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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, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @03:11AM (5 children)
I'm so glad you brought that up.
You're absolutely right. And since 70% of the US economy is consumer spending, we should create incentives for more of that. Which will spur new businesses, new wealth creation and more prosperity.
How do we do that? By spreading it around. Not necessarily with UBI. And not necessarily with social programs (although that couldn't hurt).
We spread it around by using the tax code to *strongly* incentivize business investment in goods and services over profit taking. This will drive new business development and employment.
We spread it around by raising wages significantly. More people having more money to spend will feed revenue to those new businesses, growing the economy and employment. That spurs more investment -- in a virtuous cycle that benefits *everyone*
In fact, if we don't do those things we're in for some serious problems in our economy. Because as more wealth is concentrated into fewer hands, less money will flow into consumer spending. Because there are only so many houses, cars, cinnamon buns, miniskirts, wifi routers, china sets, laptops, duvets, half-caf soy lattes, gym memberships, Spotify subscriptions and all manner of other stuff that one person or family can reasonably use.
And when there aren't enough consumers to meet the supply, we end up in an economic death spiral.
The choice seems pretty clear.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 28 2020, @05:01AM (4 children)
100% of the economy is consumer spending. You just don't acknowledge a fair bunch of the consumers (such as the new businesses). And to speak of "consumer spending" as being a fixed amount of the economy, demonstrates that you are unaware that economic activity != the economy.
My take is that if you want new businesses, new wealth creation, and more prosperity, then maybe that should be the things you incentivize instead!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @05:14AM (3 children)
You're a disingenuous jackass.
Who said anything about it being a "fixed amount?" That's just the numbers from 2019 [thebalance.com]:
Get back under your bridge!
(Score: 1, Redundant) by khallow on Wednesday October 28 2020, @01:00PM (1 child)
I didn't mean to imply that it was somehow a constant part of the economy. The real problem here is that you are conflating a measure of economic activity (GDP is another example) with the economy. The problem comes in with your proposed solution:
So rather than incentivize new businesses, new wealth creation, and more prosperity, we're instead going to incentivize more consumer spending (for a limited definition of consumer)? The annoying thing here is that the US has been incentivizing consumer spending for the better part of a century. That noodle has been pushed hard. Any value to gain from it has been gained, IMHO.
Let's go back to that earlier post:
In the first paragraph, we're going to spur new business and new wealth by destroying much of the value of the new business and wealth. In the second, we're going to jack up the cost of employees without providing anything of value to the employer. That again will reduce the value of all business and wealth in the US. It'll spur investment - in automation and in other countries.
As to the "serious problems", you don't have that wealth is concentrating in the first place - or that even if it were, that it would be remotely relevant to us (you're doing some erroneous zero sum game thinking). Further, the measure of wealth is greatly inflated [soylentnews.org] in the first place - my take in large part due to our present, global measures to fight covid and such, which happen to neuter new investment and channel the entire planet into a few dubious safe havens. And this complaining about running out of stuff to consume indicates we've already gone too far with incentivizing consumer demand. Time to look at the warning signs.
My take on the matter? Simplify the tax code so that profit taking isn't double taxed. I suggest outright ending the corporate tax as a means. Take a hard look at the regulations that drive up the costs of employing people and cull them - for a relatively minor example, the HR department exists because regulation has created a very risky hiring/firing environment requiring specialized bureaucrats. End Social Security outright - that drives up the cost of employees by a substantial amount (about 15%). End luxury taxes. Maybe look at temporarily subsidizing employment, should that be a problem.
As to consumer spending, give the consumer a break. Let people pay off their cards for a while. They're not a resource you can dial to a new 11 every time you want more magic in your economy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @06:14PM
Get back under your bridge!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 29 2020, @12:09PM
The corresponding quotes from the balance [sic]:
Again, an economy is not just GDP or "production". Even your sources are careful enough to get that right.
As to the bridge, you're under my bridge now. Don't like it? Don't insist on being wrong.