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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: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 28 2020, @01:04AM (2 children)
I chalk that up to bad perception. For starters, my objection is not religious, it's practical and common sense. There's a lot of bad stuff you can strongly mitigate by merely saving a half a year or more of your wages, fuck you money [soylentnews.org] (as the Puritan Calvinist etc etc would call it). You job gets cut? You have six months. Covid hits or house burns down? You have six months. The boss sucks? Six months.
It's a common sense solution to uncertainty about the future and an effective rebuttal to wage slavery. And if you save more, you can do more down the road when bad times hit.
So why does the above sound like some sort of weird freak show to you? Is your life so devoid of good advice that you can't recognize it when you run into it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @01:54AM (1 child)
Social Darwinism claims that the poor are poor due to bad genes, which causes them to be less intelligent, more prone to maxing out their credit cards (as khallow puts it) than investing wisely be delaying gratification, and saving their semen until they have "made it". This is why we should not have poor houses or a welfare system, or UBI, because it will only encourage these behaviors, and promulgate the bad genes that are supposed to be weeded out by Natural Selection and the Survival of the Be Bestest (or, a Final Solution, if the Market does not work). See, khallow? You are quite actually a Calvinist, and a Nazi!!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 28 2020, @02:00AM
So in other words, definitely not Social Darwinism then. Glad we sorted that out.
The "literally nazi" acknowledgement of defeat. I'll employ the obvious rebuttal. You are quite actually an idiot, BUT you don't have to stay an idiot. Your move.