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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 Thursday October 29 2020, @03:43AM (4 children)
I missed this humdinger.
High income US person habitually spends to the nub on ephemeral things like ski trips and parties. On their last trip to Vegas, they bet too much and had to borrow from the House. Now, they're moderately in debt to some casino (plus their credit card bills) which they'll gradually pay back over the subsequent year, just in time for their next Vegas foray. No serious assets (future income is not an asset, remember?) and they owe some money. By the metric of wealth inequality they are poorer than the above African.
That's how it can happen. Sure they could easily slide into the "cannot readily pay it back" scenario by borrowing more and more, but it's quite easy to owe more than you own, and yet small enough that you could pay it back quickly.
Moving on
Will any government survive? No, they all die just like people. I'll note that the US's ~233-244 year stretch is really good by such standards. The US has had a good run.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday October 31 2020, @03:19PM (3 children)
You're missing your own point. They *might* be able to pay it back, but as you admit, they do not have the assets to do it immediately. They're relying on an expectation of future income - an expectation that may not come true, for any number of reasons. The credit-vampires want you to think that's just fine - because that's how they wind up with all the money.
"I'll note that the US's ~233-244 year stretch is really good by such standards."
Not really. The Republic of Venice lasted 1100 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Venice
San Marino has been around even longer, and still exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Marino
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 31 2020, @03:43PM (2 children)
All wealth has risk associated with it. Maybe Apple has been stuffing the channel for years and there's ten billion iPhones gathering dust in a warehouse in Texas. Maybe your house burns down. Maybe the country you bought those highly reliable bonds from, decides to default. Maybe credit default swaps aren't as sure thing as advertised. It's not a particularly big risk in comparison that one might lose their job and fail to get another comparable job in a timely manner.
All wealth has expectations. And while it is uncommon, it's not rare that those expectations aren't met.
I think out of the few dozen countries in Europe, there are maybe two or three present countries that have an older constitution than the US: definitely Switzerland and Iceland. The EU, a government over comparable population, is probably on the verge of needing a new constitution already.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday October 31 2020, @05:44PM (1 child)
But you're just evading by changing the scope. The question is, can they pay it now? Not in some imaginary future time that may or may not come to be; now.
A lot of bad economics is built on the same sort of evasion.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 31 2020, @07:36PM
Of course they can. The required payments for that debt are all in the future.
Sorry that's no different than any other sort of wealth. It's all dependent on expectations not just of the present, but of the future.
So is a lot of good economics. Much of this depends on scale and the value of the activity in question. Borrowing money just to gamble on Vegas is not good economics. I never claimed it was. But you can as a result appear to be poorer than dead broke by the metrics of wealth inequality, even though it'd be a reasonable expectation that you could pay that debt off in a short while. That informs me that wealth inequality as currently measured is also bad economics.