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PT6A posted:If you took a billion dollars and divided it among the poorest 10% of Americans, it's a one-time gift of around $33/person. Granted, for a lot of those people, it might be the difference between going hungry and being able to feed their family for a few days, but it's still not going to fix the problem within society itself which allows for such staggering inequality. We need to invest in schools, infrastructure, welfare, healthcare, etc. and the money required to do that is beyond what any one person, even the richest of the rich, will likely ever have. I mean, it's fine if they give most of their money to organizations that support some good political cause(s). Maybe that's a better option than randomly giving it to poor people. But the key point is that, regardless, it is wrong for them to continue to retain ownership of the wealth.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:37
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Ytlaya posted:Even then there are issues relevant in the present like UHC where a lot of people who consider themselves liberals are actively opposed. Like, there has to be a conflict there if you actually care about accomplishing the goal in question. Your post seems to be implying that everyone on the American left agrees about all important contemporary issues, and that simply isn't true. A lot of people who consider themselves liberals even want to do stuff that would make things worse, like cut "entitlements." Note that I didn't say everyone on the left was an ally; I said everyone who was genuinely on the left is at worst a confused ally. Some people think they're on the left but they aren't actually left-wing; other people are left wing but are confused or misguided and thus at least potential allies (if you can get them un-confused, which I thought was obviously implied by the phrasing). Said another way, some people want to cut entitlements because gently caress you, got mine; gently caress them, even if they claim to be "liberal." Some people want to cut entitlements because they are misguided and think that is the correct path to helping more people; those are potential converts if they can be educated.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:37
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Oh Snapple! posted:"Space exploration on the part of a private, profit-driven entity is inherently evil" is probably the most accurate way to put it. Elon Musk is to "space exploration" what a paddle boat rental owner is to the naval imperialism of gunboat diplomacy.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:38
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PT6A posted:If you took a billion dollars and divided it among the poorest 10% of Americans, it's a one-time gift of around $33/person. Granted, for a lot of those people, it might be the difference between going hungry and being able to feed their family for a few days, but it's still not going to fix the problem within society itself which allows for such staggering inequality. We need to invest in schools, infrastructure, welfare, healthcare, etc. and the money required to do that is beyond what any one person, even the richest of the rich, will likely ever have. While systematic spending on civil infrastructure is more important than direct consumer spending transfers, saying "actually the billionaires don't have that much money to possibly affect the poor" is an interesting hot take. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Jan 10, 2018 |
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Jan 10, 2018 22:40
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Ytlaya posted:I mean, it's fine if they give most of their money to organizations that support some good political cause(s). Maybe that's a better option than randomly giving it to poor people. But the key point is that, regardless, it is wrong for them to continue to retain ownership of the wealth. Yeah, I agree, I was making the point that divesting themselves of the wealth without consideration for what it will accomplish does nothing to "fix" the wrongness of having that much in the first place.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:40
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Note that I didn't say everyone on the left was an ally; I said everyone who was genuinely on the left is at worst a confused ally. I mean, yeah, but at that point you're basically just doing a no true scotsman. It's basically saying "everyone on the left is an ally, where 'the left' is defined as 'allies.'" In reality a significant portion of people who consider themselves (and who are considered by broader American media and culture) to be on the left aren't allies.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:40
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steinrokkan posted:Saying "actually the billionaires don't have that much money" is an interesting hot take. No single billionaire has that much money compared to the budget of a country, and most don't have anything approaching the actual budget of a large city. You can't tackle this problem one at a time by convincing billionaires to give away their fortunes. It will never work. Only progressive taxation can possibly ever fix the problem of wealth inequality.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:45
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Meanwhile, there were 10.8 million millionaires in the US when last reported. That's 10.8 million people that have at least a million dollars beyond their debts. Also, 540 Billionaires. That's 540 people that have made more money in this country than the entire lower 50% of the nations' population will make combined in their lifetime. But yes, let's just not even consider taxing those fuckers to support social improvement programs because there isn't enough to literally make everybody equally rich or whatever. Some Pinko Commie fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Jan 10, 2018 |
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Jan 10, 2018 22:49
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Ytlaya posted:Even then there are issues relevant in the present like UHC where a lot of people who consider themselves liberals are actively opposed. Like, there has to be a conflict there if you actually care about accomplishing the goal in question. Your post seems to be implying that everyone on the American left agrees about all important contemporary issues, and that simply isn't true. A lot of people who consider themselves liberals even want to do stuff that would make things worse, like cut "entitlements." I actually agree in part with this post, in the sense that the left needs to figure out what it wants to do if and when it gets back into power. However, I do have two concerns: Firstly, the Democrats, being the viable coalition of the left at the moment, but the losing one, are in the position of having to expand their coalition of voters if they want to succeed in future elections. That coalition isn’t going to look quite the same everywhere, but with the nationalization of politics, it’s as important as ever that Democrats represent a broad coalition and manage to fulfill an array of concerns. In other words, they’re not in a position to shed members. If members have to be shed, then they must be replaced with a greater number of voters found elsewhere. There’s an arithmetic here to find enough voters. Secondly, I worry from the example of the Republicans, where they successfully energized their base from 2010 through 2016 and enforced an ideological purity around repealing the ACA and returning to the status quo ante. However, that ideological rigidity, which was so easy when the Republicans weren’t working on a bill, fell apart when it came time for the Congressional GOP to actually vote. I’m concerned about a shallow consensus forming around a Medicare For All program that won’t be able to command consensus from the caucus and doom it. If I had to choose, I’d rather just hear what everyone’s actual opinion now and hash it out to find something that’s generally agreeable, rather than trying to emulate Republicans and living their failures.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:51
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PT6A posted:No single billionaire has that much money compared to the budget of a country, and most don't have anything approaching the actual budget of a large city. You can't tackle this problem one at a time by convincing billionaires to give away their fortunes. It will never work. Only progressive taxation can possibly ever fix the problem of wealth inequality. No one is suggesting that the solution is to convince billionaires to give their money away. They are simply pointing out that people who haven't are evil. Which also means that they can't be convinced to just give their money away.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:52
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PT6A posted:No single billionaire has that much money compared to the budget of a country, and most don't have anything approaching the actual budget of a large city. You can't tackle this problem one at a time by convincing billionaires to give away their fortunes. It will never work. Only progressive taxation can possibly ever fix the problem of wealth inequality. I don't think anybody sane expects to solve inequality by sitting down with people one at a time and asking them nicely, though. But they absolutely have enough money to completely change the social dynamics should it get redistributed, which is also why the same amount of money would be enough to change social dynamics as part of a national budget.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:52
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joepinetree posted:No one is suggesting that the solution is to convince billionaires to give their money away. They are simply pointing out that people who haven't are evil. Which also means that they can't be convinced to just give their money away. I agree, hence: PT6A posted:...I was making the point that divesting themselves of the wealth without consideration for what it will accomplish does nothing to "fix" the wrongness of having that much in the first place. Their obligations clearly go beyond giving a whole fuckton of their fortune away.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:55
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Ytlaya posted:I mean, yeah, but at that point you're basically just doing a no true scotsman. It's basically saying "everyone on the left is an ally, where 'the left' is defined as 'allies.'" In reality a significant portion of people who consider themselves (and who are considered by broader American media and culture) to be on the left aren't allies. That's stripping my argument of context though. I'd provided a definition of "the left" for purposes of that particular argument : Hieronymous Alloy posted:Anyone on the left-wing spectrum is at worst a confused ally. Either you have a herd instinct and care about your fellow human beings, or you don't. I mean yes if I'd realized we were going to be parsing the statement to this level of detail I would have put in clauses like "[potential] ally" but I thought that was obvious from context. The basic point was that in the current political environment everyone who has a shred of human decency is a potential ally (because the people we're fighting against don't have that). joepinetree posted:No one is suggesting that the solution is to convince billionaires to give their money away. They are simply pointing out that people who haven't are evil. Which also means that they can't be convinced to just give their money away. That doesn't follow logically. Current billionaires are currently evil yes but it doesn't follow from that, that they are irredeemably evil and unconvertible/inconvincible. Conversions happen. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Jan 10, 2018 |
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Jan 10, 2018 22:57
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Talking about basically anything but like murderers or something in terms of "evil" in any sort of serious way is super dumb and dorky
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Jan 10, 2018 23:08
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Ah, yes, the mythical kind, compassionate billionaire, we have to protect the system so when one is born thousand years from now, he won't be inconvenienced. Even the most benign billionaires get warped by their wealth so as to become socially regressive and dangerous. Rowling's casual sliding towards right wing politics and acting as a willing figurehead in opposition to representatives of working class interests has already been discussed, and if she technically isn't a billionaire these days, it just means billion dollars is too much of an arbitrary threshold to define membership in the leisure class. Oprah, the other person from this thread, has also been ranting about taxes and being unfairly punished for being rich.
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Jan 10, 2018 23:08
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Talking about basically anything but like murderers or something in terms of "evil" in any sort of serious way is super dumb and dorky #notallbillionaires
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Jan 10, 2018 23:12
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Talking about basically anything but like murderers or something in terms of "evil" in any sort of serious way is super dumb and dorky If it really bothers you, find/replace all uses of "evil" in this thread with "immoral" and nothing changes substantively.
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Jan 10, 2018 23:14
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PT6A posted:If you took a billion dollars and divided it among the poorest 10% of Americans, it's a one-time gift of around $33/person. Granted, for a lot of those people, it might be the difference between going hungry and being able to feed their family for a few days, but it's still not going to fix the problem within society itself which allows for such staggering inequality. We need to invest in schools, infrastructure, welfare, healthcare, etc. and the money required to do that is beyond what any one person, even the richest of the rich, will likely ever have.
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Jan 10, 2018 23:20
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Talking about basically anything but like murderers or something in terms of "evil" in any sort of serious way is super dumb and dorky Just read it as, like 'really bad and thoroughly horrible' then or whatever makes it nicer for you.
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Jan 10, 2018 23:28
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steinrokkan posted:Oprah, the other person from this thread, has also been ranting about taxes and being unfairly punished for being rich. The only places I have seen this have been right wing loony sites. You have a better source for this?
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Jan 10, 2018 23:30
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Kilroy posted:In fact if we made a habit of taking $1B from a random billionaire every few days so people could feed their families or whatever, and just kept doing that indefinitely it would pretty much solve the inequality problem. Or we could just do it through increased and steeply progressive taxation, instead of some weird novel scheme, which is exactly what I've been suggesting all along.
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Jan 10, 2018 23:32
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If it really bothers you, find/replace all uses of "evil" in this thread with "immoral" and nothing changes substantively. I mean, it's not a forbidden word or anything, calling things evil as a quick shorthand is fine. But having an actual discussion on if oprah winfrey is "good" or "evil" is like a conversation a little kid would have.
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Jan 10, 2018 23:37
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The rich have started drinking pond scum for fun, taking their wealth would just be a mercy at this point.
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Jan 10, 2018 23:38
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I mean, it's not a forbidden word or anything, calling things evil as a quick shorthand is fine. But having an actual discussion on if oprah winfrey is "good" or "evil" is like a conversation a little kid would have. Serious discussions about good and evil are for children
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Jan 10, 2018 23:40
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karthun posted:The only places I have seen this have been right wing loony sites. You have a better source for this? Apparently on a closer inspection it has been based on one interview where she complained about taxes making it too hard to pass money to other people, and her intent is not so clear in the broader context of the interview anyway, so I guess that is actually a poorly sourced story.
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Jan 10, 2018 23:41
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PT6A posted:Or we could just do it through increased and steeply progressive taxation, instead of some weird novel scheme, which is exactly what I've been suggesting all along. He's not proposing a wealth redistribution scheme, he's using an example to illustrate wealth disparity, lol. When you hear something like "It would take two hundred people standing on each others' shoulders to reach the top of the WTC" is your response "This is unrealistic, why don't they just use a crane?"
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Jan 10, 2018 23:43
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The Kingfish posted:Serious discussions about good and evil are for children If you can have a discussion about a black woman born in the 1950s that was raped by family members until she got pregnant at 13 who then became one of the first black news anchors and then later became a billionaire via a tv show that sometimes supported pseudoscience and that discussion easily settles into anything as simple as "she's evil" in any serious way then yeah, that is really really dumb.
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Jan 10, 2018 23:53
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:became a billionaire... "she's evil" I don't think that other stuff affects this pretty simple formula.
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Jan 11, 2018 00:04
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:If you can have a discussion about a black woman born in the 1950s that was raped by family members until she got pregnant at 13 who then became one of the first black news anchors and then later became a billionaire via a tv show that sometimes supported pseudoscience and that discussion easily settles into anything as simple as "she's evil" in any serious way then yeah, that is really really dumb.
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Jan 11, 2018 00:10
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:If you can have a discussion about a black woman born in the 1950s that was raped by family members until she got pregnant at 13 who then became one of the first black news anchors and then later became a billionaire via a tv show that sometimes supported pseudoscience and that discussion easily settles into anything as simple as "she's evil" in any serious way then yeah, that is really really dumb. Axis of evil is now Oprah, Nancy Pelosi, and the musical Hamilton. Thanks D&D.
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Jan 11, 2018 00:11
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Nevvy Z posted:I don't think that other stuff affects this pretty simple formula. Part of the issue is that the human brain has a really hard time wrapping itself around numbers as big as a billion; it's hard to conceptualize and understand just how much money that is. https://www.forbes.com/special-report/2013/what-a-billion-dollars-buys-you.html https://businesstech.co.za/news/wealth/81695/this-is-what-you-can-buy-with-bill-gates-fortune/ It's hard to even conceptualize how much money Oprah has; I'm not sure the human brain can really handle it.
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Jan 11, 2018 00:13
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Democrazy posted:However, that ideological rigidity, which was so easy when the Republicans weren’t working on a bill, fell apart when it came time for the Congressional GOP to actually vote. I’m concerned about a shallow consensus forming around a Medicare For All program that won’t be able to command consensus from the caucus and doom it. If I had to choose, I’d rather just hear what everyone’s actual opinion now and hash it out to find something that’s generally agreeable, rather than trying to emulate Republicans and living their failures. This is a bit disingenous, the reason their healthcare bill fell apart isn't because of ideological disagreements, it's because the bill had atrocius approval rates, barely in the double digits (17% I think).
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Jan 11, 2018 00:14
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yronic heroism posted:Axis of evil is now Oprah, Nancy Pelosi, and the musical Hamilton. Thanks D&D. Don't forget Cuphead
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Jan 11, 2018 00:14
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:If you can have a discussion about a black woman born in the 1950s that was raped by family members until she got pregnant at 13 who then became one of the first black news anchors and then later became a billionaire via a tv show that sometimes supported pseudoscience and that discussion easily settles into anything as simple as "she's evil" in any serious way then yeah, that is really really dumb. The serious question is whether any of that matters. We already know that absolute evil can be banal, but can it be sympathetic?
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Jan 11, 2018 00:22
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Part of the issue is that the human brain has a really hard time wrapping itself around numbers as big as a billion; it's hard to conceptualize and understand just how much money that is. That's simultaneously scary but also kind of cool. I think that the more you have, the more you want. I wonder how much money any one of us would give away if we suddenly found a way to make shittons of money.... What if we were slaving away in a lovely basement for years while eating instant noodles before hitting the billions? Maybe the money and the power it gives you also corrupts you and turns you into a giant rear end in a top hat. I'm sure most of Jeff Bezos's equals (in net worth) probably think he's awesome. The rich community is very tightly knit, most of them know eachother.
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Jan 11, 2018 00:26
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Im posting from the year 2020 and Cuphead has just clinched the Democratic nomination
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Jan 11, 2018 00:26
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Flavahbeast posted:Im posting from the year 2020 and Cuphead has just clinched the Democratic nomination we’ve already got a 1930s throwback antisemitic cartoon in the white house though?
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Jan 11, 2018 00:41
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Kraftwerk posted:That's simultaneously scary but also kind of cool. How much does it cost to cure people of their irrational fear of atoms? I'd invest in that and mincome experiments. Leftism is cool but the planet is cooler.
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Jan 11, 2018 00:42
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I skipped to a small breaksown of other issues, beyond being a billionaire and thus incapable of representing the American people, etc, of why Oprah looks like she'd be god awful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFxgQN5fydc&t=561s
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Jan 11, 2018 01:10
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Dems, 2021: "Can you prove POTUS prospect Peter Thiel isn't harvesting infant bone marrow in his Youth Processing Plants to help the average American? Questioning things is very childlike, you know."
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Jan 11, 2018 01:12
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