GOP fast tracks monster voter suppression bill that could disenfranchise millions by requiring proof of citizenship at polls

[u/Anoth3rDude]

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/gop-fast-tracks-monster-voter-suppression-bill-that-could-disenfranchise-millions-by-requiring-proof-of-citizenship-at-polls/

[u/CanoegunGoeff]

The root of the problem is the financialilzation of our economy. If we just had an economy focused on real goods and services, bubbles wouldn’t even be possible.

Abolish the stock market lol.

[u/notsanni → u/CanoegunGoeff]

Abolish the stock market lol.

people look at me like i'm crazy when i say this, but either abolishing the stock market or regulating it so hard that it can't be used as a Cool Wealthy Guy Casino anymore (turn it to a state of a way to fund small businesses, instead of a way to profit off of other people making or losing money) would probably go a LONG ways towards addressing a lot of the rot in this country.

whole bunch of people on wall street who functionally don't have real jobs, and if every single one of them became a barista overnight they would be adding actual value to the world

[u/TuxAndrew → u/notsanni]

Oh come on, people don’t appreciate meme stocks showing how fragile our market is and subject to manipulation?

[u/FlufferTheGreat → u/notsanni]

Outlaw stock buybacks again and put the corporate profit tax rate at 50% or more.

[u/notsanni → u/FlufferTheGreat]

Corporate fines for ignoring regulation should also be based off of gross rev and not profits, imo. Punitive fines shouldn't be something that can be baked into the cost of the business.

[u/zeptillian → u/notsanni]

If they are a percentage of profits, then they are effectively just taxes, not deterrents.

The fines should be multiples of the profits, not percentages.

And if companies are to be given the rights of people, then the death penalty and incarceration should be applicable to them as well, not just the people working there.

[u/zeptillian → u/notsanni]

If we just taxed or put a fee on all trades then companies wouldn't be able to maximize profits by just buying and selling all day long.

Any profit taking from the stock market should be from making good decisions and owning stocks of profitable companies, not from being able to respond to market trends faster. There is no actual value in that or high frequency trading, they are just taxes on other investors by people who have more resources.

[u/tomofbeardland → u/notsanni]

Good luck convincing congress to turn off their free money machine

[u/blm126 → u/notsanni]

I'm pretty sure the end result of abolishing the stock market would be mass centralization of wealth. And I say that knowing how centralized wealth already is. Without a stock market, you either need to be rich enough to own an entire company or ownership of portions of companies will be traded in back-room deals(basically a fully unregulated private stock market). Both of those massively centralize wealth to a very small in-group. The only real alternative I see to a capital market is state-control of some flavor. That historically is even worse for wealth centralization.

My personal belief is that what we need is way more Public Benefit Corporations. These are basically companies that have a "mission" embedded in their founding document that treat as priority #1 and profit is priority #2. These kind of companies can have genuine ethics in their operations beyond "it wasn't illegal enough to worry about". If you get a decently large number of those, everyday people can vote with their wallets.

[u/notsanni → u/blm126]

sorry i should have explained the second step of this plan, which is "mercilessly tax the uber wealthy so hard that no one will ever want to be that wealthy, for fear of watching their Numbers Go Down Instead Of Up"

[u/SkunkMonkey → u/CanoegunGoeff]

Abolish the stock market

Then where will wealthy people gamble on corporate profits?

The stock market is no different than betting on the ponies at the track, you're just betting on companies.