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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Human beings largely object to income inequality and are willing to correct injustice—unless, of course, it rattles their status quo.
That's the conclusion of a recent study looking at how far people would go to redistribute resources between the haves and have nots. Participants fiercely objected to "when winners become losers and losers become winners," researchers note in the paper, published in the latest issue of Nature Human Behaviour.
Researchers initially recruited Indian, American, and Chinese participants take part in an experimental game they called "the redistribution game." The gist of the game was simple: Participants were given a number of scenarios that would redistribute a fixed sum from a richer person to someone poorer. Participants were told the original standing of wealth was assigned randomly.
In the first scenario, participants had to decide if they wanted to transfer two coins from person A (who already had four coins) to person B (who had one). Researchers note the "transfer would reduce inequality," (as there's less of a gap between them), but person B would end up one coin richer than person A, reversing their status.
In the second version of game, participants were asked whether they'd transfer one coin to person B (where person A ended up with three coins and person B with two coins). Researchers ran a third and fourth scenario that allowed participants to transfer coins from person A to B, where the outcome still left person A with significantly more coins.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16 2017, @05:03PM
"You overdignify Thatcher's thought terminating cliché by elevating it to a proverb. Anyone who uses this phrase is dealing in the currency of facile political slogans, not meaningful ideas. I reject the premises implied by the question."
Answer not given. What limits are provided in the system where everyone below the very top tier, as per your prior post, comes out ahead? You can only soak the rich so much, and since they're a tiny minority, you have to bleed them hard to get much at all.
So: how would you determine what you would presumably describe as a fair tax, and how would you differentiate it from an unfair one? Verifiable metrics, not warm fuzzies.
"Your passages about health care are, bluntly, either false or where they are true reveal a disturbing indifference to human suffering. A healthcare system that only covers those capable of paying is not among the candidates of acceptable solutions. It does not meet the minimum standards to be considered. It is a moral obscenity. I have no more obligation to rebut it than I do the proposal that cannibalism is sound agricultural policy."
Didn't propose anything of the sort. Pointed out that the USA doesn't have anything even resembling a free market in health care - and even so the outcomes, where financially supportable, are world-class. If the problem is one of distribution, please explain which bathwater you will throw out and which babies will have to go with it.
"We see employed also the old trick of never assigning to capitalism the failures of capitalism, and never assigning to socialist policy the successes of socialism; keeping two sets of books."
I assign all sorts of failure to capitalism - but it was social democracy that was under discussion. If you want to differentiate the two by comparison, feel free. But explain not merely your goals, but also your methods - because as illustrated, there are massive problems with the methods at which you hint.
"That's rounded off with a lot of "just so" hand-waving and procedural quibbling under the absurd premise that every single failure in every other similar country would be replicated, simultaneously, here. As if we could learn nothing."
Fine. What have you learned, and what would you change? I promise to read every word. Probably a couple of times, and analyse carefully. The floor is yours.
"And if that wasn't enough you're an anonymous climate change skeptic. Although, at least one sharp enough to realize it's unacceptable to come right out and say so. I've already spent more time replying than your comment deserved and no more will follow."
I'm sceptical of many things. In some cases, I've been proven right, in others wrong. That's life. But I don't accept because I said so from anyone purporting to be a scientist - and that includes climate scientists. There are serious open questions about positive and negative feedback loops, interactions with independent variables and the rate of change.
... but you're taking your rhetorical ball home and sulking rather than actually defending your position. Fair enough.
Case still not proven, and given that the advocate rests his case, I think that one gets swept away. Next, please?