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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, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday October 28 2020, @02:19PM (19 children)
If there was less wealth divide, poor people would be able to save and invest -- even if it isn't as much as rich people.
Wealthy people exploit and call it investing. Usually a purely selfish motive to try to hoard more of the planet's resources.
When Lucifer was cast out of heaven down to Earth, theologians debate whether he landed in Florida or Texas.
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 29 2020, @11:42AM (18 children)
Poor people can save and invest. What's confusing you is that the ones who do so stop being poor and you no longer get to see them when you look specifically at the poor.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday October 29 2020, @03:12PM (16 children)
You may not understand the definition of poor.
If someone can barely pay their rent and food, they probably don't have anything left to save.
When Lucifer was cast out of heaven down to Earth, theologians debate whether he landed in Florida or Texas.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 30 2020, @02:49AM (15 children)
Thinking like that is why you would stay poor. You save even if it means beans and rice five times a week for dinner, ramen for lunch, and coffee for breakfast.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday November 18 2020, @08:50PM (14 children)
And then whatever you save (and more) is grabbed by the hospital after you run your health down. Then the same better off people who said they should have eaten nothing but beans and rice with ramen cluck on about how if they didn't have such terrible eating habits they wouldn't have needed the hospital, or how they should have spent $700/month out of the $100/month they were saving on health insurance.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 20 2020, @02:37AM (13 children)
Oh bullshit. People can live on damned near anything and you don't actually have to go to the doctor for anything you're going to get over on your own.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday November 20 2020, @03:27AM (12 children)
So your advice for sudden chest pain is go lie down and hope it gets better?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @12:55AM (11 children)
My advice for anything that isn't likely to kill or cripple you is to take some OTC meds and STFU. Taking your precious little shit spawn to the doctor for every runny nose is a significant contributor to the epically fucked up price of healthcare in the US.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday November 22 2020, @10:52AM (10 children)
I'm all for home treatment of anything that can be treated at home, but that still leaves many opportunities to be sent back past square 1 with a single incident that might kill or cripple you. It only takes one such incident per family over a period of 20 years or so.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 22 2020, @02:03PM (9 children)
See, you're not wrong in your defining of that problem. Unfortunately you're treating the symptom instead of the cause. If your healthcare is overpriced, the solution is to cause it to not be overpriced. It is not to make others pay your overpriced costs. Which is all entirely off topic from the fact that you can always tighten your belt a little to save for a rainy day.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday November 22 2020, @06:23PM (8 children)
I would be all for proper socialized healthcare to control the costs, but I was referring to the current conditions, not a hypothetical society that we do not currently live in.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 23 2020, @12:16PM (7 children)
Socialized healthcare is treating an ingrown toenail by amputating the leg mid-thigh. It is not the worst possibly way to approach overpriced healthcare but it's damned close.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday November 23 2020, @06:45PM (6 children)
It's the worst solution to the problem except for all the others.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 24 2020, @02:13PM (5 children)
Except no, it's not. Free market capitalism with someone ready to call bullshit on monopolistic abuses is. Once the players start getting to dip into bottomless pockets you get the fucked up nonsense we have now instead of the fairly affordable healthcare we had prior to doing so.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday November 24 2020, @08:26PM (4 children)
Except nobody has been calling bullshit on monopolistic practices in decades (if ever). Hell, the FDA is actively handing out monopolies like they're Cracker Jack prizes.
In properly socialized medicine, nobody is offering bottomless pockets. That's why countries with socialized medicine spend far less per capita on healthcare and get better outcomes.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 25 2020, @03:27AM (3 children)
And, as always, your solution is to treat the symptom with something even worse instead of tackling the root cause.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday November 25 2020, @06:43AM (2 children)
So paying less than half as much for better results is worse?
It sure sounds better than more of the same.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 28 2020, @12:04PM (1 child)
It doesn't cost less. You only think so because you don't count the choices taken from you as part of the price.
And, yes, I would rather address the root causes of the problem than have a doomed-to-fail, symptom-treating solution that only shithead socialists would come up with. Yes, even if it does temporarily appear to be slightly less fucked up than what we currently have. Putting hydrogen in a flat tire will make it functional again but the side effects are much worse than doing nothing over the long term.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday November 28 2020, @06:57PM
It LITERALLY does cost less. If fact, it costs half as much. What are these nebulous choices that are so important for you that you're willing to leave a large percentage of the population without healthcare (or impoverished BY healthcare) in order to get? Why do you think socialized medicine takes them away from you?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2020, @07:39PM
Hey Buzzy you in here being stupid? Sweet, keep it real, you're my rock bro!