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I’m not sure how much good $250 will do for a child. I think this essentially explains why taxing billionaires is not very useful, because the total amount of

I’m not sure how much good $250 will do for a child. I think this essentially explains why taxing billionaires is not very useful, because the total amount of their life generated wealth assets amounts to a small amount for 25 million people let alone larger populations. Even if you took all the $’s away, the government really needs to tax high numbers of lower income people for the income to be meaningful.

maxerickson 11mo ago
Helping them not go insane from always getting what they want is useful.
bink 11mo ago
It's not either/or. You can tax both the poor and the wealthy at a similar rate.
bluGill 11mo ago
Depends on how it is spent. Buy candy/beer - as many kids will (depending on when they are allowed to access it) and there is no good. Buy some education and it is good. Remember money is fungable - even if this money can only be used for something good, it can still free up money for something bad that in turn destroyes the good (you buy tuition for a semester, but then use your free cash to party and get bad grades...) I don't know how to solve this problem, but it is one everyone should be aware of.
- daft_pink 11mo ago
  Where I live, the government spends 16,500 ANNUALLY for each K-12 child. Getting $250 once doesn't seem like it will have a huge benefit to someone's life.
  - bluGill 11mo ago
    Again, depends on how it is spent. How much of that spending is for outliers - every school has a few severely disabled kids who can't even feed themselves: schools spend a lot more on those kids even though they will never learn. Also there is a lot of money spent on sports, music, art... which have debatable use in education - your community has come down on one side of the debate, but that doesn't mean it is right. Note too that higher education in the US is partially supported by things other than tuition and so 250 can go farther than it seems because it is 250 applied to your portion of the whole... We can debate how much different payers should pay, but that is a different question.
    - daft_pink 11mo ago
      I think if this were a much larger number like $100k or even $10k, I might agree with your argument, but the fact that this less than 1% of a college degree or less than 1% of a communities total spending on a child or even just a fraction of the minimum wage. I feel he would have been better off going to someone like Coursera and funding minimum accredited US associates degrees and delivered electronically and delivered for free to anyone in the United States. It seems like the buying power of $6 billion to deliver electronic services on the cheap would make more sense than giving millions of children a one time amount of essentially pocket change in relation to total spending.
wat10000 11mo ago
Taxing billionaires is useful because concentrated power is bad. The fact that it also produces revenue should just be seen as a bonus.

maxerickson 11mo ago

Helping them not go insane from always getting what they want is useful.

bink 11mo ago

It's not either/or. You can tax both the poor and the wealthy at a similar rate.

bluGill 11mo ago

Depends on how it is spent. Buy candy/beer - as many kids will (depending on when they are allowed to access it) and there is no good. Buy some education and it is good. Remember money is fungable - even if this money can only be used for something good, it can still free up money for something bad that in turn destroyes the good (you buy tuition for a semester, but then use your free cash to party and get bad grades...) I don't know how to solve this problem, but it is one everyone should be aware of.

daft_pink 11mo ago
Where I live, the government spends 16,500 ANNUALLY for each K-12 child. Getting $250 once doesn't seem like it will have a huge benefit to someone's life.
- bluGill 11mo ago
  Again, depends on how it is spent. How much of that spending is for outliers - every school has a few severely disabled kids who can't even feed themselves: schools spend a lot more on those kids even though they will never learn. Also there is a lot of money spent on sports, music, art... which have debatable use in education - your community has come down on one side of the debate, but that doesn't mean it is right. Note too that higher education in the US is partially supported by things other than tuition and so 250 can go farther than it seems because it is 250 applied to your portion of the whole... We can debate how much different payers should pay, but that is a different question.
  - daft_pink 11mo ago
    I think if this were a much larger number like $100k or even $10k, I might agree with your argument, but the fact that this less than 1% of a college degree or less than 1% of a communities total spending on a child or even just a fraction of the minimum wage. I feel he would have been better off going to someone like Coursera and funding minimum accredited US associates degrees and delivered electronically and delivered for free to anyone in the United States. It seems like the buying power of $6 billion to deliver electronic services on the cheap would make more sense than giving millions of children a one time amount of essentially pocket change in relation to total spending.

wat10000 11mo ago

Taxing billionaires is useful because concentrated power is bad. The fact that it also produces revenue should just be seen as a bonus.