The reality though is that most millionaires and really rich families and people aren’t really the main problem with our current system.
Even if your family had tens of millions of dollars available while you were growing up, you’re many orders of magnitude closer to a minimum wage worker than to any billionaire.
The reality is that if most societies redistributed a fraction of the wealth of their top 30 wealthiest individuals, almost no one would be harmed and thousands of people could benefit significantly.
Now, of course, if you just give money away, that’s no good at improving people’s lives, so it makes sense to use the money to fund hospitals and schools, to provide adequate conditions to the disabled, the elderly, single parents, the homeless and our most vulnerable. And oh, would you look at that, that’s just a tax reform.
I’m from a middle upper class family, so, I never lacked any necessities but I also couldn’t afford luxuries every day. But I hold no contempt for people who got to grow up living in wealth and luxury beyond what my family could afford. I hold contempt for people who could dramatically improve their entire communities’ conditions and choose to evade their only tax obligations and only invest their wealth to accumulate more and more.
I think societies should at some point put a cap on wealth. No human being should be as rich as Elon Musk.
Now, of course, if you just give money away, that’s no good at improving people’s lives
Actually, no, I’m pretty sure there have been many studies that show that literally just giving poor people money is all it takes. This is the first one I found after 15 seconds of searching; I think you are really underestimating how difficult it is for poor people to just get necessities, or how difficult it is to get out of debt traps.
I see where you’re coming from. Drug addicts, gambling addicts, etc, may not be the best demographics to just give money to. But that is not most poor people. It’s a tiny fraction! Literally all we need is wealth distribution, with no need to overcomplicate things. It might not be perfect, but it would be magnitudes better than what we have now.
Edit, to be clear, I’m not saying we shouldn’t fund hospitals and schools and whatnot. But it’s simply not true that giving money away isn’t effective.
Interesting! Thanks for the fact check. I always assumed giving money away would at best just be a temporary bandaid solution since you need a stable income to actually get out of poverty.
Of course, this isn’t a problem with a stable UBI, I imagine.
Even if your family had tens of millions of dollars available while you were growing up, you’re many orders of magnitude closer to a minimum wage worker than to any billionaire.
If you grew up with millions of dollars, your existence is very different from people making minimum wage because you can live comfortably without much stress or need to burn yourself out working. But you and the minimum wage worker both have effectively no political power, while the few thousand billionaires in the world are really running the show - makes no difference what sort of lifestyles those billionaires are living.
I’m from a very wealthy family and I find people treat me normal if I just live a normal middle class life.
Oh, look at medici over here!
The reality though is that most millionaires and really rich families and people aren’t really the main problem with our current system.
Even if your family had tens of millions of dollars available while you were growing up, you’re many orders of magnitude closer to a minimum wage worker than to any billionaire.
The reality is that if most societies redistributed a fraction of the wealth of their top 30 wealthiest individuals, almost no one would be harmed and thousands of people could benefit significantly.
Now, of course, if you just give money away, that’s no good at improving people’s lives, so it makes sense to use the money to fund hospitals and schools, to provide adequate conditions to the disabled, the elderly, single parents, the homeless and our most vulnerable. And oh, would you look at that, that’s just a tax reform.
I’m from a middle upper class family, so, I never lacked any necessities but I also couldn’t afford luxuries every day. But I hold no contempt for people who got to grow up living in wealth and luxury beyond what my family could afford. I hold contempt for people who could dramatically improve their entire communities’ conditions and choose to evade their only tax obligations and only invest their wealth to accumulate more and more.
I think societies should at some point put a cap on wealth. No human being should be as rich as Elon Musk.
Actually, no, I’m pretty sure there have been many studies that show that literally just giving poor people money is all it takes. This is the first one I found after 15 seconds of searching; I think you are really underestimating how difficult it is for poor people to just get necessities, or how difficult it is to get out of debt traps.
I see where you’re coming from. Drug addicts, gambling addicts, etc, may not be the best demographics to just give money to. But that is not most poor people. It’s a tiny fraction! Literally all we need is wealth distribution, with no need to overcomplicate things. It might not be perfect, but it would be magnitudes better than what we have now.
Edit, to be clear, I’m not saying we shouldn’t fund hospitals and schools and whatnot. But it’s simply not true that giving money away isn’t effective.
Interesting! Thanks for the fact check. I always assumed giving money away would at best just be a temporary bandaid solution since you need a stable income to actually get out of poverty.
Of course, this isn’t a problem with a stable UBI, I imagine.
If you grew up with millions of dollars, your existence is very different from people making minimum wage because you can live comfortably without much stress or need to burn yourself out working. But you and the minimum wage worker both have effectively no political power, while the few thousand billionaires in the world are really running the show - makes no difference what sort of lifestyles those billionaires are living.
But why would you do that if you are very wealthy?
How do you show that you’re better than everyone else?
I don’t believe I am better. Just very lucky in that one way