkteerium.xyz)'s status on Friday, 26-Jul-2024 22:59:27 JST cjd
   There's actually a really good reason why not, it's this thing called a "social contract".
   
   Basically it says that the poor will not vote to take away ALL the money from the rich, and the rich will not overthrow the government and install a dictator who puts the poor in work camps.
   
   Lets suppose a country raised taxes as much as this lady proposed:
   
   1. The rich all leave the country, why should they stay? They can live anywhere, they're rich. The super rich go to private islands, the middling rich go to Dubai, etc.
   
   2. Now you have a country of only lower-middle-class and poor (nice job), well, it turns out these people don't have much money, so they're not going to buy things and they're not going to pay much tax. So now you have an economic downturn combined with a reduction in tax revenues.
   
   3. Which means the government income is going to decrease - and when the government income decreases, government has to either fire people or raise taxes....
   
   4. And guess what they do, they raise taxes. And who do they raise taxes on? Not the poor, they're the ones who have gotten power over the government to make it tax the rich. Not the rich, they've left. Who do they tax? BUSINESSES, the last remaining vestiges of the rich who have already fled.
   
   5. So with a bankrupt government running around trying to find someone to shake down so they can keep the lights on at the public administration, businesses which have been carefully tuned to operate at the knife-edge of profitability suddenly become wildly unprofitable and they close their factories and sell off the assets so the investors don't lose EVERYTHING.
   
   6. Now suddenly everybody's out of work and there's no money do do anything. At this point usually the administration has some Bright Ideas like "print money" or "law against price increases" and day by day everything keeps getting more insane, more terrible.
   
   > You thought you would eat the rich, you ended up eating the family pet.
   
   7. There is no social contract and there is no stability. Government corruption runs rampant, anything that can be stolen is. The value of property in the country collapses to nearly nothing, as nobody believes they'll be able to keep the stuff that they own.
   
   8. Then at some point, the private island guys decide that the smart thing to do would be go in and "fix" the country so that it starts making money for them again. How do they do that? Well they might use their influence to get the CIA involved, or they might use mafia, or a popular candidate.
   
   9. Abi Wilkinson gets her first (and last) ride in a helicopter.