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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 The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 28 2020, @01:58PM (15 children)
That's not exactly how they'd do it but you've got the general idea, yeah. The less fair the system, the less moral qualms there are to be found for gaming it. And no matter how you say you're calculating it, me paying a bigger chunk of my pie than my neighbor is wholly unfair.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 28 2020, @08:32PM (14 children)
That would make sense, except for two things: 1) elasticity of demand is not uniform across every class of good, service, etc, and 2) related to point 1, some things are absolute necessities to survive. In fact, point 1 is an epiphenomenon of point 2. If you want to try a flat tax, you'd be better served by what you may metaphorically think of as an "angled tax." In other words, set a floor below which income and assets may not be taxed, and take a flat share above that floor. This is not difficult.
Here's an instructive analogy, using your pie metaphor: the human stomach can, with some variation, hold X amount of pie. If one person has enough pie to just about cover X, and someone else has a pie the size of the empire state building, it makes no sense to complain about the guy with the flight-hazardous pie paying "more that his fair share" when both people can only eat X plus or minus delta of pie in one sitting to begin with.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 29 2020, @11:51AM (12 children)
Saying they have "more than they need" is both narcissism and greed. You don't live their life and you don't get to decide what they need. They are neither your subjects nor your slaves that you are entitled to dictate how their life should look.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2020, @07:54PM (1 child)
Oooh a saucy Buzzstupid. Really, this is your core error in belief which even a 3rd grader could figure out.
That is the problem with ideology, it easily becomes rigid and can cause mental illness like your unwillingness to tax the wealthy, and even your encouragement of tax evasion! You have gone insane for misty visions of freedom and meritocracy, all while ignoring reality breaking down right in front of you.
Just FYI buddy, hang in there and one day you might come out of it!
(Score: 1, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday October 29 2020, @11:08PM
I've been pointing out the "moral priority-inversion glitch" messing with his systems for years. He doesn't give a shit; in his own mind, that is very much a feature, not a bug, because he's clearly a primary psychopath and his elevation of objects and ideology over people is his way of justifying it.
He's never going to change, short of suffering hideously as a direct result of the things he believes, and given that he *is* a psychopath, even that might not do much of anything. By all means keep whaling on him, just understand that he's never going to change.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday October 29 2020, @11:06PM (9 children)
Wrong again!
It's about as close to plain deductive logic as you can get to say they have more than they need, because a single human body's needs are fairly well-enumerated by this point: a certain amount of nutritious food at proper intervals, shelter with heating and (ideally) cooling, clean water, medical care, and whatever utilities--I include transportation here--are necessary to hold down a job and interact with other humans.
I can tell I've got you by the smelly feathers when you reply with such venom and anger. This is the core of your pathology, the hill you chose to die on, and you will do anything to defend your sociopathic worldview. Unfortunately, it's not working; a critical mass of the forum's population knows what kidney of monster you are and you've lost all clout with them.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 30 2020, @03:00AM (8 children)
You've got a whole lot of "wants" mixed in with your "needs". I'll give you this opportunity to go back to the mental drawing board and fix that instead of embarrassing you by pointing out how you are not just wrong in my opinion but factually this time though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday October 30 2020, @09:33PM (7 children)
Oh right, I forgot, anything having to do with "interacting with society" has no meaning to you since you're incapable of interacting with other human beings. That doesn't make me wrong; it makes you a broken, malformed example of humanity. Go live in the woods and hunt squirrels with your bare hands.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 31 2020, @12:52AM (6 children)
Nope, you simply can't tell the difference between wanting something and needing it. Let me give you a simple test you can use in daily life: if you aren't going to die today because of a lack of $foo, $foo is not a need.
Which is entirely beside the point. Your needs are nobody else's responsibility, they're yours. It's good to help the needy but mugging innocent citizens and giving their wallets to the homeless is neither charity nor any manner of a good deed. Need is not a virtue and prosperity is not a vice.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday October 31 2020, @02:31PM (5 children)
Way to miss the point, shitbird.
Let me spell this out for you: it costs less to perform preventive maintenance measures for things like healthcare, housing, safe water (hello, Flint!) and nutrition. We, as a nation, pay MORE to deal with the aftermath of neglecting these things than we would if we just fucking fixed them up front.
You *claim* to care about fiscal responsibility. If you did, you would be on board with this. You do not, which means your true motivation is some combination of 1) "fuck you, got mine (and don't tell me about HOW I got mine, fuck you, I don't care)" and 2) "I choose to pay more so that people I deem unworthy suffer more."
Why do you think everyone and their grandmother's dog can't see this? You're not clever, you're not smart, you're not sneaky, and you're not a skilled enough rhetorician to hide any of that. It's one of the oldest cliches in the book. I can't help it if you're a defective attempt at a human being whose physical wiring makes him incapable of interacting with other humans and living in a normal society.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 31 2020, @03:42PM (4 children)
The most fiscally responsible thing to do would be for the government to not be involved in healthcare finances at all. Since they got involved and introduced near bottomless pockets of money to dip into, prices have skyrocketed out of the reach of most everyone. That simply wasn't possible before. So you need another argument.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday October 31 2020, @06:02PM (3 children)
So why hasn't that happened in other civilized nations that have universal coverage? We pay more per capita and have worse outcomes than Canada and the Nordic nations. Why the fuck did anyone mod you up? You're so wrong you're on the edge of "nicht einmal falsch." The data contradict you. You are wrong, full stop.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 31 2020, @11:22PM (2 children)
It did, dumbass. Why do you think they wanted the government to pay for it in the first place?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday November 01 2020, @04:40PM (1 child)
And, again, they have better outcomes and pay less per capita than we do. By all accounts this is an astounding success, one repeated in nation after nation. At this point, it's ignorance, stubbornness, and pure evil bloodymindedness that keep something similar from being implemented here in the US.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 01 2020, @06:03PM
Slightly less fucked up than us but still astoundingly more fucked up than necessary is your goal then? Yeah, I won't be joining you in that.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 29 2020, @11:57AM
Side note because I forgot about this bit. I don't have issue with letting folks who make under a certain amount pay no income tax. That line ends just below what a person working full time at a minimum wage job makes though. Regardless of what minimum wage is; that's another issue entirely. Folks not really part of the proper work force but just looking to pick up a little extra pocket money aren't worth the added paperwork and it's bloody stupid to tax a kid mowing neighborhood lawns.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.