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If you give one million dollars to every person, a sandwich would cost one million dollars. Because the farmers, truck drivers, slaughterhouse workers, butcher

If you give one million dollars to every person, a sandwich would cost one million dollars. Because the farmers, truck drivers, slaughterhouse workers, butchers, truck drivers, would quit their job immediately upon receiving 1 million dollars. It's a fallacy that giving money to people would solve poverty. It would simply force the system to recalibrate so that everyone asks for more money.

flarg 4y ago
Food banks. People are living off food banks. No one is getting a million dollars but they be should at least be able to afford food.
jemmyw 4y ago
That's a simplistic example with extreme inputs. If you gave the people earning the least, in a country like the UK, a sensible increase it doesn't follow that all prices will rise to match it, although they might rise a small amount. The reasons being that the total income and spending power of those on minimum wages and benefits is small compared to the total economy, and that each working person in the supply line of sandwiches is only a small proportion of the sandwich cost, i.e. once you get to a certain scale you can churn out a lot of sandwiches per worker. Sure you can cite silly and extreme examples like "give everyone 1 million dollars." But how about an analysis of "raise minimum wage by 5 dollars per hour and increase benefits by 50 dollars per week"?
flandish 4y ago
How about we take the things that are necessary for a functioning life, and make them provided to each person based on a universally understood base tax layer. Things like food, shelter, electricity, heat, water, healthcare, etc. Just… start there. That there are hungry people in the same world as there are people with such billions amassed and through exploitation… is just deplorable.
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  Then you would be artificially raising the population capacity, causing population to grow exponentially until reaching the new capacity, determined by the point in which you cannot keep providing those things for free anymore. This creates a much bigger problem than the one you initially tried to solve and would lead to a total catastrophe. Economic hardship is the population feeling the backpressure from what essentially is the reality of living in a world with limited resources. You can decide to ignore those limits but that does not end well.
  - flandish 4y ago
    sure: if you extend things to the extreme. Ignoring that illogical connection between “feeding people” and “pop growth” - there is no, that I have read, indication that an increase in pop will become untenable, under a system designed to take care of its people. (Not under capitalism, for instance.)
    - 29athrowaway 4y ago
      Under a system that ensures housing, food, health, education, you also need some form of population control. The premise is that if you lower mortality rates you lower birth rates, but that's because once enough people survive you reach a capacity, which is established through economic pressure.
      - flandish 4y ago
        Where do you (how do you) connect housing, food, essential services to a lower mortality rate and further, how do you connect more people (consuming yet paying taxes) to a capacity as you mention it?

flarg 4y ago

Food banks. People are living off food banks. No one is getting a million dollars but they be should at least be able to afford food.

jemmyw 4y ago

That's a simplistic example with extreme inputs. If you gave the people earning the least, in a country like the UK, a sensible increase it doesn't follow that all prices will rise to match it, although they might rise a small amount. The reasons being that the total income and spending power of those on minimum wages and benefits is small compared to the total economy, and that each working person in the supply line of sandwiches is only a small proportion of the sandwich cost, i.e. once you get to a certain scale you can churn out a lot of sandwiches per worker. Sure you can cite silly and extreme examples like "give everyone 1 million dollars." But how about an analysis of "raise minimum wage by 5 dollars per hour and increase benefits by 50 dollars per week"?

flandish 4y ago

How about we take the things that are necessary for a functioning life, and make them provided to each person based on a universally understood base tax layer. Things like food, shelter, electricity, heat, water, healthcare, etc. Just… start there. That there are hungry people in the same world as there are people with such billions amassed and through exploitation… is just deplorable.

29athrowaway 4y ago
Then you would be artificially raising the population capacity, causing population to grow exponentially until reaching the new capacity, determined by the point in which you cannot keep providing those things for free anymore. This creates a much bigger problem than the one you initially tried to solve and would lead to a total catastrophe. Economic hardship is the population feeling the backpressure from what essentially is the reality of living in a world with limited resources. You can decide to ignore those limits but that does not end well.
- flandish 4y ago
  sure: if you extend things to the extreme. Ignoring that illogical connection between “feeding people” and “pop growth” - there is no, that I have read, indication that an increase in pop will become untenable, under a system designed to take care of its people. (Not under capitalism, for instance.)
  - 29athrowaway 4y ago
    Under a system that ensures housing, food, health, education, you also need some form of population control. The premise is that if you lower mortality rates you lower birth rates, but that's because once enough people survive you reach a capacity, which is established through economic pressure.
    - flandish 4y ago
      Where do you (how do you) connect housing, food, essential services to a lower mortality rate and further, how do you connect more people (consuming yet paying taxes) to a capacity as you mention it?