SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds.
Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world's foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.
The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.
"We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff" said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF. "If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done."
"This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is," he said. "This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a 'nice to have' – it is our life-support system."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by exaeta on Wednesday October 31 2018, @08:23PM (12 children)
How about this? Adding a 1% income tax for each child you have, 2% if not married. (so 1% on two people or 2% on one).
Us singles are oppressed under the current tax code, why don't we reverse the situation?
Also get rid of the mortgage tax deduction.
This would fix the overpopulation problem.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday October 31 2018, @09:13PM
> This would fix the overpopulation problem.
I am not sure it would. These are my thoughts:
The rich don't have an income (or rather, they can make their income be whatever they want), plus all kinds of other tax tricks means they can avoid said "child based income tax", and have as many children as they want.
The poor don't have an income (or if they do, it is so small as to not be subject to income tax), that is why they are poor. So said "child based income tax" would not apply to them, so they can have as many children as they want
The only people who are rich enough to be taxed, but not rich enough to avoid said taxation, are the working/middle classes in developed countries, who are already taxed to the hilt, and cannot afford to have 2 kids (most have 1, if any kids at all). That is why they are in rapid population decline.
Slapping another tax on those who are already in a population decline due to low birthrates, while not affecting those who have a lot of kids, will not really make much of a dent in world population growth.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday October 31 2018, @11:31PM (5 children)
"Not married" != "not supported by partner" - Marriage is a legal / religious state that has no inherent bearing on income.
And 2% is too low. Needs to be much higher, IMHO, otherwise it's neither a deterrent or a significant aid to the social load those kids present.
Fix housing prices and get rid of mortgages entirely would be better. Most mortgages are horrific examples of usury.
And get rid of all deductions. You earn, you pay a percentage. No advantages for anyone. The mortgage deduction is hilarious: you get a break for supporting the lenders. Good grief, could the tilt of the playing field towards them be any more obvious?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday November 01 2018, @03:57AM (4 children)
And a 1% tax on your total assets, with maybe an exemption for your primary residence.
1% is a reasonable fee to pay to society for respecting and protecting your assets, and is neither debilitating nor onerous. It is not difficult to invest your hoarded capital to produce a return exceeding 1%.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday November 01 2018, @06:32PM (2 children)
Sounds okay to me. Although I think if your primary residence has a high value, say in the top 40% of value range for all of the homes in your state, it shouldn't be exempt. Clearly you're stashing value there (or in the land itself) instead of in the rest of your net worth, considerably more so than the average person has the ability to do so. If your land is used otherwise, such as a farm, then it should be taxed that way except the part your home is actually sitting on up to perhaps 100x100 feet (just handwaving there.) When municipalities allow land values to get so far out of hand (like some Cali cities, and others similar), it's probably time to live somewhere else anyway. Unless you like paying absurd amounts for the same land and structure you could have much less expensively somewhere else, of course. The view, the stores, the job, whatever. Me, I won't play that. I think it's outright dumb.
Loopholes for big spenders are bad, IMHO. They always turn into escape hatches.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday November 01 2018, @09:18PM (1 child)
There are two main reasons for the home exemption;
1/ old people on low incomes. If you've lived in your little house in the same area for the past 40 years, paid off your house and then retired, it is not fair to suddenly hit you with a huge tax bill just because the area got popular.
2/ increase the rate of home ownership. Exempting the home would tend to decrease the cost of owning relative to renting. Higher rates of home ownership come with many societal benefits.
Also, I'm not sure about the US, but in AU we have 'Council Rates' which are basically a local government tax on real estate. It's usually between 0.1% and 1% and is the main source of income for local councils. Hitting the home again would be double-dipping. However, you could always put a limit on it. Maybe the first million dollars of home value is untaxed.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday November 02 2018, @01:59AM
1/ Keeping in mind we're speaking of proposed mechanisms: a home's taxes should only change via external evaluation with actual improvements, and/or the cost of related infrastructure. New city water pipes, repair of your particular street, that sort of thing. So then it's fair to make changes, as long as they're proportional. The current system (in the USA, don't know about your country) is ridiculous; first they pretend the home has a totally fictional new value they invent that has nothing to do with its actual value, though you're neither selling it or taking out a loan on it; then they assess taxes on this utterly imaginary value they cooked up. They keep upping this imaginary value, when in actuality, the home is aging, costing more to maintain, and is decreasing in value precisely as a car does as it is used and it ages. The root of the problem, of course, is the ridiculous inflation behind the whole mess. I don't think it should be legal. You pay X for a house and property, it should never be assessed for more than you paid unless you actually improve the house and/or the property. Which, frankly, most people do not manage to do. You sell it for more to someone, fine, tax that transaction, and then tax THEM at that rate, because that's the value of the home (again, keeping in mind that the actual value will decrease after that, again.)
2/ You mean bank ownership. How many people can actually afford to buy a home? What they actually do is have the bank buy the home, able to take it at any violation of the loan terms (and sometimes, just "because") and then, if they're really, really diligent, 30 years later they can actually own the home. Except the tax people and the courts can still take it. That's how it works in the USA. "Ownership" of a home is about 99% illusory here. In any case, if home values weren't so ridiculously inflated, this would not be a problem in the first place.
Here in the US, if the tax authorities were only double-dipping, it would be a huge relief to the taxpayers. :/
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Sunday November 11 2018, @09:36PM
Asset tax is unlikely to be looked upon favorably. Nor would it be an appropriate use of government power.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @01:43AM (4 children)
Far from it, this would address the current thorn in your personal income paw, and very little more.
A global child tax: first one is free for every man and woman, after that every additional child incurs an additional lifetime 10% tax on the parent(s)' post-tax income to defray the future costs of protecting the environment from the additional child(ren). Taxes so collected to be administered by a world governmental organization devoted to preservation of the ecosystem we all depend on.
Everyone, everywhere - fair and equal except that some countries will have miserable enforcement performance and require "advisory assistance" from the WGO.
This still might not be enough, but the tax rate could be reviewed every decade and revised according to how world population is tracking.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday November 01 2018, @11:03AM (1 child)
Yeah, but a one world dystopian government won't happen. The earth (for all the perceived shrinkage in size due to improvements in communication) is still a large place, and you will not get all the peoples of the world to agree to your solution.
The only way your "top down" approach would be if every country on earth was a dictatorship, and their populations serfs. A little bit like China in that sense, but far more extreme, with far better enforcement and monitoring. To keep control over such a wide ranging would require a massive amount of resources, and would not work, long term.
Every single dictatorship eventually succumbs to collapse, because people are individual agents, and generally are unwilling to have their entire life controlled by a government.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @12:27PM
I did mention "advisory assistance" - the UN already fields minor peacekeeping forces, with a tithe from the parents of every population expansion child an organization like the UN could exert enough influence on minority dissenters to keep population expansion taxes collecting worldwide within reasonable tolerances. It would require a majority (of world military power) buy-in to get rolling, I think US, China, India and a majority of Europe would be enough to make it stick after establishment.
Of course, a key component of political acceptance is to offer more carrot than stick. Compliant states to receive food, energy and infrastructure aid, etc.
As for "dictatorship" - the nature of the organization's funding and mission statement should prevent it from growth to anything resembling a totalitarian state. Its sole source of funding is the parents of population expansion children, said funding is not terribly unreasonable (even the church demanded a tithe, when they could...), and its sole mission statement is preservation of the world ecology through use of those funds taken from population expanders. If an individual, or country full of individuals, feels the desire to expand the global population - that is perfectly acceptable as long as they comply with payment of the global population expansion tax.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Monday November 19 2018, @07:07PM (1 child)
A 10% tax is objectively too much. I don't think more than 5% would be reasonable, and that's on the high end.
4 children brings you to 80% effective tax rate? I don't think so.
I stand by 2% during the duration that the child is under 18.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 19 2018, @07:49PM
Taxes aren't about fair, often they aren't about what things cost, mostly they are about behavior modification.
The aggregate behavior of 7 billion people some years in the future is virtually impossible to predict, if 10% tax causes a population crash, then great, let's ride that wave down and start tweaking it for a soft landing around 2 billion stable population. I suspect 10% is not enough to generate the required (not desired) drop in birth rate to even bring peak population in under 10 billion, and if you elect me king of the world, I promise to raise that new child tax rate 1% per year until such time as birth rates do start declining.
What to do with the excess tax income? Certainly it can defray the bulk of other income and sales taxes, leaving them to focus on behavior modification rather than simply being large enough to fund desired social and infrastructure programs.
🌻🌻 [google.com]