Quote:
Originally Posted by somigosaden
So your reasoning for expanding the social net beyond free school, healthcare, food, shelter, transportation, etc., is because this won't placate the communist militants who will soon be breaking down my door? And you think others in this thread aren't coming through?
By the way, no I don't think the poor should pay more taxes. I think our current social net that gives them everything they need to get educated and live safe, healthy lives is about right.
I tried asking BoredSocial a few times if he wants to raise taxes on the rich, who already pay hugely disproportionate and generous sums to give the disadvantaged all they need to get educated and live securely and move up, but he'd rather moralize and dodge than give me an answer.
The wealthiest own basically everything. The top 5 people own more wealth than the bottom 50%. As a % of their income they pay way less than the typical middle class person (and way way less than me interestingly, I paid right at 30% of every dollar I made in 2018), and as a % of their wealth they pay VASTLY less than the typical poor person. If you graph the top 10% of the populations income and assets vs the rest of the population over the last 40 years it immediately pops out at you that the very well off are clobbering the rest of the population on a macro level. This isn't about taxes, this is about the share of GDP going to capital instead of labor. Labor is the only real asset the poor/middle class own and it is massively down in terms of income generation potential. This in turn greatly reduces social mobility.
I'm sorry but your attempts to paint the people who have managed to capture basically ALL of the economic growth for the US over the last 40 years as the victims is super weird.
We need new infrastructure, new educational spending, more basic science research, and yes I'd like to scrap our current means tested welfare system (because it's hot garbage that helps trap people in poverty) and go to UBI. We can fund a lot of this by getting rid of our existing healthcare system, (we need our healthcare spending as a share of GDP to be ~12-13% instead of 18%+) downsizing the military (we should be spending ~2-3% of GDP max), and charging people at the tippy top of the pyramid heavily for the balance. I figure the country should be funded by the people who own it.
What you're missing is that I'm seriously worried about the health of the middle class as well. Just because they have enough now doesn't mean they aren't teetering on the brink and massively overladen with debt.
And yes absolutely I worry about political violence brought on by extreme income inequality. I also worry about ACTUAL communists winning elections for the same reasons. I want to do something about income inequality under a capitalist framework. Donald Trump getting elected using a populist message has already resulted in a massive trade war that is already causing me and my customers a significant amount of economic harm. It's going to get worse from here if we don't start at least moving in the right direction.
Last edited by BoredSocial; 07-08-2019 at 08:34 AM.