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For some definition of "deserving", I would agree. Certainly, everyone should have the tools and opportunities they need to build the life they want. Society h

For some definition of "deserving", I would agree. Certainly, everyone should have the tools and opportunities they need to build the life they want. Society has limited resources. Until we manage the post-scarcity utopia, I would prefer my tax dollars go to someone who will use them to build a better life.

whimsicalism 6y ago
Half of all private wealth is inherited, not earned through work, by the wealthiest 5% of households. In that context, why focus on giving small portions of wealth to those in poverty (even if they aren't working as hard as you think they ought to)?
- criticaljudge 6y ago
  The notion that children don't deserve the spoils of their parents is really crazy to me. Parents work so that they can give their children a better life. Heck, they even choose their partners to maximize odds for a better life for their offspring (wealth, good genes, and so on - it does not even depend on capitalism). To take that away from people is truly dehumanizing, but sounds like a typical socialist scheme (destroy the family, destroy individualism, everything has to be the same).
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    So you are only deserving of a life free of poverty (even if you're lazy) if your parents happened to be rich? Yeah, I disagree. We're talking about on the order of tens of millions of dollars or more being passed from one parent to one child.
    - dahfizz 6y ago
      You're right. We should kick that kid out on the street, sell all his belongings, and write a check to ever american for a fat 10 cents. Problem solved. > So you are only deserving of a life free of poverty (even if you're lazy) if your parents happened to be rich? This is such a twisting of my words I am not even sure how to respond. Are you saying the only way out of poverty is to steal everything you want from the rich?
    - criticaljudge 6y ago
      Why don't parents who work hard to give their children a good live deserve to do so? It is not their fault if other people have children while they are poor. Everybody should have a fair chance, but people who worked harder should also be allowed to benefit. Why should anybody be entitled to the fruits of their labor?
  - overlords 6y ago
    1 rich person saving his money so his 3 children never have to work is bad for the economy. It's better the 1 rich person is forced to consume that in his lifetime. By doing so that money is redistributed back to the economy, and his 3 kids are also productive. In scenario 1 only 1 out 4 people work. In scenario 2, 4 out of 4 people work. Also - it's hypocritical for 'pull yourself by your bootstraps' for children born poor, and 'guaranteed basic income' for children born rich. That is more dehumanizing than not being allowed to pass off inheritance.
    - dahfizz 6y ago
      Its hard for me to imagine being so full of envy that you would like to see the children of rich people stripped of everything they have. Equality means nothing if you achieve it by pulling everyone down to the lowest level. > 1 rich person saving his money so his 3 children never have to work is bad for the economy. "Your rights are bad for the economy, we are taking everything from you. Back to work, pleb".
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        > Its hard for me to imagine being so full of envy that you would like to see the children of rich people stripped of everything they have. I think you misread the sentiment. What a lot of us would like to see is a more meritocratic system, where children start off on more equal footing and either earn their wealth or not. But inherited works against that. It is difficult to listen to arguments against taxing the wealthy heavily "because they earned it" while at the same time hearing support for what amounts to aristocracy.
        dahfizz 6y ago
        Right, but you're trying to achieve your meritocracy by pulling people down instead of helping people up. This isn't a footrace, and it's not a zero sum game. When you say something like "we need to take money away from rich kids so they have to work like everyone else", you're doing nothing but harm. You may feel the people you're harming have it coming, but that's still what you're doing. The idea that we have to come up with a good reason _not_ to heavily tax people is backwards. The only reason you need is that people have rights. A man owns what is his and you have absolutely no right to it. This is all beside the pont anyway. Increasing tax revenue will not solve any of the problems you are trying to solve. As I said elsewhere, you could tax 100% of every billionaire in this country, leaving them homeless, and you would not have collected enough money to fund the federal government for even one year. You could sell off your entire "aristocracy" and it wouldn't make a dent. The strategy of "just spend more money" does not work.
- covidthrow 6y ago
  If one were to redistribute all of the top 5%'s wealth at once: - it wouldn't be liquid, so you'd be giving part ownership in assets - the value would be slightly less than median yearly income per recipient. At a pretty sizeable 5% average return, the individuals would net about $2,000 a year. - if they chose to sell the assets, they would end up with about one year's median income and then it's gone I'm not sure how much money you think lives up at the top, but redistributing it is not sustainable, and it's certainly not enough to magically pull everyone out of poverty indefinitely. (Or even for very long, at that.) There are a ton of reasonable discussions to be had about imbalanced power structures between socioeconomic groups, but this whole redistribution thing is just a fantasy. One can look at a million/billionaire and say, "oh, this person has 50 cars. That's way too many cars for one person to have! Let's give them away to people who actually need cars!" So you seize them and give them away—along with the other 12,000 super wealthy people that own 50 or more cars—and then you have... 200,000 people who still don't have cars. For groups that preach so frequently about global and ecological sustainability, there's a disturbing blind spot for economic sustainability. I think that's more a feature of envy than responsibility, unfortunately.
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    > I'm not sure how much money you think lives up at the top, but redistributing it is not sustainable, and it's certainly not enough to magically pull everyone out of poverty indefinitely. People just do not understand this. You could take away every penny from every billionaire in this country. If you sold everything they had, you would not have enough money to fund the federal government for even one year. And now the money is gone; you can no longer collect tax from the ex-wealthy. Nevertheless, "just tax the rich" is treated as the solution to all problems. I guess people hear all the talk about the "top one tenth of one percent" and they imagine literally bottomless bank accounts.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    > For groups that preach so frequently about global and ecological sustainability, there's a disturbing blind spot for economic sustainability What you've done is described a position ("redistributing all of the top 5%'s wealth at once"), described the problems with it, and then criticized my obvious blind spots due to this oversight. Forgotten in this tale is that I never held that position in the first place! You are criticizing your own invented argument. Also, even if I did favor redistributing all wealth in the top 5% of families, a simple back-of-napkin calculation shows that your argument is wrong. 107 * 10^12 (total networth of US households [0]) * 0.619 (share owned by top 5% [0]) * 0.05 (rate of return) / (315*10^6 (population of US)) = $10k/yr for every person in the US just off of the returns from that wealth, which is 5x your estimate. The US Census poverty threshold is making below $13k/yr. If that wealth was held for you until you were 18, that would be every young person starting their life with $180k in savings, which is another $9k/yr with 0.05 rate of return. Obviously, there's a whole host of issues with this, including some of the ones you mentioned, and (of course) price inflation, but I am not sure how you calculated your numbers. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
This is a lie. The world has enough resources to feed, clothe, and house everyone. We've chose to build a system that does not. Perhaps you find that defensible, perhaps you find that appalling, but argue that position, not one that isn't true.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > The world has enough resources to feed, clothe, and house everyone. this is kind of reductive claim. in one sense, it's trivially true that the earth has more raw resources than humans can consume even over the course of centuries. AFAIK it's also true that, under the current system of organization, the global economy produces enough finished goods to feed, clothe, and house everyone (though people often bring up logistical caveats here, eg, distributing stuff in places where there are no paved roads or airfields). the real question here is whether we would still have that quantity of finished goods under a different system of organization with different incentives. to be clear, I don't discount the possibility that we might have even more! but it seems more likely to me that people would simply produce less stuff if they didn't get to keep the surplus by default.
  - lostcolony 6y ago
    Just like how that increase in marginal tax rate prevents anyone from climbing into the upper tax brackets (and why we never had millionaires back when the top bracket was > 90%), eh? Of course people can keep the surplus. Some of it. But we're a far, far cry from the point where people will stop working when only getting a percentage of their labor's worth (or their parent's labor's worth, as is often the case).
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      > and why we never had millionaires back when the top bracket was > 90% some caveats apply to this offhand quip (very different tax laws and perhaps even widespread evasion meant almost no one was paying an effective tax of 90%, regardless of actual income). I suspect you know this. I'm sure there's a lot of slack in the tax brackets. I doubt we are close to a laffer curve inflection point. all I'm saying is I'm not convinced by the style of argument that goes "we already have enough food for everyone; we just need to radically reorganize the economy and then no one will go hungry!". more analysis is needed.

whimsicalism 6y ago

Half of all private wealth is inherited, not earned through work, by the wealthiest 5% of households. In that context, why focus on giving small portions of wealth to those in poverty (even if they aren't working as hard as you think they ought to)?

criticaljudge 6y ago
The notion that children don't deserve the spoils of their parents is really crazy to me. Parents work so that they can give their children a better life. Heck, they even choose their partners to maximize odds for a better life for their offspring (wealth, good genes, and so on - it does not even depend on capitalism). To take that away from people is truly dehumanizing, but sounds like a typical socialist scheme (destroy the family, destroy individualism, everything has to be the same).
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  So you are only deserving of a life free of poverty (even if you're lazy) if your parents happened to be rich? Yeah, I disagree. We're talking about on the order of tens of millions of dollars or more being passed from one parent to one child.
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    You're right. We should kick that kid out on the street, sell all his belongings, and write a check to ever american for a fat 10 cents. Problem solved. > So you are only deserving of a life free of poverty (even if you're lazy) if your parents happened to be rich? This is such a twisting of my words I am not even sure how to respond. Are you saying the only way out of poverty is to steal everything you want from the rich?
  - criticaljudge 6y ago
    Why don't parents who work hard to give their children a good live deserve to do so? It is not their fault if other people have children while they are poor. Everybody should have a fair chance, but people who worked harder should also be allowed to benefit. Why should anybody be entitled to the fruits of their labor?
- overlords 6y ago
  1 rich person saving his money so his 3 children never have to work is bad for the economy. It's better the 1 rich person is forced to consume that in his lifetime. By doing so that money is redistributed back to the economy, and his 3 kids are also productive. In scenario 1 only 1 out 4 people work. In scenario 2, 4 out of 4 people work. Also - it's hypocritical for 'pull yourself by your bootstraps' for children born poor, and 'guaranteed basic income' for children born rich. That is more dehumanizing than not being allowed to pass off inheritance.
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    Its hard for me to imagine being so full of envy that you would like to see the children of rich people stripped of everything they have. Equality means nothing if you achieve it by pulling everyone down to the lowest level. > 1 rich person saving his money so his 3 children never have to work is bad for the economy. "Your rights are bad for the economy, we are taking everything from you. Back to work, pleb".
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      > Its hard for me to imagine being so full of envy that you would like to see the children of rich people stripped of everything they have. I think you misread the sentiment. What a lot of us would like to see is a more meritocratic system, where children start off on more equal footing and either earn their wealth or not. But inherited works against that. It is difficult to listen to arguments against taxing the wealthy heavily "because they earned it" while at the same time hearing support for what amounts to aristocracy.
      - dahfizz 6y ago
        Right, but you're trying to achieve your meritocracy by pulling people down instead of helping people up. This isn't a footrace, and it's not a zero sum game. When you say something like "we need to take money away from rich kids so they have to work like everyone else", you're doing nothing but harm. You may feel the people you're harming have it coming, but that's still what you're doing. The idea that we have to come up with a good reason _not_ to heavily tax people is backwards. The only reason you need is that people have rights. A man owns what is his and you have absolutely no right to it. This is all beside the pont anyway. Increasing tax revenue will not solve any of the problems you are trying to solve. As I said elsewhere, you could tax 100% of every billionaire in this country, leaving them homeless, and you would not have collected enough money to fund the federal government for even one year. You could sell off your entire "aristocracy" and it wouldn't make a dent. The strategy of "just spend more money" does not work.
covidthrow 6y ago
If one were to redistribute all of the top 5%'s wealth at once: - it wouldn't be liquid, so you'd be giving part ownership in assets - the value would be slightly less than median yearly income per recipient. At a pretty sizeable 5% average return, the individuals would net about $2,000 a year. - if they chose to sell the assets, they would end up with about one year's median income and then it's gone I'm not sure how much money you think lives up at the top, but redistributing it is not sustainable, and it's certainly not enough to magically pull everyone out of poverty indefinitely. (Or even for very long, at that.) There are a ton of reasonable discussions to be had about imbalanced power structures between socioeconomic groups, but this whole redistribution thing is just a fantasy. One can look at a million/billionaire and say, "oh, this person has 50 cars. That's way too many cars for one person to have! Let's give them away to people who actually need cars!" So you seize them and give them away—along with the other 12,000 super wealthy people that own 50 or more cars—and then you have... 200,000 people who still don't have cars. For groups that preach so frequently about global and ecological sustainability, there's a disturbing blind spot for economic sustainability. I think that's more a feature of envy than responsibility, unfortunately.
- dahfizz 6y ago
  > I'm not sure how much money you think lives up at the top, but redistributing it is not sustainable, and it's certainly not enough to magically pull everyone out of poverty indefinitely. People just do not understand this. You could take away every penny from every billionaire in this country. If you sold everything they had, you would not have enough money to fund the federal government for even one year. And now the money is gone; you can no longer collect tax from the ex-wealthy. Nevertheless, "just tax the rich" is treated as the solution to all problems. I guess people hear all the talk about the "top one tenth of one percent" and they imagine literally bottomless bank accounts.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > For groups that preach so frequently about global and ecological sustainability, there's a disturbing blind spot for economic sustainability What you've done is described a position ("redistributing all of the top 5%'s wealth at once"), described the problems with it, and then criticized my obvious blind spots due to this oversight. Forgotten in this tale is that I never held that position in the first place! You are criticizing your own invented argument. Also, even if I did favor redistributing all wealth in the top 5% of families, a simple back-of-napkin calculation shows that your argument is wrong. 107 * 10^12 (total networth of US households [0]) * 0.619 (share owned by top 5% [0]) * 0.05 (rate of return) / (315*10^6 (population of US)) = $10k/yr for every person in the US just off of the returns from that wealth, which is 5x your estimate. The US Census poverty threshold is making below $13k/yr. If that wealth was held for you until you were 18, that would be every young person starting their life with $180k in savings, which is another $9k/yr with 0.05 rate of return. Obviously, there's a whole host of issues with this, including some of the ones you mentioned, and (of course) price inflation, but I am not sure how you calculated your numbers. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...

35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago

This is a lie. The world has enough resources to feed, clothe, and house everyone. We've chose to build a system that does not. Perhaps you find that defensible, perhaps you find that appalling, but argue that position, not one that isn't true.

leetcrew 6y ago
> The world has enough resources to feed, clothe, and house everyone. this is kind of reductive claim. in one sense, it's trivially true that the earth has more raw resources than humans can consume even over the course of centuries. AFAIK it's also true that, under the current system of organization, the global economy produces enough finished goods to feed, clothe, and house everyone (though people often bring up logistical caveats here, eg, distributing stuff in places where there are no paved roads or airfields). the real question here is whether we would still have that quantity of finished goods under a different system of organization with different incentives. to be clear, I don't discount the possibility that we might have even more! but it seems more likely to me that people would simply produce less stuff if they didn't get to keep the surplus by default.
- lostcolony 6y ago
  Just like how that increase in marginal tax rate prevents anyone from climbing into the upper tax brackets (and why we never had millionaires back when the top bracket was > 90%), eh? Of course people can keep the surplus. Some of it. But we're a far, far cry from the point where people will stop working when only getting a percentage of their labor's worth (or their parent's labor's worth, as is often the case).
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    > and why we never had millionaires back when the top bracket was > 90% some caveats apply to this offhand quip (very different tax laws and perhaps even widespread evasion meant almost no one was paying an effective tax of 90%, regardless of actual income). I suspect you know this. I'm sure there's a lot of slack in the tax brackets. I doubt we are close to a laffer curve inflection point. all I'm saying is I'm not convinced by the style of argument that goes "we already have enough food for everyone; we just need to radically reorganize the economy and then no one will go hungry!". more analysis is needed.