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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) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday October 27 2020, @11:35PM (10 children)
All attempts for saving money by poor has been countered with combined inflation, taxes and wars for centuries.
Reality check for just you: How many generations would take you and your family to save a billion? Thousands of years?
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @11:46PM
Saving != Investment
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 27 2020, @11:53PM
Or by the poor becoming not poor.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 27 2020, @11:58PM (3 children)
It'd probably take a few hundred years. So maybe 8-16 generations, if we consistently saved and invested, but didn't obsess over it. But then, I'm not trying to create large new businesses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2020, @12:02PM (2 children)
Really? Assuming you reinvested it all at 10% you would need to save a million a year to get a billion that fast.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 29 2020, @02:17PM (1 child)
If I invested $1, that is a single dollar, now at 10% per year (post-tax), I'd have a billion dollars in 217 years! Compound interest is a powerful thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2020, @10:23PM
If you invested a single dollar at 10% fees would immediately take your balance negative and in 217 years you would owe enough to pay off the national debt.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 28 2020, @05:23AM (3 children)
AC's response below is fitting - no one in the working class is going to get wealthy simply by saving.
I will add to that, the fact that working class people are actively discouraged from saving. Balanced budgets don't seem to be taught in school anymore. Those credit card offers keep coming, with all the special offers and rewards. People are expected to stretch their credit just as far as it can go. Open an account here, there, everywhere, and run everything up to the limit. Few people live with a budget, almost everyone is over extended. And, that is just where that "ruling class" wants them.
Bad enough that people once over extended to buy a nice home, today young adults are roped into the credit scheme to get a degree, so they can't even afford to get roped into the mortgage scheme. Today's adults are already trapped, and they will never even have a paid-off home to show for all their struggles.
The student's parents were fools to encourage the kids to get roped in. The students were fools to be suckered in. And, the credit companies were fools as well. Those student loans are never going to be paid off, someone is going to have to eat a lot of those notes. And, that "someone" will most likely be taxpayers. All of those Wall Street establishments holding the notes will be deemed "too big to fail" again, and the bailout will benefit everyone - except the former students.
How many people's mortgages were paid off with that last big bailout? None that I know of. Wall Street ate all that money up, and passed along none of the benefits to the people with mortgages.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2020, @12:11PM
When my parents bought their first house in the sixties, it cost about three years of my dads wage. He was an assistant at an engineering place on well below the 'average wage'. Twenty years later, they moved and their new house cost about three years of his 'tech officer' wage (about the national average). Fast forward to now, and a house costs more than ten years of the average wage, and with interest requires a thirty year mortgage. Trapped indeed.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 30 2020, @01:12PM (1 child)
Why it should be? Having a mortgage wasn't the problem with the economy back then. Personally I don't think there was much that needed bailing in the first place.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 30 2020, @07:30PM
Why should the little guy's mortgage NOT be paid off? Gubbermint could have made grants to some millions of struggling homeowners to pay off their mortgages, the individual debts would have been paid satisfied, and the banks would have received the money, albeit days later.
Why should the rich bastards be bailed out, and the little bastards be left hanging?
Oh, I forgot. Some of you big business lovers believe in socialism for corporate risk but not for the people.
IMO, any time that government gets involved in a bailout, a subsidy, or any kind of socialist bullshit, the primary aim should be to help as many individuals as possible. Bailing 2 million small people out of debt will benefit Republican's beloved Megacorps.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.