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If you bring up UBI, or other reforms, you'll inevitably get someone who brings up: "voting yourself someone else's money".
You could convince me, except that things have gotten to an absurd state.
I look at some graphs of wealth inequality and it is unimaginably shocking. I never dreamed it could be this bad. More than 50% of the US wealth is owned by 5% of the people. [1] 35% is owned by only 1% of the population.
This image from this article also tells the story.
I'm not going to argue how accurate those numbers are. Rather, I will extrapolate the trend.
Let's continue the current trend to its logical absurd conclusion. The entire planet is owned by one single person. You (and everyone else) are one of the wage slaves in the bottom 99.99999999 % of the population (at least 8 decimal places). [7.5 billion people, minus that one person who owns everything, then divided by 7.5 billion people.]
Naturally, we should respect property ownership. Somehow this one person deserves and "earned" the wealth of the entire planet through his hard and diligent efforts and deserves to own everything and everyone. It is absurd on its face.
At this logical endpoint, it clearly seems that the rest of the planet should seize the wealth of the one person.
Wealth transfer has already happened. And is still happening. Republicans are just fine with this as long as it is all trickling upward.
Yes, "voting yourself someone else's money" involves taking away some of the absurd amounts of wealth hoarded up by a few. Amounts of individual wealth that one person couldn't spend in a lifetime; then leaves to others, who themselves can't spend it in their lifetime.
Not as a proposal, but just to make a point, hypothetically, if all of these people who exceed this threshold had their net worth capped at $100 Million, they would still be just fine. Yes, really! They would still live in fabulous homes, drive fabulous cars, and eat whatever they wanted, travel wherever and whenever they wanted -- for the rest of their natural lives.
In case my "one man owns the world" didn't get the idea across, I'll be more blunt. Any time too few people have owned way, way too much, and too many had nothing, there is always an uprising. I'm not proposing an uprising. I'm merely warning it is inevitable. Hopefully not in my lifetime. Maybe it would be better to solve this peacefully where the wealthiest, while heavily taxed, still end up, after taxes, fabulously wealthy beyond the dreams of most everyone else. I'm not proposing reducing all the rich people's wealth to some cap. Just that they should pay their fair share. Why are they the ones who get the tax cuts?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Wednesday October 28 2020, @03:17AM
What's wrong with the potlach?
What's wrong with parties and degeneracy generally?
I've generally been on the other side, I've always been a bit of a degenerate, and proud of it. I'd expect you to be the one to bring up the downsides. I've always been of the opinion that debauchery, like virtue or oxygen, is necessary for life - though each can become poisonous in excess.
The hangovers, there's a start. The consequences. Tomorrow you're homeless/tonight it's a blast.
I have no problem with people spending their money on debauchery, generally. You tell me. What are the negative consequences of debauchery?
But let's refer back to the parent journal entry as topic and context. It's not just that some people foolishly spend their money on debauchery. It's that, combined with the fact that some people have control and use of enormous amounts of money they didn't earn - such huge unearned fortunes that a handful of people 'can buy and sell' millions of their brethren. This creates a situation truly primed for abuse - not just the sort of abuse that inflict horrible sufferings on individuals, but also the sort that renders our entire species as a whole less fit to survive.
"a $15k per month wine bill just isn't a big deal"
In the context within which the man was navigating at the time, that's a fair statement.
In the context of a world where children starve to death and die for lack of a few cents every day it's obscene.
I'm not judging the man; it may be that all we can expect of him is to navigate the obstacles life gives him and accomplish some good along the way, and it may be that he managed to do just that. But in the broader context, it's still a warning sign for our species; a reminder that for all our advances in physical technology our social technology has yet to conquer some of the basic difficulties that have plagued our species for tens of millennia.