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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, @01:39PM
In other words, you have nothing to say, but you have to say it anyway. Those "muh dumb points" are why I believe what I believe. I'm not going to change my mind just because you've noticed that I have reasons for my beliefs.
You haven't addressed them then, and continue not to address them now, leading to lack of change in "muh dumb points". What's the point of complaining that someone doesn't agree when there's no reason for them to agree with you?
So what? Remarks that boil down to "muh dumb points" or (as in the above linked post) "I haven't placed any argument before you this time." aren't criticism that will stick. They are noise. I would start with the observation that there is more than one glacier and go from there (# glaciers that are advancing versus # of glaciers that are retreating).
I use cherry picked examples when someone makes universal statements. It shows those statements are false. That's how logic works. If someone were to say "all glaciers are retreating", which is the sort of universal statement, then noting that some glaciers aren't is a valid point though it may not be enough to reverse the argument. If they say "most glaciers are retreating", then cherry picking glaciers that are retreating doesn't affect the argument.