5 ms·

It's interesting how you want to take those who worked hard, got a degree, bettered themselves, and who are using their skills to better society (programmers, d

by rplst8 10y ago

It's interesting how you want to take those who worked hard, got a degree, bettered themselves, and who are using their skills to better society (programmers, doctors, lawyers), and reward them with higher taxes.

mindcrime 10y ago
Apparently you missed the memo... nobody who is successful got there through hard work, sacrifice, initiative, or diligent application of their own will. It's all a result of luck and/or leaching off of the backs of the exploited masses.
- back_beyond 10y ago
  Apparently I did miss the memo. All successful people are a result of luck and leaching. TIL. Actually that is, in my opinion, a perverted world view. Surely you don't believe it.
  - pwnna 10y ago
    I think the parent is trying to say that successful people all have luck, while not all hard working people are successful. I feel this is a correct, one way relation, as being born in the right country is luck in itself.
    - back_beyond 10y ago
      Sure, this is something that I can support. The parent post seemed too simplistic a characterization.
  - mindcrime 10y ago
    That (my post above) was sarcasm, for anybody who missed it.
- cesarbs 10y ago
  > It's all a result of luck and/or leaching off of the backs of the exploited masses. I can't accept someone truly believes that. You are polarizing this discussion. While it is known that people born with an advantage have a higher chance of succeeding in life, those people have to do their part in order to succeed. That means seizing opportunities offered to them, studying hard, working hard. They might have had an easier time having access to things, but that doesn't mean they could just slack off and yet succeed.
  - mindcrime 10y ago
    I can't accept someone truly believes that. Yeah, seems incredible to me as well. But reading some of the rhetoric flowing around here over the past couple of years, it seems to be an amazingly popular point of view.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  My grandfather survived 5 beach landings in WWII and came home to open a restaurant. He worked every day (you have to or people in that industry will steal from you) to provide for his family. The only luck or exploitation he had was having the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki so he didn't have to die on a Japanese beach (his medical records at that time listed him as suffering from typhoid and dysentery - but because the war effort was stretched so thin, he was also listed as "combat ready". He would have died)
- r00fus 10y ago
  You forget - taxes pay for all sorts of infrastructure, the legal system, and the underlying mechanics that allow those successful people to find success. Tell me with a straight face that the next big startup is going to come from Somalia or hell, even Flint, Michigan.
  - mindcrime 10y ago
    I'm not following how that has anything to do with the comment you replied to. I personally am actually very anti-tax, but that's an orthogonal issue as to whether or not individual effort counts for anything or not, and whether or not "it's all luck". Note too that "success" doesn't necessarily have to mean "building a startup and having a big exit." There are many levels of success.
    - r00fus 10y ago
      Let me simplify: taxes are critical for basic infrastructure that makes you successful at all levels. If you want zero taxes, go build a business in a jurisdiction that doesn't have them and see how you fare.
_greim_ 10y ago
So suppose I'm a member of the upper class, and I always act in a selfish and rational way, seeking maximum benefit to myself at all times, without regard for benefit to others unless it also helps me. Living thus in a society with a socio-economically paralyzed, beaten-down underclass will have negative outcomes for me. Parts of town fall into disrepair, limiting my movements and driving down my property value. More bums pester me on the street. Class-warfare politics threaten my interests. Etc. Crass but there you go. In the grand scheme, I'm incentivized to avoid this scenario, and if raising taxes on myself can do it, then maybe I'd consider it, arguably without acting at all in contradiction to my purely selfish, purely rational nature.
pwnna 10y ago
While this comment may seem a little inflammatory, it does not deserve a downvote, as it brings an interesting point of discussion. In my view, there are two different things we have to balance with something like UBI: 1. Provide for those who have "fallen behind" via wealth redistribution. 2. Reward those who are doing exceptional work. We as a society are generally are good at the second point: skilled worker are generally above median income and thus at or above middle class. We also have ways, albeit not perfect, to deal with the first point: via welfare and other programs. The problem is the future. I believe that we will continue to try to automate people's jobs, because it is lucrative to do so: if you automate 10 persons' jobs away, you can sell that automation for 8 persons salary, which creates savings for your clients. However, as we automate away more jobs, how do we ensure that people can still live? We can't just leave a large portion of the population to die on the streets. We must come up with a compromise solution that ensure that both people are taken care of and people are rewarded with their good work. I personally don't know how to balance this without higher taxes on the rich and well off, to the point that I have accepted that this is probably the way of the future. I feel that if we do not apply wealth redistribution, society may become unstable and I would end up worse than paying extra taxes each year. Lastly, as a sibling comment addressed: those that do well have good luck, which is built on society's shoulders, so I find it natural to give back. I understand that others might not think this way, tho.
- Annatar 10y ago
  And, as everything is completely automated, what use for money is there? (In the following argument, I am assuming free energy via solar / water / wind combination, which is perfectly doable today, but isn't fully implemented for logistic and political reasons. Yet.) If you have everything fully automated to the point that it doesn't cost you or anyone else to produce it, what would be the point of attempting to sell it? And why would anyone buy anything, if everything is automatically produced for free?
  - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
    Even if scarcity of labor goes away, there will still be scarcity of energy and natural resources. We would still need money to apportion the limited resources. We would likely be fantastically wealthy by the standards of today, but there would still be some limits.
aninhumer 10y ago
The reward for working hard is that they're being paid more in the first place. There are plenty of arguments to be made about progressive taxation, but this idea that it punishes the rich is tiresome. Reducing the size of someone's reward is not punishment.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  "Punished" with enormous salaries and slightly higher taxes. Please sign me up for such punishment--that sounds wonderful.

by rplst8 10y ago

mindcrime 10y ago

Apparently you missed the memo... nobody who is successful got there through hard work, sacrifice, initiative, or diligent application of their own will. It's all a result of luck and/or leaching off of the backs of the exploited masses.

back_beyond 10y ago
Apparently I did miss the memo. All successful people are a result of luck and leaching. TIL. Actually that is, in my opinion, a perverted world view. Surely you don't believe it.
- pwnna 10y ago
  I think the parent is trying to say that successful people all have luck, while not all hard working people are successful. I feel this is a correct, one way relation, as being born in the right country is luck in itself.
  - back_beyond 10y ago
    Sure, this is something that I can support. The parent post seemed too simplistic a characterization.
- mindcrime 10y ago
  That (my post above) was sarcasm, for anybody who missed it.
cesarbs 10y ago
> It's all a result of luck and/or leaching off of the backs of the exploited masses. I can't accept someone truly believes that. You are polarizing this discussion. While it is known that people born with an advantage have a higher chance of succeeding in life, those people have to do their part in order to succeed. That means seizing opportunities offered to them, studying hard, working hard. They might have had an easier time having access to things, but that doesn't mean they could just slack off and yet succeed.
- mindcrime 10y ago
  I can't accept someone truly believes that. Yeah, seems incredible to me as well. But reading some of the rhetoric flowing around here over the past couple of years, it seems to be an amazingly popular point of view.
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
My grandfather survived 5 beach landings in WWII and came home to open a restaurant. He worked every day (you have to or people in that industry will steal from you) to provide for his family. The only luck or exploitation he had was having the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki so he didn't have to die on a Japanese beach (his medical records at that time listed him as suffering from typhoid and dysentery - but because the war effort was stretched so thin, he was also listed as "combat ready". He would have died)
r00fus 10y ago
You forget - taxes pay for all sorts of infrastructure, the legal system, and the underlying mechanics that allow those successful people to find success. Tell me with a straight face that the next big startup is going to come from Somalia or hell, even Flint, Michigan.
- mindcrime 10y ago
  I'm not following how that has anything to do with the comment you replied to. I personally am actually very anti-tax, but that's an orthogonal issue as to whether or not individual effort counts for anything or not, and whether or not "it's all luck". Note too that "success" doesn't necessarily have to mean "building a startup and having a big exit." There are many levels of success.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    Let me simplify: taxes are critical for basic infrastructure that makes you successful at all levels. If you want zero taxes, go build a business in a jurisdiction that doesn't have them and see how you fare.

_greim_ 10y ago

So suppose I'm a member of the upper class, and I always act in a selfish and rational way, seeking maximum benefit to myself at all times, without regard for benefit to others unless it also helps me. Living thus in a society with a socio-economically paralyzed, beaten-down underclass will have negative outcomes for me. Parts of town fall into disrepair, limiting my movements and driving down my property value. More bums pester me on the street. Class-warfare politics threaten my interests. Etc. Crass but there you go. In the grand scheme, I'm incentivized to avoid this scenario, and if raising taxes on myself can do it, then maybe I'd consider it, arguably without acting at all in contradiction to my purely selfish, purely rational nature.

pwnna 10y ago

While this comment may seem a little inflammatory, it does not deserve a downvote, as it brings an interesting point of discussion. In my view, there are two different things we have to balance with something like UBI: 1. Provide for those who have "fallen behind" via wealth redistribution. 2. Reward those who are doing exceptional work. We as a society are generally are good at the second point: skilled worker are generally above median income and thus at or above middle class. We also have ways, albeit not perfect, to deal with the first point: via welfare and other programs. The problem is the future. I believe that we will continue to try to automate people's jobs, because it is lucrative to do so: if you automate 10 persons' jobs away, you can sell that automation for 8 persons salary, which creates savings for your clients. However, as we automate away more jobs, how do we ensure that people can still live? We can't just leave a large portion of the population to die on the streets. We must come up with a compromise solution that ensure that both people are taken care of and people are rewarded with their good work. I personally don't know how to balance this without higher taxes on the rich and well off, to the point that I have accepted that this is probably the way of the future. I feel that if we do not apply wealth redistribution, society may become unstable and I would end up worse than paying extra taxes each year. Lastly, as a sibling comment addressed: those that do well have good luck, which is built on society's shoulders, so I find it natural to give back. I understand that others might not think this way, tho.

Annatar 10y ago
And, as everything is completely automated, what use for money is there? (In the following argument, I am assuming free energy via solar / water / wind combination, which is perfectly doable today, but isn't fully implemented for logistic and political reasons. Yet.) If you have everything fully automated to the point that it doesn't cost you or anyone else to produce it, what would be the point of attempting to sell it? And why would anyone buy anything, if everything is automatically produced for free?
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  Even if scarcity of labor goes away, there will still be scarcity of energy and natural resources. We would still need money to apportion the limited resources. We would likely be fantastically wealthy by the standards of today, but there would still be some limits.

aninhumer 10y ago

The reward for working hard is that they're being paid more in the first place. There are plenty of arguments to be made about progressive taxation, but this idea that it punishes the rich is tiresome. Reducing the size of someone's reward is not punishment.

ryandrake 10y ago
"Punished" with enormous salaries and slightly higher taxes. Please sign me up for such punishment--that sounds wonderful.