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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 Friday October 30 2020, @01:20PM (4 children)
The deathbed confession is such a wonderful plot device.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday October 30 2020, @09:23PM (3 children)
You don't need to confess. I don't want a public mea culpa from you; no, if anything, I hope you *do* die in this state, to make certain you reincarnate poor and/or racial minority and/or somewhere on the queer spectrum, preferably all three at once plus getting screwed over by a "libertarian" landlord or boss.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 30 2020, @09:47PM (2 children)
My take is that if I have to get born into a ridiculously contrived scenario in order to achieve your sense of justice, then it's your sense of justice that's at fault, not my alleged perfidies.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday October 30 2020, @11:41PM (1 child)
You don't pay attention to a single fucking thing people say, do you?
YES, you are doing wrong: you support policies that cause needless suffering and misery to others. The very fact that you don't think you've done anything wrong is WHY you are going to go to Hell and then reincarnate in a position to suffer from the imposition of the very policies you support.
You were, for whatever reason, given a life of relative comfort and safety in which to learn the hard lessons of humanity in an easier, hands-off way. If you fail to pass the theory exam, as it were, then you'll have to sit for the practical...*after* detention. I don't expect you to change in this lifetime, and I don't expect anything I say to change you. Only suffering will do that.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday October 31 2020, @01:11AM
Your idiocy is not my inability to pay attention.
Support that claim. Don't just say it.
Once again, that is code for "I have nothing to say, but I have to say it anyway." You keep claiming that I'm not listening, but then you say bullshit like that. Sorry, I can't do anything with your nothing.