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asdf32
May 15, 2010

I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.

down with slavery posted:

Wealth too honey

For reference assuming 40 trillion of "hoarded wealth" (first number I found) that's something like 2-5 years of GMI. Though you can't come close to taxing that much because as you force the liquidation of the assets underlying it you devalue them. So it's effectively less.

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archangelwar
Oct 28, 2004

Teaching Moments

on the left posted:

A good campaign slogan for mincome: American citizens, heed the call of doubling or tripling your income tax burden so that a bunch of autistic shut-ins are freed from the burden of work.

People want to make sure the poor have dignity and all you can do is fret about SOMEONE SOMEWHERE using your money in a way you might not approve.

Edit: The best part is you are making fun of someone who is suffering from a legitimate issue, if they are truly autistic. You are the worst of right wing stereotypes.

archangelwar fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Nov 6, 2014

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

asdf32 posted:

For reference assuming 40 trillion of "hoarded wealth" (first number I found) that's something like 2-5 years of GMI. Though you can't come close to taxing that much because as you force the liquidation of the assets underlying it you devalue them. So it's effectively less.

Every time I pay my property taxes my land gets a little smaller. Soon it will be gone! :ohdear:

archangelwar
Oct 28, 2004

Teaching Moments

asdf32 posted:

For reference assuming 40 trillion of "hoarded wealth" (first number I found) that's something like 2-5 years of GMI. Though you can't come close to taxing that much because as you force the liquidation of the assets underlying it you devalue them. So it's effectively less.

Well if property and capital becomes cheaper, then so does production and rents.

Accretionist
Nov 7, 2012
I BELIEVE IN STUPID CONSPIRACY THEORIES

asdf32 posted:

For reference assuming 40 trillion of "hoarded wealth" (first number I found) that's something like 2-5 years of GMI.

That's something like to $25,000 to $63,000 per resident funded solely from wealth. No one suggested payments that high and no one suggested using this to destroy all "hoarded wealth."

archangelwar
Oct 28, 2004

Teaching Moments

Accretionist posted:

That's something like to $25,000 to $63,000 per resident funded solely from wealth. No one suggested payments that high and no one suggested using this to destroy all "hoarded wealth."

No no, let's not protest too much. Embracing the aggressive devaluation of property is a step forward.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

You can't destory hoarded wealth by liquidating it anyway. A mine or a factory or a farm doesn't magically disappear when sold.

If the wealth tax rate is too high such that productive investments still can't turn a profit, the market will react by depressing the price of it (and therefore the absolute amount owed in taxes) again until it's roughly equal to the net present value of expected future returns.

Ernie Muppari
Aug 4, 2012

Keep this up G'Bert, and soon you won't have a pigeon to protect!
c'mon everyone be nice

some people might just have never developed object permanence and actually think that when people spend money it just stops existing

on the left
Nov 2, 2013
I Am A Gigantic Piece Of Shit

Literally poo from a diseased human butt

Ernie Muppari posted:

c'mon everyone be nice

some people might just have never developed object permanence and actually think that when people spend money it just stops existing

No reason not to make the minimum income at least 500k, just so poor people can afford everything they need in life. Of course, some sort of money circulation effect will quickly bring our GDP in line with this high figure. There must be some way for the economy to reflect a higher money supply or velocity chasing a relatively fixed supply of energy-intensive goods.

down with slavery
Dec 23, 2013
STOP QUOTING MY POSTS SO PEOPLE THAT AREN'T IDIOTS DON'T HAVE TO READ MY FUCKING TERRIBLE OPINIONS THANKS

on the left posted:

No reason not to make the minimum income at least 500k, just so poor people can afford everything they need in life. Of course, some sort of money circulation effect will quickly bring our GDP in line with this high figure. There must be some way for the economy to reflect a higher money supply or velocity chasing a relatively fixed supply of energy-intensive goods.

Congratulations, you are Sean Hannity (only a little more dumb and a little less rich)

You can add "carbon tax" to the ways we can fund a GMI too :)

Also, 90% tax brackets on inheritances above $2m

While we're having fun, we might as well just go ahead and also restore capital gains to be treated as income.

down with slavery fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Nov 6, 2014

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

on the left posted:

No reason not to make the minimum income at least 500k, just so poor people can afford everything they need in life. Of course, some sort of money circulation effect will quickly bring our GDP in line with this high figure. There must be some way for the economy to reflect a higher money supply or velocity chasing a relatively fixed supply of energy-intensive goods.

Liberals claim that drinking 8 glasses of water is good for you, so why don't you drink 8,000 glasses in a day if it's so good, huh libtards?

on the left
Nov 2, 2013
I Am A Gigantic Piece Of Shit

Literally poo from a diseased human butt

VitalSigns posted:

Liberals claim that drinking 8 glasses of water is good for you, so why don't you drink 8,000 glasses in a day if it's so good, huh libtards?

Why do you hate poor people and want them to live on only 15-20k a year just because they don't work? My plan would make everyone rich due to that whole circular money effect thingy that apparently will fix any economic problem.

down with slavery
Dec 23, 2013
STOP QUOTING MY POSTS SO PEOPLE THAT AREN'T IDIOTS DON'T HAVE TO READ MY FUCKING TERRIBLE OPINIONS THANKS

on the left posted:

Why do you hate poor people and want them to live on only 15-20k a year just because they don't work? My plan would make everyone rich due to that whole circular money effect thingy that apparently will fix any economic problem.

I would unironically agree to your plan fyi. As long as we're redistributing the wealth from the top I'm down for some aggressive hyperinflation if you want to ride that train.

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

^^^ Yeah, basically inflation is meaningless as long as the increase in the real amount of goods/services people can purchase increases faster than the rate of inflation. But the media tends to focus on it a lot because inflation is really bad for rich people.

on the left posted:

No reason not to make the minimum income at least 500k, just so poor people can afford everything they need in life. Of course, some sort of money circulation effect will quickly bring our GDP in line with this high figure. There must be some way for the economy to reflect a higher money supply or velocity chasing a relatively fixed supply of energy-intensive goods.

This is a really dumb post and I'm not sure what point you're trying to make? It's kind of obvious that a slippery slope argument doesn't apply here. It's a really stupid post!

While it's true that increasing money supply can result in inflation, you're basically weighing the benefits of a great increase in the amount of money poorer individuals spend on goods/services vs. whatever inflation occurs. If you were talking about increasing the pay of every single person in the nation by $X an hour then it might make sense to think that the harm would be at least equal to the benefit, but it's entirely reasonable to think the benefits of the poor having a lot more spending money will outweigh whatever relatively insignificant inflation occurs as a result.

Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Nov 6, 2014

lurker1981
May 15, 2014

by XyloJW
I thought the Dredd universe (comic books) had the right idea: build huge apartment complexes that people live in, and have robots do all of the work.

We could even create a new form of transferring money, or things of value. Basically, one person could trade an item with someone else, and depending on the perceived values of the item or items, the second person person could give the first person something of perceived equal value, and this could function as a means of obtaining and redistributing wealth. I call this "bartoring" (patent pending). What makes my idea unique is that computers will be used to determine the actual value of items traded, and then the owners of the items will be taxed according the actual value of the things they own, at a rate of 40% or so, and they can either "donate" items to the government, or sell them to government workers (at approximately 75% of their real value, according to the computers, and the police are allowed to execute civilians caught using government money for non-tax purposes without a trial) in order to pay off their debts.

This will benefit the government immensely. And knowing human nature, our supply of soylent green will never run dry.

lurker1981 fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Nov 6, 2014

i am harry
Oct 14, 2003

Ytlaya posted:

This is a really dumb post and I'm not sure what point you're trying to make? It's kind of obvious that a slippery slope argument doesn't apply here. It's a really stupid post!

Yeah...If none of the rest of what that person said was stupid, it requires less than $20k to afford everything you need in life.

Accretionist
Nov 7, 2012
I BELIEVE IN STUPID CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Yeah, according to national MIT's Cost of Living estimates for the US, you're pretty much looking at a bare minimum of $15k to $25k for a single adult living alone in a 1 bedroom depending on whether you're in Walla Walla, WA or New York, New York. With some corner cutting, $20k has totally got you covered in almost all of the US.

on the left
Nov 2, 2013
I Am A Gigantic Piece Of Shit

Literally poo from a diseased human butt

i am harry posted:

Yeah...If none of the rest of what that person said was stupid, it requires less than $20k to afford everything you need in life.

If you have kids, this figure increases dramatically.

Ernie Muppari
Aug 4, 2012

Keep this up G'Bert, and soon you won't have a pigeon to protect!

on the left posted:

If you have kids, this figure increases dramatically.

well yeah that's why you put them to work

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

on the left posted:

If you have kids, this figure increases dramatically.

Why don't you just make the case for full communism at this point. You know you want to, all you do is complain liberals are too stingy and we keep taxes too low.

breadshaped
Apr 1, 2010


Soiled Meat
I like the idea of a UBI as a kind of temporary solution to an increasingly automated society.

What is the solution to price increases on products where a single entity already has a monopoly on the entire market? An example is probably something like telecomms as they are now in America. Can't they just increase prices and drive down purchasing power?

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004

Bedshaped posted:

I like the idea of a UBI as a kind of temporary solution to an increasingly automated society.

What is the solution to price increases on products where a single entity already has a monopoly on the entire market? An example is probably something like telecomms as they are now in America. Can't they just increase prices and drive down purchasing power?

Harsh and unforgiving antitrust legislation. The current telecomms situation is massively overdue for a repeat of what happened to Ma Bell.

Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe

Liquid Communism posted:

Harsh and unforgiving antitrust legislation. The current telecomms situation is massively overdue for a repeat of what happened to Ma Bell.

So you have no idea what happened with Ma Bell then? Let me tell you what happened: we created 7 local monopoly operators, and they had such an incumbent advantage that landline services besides long distance remained with the incumbent monopoly operator something crazy like over 95% of the time. With the only major "moving" coming from the newly formed monopolies deciding to sell off less profitable, mostly rural operating areas to small companies (who then themselves became pretty much the incumbent monopoly). Most importantly, let's say it's 1992, well after the decision and things have shaken out. Can you, a Bell Atlantic customer get service from one of the neighboring baby bells like NYNEX, Ameritech or BellSouth? No, you definitely can't for local phone service, and you only have a slim chance of getting them for long distance (and they all charge about the same rates for that anyway. 10 years on from that you can now get "NYNEX" service but only in so much as Bell Atlantic and NYNEX have now merged with GTE as well to form Verizon. 10 years on from that it's modern times so you've dropped a landline altogether in your last move.

Just about the only thing that actually moved people off the original monopoly baby bell for their area or its merger successor was cell phone lines, which often as not were also purchased from the wireless subsidiary of their landline service (although there were plenty of cases of the cell carrier ending up owned by a rival to your landline, if you even kept the landline.

So yeah, doing what we did in the AT&T case is not going to do anything to remove monopolies.

Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Nov 6, 2014

wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010

Helsing posted:

"Modern experience" here clearly just means your gut feeling. I would suggest modern experience suggests the opposite. If you look, for example, at the functioning of any industrial economy during a major war you can see how a high level of economic intervention and coordination proved to be incredibly effective at simultaneously increasing production, encouraging technological innovation, and maintaining or even raising living standards for workers. Those highly coordinated war economies also created the institutional, technological and social basis for a 30 year economic boom and a (by historical standards) broadly based middle class society.

Which war and which economies are you talking about? World War 2 and the U.S?

wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010

Ardennes posted:

I don't really think there should be a universal GMI, it should be means-tested.


Probably because you need to address income and the place of it in the first place, and the issue of automation and lower levels of employment. There needs to be far more than a few targeted improvements as well especially considering the severity of inequality in the US (and actual poor living standards for significant portions of the population).

A means tested GMI would be different, for sure. The impact (disruptive or otherwise) would depend on who was elligible and for how much and what programs got displaced, etc. We could talk about the details and probably come to agree on a proposal that seems acceptable to both of us though I suspect we'd disagree on the size of the GMI.

As far as poor living standards a small minority of poor in the US live in disgraceful conditions that people living in a first world country should be ashamed of, but a lot of nominally poor people have a much better standard of living in the States than they'd have for instance anywhere here in Latin America. IMO it might be wise not to mess with the system delivering relative prosperity too much.

Helsing
Aug 23, 2003

DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU :love::love::love: JOE BIDEN

wateroverfire posted:

Which war and which economies are you talking about? World War 2 and the U.S?

I am thinking mostly of Canada and the US during World War II but I made my comment more open ended because I think that you can also draw lessons from the performances of other countries during the extended period from 1914 to 1945. Obviously, though, the situation is more complicated when your country is either being blockaded (as in the case of Britain or Germany) or physically destroyed (i.e. something that happened in varying degrees to most of Asia and Europe during this period).

archangelwar
Oct 28, 2004

Teaching Moments

wateroverfire posted:

As far as poor living standards a small minority of poor in the US live in disgraceful conditions that people living in a first world country should be ashamed of, but a lot of nominally poor people have a much better standard of living in the States than they'd have for instance anywhere here in Latin America. IMO it might be wise not to mess with the system delivering relative prosperity too much.

The scales have fallen from my eyes and I now herald the return to the Great Age of Colonialism!!! Long live the Empire!

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

Helsing posted:

I am thinking mostly of Canada and the US during World War II but I made my comment more open ended because I think that you can also draw lessons from the performances of other countries during the extended period from 1914 to 1945. Obviously, though, the situation is more complicated when your country is either being blockaded (as in the case of Britain or Germany) or physically destroyed (i.e. something that happened in varying degrees to most of Asia and Europe during this period).

Of course in Britain even with the blockade, health and nutrition improved among the lower classes because it turned out there was enough food for everyone after all and the only stumbling block was economic.

German subs were sinking tons and tons of shipping, and about 50% of the country's labor was entirely removed from productive endeavors and put to work manufacturing things that were just going to be blown up, and the food situation was still better than in the glory days of capitalism.

Helsing
Aug 23, 2003

DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU :love::love::love: JOE BIDEN
Yeah, I think that a lot of the postwar welfare state, especially in the English speaking world, was made possible by the very visible and dramatic successes of government during the War. It totally demolished the liberal arguments of the 19th and early 20th century about how the state wasn't capable of coordinating economic activity with any degree of efficiency.

For people who came of age during the era surrounding the Great Depression and the World Wars you had a very clear example of massive market failure followed by a very successful series of government initiatives (I'm thinking primarily of the war, not the New Deal). These formative experiences helped set the stage for a much more interventionist state.

Now if you think about our current generation of policy makers, many of them came of age politically in the 1970s and 1980s. This was a time when governments everywhere were failing to deal with inflation, crime rates were rising, communities were falling apart, a lot of industry went bankrupt, the Cold War was dragging on and the USSR seemed to be catching up, while in the third world socialism seemed to be winning. It isn't altogether surprising that this generation would be so much more receptive to a grand narrative about the incapability of government to accomplish anything. After all, they took the achievements of the welfare state for granted since they hadn't lived through the depression, and therefore all they could really see were the government's various failures.

Obviously there are some economic and political reasons for the rise of neoliberalism, but I think that this generational divide also played a role.

wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010

Helsing posted:

I am thinking mostly of Canada and the US during World War II but I made my comment more open ended because I think that you can also draw lessons from the performances of other countries during the extended period from 1914 to 1945. Obviously, though, the situation is more complicated when your country is either being blockaded (as in the case of Britain or Germany) or physically destroyed (i.e. something that happened in varying degrees to most of Asia and Europe during this period).

Let me chew on that for a bit. What do you make of the rationing the U.S. had to undertake as the war progressed? A lot of capital was repurposed to supply the war effort and it seems like the QOL of american citizens at home took a dive due to scarcity of things like metals, gasoline, and even food. In the post-war period the U.S. had the benefit of being the only industrial power that hadn't been demolished and that may explain more of its subsequent prosperity than the hypothesis that the war effort primed it for production.

Paradoxish
Dec 19, 2003

Will you stop going crazy in there?

wateroverfire posted:

Let me chew on that for a bit. What do you make of the rationing the U.S. had to undertake as the war progressed? A lot of capital was repurposed to supply the war effort and it seems like the QOL of american citizens at home took a dive due to scarcity of things like metals, gasoline, and even food.

This is sort of irrelevant for the topic at hand, isn't it? The US government rationed during the war because there was an actual need to do so, but the rationing effort also insured that there were enough resources for use at home by those who needed them. Gasoline wasn't rationed out evenly, for example, but it was rationed out to households on an as-needed basis. In other words, supplies were legitimately limited, so some people having to do without wasn't indicative of the government's inability to manage the economy and quality of life was probably about as good as could be expected given the circumstances.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

Paradoxish posted:

This is sort of irrelevant for the topic at hand, isn't it? The US government rationed during the war because there was an actual need to do so, but the rationing effort also insured that there were enough resources for use at home by those who needed them. Gasoline wasn't rationed out evenly, for example, but it was rationed out to households on an as-needed basis. In other words, supplies were legitimately limited, so some people having to do without wasn't indicative of the government's inability to manage the economy and quality of life was probably about as good as could be expected given the circumstances.

It would be a waste I guess if you thought the US shouldn't be fighting/should have surrendered I guess.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

Ardennes posted:

It would be a waste I guess if you thought the US shouldn't be fighting/should have surrendered I guess.

Right but the point is despite huge amounts of resources and at least half of the country's manpower being removed from domestic production and devoted to war industries, the government still did a better job feeding the populace than laissez-faire capitalism did in good conditions.

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Nov 7, 2014

Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe
Much of the US' rationing during World War II was not strictly needed, but was done as part of making sure people would keep up with rationing of things that really needed it.

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


My Lil Parachute posted:

I honestly don't see why it is morally right to literally pay people to do nothing. At least tie it to trivially easy volunteer work like a few hours a week helping in nursing homes or something.

I want to address this post in detail, even though it's really old at this point and the poster (probably) isn't even following this thread any more. Reason being this is how Republicans think. I lived around them for years and I used to think I was one. Being able to address these points without being alienating is important (good job, guys! :thumbsup:), and it's a deceptively complicated matter.

So, first of all, why is this statement incorrect from a logical standpoint? It's guilty of my favorite logical fallacy - begging the question. Basically, it assumes a premise that has not been agreed upon or justified. In this case, it makes three assumptions:

1: Getting something for free is immoral.

There are two ways of looking at this one (that I've seen), and they typically go hand in hand. The first is that you can can take this further (and many do) to say that getting something for free is the same as stealing. Taken even further than that, it turns into "Getting something free is stealing from me." Essentially making the argument that someone else getting a handout (welfare, foodstamps, whatever) is directly negatively affecting the person making the argument (usually through additional taxes). This is why you commonly hear people on welfare being called "leeches".

Why this is wrong: Welfare is an overall net benefit to GDP. Increased GDP leads to more wealth and cheaper goods. You can think of welfare as an investment, like your 401k. Just because you have to pay out for it now, doesn't mean anyone's "stealing" from you. Granted, there are some people who will end up with less wealth due to wealth distribution (duh). If you believe you are in this group, you are almost certainly wrong. If you actually DO belong to this group (again, you probably don't), congratulations! You have more money than you probably know what to do with anyways. Stop worrying so drat much. Note: If you have ANY debt at all (credit cards, mortgage, car payments, student loans), you don't belong in this group. There are no "working families" that belong in this group. The only "single mothers" that belong in this group are CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies or celebrities. See where I'm going with this?

The second way of looking at this is that it isn't fair that you work for something and someone else doesn't. This is a big one I hear a lot. This argument is essentially the grownup version of "Why did Timmy get a Playstation for Christmas, and I didn't?" Yes, I know that sounds condescending. That's because it is.

Why this is wrong: Look, this one doesn't have a great answer, so just bear with me. The short version is two-fold. 1: Unlike in ancient times, not everyone has to work for there to be enough to go around. We have a surplus of pretty much everything. Hell, the government subsidizes crops because we produce so much extra that the market would crash if they didn't. 2: If you're getting mincome, you've probably had a lovely life. It's not very Christian or mature or whatever of you to complain that someone else got something handed to them when you've pretty much had your whole life handed to you. People don't actually "bootstrap" themselves. That doesn't even make sense. The phrase is "Pick yourself up by your bootstraps" because doing that is literally impossible. Try it sometime. Put on some boots and try to lift yourself off the ground by pulling up on them really hard. See? Told you. Life isn't fair, and that's why we have welfare - to make it more fair to people that life was a bitch to. I mean, you're free to quit your job any day and live ~~luxuriously~~ on food stamps. No? Didn't think so.

2: We should not do things that have a net benefit to society if they are immoral.

This is a weird one. If we grant the previous assumption that getting something for free is immoral, then the second assumption you have to make is that it is better to not help people if helping people would be immoral. Which is... well weird. How could helping someone be immoral? What does that even mean? :iiam:

3: We need people to "work in nursing homes or something."

~6% of Americans are unemployed. These aren't just the people who don't have jobs. These are the people actively looking for jobs that can't get any. The US Workforce has a "Participation Rate" of about 63%. That means that 37% of persons over the age of 16 aren't even looking for a job. This includes students, stay at home parents, retired people, disabled, etc. In other words, only about 57% of American adults actually have jobs. If those other 43% suddenly had to find something to do with their time to collect mincome, what the gently caress would they even do? It's better for everyone that they stay at home with their kids or paint or garden or do hard drugs or literally anything but look for a job. This number is only going to go up as automation improves. I can easily see participation rate get as low as 20% in the next 50 years as manufacturing and low-level service jobs become obsolete. We're going to need a mincome at some point. If we don't, it's going to be painful.

wateroverfire
Jul 3, 2010

KillHour posted:

Why this is wrong: Welfare is an overall net benefit to GDP ... You can think of welfare as an investment, like your 401k. Just because you have to pay out for it now, doesn't mean anyone's "stealing" from you.

Whether welfare is a net benefit to GDP depends on where the money to fund it comes from and what its alternative use would have been. If the money would have been spent anyway than in aggregate it's a wash. If it would have been invested then there's an opportunity cost associated with handing it out to be consumed and it's not obvious that's net positive for GDP. If the money is just going under a matress then sure but most of the time that's not what what's going on.

You´ve also got your math wrong. To fund a mincome of any significant size you have to reach pretty far down the income distribution. The rich don't have enough money to top everyone up to 15k or whatever. Funding mincome on the backs of the rich is a pipe dream.

Beyond that, though, I think a fundamental tenant of a just society is that you fund your steam account through your own effort and not your neighbor's.

God bless.

i am harry
Oct 14, 2003

KillHour posted:

1....the second assumption you have to make is that it is better to not help people if helping people would be immoral. Which is... well weird. How could helping someone be immoral? What does that even mean? :iiam:

2. This number is only going to go up as automation improves.
1. You need only to watch church goers drive their cars around the church parking lot to see how little they care for their peers, let alone the scum of the world.

2. Big time.

KillHour
Oct 28, 2007


wateroverfire posted:

Whether welfare is a net benefit to GDP depends on where the money to fund it comes from and what its alternative use would have been. If the money would have been spent anyway than in aggregate it's a wash. If it would have been invested then there's an opportunity cost associated with handing it out to be consumed and it's not obvious that's net positive for GDP. If the money is just going under a matress then sure but most of the time that's not what what's going on.

You´ve also got your math wrong. To fund a mincome of any significant size you have to reach pretty far down the income distribution. The rich don't have enough money to top everyone up to 15k or whatever. Funding mincome on the backs of the rich is a pipe dream.


You're underestimating the income inequality. If we took all the money the top 20% makes, we could double the income of everybody else.

The top 400 individuals make over 1% of the total income for the country. - 106 Billion dollars between them. They alone could afford to give $300 to every man, woman, and child in the country every year and would still be rich beyond most people's wildest dreams.

wateroverfire posted:

Beyond that, though, I think a fundamental tenant of a just society is that you fund your steam account through your own effort and not your neighbor's.

This is a fundamental tenant of libertarianism, not society. At some point along the road, we forgot about that. There is no place for such thinking in a future where workforce participation is likely to be the exception, not the rule.


Deuteronomy 24-25: If you enter your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat all the grapes you want, but do not put any in your basket. If you enter your neighbor’s grainfield, you may pick kernels with your hands, but you must not put a sickle to their standing grain.

i am harry posted:

1. You need only to watch church goers drive their cars around the church parking lot to see how little they care for their peers, let alone the scum of the world.

As fun as it is to write off a group of people as evil/coldhearted/whatever, it's both hypocritical and counterproductive. Some people go to church. Some people drive like assholes in parking lots. Some people do both. Insinuating anything else is just strengthening the argument that it's acceptable to paint an entire group of people with one brush (which is what, ironically, we are calling people out for).

KillHour fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Dec 17, 2014

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

wateroverfire posted:

Beyond that, though, I think a fundamental tenant of a just society is that you fund your steam account through your own effort and not your neighbor's.

1 in 6 Americans is food insecure, but yeah okay just pretend that's not the case and those lazy poors just want video games, really makes you look Serious.

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My Lil Parachute
Jul 30, 2014

by XyloJW

KillHour posted:

I want to address this post in detail, even though it's really old at this point and the poster (probably) isn't even following this thread any more.
hello.

quote:

1: Getting something for free is immoral.

I would alter the wording to say - "Taking something from someone else, without their approval, is immoral". Additionally things obtained for free are not as valued as things worked for.

quote:

Why this is wrong: Welfare is an overall net benefit to GDP. Increased GDP leads to more wealth and cheaper goods. You can think of welfare as an investment, like your 401k.

Have you got any cites for this? It sounds a little like the broken-window fallacy.

quote:

The short version is two-fold. 1: Unlike in ancient times, not everyone has to work for there to be enough to go around. We have a surplus of pretty much everything. Hell, the government subsidizes crops because we produce so much extra that the market would crash if they didn't.
I would propose a cap on the number of hours worked per week instead.

Bootstraps: Sure, luck can play a huge role in life (are you born an orphan or heir to a billionare's fortune?) but from what I've seen, most people need some luck and a lot of hard work before they get anywhere. Attributing someones success purely (as many people do) to luck shits all over the work they did to get there.

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2: We should not do things that have a net benefit to society if they are immoral.

This is a weird one. If we grant the previous assumption that getting something for free is immoral, then the second assumption you have to make is that it is better to not help people if helping people would be immoral. Which is... well weird. How could helping someone be immoral? What does that even mean? :iiam:

Hypothetical: Would you brutally murder 100 Americans at random if everyone else in the world got a weeks worth of food? On average, it would save more lives then it would cost, so would be a net benefit to society - whilst still being an abhorrent act.

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3: We need people to "work in nursing homes or something."

~6% of Americans are unemployed. These aren't just the people who don't have jobs. These are the people actively looking for jobs that can't get any.

There is a fraction of the population I wouldn't trust to make me a sandwich, so we will always see some unemployment. There are jobs at present which are not done because it is simply not economical but would benefit society (eg roaming the beach all day and picking up litter). With adequate supervision I don't see why we can't get a few hours of community service in exchange for benefits.

The long-term solution has to be a reduction in working hours imo.

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