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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: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @04:29AM
I accept the data but it's unfair to imply that red states are mooching off blue states.
People who are conservative are more likely to choose to live in rural areas. One political divide is that rural areas are very red and urban areas are very blue. Suburbs used to be generally red but have trended blue. States that have larger rural populations tend to be red states.
Providing services to rural areas tends to be more expensive than in urban areas. Lower population density means it things like infrastructure and schools cost more per capita than in urban areas where the scale makes them more cost effective. The economy in rural areas tends to be based more on agriculture and is less industrial. The goods that are produced in these areas tend to be commodities like livestock, corn, wheat, and soybeans.
We need to feed the population. We need the goods produced in rural areas just as much as we need the goods produced in urban areas. One could argue that subsidizing rural areas helps pay the cost of living for workers in those areas, particularly because services are generally more expensive per capita. If subsidies are eliminated, the workers still need a living wage and rural areas need enough money to pay for essential services. If subsidies are eliminated, one possible outcome is that commodities become more expensive. Alternatively, farmers and ranchers may be unable to compete against goods produced in other countries. Neither outcome is a good one.
I agree that there's a net flow of government funds from blue states to red states. That doesn't mean it's a problem. This is essentially the same reason we provide tax credits for low income workers. Those workers are performing necessary services like being janitors and cleaning our workplaces and stocking supermarket shelves. We need someone to do those jobs. Those workers are performing an essential service so we should make sure they're paid a living wage.