Comments by "Maria" (@maria8809ttt) on "You have to tax wealth to grow an economy" video.

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  2. In many cases the wage losses, redundancies and erosion of labour rights that have resulted from privatisation have exacerbated since the economic crisis of the private sector banks. This has helped to increase inequality. All in all, the evidence suggests that none of the transfers to private ownership have resulted in improvements to societies well being. Research by the IMF and European universities shows that there is no evedence that privertised firms are more efficient. In fact, in many cases privatised firms rely on higher public subsidies than they needed when they were in public hands. To add insult to injury, despite the rhetoric in favour of private management, many of the firms involved in the acquisition of privatised assets are, in fact, other countries' state owned companies : Chinese, German and French state owned companies, for example, own large stakes in Europe's formerly public utilities. Arguments that the public sector could fund enterprises more cheaply (both because it could borrow more cheaply and because it didn't need to generate profit) we're dismissed by proponents of privertisation. The privertisation lobby claimed that the difference in funding costs lay in the fact that the private sector would now explicitly assume the risk of the enterprise - a factor they said was buried in public accounts but was ultimately a liability to the 'taxpayer'. It was a lie. In many cases, the privatisation failed outright and the asset was returned to public ownership (Swissair, for example) because the state maintained the risk of the activity, despite the claims by proponents of privatisation to the contrary. The indelible fact is that in the case of large scale national infrastructures and systematically important industries - such as the financial sector - the risk can never be shifted from the public to the private domain. For these, private ownership amounts to little more than a case of privertisation of the profits and socialisation of the losses.
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  8. Transactions within the non-government sector may alter who owns the financhel assets and the form those assets are held in, but they do not alter the net position of that sector overall. For example, a household might use some cash it holds in a bank deposit to purchase a corporate bond. The person's financhal asset is now a bond rather than cash and the liability shifts from the bank to the corporation that has borrowed the funds. But there is still the same quantity of assets and liabilities in the non government sector overall. For the non-government sector to accumulate net financial assets (financial wealth) or lose net financial assets, there has to be a source of financial asset that is 'outside' the non-government sector. This can only be the government sector as in, the consolidation of the treasury function (fiscal policy) and the central bank (monetary policy). Consolidating the currency - issuing arm of government (central bank) and the spending and taxing arm (treasury) would allow for a better understanding of how net financial assets can enter and exit the non-government sector. It is the transactions that are conducted between the consolidated government sector and the non-government sector which determine the level of net financial assets (denominated in the national currency) that are held by the non-governmentsector. This is basic macro. Without government all the private sector can do is shift assets around. Increasing wealth in one area will decrease it in another. ​ @abody499 
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