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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: 2, Informative) by sea on Sunday July 16 2017, @12:19AM (35 children)
I think the issue is that people have an innate sense of what is Fair.
and no matter how you slice it, taking something away from someone who has it just isn't fair to that person.
You might be improving the state of the poor person, but at the end of the day, everybody is going to know, deep down, that the rich person didn't do anything to deserve an injustice like that.
The only way forward is to generate new coins and give them to the poor persons, not steal from people who haven't done anything wrong.
Now if the richer person willingly donated, it's different. Strong-arming the goods out of them is theft, though, plain and simple.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16 2017, @12:27AM (13 children)
Rich people shouldn't pay taxes because taxes are unfair to people who earned their money. Tax the poor instead. Poor people are already poor and they know how to live with less so let's give them less. That's fair.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16 2017, @12:42AM (12 children)
A lot of folks don't realize that when USA's personal income tax was thought up, it was a tax on what would today be called billionaires; Joe Average paid nothing.
Over the years, The Rich have bought off the politicians and shifted the bulk of that tax onto The Working Class.
This is what Oligarchs do.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday July 16 2017, @01:28AM (11 children)
Bullshit. The proper poor pay not one dime of income tax. The proper rich pay very little except to their accountants. The middle class are the only ones paying huge chunks of their income to support this bullshit system.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 16 2017, @05:25AM (10 children)
The middle class are the big target - no point in taxing the poor, you just have to give it back to them anyway to keep them from resorting to crime to survive. Taxing the rich is too much trouble for the ROI - there aren't enough of them to make a real difference, and besides - they employ legions of middle class lawyers and accountants to keep their taxes low, so, in effect, these loophole laws are creating jobs and generating tax income that way.
No, the bulk of the US economy is still the middle class, which is why it's worrying to see it disappearing. We're going to have to start taxing the rich more if they insist on hoarding all the wealth, unless we just want to kill all the poor before they have a chance to revolt. People may find urban homeless "revolting" today, but that's minor compared to the problems the rich had in the French Revolution. Then, there's the problem that if you kill all the poor, the rich won't stay rich for long - sometimes I wonder if they realize this, it often seems like they don't.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday July 16 2017, @10:33PM (9 children)
Huh? The top 1% in the U.S. possess ~35-40% of all U.S. private wealth. The top 0.1% possess ~20% of all wealth. I'm not sure who you define as "rich," but "aren't enough of them to make a real difference" isn't true when they own a significant chunk of the pie.
(I'm not arguing about the fairness or unfairness of tax rates or brackets -- but the idea that the rich are a relatively insignificant portion for tax purposes just isn't true.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @12:22AM (2 children)
Income != assets.
We keep having this damn non sequitur show up.
"Tax the rich! Tax the monkeyfuck out of the rich!"
"There ... aren't that many of them, and their share of income isn't that big, so that even if you simply confiscated all income for the top 1% you wouldn't get as much as your social programmes require."
"But they have so much!"
"Not the point. You're not proposing just taking their shit - but taxing their income."
"Then let's take their shit!"
"Compensation ... eminent domain ... yeah, you'll have to change the constitution to do that."
"Fuck the USA! The system's broken! Bring in socialism!"
"You cray."
The fact is, even if you levied huge fat asset taxes to the point of being confiscatory, all you'd achieve (besides driving mobile assets out) is dropping the very value of assets like a rock because all of a sudden every car, every boat, every strip of grassland, every bit of business turns into a moneypit. And if you made it conditional upon a certain degree of accumulated wealth (net or gross) that would be a de facto confiscation from a subgroup of the population, which would almost certainly fail constitutional scrutiny - unless they applied the broken logic of the drug war, thereby rapidly converting the USA into one of the worst places in the world to own assets and build wealth.
Not exactly sterling public policymaking, yo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @01:16AM (1 child)
...and the rich stuff their money into mattresses where it gains them no additional income.
...and real estate has never been know to appreciate in value.
Don't you even -think- about things before you put your silly notions into comments?
.
Tax the rich
...or don't allow them to use The Commons to make money.
Let them buy their own rights of way then build their own private roads, put in their own electrical wires and communications fiber, etc.
.
eminent domain ... yeah, you'll have to change the constitution to do that
Gawd, you are a moron.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @03:52AM
"...and the rich stuff their money into mattresses where it gains them no additional income."
"...and real estate has never been know to appreciate in value."
Missing the point. If you're taxing it at a rate commensurate with income, it's effectively an income tax and we're back at square 1 - they don't actually have, on balance, as much income as you'd think. Certainly not enough, in the top 1%, to finance all those delicious social programmes. The top 1% get maybe 20% of the nation's income (USA, here). The top of the pyramid spikes high, but it's pretty narrow. If you want a broad-based tax on income, you need to go a lot deeper.
If on the other hand you're simply taxing the raw value of assets, you're inducing a whole different problem. I'd thought it would have been fairly clear from the post above, but evidently it wasn't so let me spell it out:
Bob Bigbucks has a Massive Mansion that he lives in. Very elitist of him. On paper (i.e. unrealised value) it might or might not accumulate cash value, but unless he sells, that's essentially imaginary. He lives in it, he's not renting it out, and it requires maintenance. Sure, it's nice that he has it, but it is the proverbial money-pit, only justified by the idea that the alternative is renting, and it might actually increase in market value in the long run. In the short run, as we all know, the value fluctuates.
Now Greta Government comes along, wearing her bustier and carrying her riding crop, and tells Bob Bigbucks to cough up money because he has an asset. Not because he sold an asset; not because the asset is making him money; because it just is. Because it exists. Because it's there. Not just an extra 2% on his property tax bill, mind you, but a big enough chunk to make a major difference to the USA's medical bill.
Bob does his sums. Bob looks his mansion square in the eye, and says: "Sweetie, it's been great. We'll always have the good times. But there's this little beachfront property in the Bahamas I want to live in, so ... hasta la pasta."
If it's just one guy, who cares? But it's not just one. It's dozens, hundreds, thousands of Bobs all putting their property on the market around the same time. And it's not just mansions, it's yachts, it's cars, it's vacation cabins, it's farms, it's wads of stock in ExploitoCorp, it's everything that constitutes a convertible asset.
Now, let's take a little trip back to the theory of supply and demand, shall we? What happens to the value of items on the market, when there's a glut of items on that market, and when the costs of ownership of those items have just spiked? Anybody? Bueller? That's right - the market falls like a balloon with a brick in it. Asset values? Wow. Yeah. Not so much.
The good news for Bob, assuming he could even close a sale, is that he now has some cash in hand, and the eye-watering loss he just took at least can come off his taxes, but now he looks around and determines that the best place for this cash is somewhere, anywhere, but here where assets are being taxed merely for existing, at rates that it would be polite to call extortionate. (The annual budget, for those wondering, for health care in the USA has a few zeroes ... might it be in the region of twelve? Yeah, a little property tax today is nowhere near that kind of money, especially not when we're soaking the rich preferentially.)
So we're either taxing the crap out of assets because wealthy people are blood-sucking vampire squid, or we're taxing the crap out of their incomes. One way or another they're not motivated to stick around and say: "Please sir, may I have another?"
But let's not forget other assets: assets that show an affirmative return. Bob Bigbucks also has rental property. Of course he does! He's Bob! Dozens, hundreds of families living on his land! Now all of a sudden those evil rental assets turn into ... what? Rental problems, because not only is he being taxed on the whole rental income thing, but the rental asset itself just suddenly got a hell of a lot more expensive to own.
Oooh, this is a tough one. What can Bob do to get out of this problem? Well, he can kick people out, resubdivide, and rent half sized apartments for the same money to recoup his losses. Or he can raise the rent like a firework going up. Or he can simply ditch the asset because it's now a losing proposition. Hell, he could sign it over to the IRS and let them worry about it. Either way, Bob ditches the thing that was supposed to be a nice nest egg, but is now a leech on his balance sheet. And again, we have Bobs in their thousands doing the exact same thing. The little people, who aren't being taxed, but are customers of people who are being soaked, suddenly find that rent is crazily expensive. Or the building just got sold out from under them and they need to get a U-Haul before the eviction notices start coming.
The long and the short of it is that confiscatory policies, regardless of how you dress them up, don't actually tend to have the effects desired. Assets tank, people leave (or find loopholes, or find loopholes while they're leaving) and then you just have a new selection of 1%ers, just poorer than the previous lot. One way or another, you're still stuck with your social programme and a worse situation.
And while we're at it, I can point out that this would apply just as easily to other assets, such as cooperative co-ownership ...
On another front, it's worth pointing out that estate taxes have had similar results on a smaller scale. They've created an entirely artificial liquidity preference in estate planning, just so that you don't have to ditch major family assets at firesale prices. This is a classic example of unintended consequences, where the asset-wealthy (and often income-poor) are essentially pushed into shoving their money into virtual mattresses. Woo.
"...or don't allow them to use The Commons to make money. Let them buy their own rights of way then build their own private roads, put in their own electrical wires and communications fiber, etc."
Yeah, funny thing with that. That was tried during the Gilded Age, and it turns out that it's a great way of lending them power. They build exactly what they need, and don't build what anybody else needs, and then they charge everyone else to use those assets. This is actively counterproductive. Many company towns had company roads, company lighting, company steam pipes, company everything. You may want to check the details of this, but the consensus is that it did not make for a very good outcome.
Instead, what happened is that things like rights of way were taken over by the government, for use by rich and poor alike, in the interests of giving the poor suckers at the bottom a break. It may come as a shock to learn this, but this was actually very good for small business, even though Bob Bigbucks was only too happy to run his trucks and vans on public roads.
"eminent domain ... yeah, you'll have to change the constitution to do that"
"Gawd, you are a moron."
Quote the whole thing. But what the hell, since you're having trouble with the nuances here, let me break it down. Just taking the shit of rich people runs into a problem, because confiscation without compensation is actually illegal. This is one of the big hurdles for projects such as Hyperloop. Confiscatory taxes and legislated confiscation ("takings") are outlawed by the constitution. If you don't fix those items, or find a root password to the constitution (Drugs! Terrorism! Think of the children!) the basic idea of confiscatory approaches is doomed - the most that can be done is taxation, and in that context you run into asset value problems, or simple magnitude of income problems.
Now, I won't call you a moron for not figuring all this out on your ownsome, but I will say that your scholarship is lacking. Fortunately, that can be improved with study.
You gotta lotta work to do.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 17 2017, @03:22AM (5 children)
So, are you proposing taxing static wealth holdings? Property taxes are some of the most unpopular, and most likely to drive the wealthy overseas - the smaller tax havens make a point of not taxing property, or income, only consumption, specifically to attract the wealthy to their jurisdictions.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @04:00AM
That certainly does sound a lot like what Athanasius is proposing.
And property taxes, by the way, tend to work out to be wickedly regressive. It doesn't look that way at first, and if you're only looking down Broadway, it wouldn't be - but it's not. They take effect out in rural areas, where the vast majority of people range between scraping by, broke and broker. There's a lot of detail to understand, but property taxes are one reason that Washington (the pacific state, not the swamp) has the most regressive taxes in the nation.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday July 17 2017, @04:36AM (3 children)
Sheesh -- do I have to do all the thinking for everyone? No, I'm not proposing increasing property taxes or proposing anything else for that matter as I stated quite clearly at the end of my first post. I'm just noting that there's a significant chuck of the pie concentrated in the "rich," so even if they are a small fraction of the population, the "ROI" in taxing them is not insignificant.
For the record, the top 1% also have something like 22% of total annual income in the U.S. too. Do some research before assuming a bunch of things I didn't even say.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @05:17AM
The 22% number is substantially disputed. Not in terms of order of magnitude, but in terms of a substantial proportion. If I remember correctly, Piketty came up with that number, along with fellow researchers, but made some rather aggressive assumptions when doing so. Other numbers I've seen are below 20%.
That aside, what you DID say was "the idea that the rich are a relatively insignificant portion for tax purposes just isn't true."
In the context of where to put taxes, it does raise the question of what taxes to demand of whom - and since those were options on the table, guessing at what you are advocating seems reasonable.
But aside from that, your observation by itself isn't that helpful anyhow. It doesn't address questions such as the people who earn nothing (like babies, the indigent, college students living off loans rather than jobs) and it leaves the question of households a little open. It also takes no account whatsoever of living circumstances. If you're in the 1% of household income, and you're in rural Mississippi, you're doing just great! If you're living in Manhattan, you're ... kind of doing OK. There's a massive difference.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 17 2017, @12:11PM (1 child)
Getting closer to reality - and I agree with Warren Buffet, it's not only unfair but also insane that his receptionist pays a higher percentage of her income as tax than he does.
But, you're talking about "attacking" capital gains, and all the other sacred cows that have been elevated to protected status in the last 30 years. That 22% number is including more than just what gets reported on 1099s and W2s.
In the early 70s, the rich were supposed to be paying >50% of income as taxes, though the loopholes rebates and incentives were legion. In a sense, I think they were right: the tax laws were essentially dictating to the rich a limited number of options of what to do with their money unless they wanted to give over half of it to the general fund, and that's insulting. I'd much rather tax the rich at 40% flat, no loopholes, rather than 60% with various incentives that can bring that down to 20 if they invest as they are told to by the government.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @03:46PM
For the record, Warren's chief gripe related to more than just the income tax structure in general, but also things like capital gains tax rules.
The 22% number was arrived at by ignoring things like transfers - at which point vast segments of the population earn a big, fat 0. This is not a reasonable way of calculating where we are now, because it doesn't reflect things like - well, even as prosaic as the humble food stamp.
I find it amusing that what you're recommending is so close, in spirit, to what the Reagan-era congress achieved, by dropping top rates like a rock, but also killing a lot of tax exemptions. Financial big bosses found themselves paying more tax because their favourite tax dodges had vanished.
The real problem is that taxes have a couple of roles, the most obvious of which is stuffing the government's coffers, and the next most obvious of which is social engineering. Hence, sin taxes on cigarettes and so on.
The government can hardly resist the temptation to socially engineer - but that means that the most compliant people can get their tax bills greatly reduced as long as they're inclined to play the government's game.
Flat taxes means that the government is giving away power, and they hate that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by julian on Sunday July 16 2017, @01:23AM (18 children)
The rich are rich because society existed and gave them the opportunity to make that money, and a fair amount of luck is required on top of that. You cannot name a single person who achieved great wealth entirely on their own. They had to be born and raised at the very least. The rugged individualist is a myth; simply trace their life back to when they were in diapers which someone else was changing.
(Score: 1, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday July 16 2017, @01:30AM (15 children)
You have to do some wicked mental gymnastics to buy that bullshit. Make sure to stretch first.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday July 16 2017, @02:44AM (14 children)
God damn it, why don't we have a "-1, Fractally-Wrong" mod? That statement is wrong on every scale you examine it on. I realize you've said you're here to troll, but at some point good taste needs to win out over the urge for your daily dose of shitzngiggles.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16 2017, @10:00AM (4 children)
It's called "Disagree". Which means exactly the same thing as "Wrong" since believing the latter means that you take the former position, and claiming the former means that you believe the latter. "Disagree" is something you don't like because it implies that YOU may even be the one who is wrong. Live with it; we all are sometimes.
(Personally, I would actually prefer "Wrong". The Newspeak way of always being forced to turn all dissent on yourself is creating a society of butt-hurt victims. If you don't for example like someone's holy book, say it is wrong instead of that you don't believe it. You can still be polite when holding a strong position.)
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday July 16 2017, @11:30PM (3 children)
If I'm not mistaken, though, "Disagree" is a neutral mod, which does not affect post score. Parent was asking for a "-1, factually wrong" mod, which doesn't exist. Problem is that such a mod would likely be abused, just as "troll" or "flamebait" sometimes are already... so I'm not sure it would actually help things.
On the other hand, it would be helpful in some circumstances, because sometimes posts get modded up by people who don't know better, and then someone comes along with actually references, links, etc. that show it was complete BS. That doesn't necessarily mean the parent was acting in bad faith (deserving a troll or flamebait or whatever). I suppose "overrated" is the general purpose mod for this scenario.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @12:26AM (2 children)
Asked for "fractally wrong" not "factually wrong". Read again.
Also, we have enough of an issue with modbombing going on. Giving people with an axe to grind yet one more hammer is highly unlikely to make anything better.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday July 17 2017, @04:28AM (1 child)
I can read and I saw the spelling the first time. Given the rest of the post and the fact that "fractally wrong" doesn't make much sense in that context (or really any context) I assumed it was a misspelling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @04:32AM
The hint is in the following sentence:
"That statement is wrong on every scale you examine it on."
Fractals have a self-similarity characteristic, where they are similar to themselves in appearance at widely varying scales.
(Score: -1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday July 16 2017, @10:23AM (8 children)
Because being wrong does not detract from a discussion, it creates more informative discussion if your harpy ass can stow the venom long enough to correct the record.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16 2017, @07:09PM (7 children)
Oh look, TMBis back and full of shit. We all need some continuity in life, buy TMB yours is just sad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @12:28AM (6 children)
What, the fact that Azuma keeps stroking that big, throbbing, silicon virtual hateboner for TMB every chance it gets?
Yeah, that is kind of sad, but it's not Buzz's fault, is it?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday July 17 2017, @02:24AM (5 children)
LOL, hateboner. Seriously? Understand something: I don't hate him, for the same reason I'm not trying to make him see sense either. And that reason is that it is not possible to "save" someone so far gone, nor would any amount of hate or any emotion reach him.
My only intent in engaging his posts is to make sure anyone reading them gets a quick followup dose of the antidote to whatever memetic poison he's decided to spew at that particular point in time. Think of him as something like a small, mobile Superfund site of the mind, a walking (waddling?) cognitohazard. He himself is lost, and for all I know was lost since before I was born. It's sad, but this is all that can be done.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @04:06AM (4 children)
"God damn it, why don't we have a "-1, Fractally-Wrong" mod? That statement is wrong on every scale you examine it on. I realize you've said you're here to troll, but at some point good taste needs to win out over the urge for your daily dose of shitzngiggles."
That's your idea of a memetic antidote? It's basically poo-flinging, with somewhat less panache and grace than the second-rank chimp at the zoo.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday July 17 2017, @07:03AM (3 children)
Believe it or not, yes, it is. Let me explain: first impressions matter a whole hell of a lot. If you were new here, you'd see just two people up there, one poster and one respondent.
Now, Uzzard has stated that he is here mainly to troll. Leaving aside the fact that that's about as convincing as someone who admits to "ironic racism," having that pointed out directly below means that a casual viewer will be less likely to take him seriously, in this post *or any other future one.* That right there is a sort of global if low-strength immunization to anything he further spews.
Ripping apart individual posts of his is actually *less* useful, mainly due to the way human minds work. This is a consequence of two things: 1) it's easier to, as it were, shit on the rug than clean a shitstain out of the rug, and 2) human minds are lazy and will be annoyed with a massive wall-o-text. They may also, if even subconsciously, suspect that the person posting said wall-o-text in response actually has a weaker position than in reality *because* it took a lot of text. (In other words: tl;dr: "tl;dr").
Make sense now?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @03:36PM (2 children)
"Make sense now?"
In theory, sure.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice.
In practice I see one moderately snarky but relatively sober voice, and one shrieking, hysterical, over-emotional response to everything the sober voice says.
If you want to be the persuasive one, you have to look saner.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday July 17 2017, @04:55PM (1 child)
Oh, you again.
See, your response tells me one thing: tone is more important than content to you. That's fine; unfortunately a lot of humans work that way :/ All it means is you can't be saved either. Have fun in the playpen shittin' yourself with all the other useless degenerates.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @04:30AM
You say:
Excellent point. Let's look at the content as well as the tone of your original comment:
Tone: Ah yes. Nothing but unadulterated sober professionalism at work here... well, maybe a little schoolyard whining ... or no, actually, it's straight from the heavy trolling playbook.
Content: A statement to the effect that the parent is wrong, and a self-proclaimed troll, and an appeal for good taste.
So what did TMB originally state to merit this response?
... which was in response to:
... which was in turn a response to:
Given that julian was referring to the value of society, the reasonable interpretation of TMB's statement appears to be a rejection of the connection of society's role to the justification for expropriating the property of the wealthy.
At its most feeble, TMB's position is at best an expression of opinion on the merits of socially-motivated expropriation. You then sail into the argument with a personal criticism topped off by unsupported contradiction.
This is like a classic Navy argument: flat statement (julian) followed by flat contradiction (TMB) followed by personal abuse (AH).
But you know what? I'll bite. Explain to me, slowly and with specific reference to the interpretive details, precisely how you're providing what you are pleased to call a memetic antidote, because right now I don't see it, and as someone who reveres notions well-represented among the liberal arts, your stooping to his level (and worse) is like watching a fellow soldier shoot himself in the foot.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16 2017, @11:09AM (1 child)
Correct.
Not within the context of your preceding sentence, only within the context that terms like self-made are employed.
Not every wealthy person had a good upbringing.
[citation needed]
Your implication is completely wrong. No matter their start in life, those who take the risks and do the work find there are no barriers to wealth acquisition or social mobility.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @03:22AM
No matter who take the risks and do the work find there are no barriers to wealth acquisition or social mobility. Except for the fact some have much more to fall back on, get a lot more help often undeserved. Your start in life matter way more than any of the things you mentioned.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 16 2017, @05:04AM
You're right, about the sense of "fair," but what's wrong in this picture is when the "wealthy" haven't done anything to get that wealth - simple luck of the draw.
If you watch how lottery payouts evolve over time, what you'll see is that the "big winner" pot gets bigger over time, at the expense of the runners up. Florida lottery payouts (last time I checked) are only 50% return to the players, the other 50% goes to the state, so the odds really suck to start with, but then the bulk of the winnings goes to the hardest "pick six" winner, while those who match 5 or 4 or 3 numbers get a relatively tiny return compared to the odds of how hard it was to hit the match they made.
So, if you have such a system where everybody pays in a dollar a week - do you prefer a game where everybody gets $0.50 per week back, or one where most people get nothing back, and one person a month becomes a multi-millionaire. People prefer to dream that they might be the one who wins. I actually know a coworker of my Uncle's who won $14M in a lottery, took a nice ride on his boat once... but I also know literally thousands of people like him who have played the lottery and net-lost money, never winning anything of significance.
Personally, I think the lottery is an interesting form of entertainment, and also a potential tool for screening people for gambling addiction problems... I see no reason to abolish it, but if people are spending more than 1% of their disposable income on this form of entertainment, they should seek counselling. Similarly, I think basing the larger economy on similar schemes is lunacy, but I feel like a very significant portion of our economy is built on pointy-top pyramids that more resemble lotteries than anything resembling fairly distributed compensation for services rendered.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16 2017, @09:01PM
But that doesn't work because the rich don't store their wealth in coins, they mostly store it in property, stocks and shares. If you increase the money supply you are mostly hitting those with cash savings, who perhaps aren't poor, but likely aren't rich either. So effectively you are taking from people with a bit of money, but not the really rich who can easily afford it. Is that fair?