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Children are in poverty because some people grab vastly more than their share of the world's wealth, and then they buy legislation and elections, to take even m

by neilv 11mo ago

Children are in poverty because some people grab vastly more than their share of the world's wealth, and then they buy legislation and elections, to take even more. A challenge is that usually, within an attempt at a fair and equitable society, some TPOS will try to be a king or billionaire, or to ride the coattails of one. The society needs to tell those people no, and get them mental health care, to heal whatever makes them act like a TPOS.

bluescrn 11mo ago
The UK government spends £1.3 trillion per year. The total wealth owned by UK billionaires is estimated at a small fraction of that (£300b?). Even seizing all of it isn't going to solve anything long-term (but will create new long-term problems) Billionaires are a symbol of unfairness, but eliminating them won't make a significant long-term difference to those at the bottom. Unless they're put out of work as all that wealth, mostly tied up in companies, is liquidated.
- graemep 11mo ago
  Billionaires are a very small group. There is far more wealth held by people with assets of, say, over £100m, or even £10m? > Unless they're put out of work as all that wealth, mostly tied up in companies, is liquidated. No one is going to close down profitable businesses because they have to pay more tax. The value of shares might fall a bit, that is all. I do not even think that, because money will just shift around, not disappear. > but will create new long-term problem I do not think it will. IMO it would be a net benefit.
  - bluescrn 11mo ago
    > Billionaires are a very small group. There is far more wealth held by people with assets of, say, over £100m, or even £10m? Which is precisely why we can't 'eliminate billionaires'. Because before long it's a push for full-on communism, and even owning £100k is too much. And unless you can destroy capitalism on a global scale, there'll always be countries eager to take in very wealthy people.
    - graemep 11mo ago
      > Because before long it's a push for full-on communism, and even owning £100k is too much. Why? It does not follow at all. > And unless you can destroy capitalism on a global scale, there'll always be countries eager to take in very wealthy people. So what? Let them take them. There are few consequences of that because non-financial assets are mostly not portable.
djtango 11mo ago
We can point fingers at the rich for making more money but really we should be hounding our government for wasting money. All the taxes and confiscation in the world won't fill this bottomless pit Just today: "£700m nuclear conservation plan would save one salmon every 12 years"
- soco 11mo ago
  My question is: does this tax money get spent on the poor, or is making the rich richer?
  - csallen 11mo ago
    Both. Today's rich are wealthier than the rich of the past, but today's poor are also wealthier than the poor of the past. It's also the case that quality of life differences have shrunk between the two groups, not because life has worsened for the rich, but because it's improved for the poor. Bill Gates' car, music, TV shows, phone, pants, meals, etc. aren't that much better than the average person's, today.
  - bluescrn 11mo ago
    In the UK, it seems that it's mostly spent letting the boomers live long and relatively luxurious retirements that younger generations can only dream of.
- Nextgrid 11mo ago
  Your government is not "wasting" money. It's intentionally putting money in the hands of the rich for a personal kickback to the involved politicians, under the guise of incompetence for plausible deniability purposes.
csallen 11mo ago
This is the fixed pie policy, which assumes there's a limited amount of wealth to go around. And therefore, any time somebody gets "too much" of it, the conclusion is they must be why others have less. This is not true. And it's important to understand that it's not true, because understanding a problem is the key to helping solve it. In pre-agricultural times, the average person was lucky to own a few dozen items. Today, the average person in a developed Western country owns a few thousand goods. Western households possess over 100,000 goods on average. There's vastly more wealth than ever. Especially if you multiply these numbers by the massively expanded population of Earth compared to prehistoric times. Therefore, it's necessarily the case that wealth can be created and not merely stolen or shared.
- neilv 11mo ago
  You're responding to the words "grab" and "take", and leading up to an argument in which wealth is created, by a Great Man, who deserves the wealth and power that He created, or else He wouldn't have incentive to create wealth? People can collaborate to create wealth that they share. The problem is when someone says "I am so great, that I deserve more wealth and power than other people". Because of a bad experience in kindergarten, or because their parents told them that.
  - csallen 11mo ago
    Everybody always takes this argument to the extreme, as if it has to be a 0 or a 1, black or white, either people deserve the wealth that they created or they don't. There is no such dichotomy. On one hand, markets and incentives work. When people can earn and gain more, by providing more value to their fellow man, people do work more + smarter + better + provide more value to their fellow man. This is not speculative or just a theory, this is an actual fact that has been observed for hundreds of years across dozens of societies. This has nothing to do with some moral imperative about what people "deserve". It's just pure incentive -- it's better for society as a whole if you incentivize people to work and provide services, to create new technology, to complete engineering projects, etc etc. We absolutely should give people more money if they create more value. On the flip side, of course these people aren't 100.000% responsible for their own success, and completely entitled to all the profits, or deserving of holding all the power in society. If you build a fortune in a capitalist, market-driven economy, that's almost certainly only possible because you are making good use of the economic and political "rails" that have been laid before you and that made this possible. For example, your country almost certainly has a police force and a military that can protect the safety of you and your business. It almost certainly has a judicial branch that have created legal frameworks to limit your liability and allow you to take entrepreneurial or scientific risks. Etc. Pretty much everybody agrees with this. Which is why every western country has a progressive taxation system that taxes the rich at higher rates than the poor or middle class. In the United States, for example, the top 1% of earners paid 40% of the nation's income tax.

by neilv 11mo ago

bluescrn 11mo ago

The UK government spends £1.3 trillion per year. The total wealth owned by UK billionaires is estimated at a small fraction of that (£300b?). Even seizing all of it isn't going to solve anything long-term (but will create new long-term problems) Billionaires are a symbol of unfairness, but eliminating them won't make a significant long-term difference to those at the bottom. Unless they're put out of work as all that wealth, mostly tied up in companies, is liquidated.

graemep 11mo ago
Billionaires are a very small group. There is far more wealth held by people with assets of, say, over £100m, or even £10m? > Unless they're put out of work as all that wealth, mostly tied up in companies, is liquidated. No one is going to close down profitable businesses because they have to pay more tax. The value of shares might fall a bit, that is all. I do not even think that, because money will just shift around, not disappear. > but will create new long-term problem I do not think it will. IMO it would be a net benefit.
- bluescrn 11mo ago
  > Billionaires are a very small group. There is far more wealth held by people with assets of, say, over £100m, or even £10m? Which is precisely why we can't 'eliminate billionaires'. Because before long it's a push for full-on communism, and even owning £100k is too much. And unless you can destroy capitalism on a global scale, there'll always be countries eager to take in very wealthy people.
  - graemep 11mo ago
    > Because before long it's a push for full-on communism, and even owning £100k is too much. Why? It does not follow at all. > And unless you can destroy capitalism on a global scale, there'll always be countries eager to take in very wealthy people. So what? Let them take them. There are few consequences of that because non-financial assets are mostly not portable.

djtango 11mo ago

We can point fingers at the rich for making more money but really we should be hounding our government for wasting money. All the taxes and confiscation in the world won't fill this bottomless pit Just today: "£700m nuclear conservation plan would save one salmon every 12 years"

soco 11mo ago
My question is: does this tax money get spent on the poor, or is making the rich richer?
- csallen 11mo ago
  Both. Today's rich are wealthier than the rich of the past, but today's poor are also wealthier than the poor of the past. It's also the case that quality of life differences have shrunk between the two groups, not because life has worsened for the rich, but because it's improved for the poor. Bill Gates' car, music, TV shows, phone, pants, meals, etc. aren't that much better than the average person's, today.
- bluescrn 11mo ago
  In the UK, it seems that it's mostly spent letting the boomers live long and relatively luxurious retirements that younger generations can only dream of.
Nextgrid 11mo ago
Your government is not "wasting" money. It's intentionally putting money in the hands of the rich for a personal kickback to the involved politicians, under the guise of incompetence for plausible deniability purposes.

csallen 11mo ago

This is the fixed pie policy, which assumes there's a limited amount of wealth to go around. And therefore, any time somebody gets "too much" of it, the conclusion is they must be why others have less. This is not true. And it's important to understand that it's not true, because understanding a problem is the key to helping solve it. In pre-agricultural times, the average person was lucky to own a few dozen items. Today, the average person in a developed Western country owns a few thousand goods. Western households possess over 100,000 goods on average. There's vastly more wealth than ever. Especially if you multiply these numbers by the massively expanded population of Earth compared to prehistoric times. Therefore, it's necessarily the case that wealth can be created and not merely stolen or shared.

neilv 11mo ago
You're responding to the words "grab" and "take", and leading up to an argument in which wealth is created, by a Great Man, who deserves the wealth and power that He created, or else He wouldn't have incentive to create wealth? People can collaborate to create wealth that they share. The problem is when someone says "I am so great, that I deserve more wealth and power than other people". Because of a bad experience in kindergarten, or because their parents told them that.
- csallen 11mo ago
  Everybody always takes this argument to the extreme, as if it has to be a 0 or a 1, black or white, either people deserve the wealth that they created or they don't. There is no such dichotomy. On one hand, markets and incentives work. When people can earn and gain more, by providing more value to their fellow man, people do work more + smarter + better + provide more value to their fellow man. This is not speculative or just a theory, this is an actual fact that has been observed for hundreds of years across dozens of societies. This has nothing to do with some moral imperative about what people "deserve". It's just pure incentive -- it's better for society as a whole if you incentivize people to work and provide services, to create new technology, to complete engineering projects, etc etc. We absolutely should give people more money if they create more value. On the flip side, of course these people aren't 100.000% responsible for their own success, and completely entitled to all the profits, or deserving of holding all the power in society. If you build a fortune in a capitalist, market-driven economy, that's almost certainly only possible because you are making good use of the economic and political "rails" that have been laid before you and that made this possible. For example, your country almost certainly has a police force and a military that can protect the safety of you and your business. It almost certainly has a judicial branch that have created legal frameworks to limit your liability and allow you to take entrepreneurial or scientific risks. Etc. Pretty much everybody agrees with this. Which is why every western country has a progressive taxation system that taxes the rich at higher rates than the poor or middle class. In the United States, for example, the top 1% of earners paid 40% of the nation's income tax.