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> "let's attack poverty, and if necessary damage wealth in the process." This is a pretty good article as Paul distinguishes the "good" (creating wealth) and "
by JDiculous 7y ago
> "let's attack poverty, and if necessary damage wealth in the process."
This is a pretty good article as Paul distinguishes the "good" (creating wealth) and "bad" (rent seeking) sources of economic inequality, and suggests addressing the bad and attacking poverty vs. simply punishing the rich.
Consider the current presidential candidates - Bernie and Warren seem to talk a lot about punishing the rich, while Andrew Yang emphasizes a more bottom-up approach of giving every American a dividend of $1,000/month. The former sounds more like a vindictive blanket punishment, the latter is directly eradicating poverty and helping people.
Given Paul's focus on the value and promotion of entrepreneurship, it would seem that Yang's $1,000/month would do more than any other policy being discussed to further that cause. I'd imagine way more people would start businesses and take greater risks in general if they knew worst case scenario they'd have $1,000/month to fall back on.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- MisterBastahrd 7y agoYou could say the same thing about eliminating private health, dental, and vision insurance (or at the very least, making it so that all providers are required to accept public insurance). Making coverage a right instead of a privilege would at least lessen the foothold that employers have on the necks of their employees.
- closeparen 7y agoThe only people who can be "required to accept" a price set by the government for their labor are criminal convicts and military draftees. But yes, the government could procure services from providers on your behalf the same way it procures everything else, and that would greatly reduce dependence on employers.
- JDiculous 7y agoWhy the hell am I being downvoted? If you disagree, then explain why. Don't just downvote people because you disagree with their opinion, this is not Reddit (or at least it didn't used to be).
- claudiawerner 7y agoI didn't downvote, but dang and sctb have said several times that it's absolutely fine to downvote because you disagree with the opinion expressed, and in fact Reddit has guidelines against doing just that. The HN guidelines also note that it's boring to read people complain about downvotes. dang once told me that a post's score tends to fluctuate up and down. The key, I've learned, is to not bother what people who have no counter-arument think about your opinion. A downvote is the equivalent of someone saying "nyeh" or flipping over the chessboard. Just move on.
- JDiculous 7y agoOne of the things I used to love the most about HN was that comments weren't downvoted simply due to disagreement, unlike Reddit where any opinion against the hivemind gets downvoted to oblivian. Making it acceptable to downvote based merely on differences in opinion lowers the quality of discussion, promotes groupthink, and makes people not want to waste time putting any actual effort into writing comments.