5 ms·

Also seems to ignore the fact that the simplest way to lift the 99.99 percent is just to give them some of the 0.01 percent's money.

pdonis 5y ago
> the simplest way to lift the 99.99 percent is just to give them some of the 0.01 percent's money No, the simplest way is for the 0.01 percent to pay them to do things, not give them money.
- zorpner 5y ago
  That is trivially not simpler.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    Sure it is. People pay other people for goods and services all the time; it happens naturally and is simple. Forcibly taking money away from some people and giving it to others is not natural or simple: it takes a huge, bloated government bureaucracy, which does a terrible job at it anyway.
    - ajmadesc 5y ago
      This is just plain false. The mechanism / organization of taxing and distributing _can_ be very simple.
      - pdonis 5y ago
        > The mechanism / organization of taxing and distributing _can_ be very simple. In theory, sure. But as the saying goes, in theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, they aren't. No such "simple" system of taxing and redistributing has ever actually existed. The incentives to complicate and manipulate it are too strong.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      vs. the "huge, bloated" bureaucracy that has to exist to implement salaried & contract work? You actually believe that more people work in the government on redistribution than in companies? Also, people pay other people for goods & services that the people with the money want to pay for. The nature of my life should not be determined by the preferences of the people who've managed (frequently via heredity) to hoover up outsize chunks of wealth and power within the economy. As a human being, I do not exist to satisfy the wants of the rich (though I might choose to pursue doing so as means of making a living). The options available as a way to make a living should not be controlled by those who have already been successful.
      - pdonis 5y ago
        I agree with the general point you are making here. But you appear to assume that the way to fix it is more government bureaucracy and regulation. I think the way to fix it is less government bureaucracy and regulation. Government bureaucracy and regulation is as bloated as it is because the rich set it up that way. Those regulations benefit them, not you and me. They want society to be set up that way, so that creating wealth requires navigating a complex maze that only they know how to navigate. The only way to fix that is to get rid of the maze.
        PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        > you appear to assume that the way to fix it is more government bureaucracy and regulation I don't assume that. I was merely contrasting your complaints about the bureaucracy required for the government to distribute money to people with the reality that any system for distributing money to people is going to be ... bureaucratic. I also don't agree with your assessment of things as they are. You claim that the bureaucracies are bloated, but have no evidence that the things they do can be achieved with less bureaucracy. Most regulations exist to check the power of the rich (or some subset of them), not to enable them (or some subset of them). Creating wealth does not involve navigating a complex maze any more than simply being alive does.
        5y ago
    - adamcstephens 5y ago
      And if there’s nothing they need the workers to do or goods the rich want to purchase? Then how should those without wealth eat and provide shelter for their family?
      - pdonis 5y ago
        > And if there’s nothing they need the workers to do or goods the rich want to purchase? Then how should those without wealth eat and provide shelter for their family? The fact that you, for example, don't have any goods or services that, say, Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos wants does not mean Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have all the wealth and you have none. Wealth is not a fixed thing. Wealth can be created. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are rich because they founded companies that created enormous amounts of wealth. Say what you like about Windows and Amazon, but Windows made personal computing available to everyone, not just the affluent who could afford a Mac, and Amazon has made cheap products and easy, fast shipping available to everyone, not just the rich who could afford to hire personal shopping and delivery services. And the wealth those companies created had to be spread among everyone, by the very nature of what they did. Windows would have been useless if it were just Bill Gates' personal OS, and Amazon would have been useless if it were just Jeff Bezos' personal shopping service. The whole point was to make those things available to everyone. Similar remarks apply to everyone who creates wealth. The people who grow the food you eat grow more than they need just for themselves. Then they trade the excess for other things they need or want. The same applies to you. Want some food? Create some wealth that you can trade for it. The real complaint that can be made about the "1 percent" or "0.01 percent" or "elite" or whatever term you want to use, is that they have created a system that makes it harder for everyone else to create wealth, by putting all kinds of regulations and complications in place that only they know how to navigate. But you don't fix that problem with more regulations and complications. Nor do you fix it by just confiscating what the rich have now and redistributing it; that only works once. You fix it by scaling back all those regulations and complications so more and more people can create wealth themselves instead of having to wait for a few "elites" to do it.
        adamcstephens 5y ago
        Regulations are the only reason Windows even exists. If had not been for government antitrust laws and their enforcement, IBM would have stifled the PC market before it even began.[1] The thing about these cases is that they don’t even have to fully succeed to open the space for competition. The case against Microsoft continued this trend, providing space for Google and the monopolies of today. So regulation isn’t just good for society, it’s necessary to ensure a competitive market. Taxation ensures that all of society benefits as the collective wealth increases. It pays for shared resources, and provides for a shared safety net. Taxation isn’t confiscation, it’s the cost of doing business and thriving in a complex society. Trickle down and deregulation are awful policies that only destabilize. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/15/business/us-vsibm.html https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/15/business/us-vsibm.html
    - alasdair_ 5y ago
      >giving it to others is not natural Money is a completely unnatural invention - nothing about it is “natural”, so I don’t see this as a strong argument.
      - pdonis 5y ago
        > Money is a completely unnatural invention Not unless human society itself is "unnatural". The reasons why money gets invented are common to all human societies that get beyond the tribal stage; money is as natural as the human societies that invent it are.
        imtringued 5y ago
        >Not unless human society itself is "unnatural". Society is created by humans. Therefore it is man made, not made by nature. You don't have to change nature to change society, you can change society by changing humans, which is a very specific subset of nature and not very representative of nature as a whole. The problems that can easily be solved by money may be natural but we still get to decide how we implement money and the way we do it can create human made problems.
        pdonis 5y ago
        > Society is created by humans. Therefore it is man made, not made by nature. Okay, then that just means "unnatural" is not a bad thing, unless you think society is a bad thing. But if you think society is a bad thing, why are you taking advantage of the benefits it provides? I assume you are, because if you weren't, you wouldn't be able to post here. > you can change society by changing humans Really? And how do you propose to do that? Particularly without grossly violating the rights of the humans you want to change?
- katbyte 5y ago
  So trickle down? Which we’ve tried for decades and hasn’t work? Which Biden just said didn’t work? Problem is rich people hoard and save more money then they ever will spend. Poor people spend ever dime. Give 10,000,000 to a rich person and they but some property or “invest” it in some hedge fun that makes the world worse. Give 10,000 to 1000 people they spend it. All of it. At local businesses which pay tax. For homes they need. And it eventually ends up in the hands of the rich again anyone because they are so good at extracting wealth at every opportunity
  - pdonis 5y ago
    It's quite true that a single rich person is less efficient at spending a given amount of money than a few thousand middle class people would be at spending the same money. But the rich person is still more efficient at it than the government. Also, since you admit that it all eventually ends up in the hands of the rich again, the alternative of "give the money to the non-rich" doesn't solve the problem anyway.
    - katbyte 5y ago
      rich person is still more efficient at doing _what_ ? if we are talking about getting money to people who need it sure doesn't sound like it, UBI/direct money gives 1000s of poor/middle class people 10,000 which can honestly be life changing vs a rich person who just shrugs and puts it in a bank account so sounds like its solving problems for people to me?
      - pdonis 5y ago
        > if we are talking about getting money to people who need it That's not what UBI does. UBI gives money to everybody whether they need it or not. Sure, for some of them it will be "life changing", but for many it won't. So UBI is very inefficient at getting money to people who need it. Rich people, in addition to paying people directly for goods and services, which those people would not produce in the first place if they didn't need the money they can sell them for (so paying them is directly giving them money they need), can (and many do) donate to charities that do a much better job than the government does of figuring out who actually needs the things they provide.
- ip26 5y ago
  If only self-funded moonshot businesses were a status symbol, like pearls or big yachts.
donmcronald 5y ago
I don't agree with that. I definitely think the super rich should have a huge portion of their wealth redistributed, but giving it directly to people is a bad use. I think it would be better to invest in solid infrastructure, education, healthcare, affordable housing, rehab, crime reduction, etc. so that everyone has a legit chance of improving their standard of living. There are some really hard, poverty skewed cultural problems that need to be solved and simply giving people money isn't going to do that. The benefit of investing in all of those infrastructure related things is that it creates jobs for people that want them. Hopefully enough people fight their way out of poverty that the next generation will have people with the knowledge base and skillset to improve things even more. I honestly don't think we're going to get a solution to poverty, petty crime, etc. until we're able to engage a lot more people that have lived in that world. Our supposed "leaders" just don't understand it well enough to come up with viable solutions. The biggest hurdle is filling the government with people that actually care and want to improve the world as a whole. I don't know if that'll every happen :-(
- kiba 5y ago
  Giving cash directly does work, but it is a part of a solution in resolving a larger problem, like getting out of the car dependent suburbia schema that is considered unsustainable.
  - donmcronald 5y ago
    It's dependent on the person you're giving money to. Giving a drug addict money won't make a difference for anyone except the drug dealer that's going to end up with the cash.
    - rabidrat 5y ago
      And the person they don't steal from to get the money to get their fix?
    - xapata 5y ago
      That drug dealer spends money. Cash flow makes the economy work. Give cash to a rich person and they make a bet on what they think people will buy. Consolidate the wealth and we're back to central planning / command economy.
AdrianB1 5y ago
First, if you split that money to the 99.99 percent, it will make zero impact. A few hamburgers per person are a lot less than what you think, even if a person with a million hamburgers looks excessively rich. Second, giving people money does not improve their lives. It can have the negative effect of making them dependent on receiving money, like a big part of Africa is now after decades of outside help. "Teach people to fish, not give them a fish", but this should not be perverted "give them the money to go to college and learn something with no market value". And not the last, take money from the rich to give to the poor sounds sometime like a justification for rape: give people what they need, even without the consent of the people you take from. Sounds really cool when you tell about Robin Hood, not so cool when you give an analogy.

pdonis 5y ago

> the simplest way to lift the 99.99 percent is just to give them some of the 0.01 percent's money No, the simplest way is for the 0.01 percent to pay them to do things, not give them money.

zorpner 5y ago
That is trivially not simpler.
- pdonis 5y ago
  Sure it is. People pay other people for goods and services all the time; it happens naturally and is simple. Forcibly taking money away from some people and giving it to others is not natural or simple: it takes a huge, bloated government bureaucracy, which does a terrible job at it anyway.
  - ajmadesc 5y ago
    This is just plain false. The mechanism / organization of taxing and distributing _can_ be very simple.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > The mechanism / organization of taxing and distributing _can_ be very simple. In theory, sure. But as the saying goes, in theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, they aren't. No such "simple" system of taxing and redistributing has ever actually existed. The incentives to complicate and manipulate it are too strong.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    vs. the "huge, bloated" bureaucracy that has to exist to implement salaried & contract work? You actually believe that more people work in the government on redistribution than in companies? Also, people pay other people for goods & services that the people with the money want to pay for. The nature of my life should not be determined by the preferences of the people who've managed (frequently via heredity) to hoover up outsize chunks of wealth and power within the economy. As a human being, I do not exist to satisfy the wants of the rich (though I might choose to pursue doing so as means of making a living). The options available as a way to make a living should not be controlled by those who have already been successful.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      I agree with the general point you are making here. But you appear to assume that the way to fix it is more government bureaucracy and regulation. I think the way to fix it is less government bureaucracy and regulation. Government bureaucracy and regulation is as bloated as it is because the rich set it up that way. Those regulations benefit them, not you and me. They want society to be set up that way, so that creating wealth requires navigating a complex maze that only they know how to navigate. The only way to fix that is to get rid of the maze.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        > you appear to assume that the way to fix it is more government bureaucracy and regulation I don't assume that. I was merely contrasting your complaints about the bureaucracy required for the government to distribute money to people with the reality that any system for distributing money to people is going to be ... bureaucratic. I also don't agree with your assessment of things as they are. You claim that the bureaucracies are bloated, but have no evidence that the things they do can be achieved with less bureaucracy. Most regulations exist to check the power of the rich (or some subset of them), not to enable them (or some subset of them). Creating wealth does not involve navigating a complex maze any more than simply being alive does.
        5y ago
  - adamcstephens 5y ago
    And if there’s nothing they need the workers to do or goods the rich want to purchase? Then how should those without wealth eat and provide shelter for their family?
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > And if there’s nothing they need the workers to do or goods the rich want to purchase? Then how should those without wealth eat and provide shelter for their family? The fact that you, for example, don't have any goods or services that, say, Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos wants does not mean Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have all the wealth and you have none. Wealth is not a fixed thing. Wealth can be created. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are rich because they founded companies that created enormous amounts of wealth. Say what you like about Windows and Amazon, but Windows made personal computing available to everyone, not just the affluent who could afford a Mac, and Amazon has made cheap products and easy, fast shipping available to everyone, not just the rich who could afford to hire personal shopping and delivery services. And the wealth those companies created had to be spread among everyone, by the very nature of what they did. Windows would have been useless if it were just Bill Gates' personal OS, and Amazon would have been useless if it were just Jeff Bezos' personal shopping service. The whole point was to make those things available to everyone. Similar remarks apply to everyone who creates wealth. The people who grow the food you eat grow more than they need just for themselves. Then they trade the excess for other things they need or want. The same applies to you. Want some food? Create some wealth that you can trade for it. The real complaint that can be made about the "1 percent" or "0.01 percent" or "elite" or whatever term you want to use, is that they have created a system that makes it harder for everyone else to create wealth, by putting all kinds of regulations and complications in place that only they know how to navigate. But you don't fix that problem with more regulations and complications. Nor do you fix it by just confiscating what the rich have now and redistributing it; that only works once. You fix it by scaling back all those regulations and complications so more and more people can create wealth themselves instead of having to wait for a few "elites" to do it.
      - adamcstephens 5y ago
        Regulations are the only reason Windows even exists. If had not been for government antitrust laws and their enforcement, IBM would have stifled the PC market before it even began.[1] The thing about these cases is that they don’t even have to fully succeed to open the space for competition. The case against Microsoft continued this trend, providing space for Google and the monopolies of today. So regulation isn’t just good for society, it’s necessary to ensure a competitive market. Taxation ensures that all of society benefits as the collective wealth increases. It pays for shared resources, and provides for a shared safety net. Taxation isn’t confiscation, it’s the cost of doing business and thriving in a complex society. Trickle down and deregulation are awful policies that only destabilize. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/15/business/us-vsibm.html https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/15/business/us-vsibm.html
  - alasdair_ 5y ago
    >giving it to others is not natural Money is a completely unnatural invention - nothing about it is “natural”, so I don’t see this as a strong argument.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > Money is a completely unnatural invention Not unless human society itself is "unnatural". The reasons why money gets invented are common to all human societies that get beyond the tribal stage; money is as natural as the human societies that invent it are.
      - imtringued 5y ago
        >Not unless human society itself is "unnatural". Society is created by humans. Therefore it is man made, not made by nature. You don't have to change nature to change society, you can change society by changing humans, which is a very specific subset of nature and not very representative of nature as a whole. The problems that can easily be solved by money may be natural but we still get to decide how we implement money and the way we do it can create human made problems.
        pdonis 5y ago
        > Society is created by humans. Therefore it is man made, not made by nature. Okay, then that just means "unnatural" is not a bad thing, unless you think society is a bad thing. But if you think society is a bad thing, why are you taking advantage of the benefits it provides? I assume you are, because if you weren't, you wouldn't be able to post here. > you can change society by changing humans Really? And how do you propose to do that? Particularly without grossly violating the rights of the humans you want to change?
katbyte 5y ago
So trickle down? Which we’ve tried for decades and hasn’t work? Which Biden just said didn’t work? Problem is rich people hoard and save more money then they ever will spend. Poor people spend ever dime. Give 10,000,000 to a rich person and they but some property or “invest” it in some hedge fun that makes the world worse. Give 10,000 to 1000 people they spend it. All of it. At local businesses which pay tax. For homes they need. And it eventually ends up in the hands of the rich again anyone because they are so good at extracting wealth at every opportunity
- pdonis 5y ago
  It's quite true that a single rich person is less efficient at spending a given amount of money than a few thousand middle class people would be at spending the same money. But the rich person is still more efficient at it than the government. Also, since you admit that it all eventually ends up in the hands of the rich again, the alternative of "give the money to the non-rich" doesn't solve the problem anyway.
  - katbyte 5y ago
    rich person is still more efficient at doing _what_ ? if we are talking about getting money to people who need it sure doesn't sound like it, UBI/direct money gives 1000s of poor/middle class people 10,000 which can honestly be life changing vs a rich person who just shrugs and puts it in a bank account so sounds like its solving problems for people to me?
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > if we are talking about getting money to people who need it That's not what UBI does. UBI gives money to everybody whether they need it or not. Sure, for some of them it will be "life changing", but for many it won't. So UBI is very inefficient at getting money to people who need it. Rich people, in addition to paying people directly for goods and services, which those people would not produce in the first place if they didn't need the money they can sell them for (so paying them is directly giving them money they need), can (and many do) donate to charities that do a much better job than the government does of figuring out who actually needs the things they provide.
ip26 5y ago
If only self-funded moonshot businesses were a status symbol, like pearls or big yachts.

donmcronald 5y ago

I don't agree with that. I definitely think the super rich should have a huge portion of their wealth redistributed, but giving it directly to people is a bad use. I think it would be better to invest in solid infrastructure, education, healthcare, affordable housing, rehab, crime reduction, etc. so that everyone has a legit chance of improving their standard of living. There are some really hard, poverty skewed cultural problems that need to be solved and simply giving people money isn't going to do that. The benefit of investing in all of those infrastructure related things is that it creates jobs for people that want them. Hopefully enough people fight their way out of poverty that the next generation will have people with the knowledge base and skillset to improve things even more. I honestly don't think we're going to get a solution to poverty, petty crime, etc. until we're able to engage a lot more people that have lived in that world. Our supposed "leaders" just don't understand it well enough to come up with viable solutions. The biggest hurdle is filling the government with people that actually care and want to improve the world as a whole. I don't know if that'll every happen :-(

kiba 5y ago
Giving cash directly does work, but it is a part of a solution in resolving a larger problem, like getting out of the car dependent suburbia schema that is considered unsustainable.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  It's dependent on the person you're giving money to. Giving a drug addict money won't make a difference for anyone except the drug dealer that's going to end up with the cash.
  - rabidrat 5y ago
    And the person they don't steal from to get the money to get their fix?
  - xapata 5y ago
    That drug dealer spends money. Cash flow makes the economy work. Give cash to a rich person and they make a bet on what they think people will buy. Consolidate the wealth and we're back to central planning / command economy.

AdrianB1 5y ago

First, if you split that money to the 99.99 percent, it will make zero impact. A few hamburgers per person are a lot less than what you think, even if a person with a million hamburgers looks excessively rich. Second, giving people money does not improve their lives. It can have the negative effect of making them dependent on receiving money, like a big part of Africa is now after decades of outside help. "Teach people to fish, not give them a fish", but this should not be perverted "give them the money to go to college and learn something with no market value". And not the last, take money from the rich to give to the poor sounds sometime like a justification for rape: give people what they need, even without the consent of the people you take from. Sounds really cool when you tell about Robin Hood, not so cool when you give an analogy.