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We already know how to cut poverty, based on other countries like the Nordics where poverty is lower: Take more from the rich and give more to the poor. Unfort

We already know how to cut poverty, based on other countries like the Nordics where poverty is lower: Take more from the rich and give more to the poor. Unfortunately, rich people love money too much, so we're not allowed to talk about the real solution, and have to talk about all these fake solutions instead.

programminggeek 10y ago
That's all well and good, unless you are the one being taken from. Why should someone's effort be rewarded with thievery?
- djrobstep 10y ago
  Quite. Owners of capital and land must stop their ongoing thievery from workers.
- jgh 10y ago
  It's not thievery, it's taxation. If you advantage from the system you should pay back into it.
  - stevendhansen 10y ago
    It can be both.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      Taxation is neither moral nor amoral. It's just tax which depending on it's size and how it's used and where have consequences good and bad depending on who you ask. There isn't some objective version of tax or non-tax.
- deleted 10y ago
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- themartorana 10y ago
  This is where shit goes off the rails before it's even begun. "Take" needs to be so much more well explained, because on its face, I agree with you! But, when looked at on balance, simple things like fair working wages also help redistribute wealth down the ladder but aren't burdened with the hyperbole of the rich being mugged by the poor. The argument is forever framed as three sets of hands - one with cash, one in the middle that pries the cash from the first set and hands it to the third. We don't need to talk about direct redistribution by force. Fair market practices and regulations that prevent one from taking unfair advantage of another do the trick just fine.
- Retra 10y ago
  You can't make a profit from your efforts without infrastructure, and you can't build and maintain infrastructure without a lot of people. Paying the people who support your infrastructure with the money you made off it isn't thievery, it's an investment in your society and culture.
- Consultant32452 10y ago
  I feel like that's too simplistic a way to look at it. In this country we've passed many laws to weaken and even remove entirely a previously strong union system. Did all the workers who are today making less money and/or have less benefits as the result of union busting have their money "taken away?" Some estimates suggest that the lack of enforcement of immigration laws have lowered the income of people without a high school diploma by as much as 7%. The rest of us saved a ton of money. Did those poor people have their 7% "taken" by the wealthy business owners who hire those illegal immigrants?
- nickthemagicman 10y ago
  You know I can't agree with you more. That's why we need a 100% inheritance tax. So someone's effort doesn't go to someone who doesn't deserve it.
  - morgante 10y ago
    I'm not sure if you're being farcical, but I actually strongly support a 100% inheritance tax. It might be challenging to enforce, but it seems like the most equitable solution by far. There's nothing wrong with people earning lots of money from their own work, but they shouldn't be able to pass that on to heirs who have done literally nothing to earn it.
    - RangerScience 10y ago
      This is definitely more complicated than that. In the most basic sense, how much should I be allowed to do what I want with my own money? A step more complex; giving to your kids is, AFAIK, one of the biggest drivers in why people try to make money during their lifetimes. A step more liberal: Inheritance (the accumulation of wealth by a family), again, AFAIK, is an important part of upwards mobility. The current setup is definitely sub-optimal. 100% would also be sub optimal, and, I'd argue, worse than what we've got here, because it's another thing that rich people could dodge that not-rich people couldn't.
      - morgante 10y ago
        > In the most basic sense, how much should I be allowed to do what I want with my own money? It's not your money once you're dead. As far as I'm concerned, dead people don't have any rights. > A step more liberal: Inheritance (the accumulation of wealth by a family), again, AFAIK, is an important part of upwards mobility. On the contrary, I think it hurts economic mobility a lot more than it helps. If you're competing for opportunities with people who inherited millions of dollars (without doing anything themselves), it's a lot harder to advance yourself. Non-rich people don't generally leave enough of an estate for it to matter in the first case. We could easily exclude the first $100k for that matter.
- InclinedPlane 10y ago
  You can look at is as "theft", sure, but in many ways that's not 100% accurate. The idea that "the rich" have earned 100% of their wealth is a hypothesis, not a fact. It's a hypothesis that would only be true if the market were also 100% free and fair. It would only be true if no amount of government regulation or law ever unfairly advantaged those who already had wealth and power. It would only be true if there were absolutely no power imbalance between workers and employers, etc. None of those things are true, so we can fairly confidently say that some portion of the wealth of most of the rich has not been gained fairly. So then the next question is, obviously, how do you fix that? How do you ensure that the market, regulations, employment, etc. are all perfectly fair and free? And the answer there is, you very much cannot. At best it's an enormously difficult problem beyond the scale of any problem that has been tackled by human civilization to date, at worst it's fundamentally intractable. The next question then becomes, so how do we make it more fair in the easiest way we can in the near-term? And the answer there is wealth redistribution. Power and wealth perverts fairness of markets, including labor markets, and it perverts our systems of laws and governance. That's not to say that wealth is purely evil, there are many up sides to the accumulation of wealth, and personally I'm a big fan of "capitalism" (for lack of a better word). But we need to recognize that it is very much not only a flawed and imperfect system but a system that inherently contains many aspects that are poisonous to the operation of a peaceful and sane free society. The longer we ignore that, which we have for almost 4 decades, the worse those inherently problematic aspects become, and the more those who see the truth (that the system is very much rigged against the little guy) become increasingly intolerant of the continuation of the system that they perceive is systematically putting them at a disadvantage, and that leads to "very bad things".
  - RangerScience 10y ago
    > has not been gained fairly. This is a... let's go with "subjective" - this is a subjective interpretation of "fairness". It is totally fair to profit from the effective functioning of civilization. I think what you're actually trying to say is it's not fair to claim credit for that wealth without sharing credit with the system that created the situation within which you could make it. I tend to think of wealth in the current system like water and hydropower, except that "natural" resting place of wealth is in one big pile (at the top), instead of one big pile at the bottom (oceans). (I could go into why, but I think, observationally, it's pretty clear what the steady-state trends towards). With that in mind, power is extracted (and work done by that power) as water moves towards it's resting state. Other systems (that are importing entropy) then work against that trend (evaporation), keeping the cycle going. Wealth accumulates. Something outside the system of wealth (such as government) needs to "import entropy" back into the economy so that work can be extracted as wealth moves back towards it's resting state. Does that make sense? (Please, poke holes in my model!)
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Taxation is not thievery. You and I are living in a society which have been created by the collective work of our forefathers. You aren't responsible for 100% of the value you create since a lot of the value of the work you perform are supported by things others have created for you and which aren't reflected in your salary. Taxation is just that taxation. If you want to be free of the "thievery" just don't participate in the economy created by the rest of society. Don't use computers which fundamental development have been largely funded by government. Don't use the internet which was largely funded by governments. You can't have your cake and eat it.
  - JanezStupar 10y ago
    And you stop telling people who have funded the governments what to and not to do. Sound fair?
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      I'm not telling anyone what they have to do. I am telling you what they have done and why you can't claim 100% of your salary is based on your own working.
      - JanezStupar 10y ago
        I know for a fact that my forefathers have tried to avoid governments and their meddling fingers as much as possible and have fought really hard in various ways to keep the government of their lives as much as possible. Thus I owe it to them to keep fighting the government creep towards authoritarian totalitarianism. What have your forefathers been doing that you are now arguing that 100% of what I have earned and paid taxes on already, should get taxed again at some later date - as a punishment for me not spending it all?
        ThomPete 10y ago
        You are confusing two very different things. I too don't want government to be too big or too all encompassing but that has nothing to do with whether some sort of taxation could be considered ok. One things is certain though. If you had to pay for everything yourself you wouldn't be able to afford it. The price of many of the things we consider obvious today are based on many years of accumulated hard work by others than your forefathers which you benefit from today. So we can discuss whether we pay too much tax, I am fine with that discussion. But positioning it as all taxation being thievery is both incorrect and simplistic.
brightball 10y ago
Don't Nordic countries have some national investment fund that has about $1 million / citizen right now? What's the US surplus per citizen right now?
- sluukkonen 10y ago
  That's Norway. The other Nordic countries weren't lucky enough to have significant numbers of oil.
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    And even Norway is in trouble and may tap into its Sovereign Wealth fund much sooner than expected. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-05/norway-seen-plundering-its-wealth-fund-to-ward-off-oil-risks http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-05/norway-see...
- markvdb 10y ago
  Norway has a giant sovereign wealth fund. Denmark, Finland and Sweden don't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...
ThomPete 10y ago
Denmark have poor people too and more importantly those have less of an opportunity to make it out of their poverty once they are there. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/the-american-dream-isnt-alive-in-denmark/494141/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/the-amer...
- dagss 10y ago
  That is not what the article says -- it is criticizing Denmark for being as bad as or almost as bad as the US (i.e. NOT worse). This about sums it up: "Social mobility in Denmark and the U.S. seem to be remarkably similar when looking exclusively at wages—that is, before including taxes and transfers."
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    And I am telling you Denmark have poor people too. I.e. redistribution isn't helping against that. I linked to the article to point to the fact that poor people also have a hard time getting out of their poornes in Denmark and it's actually worse because the high "minimum salaries" makes it almost impossible for them to get a job.
    - dagss 10y ago
      You say "and it's actually worse because the high "minimum salaries" makes it almost impossible for them to get a job." --- is that from another source or this article?
- deleted 10y ago
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NhanH 10y ago
> We already know how to cut poverty, based on other countries like the Nordics where poverty is lower: Take more from the rich and give more to the poor. Unfortunately, rich people love money too much, so we're not allowed to talk about the real solution, and have to talk about all these fake solutions instead. We don't talk about the real solution because none of the person that want to "take more from the rich and give more to the poor" proposes one. The problem isn't what to do, but how to do it. Courtesy of being born in a Communist country, I had to learn Karl Marx and such in middle school. And almost every single statement on this comment chain reads like my term exam questions (I'm not being facetious here). He has a whole chapter on general formula of capital, and another one on rent seeking behavior. It's all good idea ... until you actually try to implement it and the resulting government is nuts. Take those with 100% inheritance tax idea. Are you gonna also tax gift at 100%? Cause it's obvious what will happen. Now we're adding special case that parents are not allowed to gift their house to their children?
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  Reminds me of this: The poor spendthrift vagabond says to a rich man: "I have discovered there is enough money in the world for all of us, if it was equally divided; this must be done, and we shall all be happy together." "But," was the response, "if everybody was like you, it would be spent in two months, and what would you do then?" "Oh! divide again; keep dividing, of course!" https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/barnum/moneygetting/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/barnum/moneygetting/
  - manicdee 10y ago
    Implying that the only difference between rich and poor is spending habits. Where in the real world we have confounding factors such as racism, sexism, cultural norms, differing costs of transit and habitation, limited opportunities and limits on resources.
    - _andromeda_ 10y ago
      It seems to me like it's the only one that matters because it's the one that an individual has the most control over. Other confounding factors are externalities that as an individual you cannot always control but guess what you can always do? Save, save, save and if you can, innovate and reap the fruits of your discipline and hard work. Collectivism should be avoided.
TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
I tend to lean toward agreeing with you, by the way, but the other side of this argument is: We already know that giving money and food to poor people doesn't resolve poverty, when the aid / social welfare stops the poverty returns because aid / welfare prevents people from innovating your way out of poverty. Of course, which side of the argument a person lands on probably depends on their moral politics, see[1] - basically I'm referring to the progressive vs. conservative divide. Fortunately for me I live in Australia where we have social welfare to the tune of $527.60 a fortnight for a single adult[2], and $952.80 for a couple. But of course we still have bunches of poverty, but I've never been to the US so I can't really say how it compares. Also, I think the example of the Nordic countries is a poor comparison. The 'Nordic Countries* as a whole have a population of 26.6 million, comparable to Australia. Sweden has a population of about 10 million, the others are close to half that or much less. In a country that has a population the size of Melbourne (4.5 million) or Sydney (4.9 million) I would imagine it would be a lot easier to want to care for other people. I think that matters a lot. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM 2. https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/enablers/payment-rates-newstart-allowance https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/enablers/payment-r...
- matt4077 10y ago
  There's probably some parents silently crying themselves to sleep because they fear they'll be homeless soon while people here have the time and resources to bloviate about "innovating your way out of poverty."
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    Yes, I agree with you. I believe we need a strong social welfare system and affordable (cheap / free, as in no, or little, out of pocket expense) healthcare. The net cost to society of not having those things is probably magnitudes of order greater than paying for them, both in the economic sense and the social costs.
politicsight 10y ago
> Take more from the rich and give more to the poor. What are you going to do when the rich dedicate their resources to avoiding that taking (which they already do for the current taxation policies)? I don't think you have a reasonable solution for that. For real-world examples of that, look at FBAR and FATCA and related legislation. They were meant to help the IRS tax rich people, but they had some insane side effects. For one, all US citizens and permanent residents have to file a tax return every year, even if they haven't lived in the US for years and don't owe anything to the IRS. This is a significant hassle for many people. Because of FATCA, anyone who qualifies as a "US resident for tax purposes" also has to report foreign assets and income over a certain value ($50000 if I'm not mistaken). Another "fun" effect (of FBAR this time) is that foreign banks now have to report accounts of US citizens to the IRS, which has made many foreign banks refuse to deal with US citizens or permanent residents. I would not want to be an American expat if I had to deal with that. Idealistic plans like "let's tax the rich and give all that money to the poor" have, in practice, significant negative consequences on people they never intended to harm (such as the middle class). How do you propose to eliminate or mitigate such unintended consequences?
- pdkl95 10y ago
  > when the rich dedicate their resources to avoiding that taking As professor of economics Mark Blyth explains[1], "The Hamptons are not a defensible position." Similar to the problem with the Martingale betting system where (it works great until your bankroll runs out), all of that theory about taxes is suddenly irrelevant when hungry people decide that taking your stuff directly is a better solution. > How do you propose to eliminate or mitigate such unintended consequences? I don't. Everything has unintended consequences and no plan is perfect. We will always have to manage problems as they arise. How do you propose to keep people from burning your house down because they are hungry, angry, and see no alternative? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGvZil0qWPg#t=506 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGvZil0qWPg#t=506 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_%28betting_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_%28betting_system%2...
  - politicsight 10y ago
prostoalex 10y ago
> We already know how to cut poverty, based on other countries like the Nordics where poverty is lower: Take more from the rich and give more to the poor. 1) Does this solution scale to countries that have no rich? Forbes billionaires list is heavily concentrated around a dozen or so countries, what rich targets are there to take from in large portions of African continent, for example? 2) Does this solution work long-term? How do you expect not to run out of rich after three or more iterations of the same?
- aleksei 10y ago
  1) Every country has its classes of "rich" and "poor". Billionaires would be an easy target to rob outright, but I suggest the GP meant something like progressive taxation, where those with more would pay more back into the society they benefit from. Also, the poor of another country are no less people to help than those in your own (and man would to well to transcend national identities anyway, but that's different can of worms). 2) What do you think happens to the money, that it gets burned? The money will continue in circulation (ie. the previously poor will now pay for their food instead of stealing it etc.), and if you were rich before the money will obviously keep coming back, as more people have the wealth to purchase your services.
  - ruste 10y ago
    The rich aren't just sitting on a giant pile of liquid assets. Basically all of their money is invested. It's circulating right now. It's the infrastructure and businesses the poor are buying from. You can't redistribute wealth like that because if you do there quickly won't be services to buy from. You don't improve a poor mans situation by dismantling the grocery store he goes to. Even if you give him a slice of what you take, you've removed infrastructure that he relies on. He'll be set for a week or two, but when he needs to buy food again the grocery store won't be able to provide the way it used to.
  - prostoalex 10y ago
    > if you were rich before the money will obviously keep coming back, as more people have the wealth to purchase your services In a scenario where the original rich person was a landlord, factory owner or a farmer, the property progressively got taken away to cover the tax bills and either sold to a bunch of third parties or just taken over by a government agency, as those property auctions take a while to set up, find respective buyers and run. The "services" thesis works for someone charging per engagement, like a doctor, as they can probably operate with relatively small overhead, but for a bunch of occupations the property that's responsible for building wealth is also the tool of building that wealth.

programminggeek 10y ago

That's all well and good, unless you are the one being taken from. Why should someone's effort be rewarded with thievery?

djrobstep 10y ago
Quite. Owners of capital and land must stop their ongoing thievery from workers.
jgh 10y ago
It's not thievery, it's taxation. If you advantage from the system you should pay back into it.
- stevendhansen 10y ago
  It can be both.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Taxation is neither moral nor amoral. It's just tax which depending on it's size and how it's used and where have consequences good and bad depending on who you ask. There isn't some objective version of tax or non-tax.
deleted 10y ago
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themartorana 10y ago
This is where shit goes off the rails before it's even begun. "Take" needs to be so much more well explained, because on its face, I agree with you! But, when looked at on balance, simple things like fair working wages also help redistribute wealth down the ladder but aren't burdened with the hyperbole of the rich being mugged by the poor. The argument is forever framed as three sets of hands - one with cash, one in the middle that pries the cash from the first set and hands it to the third. We don't need to talk about direct redistribution by force. Fair market practices and regulations that prevent one from taking unfair advantage of another do the trick just fine.
Retra 10y ago
You can't make a profit from your efforts without infrastructure, and you can't build and maintain infrastructure without a lot of people. Paying the people who support your infrastructure with the money you made off it isn't thievery, it's an investment in your society and culture.
Consultant32452 10y ago
I feel like that's too simplistic a way to look at it. In this country we've passed many laws to weaken and even remove entirely a previously strong union system. Did all the workers who are today making less money and/or have less benefits as the result of union busting have their money "taken away?" Some estimates suggest that the lack of enforcement of immigration laws have lowered the income of people without a high school diploma by as much as 7%. The rest of us saved a ton of money. Did those poor people have their 7% "taken" by the wealthy business owners who hire those illegal immigrants?
nickthemagicman 10y ago
You know I can't agree with you more. That's why we need a 100% inheritance tax. So someone's effort doesn't go to someone who doesn't deserve it.
- morgante 10y ago
  I'm not sure if you're being farcical, but I actually strongly support a 100% inheritance tax. It might be challenging to enforce, but it seems like the most equitable solution by far. There's nothing wrong with people earning lots of money from their own work, but they shouldn't be able to pass that on to heirs who have done literally nothing to earn it.
  - RangerScience 10y ago
    This is definitely more complicated than that. In the most basic sense, how much should I be allowed to do what I want with my own money? A step more complex; giving to your kids is, AFAIK, one of the biggest drivers in why people try to make money during their lifetimes. A step more liberal: Inheritance (the accumulation of wealth by a family), again, AFAIK, is an important part of upwards mobility. The current setup is definitely sub-optimal. 100% would also be sub optimal, and, I'd argue, worse than what we've got here, because it's another thing that rich people could dodge that not-rich people couldn't.
    - morgante 10y ago
      > In the most basic sense, how much should I be allowed to do what I want with my own money? It's not your money once you're dead. As far as I'm concerned, dead people don't have any rights. > A step more liberal: Inheritance (the accumulation of wealth by a family), again, AFAIK, is an important part of upwards mobility. On the contrary, I think it hurts economic mobility a lot more than it helps. If you're competing for opportunities with people who inherited millions of dollars (without doing anything themselves), it's a lot harder to advance yourself. Non-rich people don't generally leave enough of an estate for it to matter in the first case. We could easily exclude the first $100k for that matter.
InclinedPlane 10y ago
You can look at is as "theft", sure, but in many ways that's not 100% accurate. The idea that "the rich" have earned 100% of their wealth is a hypothesis, not a fact. It's a hypothesis that would only be true if the market were also 100% free and fair. It would only be true if no amount of government regulation or law ever unfairly advantaged those who already had wealth and power. It would only be true if there were absolutely no power imbalance between workers and employers, etc. None of those things are true, so we can fairly confidently say that some portion of the wealth of most of the rich has not been gained fairly. So then the next question is, obviously, how do you fix that? How do you ensure that the market, regulations, employment, etc. are all perfectly fair and free? And the answer there is, you very much cannot. At best it's an enormously difficult problem beyond the scale of any problem that has been tackled by human civilization to date, at worst it's fundamentally intractable. The next question then becomes, so how do we make it more fair in the easiest way we can in the near-term? And the answer there is wealth redistribution. Power and wealth perverts fairness of markets, including labor markets, and it perverts our systems of laws and governance. That's not to say that wealth is purely evil, there are many up sides to the accumulation of wealth, and personally I'm a big fan of "capitalism" (for lack of a better word). But we need to recognize that it is very much not only a flawed and imperfect system but a system that inherently contains many aspects that are poisonous to the operation of a peaceful and sane free society. The longer we ignore that, which we have for almost 4 decades, the worse those inherently problematic aspects become, and the more those who see the truth (that the system is very much rigged against the little guy) become increasingly intolerant of the continuation of the system that they perceive is systematically putting them at a disadvantage, and that leads to "very bad things".
- RangerScience 10y ago
  > has not been gained fairly. This is a... let's go with "subjective" - this is a subjective interpretation of "fairness". It is totally fair to profit from the effective functioning of civilization. I think what you're actually trying to say is it's not fair to claim credit for that wealth without sharing credit with the system that created the situation within which you could make it. I tend to think of wealth in the current system like water and hydropower, except that "natural" resting place of wealth is in one big pile (at the top), instead of one big pile at the bottom (oceans). (I could go into why, but I think, observationally, it's pretty clear what the steady-state trends towards). With that in mind, power is extracted (and work done by that power) as water moves towards it's resting state. Other systems (that are importing entropy) then work against that trend (evaporation), keeping the cycle going. Wealth accumulates. Something outside the system of wealth (such as government) needs to "import entropy" back into the economy so that work can be extracted as wealth moves back towards it's resting state. Does that make sense? (Please, poke holes in my model!)
ThomPete 10y ago
Taxation is not thievery. You and I are living in a society which have been created by the collective work of our forefathers. You aren't responsible for 100% of the value you create since a lot of the value of the work you perform are supported by things others have created for you and which aren't reflected in your salary. Taxation is just that taxation. If you want to be free of the "thievery" just don't participate in the economy created by the rest of society. Don't use computers which fundamental development have been largely funded by government. Don't use the internet which was largely funded by governments. You can't have your cake and eat it.
- JanezStupar 10y ago
  And you stop telling people who have funded the governments what to and not to do. Sound fair?
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    I'm not telling anyone what they have to do. I am telling you what they have done and why you can't claim 100% of your salary is based on your own working.
    - JanezStupar 10y ago
      I know for a fact that my forefathers have tried to avoid governments and their meddling fingers as much as possible and have fought really hard in various ways to keep the government of their lives as much as possible. Thus I owe it to them to keep fighting the government creep towards authoritarian totalitarianism. What have your forefathers been doing that you are now arguing that 100% of what I have earned and paid taxes on already, should get taxed again at some later date - as a punishment for me not spending it all?
      - ThomPete 10y ago
        You are confusing two very different things. I too don't want government to be too big or too all encompassing but that has nothing to do with whether some sort of taxation could be considered ok. One things is certain though. If you had to pay for everything yourself you wouldn't be able to afford it. The price of many of the things we consider obvious today are based on many years of accumulated hard work by others than your forefathers which you benefit from today. So we can discuss whether we pay too much tax, I am fine with that discussion. But positioning it as all taxation being thievery is both incorrect and simplistic.

brightball 10y ago

Don't Nordic countries have some national investment fund that has about $1 million / citizen right now? What's the US surplus per citizen right now?

sluukkonen 10y ago
That's Norway. The other Nordic countries weren't lucky enough to have significant numbers of oil.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  And even Norway is in trouble and may tap into its Sovereign Wealth fund much sooner than expected. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-05/norway-seen-plundering-its-wealth-fund-to-ward-off-oil-risks http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-05/norway-see...
markvdb 10y ago
Norway has a giant sovereign wealth fund. Denmark, Finland and Sweden don't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...

ThomPete 10y ago

Denmark have poor people too and more importantly those have less of an opportunity to make it out of their poverty once they are there. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/the-american-dream-isnt-alive-in-denmark/494141/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/the-amer...

dagss 10y ago
That is not what the article says -- it is criticizing Denmark for being as bad as or almost as bad as the US (i.e. NOT worse). This about sums it up: "Social mobility in Denmark and the U.S. seem to be remarkably similar when looking exclusively at wages—that is, before including taxes and transfers."
- ThomPete 10y ago
  And I am telling you Denmark have poor people too. I.e. redistribution isn't helping against that. I linked to the article to point to the fact that poor people also have a hard time getting out of their poornes in Denmark and it's actually worse because the high "minimum salaries" makes it almost impossible for them to get a job.
  - dagss 10y ago
    You say "and it's actually worse because the high "minimum salaries" makes it almost impossible for them to get a job." --- is that from another source or this article?
deleted 10y ago
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NhanH 10y ago

> We already know how to cut poverty, based on other countries like the Nordics where poverty is lower: Take more from the rich and give more to the poor. Unfortunately, rich people love money too much, so we're not allowed to talk about the real solution, and have to talk about all these fake solutions instead. We don't talk about the real solution because none of the person that want to "take more from the rich and give more to the poor" proposes one. The problem isn't what to do, but how to do it. Courtesy of being born in a Communist country, I had to learn Karl Marx and such in middle school. And almost every single statement on this comment chain reads like my term exam questions (I'm not being facetious here). He has a whole chapter on general formula of capital, and another one on rent seeking behavior. It's all good idea ... until you actually try to implement it and the resulting government is nuts. Take those with 100% inheritance tax idea. Are you gonna also tax gift at 100%? Cause it's obvious what will happen. Now we're adding special case that parents are not allowed to gift their house to their children?

matt_wulfeck 10y ago
Reminds me of this: The poor spendthrift vagabond says to a rich man: "I have discovered there is enough money in the world for all of us, if it was equally divided; this must be done, and we shall all be happy together." "But," was the response, "if everybody was like you, it would be spent in two months, and what would you do then?" "Oh! divide again; keep dividing, of course!" https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/barnum/moneygetting/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/barnum/moneygetting/
- manicdee 10y ago
  Implying that the only difference between rich and poor is spending habits. Where in the real world we have confounding factors such as racism, sexism, cultural norms, differing costs of transit and habitation, limited opportunities and limits on resources.
  - _andromeda_ 10y ago
    It seems to me like it's the only one that matters because it's the one that an individual has the most control over. Other confounding factors are externalities that as an individual you cannot always control but guess what you can always do? Save, save, save and if you can, innovate and reap the fruits of your discipline and hard work. Collectivism should be avoided.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago

I tend to lean toward agreeing with you, by the way, but the other side of this argument is: We already know that giving money and food to poor people doesn't resolve poverty, when the aid / social welfare stops the poverty returns because aid / welfare prevents people from innovating your way out of poverty. Of course, which side of the argument a person lands on probably depends on their moral politics, see[1] - basically I'm referring to the progressive vs. conservative divide. Fortunately for me I live in Australia where we have social welfare to the tune of $527.60 a fortnight for a single adult[2], and $952.80 for a couple. But of course we still have bunches of poverty, but I've never been to the US so I can't really say how it compares. Also, I think the example of the Nordic countries is a poor comparison. The 'Nordic Countries* as a whole have a population of 26.6 million, comparable to Australia. Sweden has a population of about 10 million, the others are close to half that or much less. In a country that has a population the size of Melbourne (4.5 million) or Sydney (4.9 million) I would imagine it would be a lot easier to want to care for other people. I think that matters a lot. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM 2. https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/enablers/payment-rates-newstart-allowance https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/enablers/payment-r...

matt4077 10y ago
There's probably some parents silently crying themselves to sleep because they fear they'll be homeless soon while people here have the time and resources to bloviate about "innovating your way out of poverty."
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  Yes, I agree with you. I believe we need a strong social welfare system and affordable (cheap / free, as in no, or little, out of pocket expense) healthcare. The net cost to society of not having those things is probably magnitudes of order greater than paying for them, both in the economic sense and the social costs.

politicsight 10y ago

> Take more from the rich and give more to the poor. What are you going to do when the rich dedicate their resources to avoiding that taking (which they already do for the current taxation policies)? I don't think you have a reasonable solution for that. For real-world examples of that, look at FBAR and FATCA and related legislation. They were meant to help the IRS tax rich people, but they had some insane side effects. For one, all US citizens and permanent residents have to file a tax return every year, even if they haven't lived in the US for years and don't owe anything to the IRS. This is a significant hassle for many people. Because of FATCA, anyone who qualifies as a "US resident for tax purposes" also has to report foreign assets and income over a certain value ($50000 if I'm not mistaken). Another "fun" effect (of FBAR this time) is that foreign banks now have to report accounts of US citizens to the IRS, which has made many foreign banks refuse to deal with US citizens or permanent residents. I would not want to be an American expat if I had to deal with that. Idealistic plans like "let's tax the rich and give all that money to the poor" have, in practice, significant negative consequences on people they never intended to harm (such as the middle class). How do you propose to eliminate or mitigate such unintended consequences?

pdkl95 10y ago
> when the rich dedicate their resources to avoiding that taking As professor of economics Mark Blyth explains[1], "The Hamptons are not a defensible position." Similar to the problem with the Martingale betting system where (it works great until your bankroll runs out), all of that theory about taxes is suddenly irrelevant when hungry people decide that taking your stuff directly is a better solution. > How do you propose to eliminate or mitigate such unintended consequences? I don't. Everything has unintended consequences and no plan is perfect. We will always have to manage problems as they arise. How do you propose to keep people from burning your house down because they are hungry, angry, and see no alternative? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGvZil0qWPg#t=506 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGvZil0qWPg#t=506 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_%28betting_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_%28betting_system%2...
- politicsight 10y ago

prostoalex 10y ago

> We already know how to cut poverty, based on other countries like the Nordics where poverty is lower: Take more from the rich and give more to the poor. 1) Does this solution scale to countries that have no rich? Forbes billionaires list is heavily concentrated around a dozen or so countries, what rich targets are there to take from in large portions of African continent, for example? 2) Does this solution work long-term? How do you expect not to run out of rich after three or more iterations of the same?

aleksei 10y ago
1) Every country has its classes of "rich" and "poor". Billionaires would be an easy target to rob outright, but I suggest the GP meant something like progressive taxation, where those with more would pay more back into the society they benefit from. Also, the poor of another country are no less people to help than those in your own (and man would to well to transcend national identities anyway, but that's different can of worms). 2) What do you think happens to the money, that it gets burned? The money will continue in circulation (ie. the previously poor will now pay for their food instead of stealing it etc.), and if you were rich before the money will obviously keep coming back, as more people have the wealth to purchase your services.
- ruste 10y ago
  The rich aren't just sitting on a giant pile of liquid assets. Basically all of their money is invested. It's circulating right now. It's the infrastructure and businesses the poor are buying from. You can't redistribute wealth like that because if you do there quickly won't be services to buy from. You don't improve a poor mans situation by dismantling the grocery store he goes to. Even if you give him a slice of what you take, you've removed infrastructure that he relies on. He'll be set for a week or two, but when he needs to buy food again the grocery store won't be able to provide the way it used to.
- prostoalex 10y ago
  > if you were rich before the money will obviously keep coming back, as more people have the wealth to purchase your services In a scenario where the original rich person was a landlord, factory owner or a farmer, the property progressively got taken away to cover the tax bills and either sold to a bunch of third parties or just taken over by a government agency, as those property auctions take a while to set up, find respective buyers and run. The "services" thesis works for someone charging per engagement, like a doctor, as they can probably operate with relatively small overhead, but for a bunch of occupations the property that's responsible for building wealth is also the tool of building that wealth.