You are getting by on what you make now right? So since it is easy to increase by 50% do that. Then get a second job, work enough to have $10000 a year to invest in SPY with dividends re-invested. I'm sure that would take sacrifices and a lot of hard work. By the time you reach retirement you'll have $2,000,000 plus with max Social Security plus Medicare. You'll be rich without really taking on much long term risk. It will take time, effort, and sacrifice. Doesn't seem like playing the lottery to me. Of course that is a long time so if you want to make more money faster take on more risk. There are many people that are successful in real-estate investing, starting businesses, speculating in the financial markets, playing higher limit poker, what have you. Do you think they didn't work very hard to achieve financial success?

The lottery was won when I was born in an upper middle class suburb rather than in North Philly. Agree that from here on out it's smooth sailing.

Also to bring this back to the original topic: what I worry about is the continued decimation of middle class jobs. There used to be a (maybe not easy but doable) path from North Philly to a union job making $60k/yr. Those jobs are evaporating and the path from North Philly to Product Manager @ Facebook is pretty much nonexistent.

Not as regards the very rich. Even the ones who didn't inherit their money. Their wealth usually comes from the fact that they figured out ways to help millions slightly rather than help a lessor number a lot. It wasn't "merit". They are not more meritorious than a dentist.

The only reasons not to take more money from them than we are now to help the unlucky, would be if it was clear that actually it actually harmed the unlucky in the long run, or if it was clear that this extra money taken would dramatically diminish the incentives to help millions slightly. I doubt that would be true in the large majority of cases.

The third reason not to take more from them, namely that it is "stealing" is irrelevant. OK its stealing Who cares?

Isn't helping a lot of people slightly better than helping few people a lot? You are paid by the total benefit you provide. Sam Walton has done infinitely more than some dentist.

Of course taking money would diminish incentives. Income is production. A tax is a disincentive. Increased taxes means less production which means an overall lower standard of living for society as a whole.

And who says the goal is to dictate policy based on how it affects people who are unlucky (which I assume you are commingling with poor, which I would not assume most poor are unluckly)? That might be your goal. That isn't my goal. That should be minor part of policy, if not an afterthought.

As far your last comment. The United States is not Nigeria or some banana republic. Property rights are the single biggest key to prosperity. There is a direct correlation between the degree a country respects property rights and the wealth of that nation. Voting rights away is immoral. You say "who cares?" So if 51% vote to enslave the other 49%, I assume you would care. So why should upper income earners be treated differently than everyone else? It violates equal protection.

Regardless of how their wealth was earned (so long as it was legal / moral), it not yours or anyone else's to take. The constitution, though no one cares (as we currently have a progressive tax system), prohibits this. It is theft.

"The only reason not to take more money from them than we are now...[is if] it harmed the unlucky." But it is OK to harm the lucky? It is not. Stealing is wrong.

Do you realize the implications of legalized theft and a disregard for property rights (for the record we are currently toeing that line as it is)? The very reason we have so much today is because this country was founded on the upmost belief in property rights and the upmost disdain for tyranny. Tyranny of the majority is still tyranny.

I am saying that people should basically be paid what it would take to get them to work and study that hard, or to endure tough working conditions or to take risks. If they get paid more than that just because they happen to benefit a lot of people a little, they are being paid an "unfair" amount since they would have done it for a lot less. I'm fine with giving them a bonus for those benefits. But capitalism/law of supply and demand, makes that bonus both unfair and larger than necessary.

As to the second sentence. I already said that one shouldn't care if you steal from these people. Once I say that, how could you think I would change my stance by bringing up "equal protection"?

Also, I totally disagree that they are not more meritorious than the dentist.

It is terribly easy to become a dentist. Or in a sense, even a medical doctor. All you have to do is like what you are told for the first 20 or 30 years of your life. Study and you are all set. With one exception, you have to be able to afford to go to school and have enough leisure time to study.

No one can tell you how to innovate, how to create a successful product. If those people that were 'no more meritorious than the dentist' didn't innovate (in no small part because of property rights and the incentives of doing so) we would not have affordable tools for our dentists to use. Therefore prices would be so high (so much more than they are now) that even less people would be able to afford dental care...

The bonus is fair by definition. The problem, and part of the reason the bonuses are so lopsided, is that we don't really have capitalism. The playing field is not level.

It makes sense that a capitalist system favors those with capital. But those without capital should not be running on a treadmill...they should be on solid ground.

For the record, the game is rigged. I am all for fixing it. But two wrongs do not make a right and if policy actually went down the path you are suggesting there would be so many problems. Starting with a brain drain.

It is theft. And tyranny of the majority is still tyranny. I won't be detoured from my point by trying to refute those points.

Years ago I offered a thought experiment where someone found a cure for cancer, locked it in his safe, announced it, and demanded ten billion from the government to divulge it. The govt counter offered 3billion and he refused. I said that at that point it should be taken from him at gunpoint. And I was amazed at the number of posters who disagreed. You are implying that you would be one of them. As if being right is related to the ability to utter high falootin phrases.

OK you softened you stance. And perhaps I didn't make it clear that the bonus reduction would come mainly in the form of taxes and that some of that bonus would remain. As for the brain drain I submit that very few of the brains would stop doing what they were doing if they thought a few tens of millions was the most they could reasonably hope for.

It is an interesting thought experiment. Another one is, would you kill one innocent to save 1M people? What about one innocent to save two people?
What about one innocent to save two people each of whom have a 51% chance of being innocent themselves?

If you take the cancer dude's intellectual property then you are eroding the market forces that play into curing ALS, and CF, and the common cold (and everything else).

Is curing cancer today worth the destruction of that incentive structure? Would you rather cure cancer today or all illness in 100 years?

And while you are at it, (Im sure you would only do it just that once) don't forget about the millions to billions that you would risk slipping into poverty and starvation by destroying efficient allocation of resources.

What good is curing cancer if everyone dies before it develops because there is no food?

Ha they would not stop. They would move to Singapore or Mars or something.

Who are these wise central planners who are going to tax people at just the right amount? You? Barbara Boxer? Hank Johnson?

I think FA Hayek pretty much answered your statement and kind of won the argument. "On The Use of Knowledge in Society." Wikipedia says it was selected one of the 20 greatest economic papers ever so..
http://home.uchicago.edu/~vlima/cour...ng01/hayek.pdf

"What is the problem we wish to solve when we try to construct a rational economic order?

The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate "given" resources—if "given" is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these "data." It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.

People will stop trying to cure all illness because their financial upside is capped at 3 billion? Anyway to elaborate. I don't know if confiscating a very large percentage of very wealthy people' income or net worth would do more harm than good. But what I do know is that it is immoral that they should be so wealthy when there are so many people suffering. I don't take this to the extreme of communism that says "from each according to his abilities". Rather I think people should be rewarded rather handsomely for their efforts and their risk taking. But when they make immense wealth like movie stars, athletes, or options traders they shouldn't claim they "deserve" it because of the millions they help slightly. They don't deserve it but rather got lucky. The extreme wealth is immoral.

Now it may be that some people need the allure of immoral wealth to help others. For instance if that allure wasn't there you guys might still be calling cold raises with KJ offsuit. But there are plenty of people who will do the right thing without that allure.

People arguing for UBI are coming from a more (not to be derisive just my humble opinion) pragmatic place and people who argue against it are coming from a more principled place. That's why the arguments tend to fly by each other.

I'm not smart enough to know the right answer but this threads a good read, thanks for posting the link in P David Sklansky

Immense wealth is a relative term. 2 billion people live on less than $2 a day, often struggling to even find food.

A minimum wage earner in the US is like a movie star in comparison. Given your thought experiment below:
Should the wealth of everyone in the US be taken at gunpoint, and given to people in the Philippines and Africa? Your moral framework seems to dictate that should happen.

The reality is that social systems that fail to allow and encourage the selfish accumulation of wealth, are total failures. They fail to innovate and they have high levels of corruption. Because when there is not a legitimate path to selfish wealth, the smart and selfish take illegitimate paths, or avoid the hard and self-sacrificing and risky work required to become wealthy, which is far far more harmful to society.

The accumulation of wealth while others suffer isn't immoral. It is in fact highly moral. It's a cognitive flaw that you and others have to see it is unfair. You see one person who could easily help without hurting themselves in any way, you see another person who desperately needs that needs, and you see the lack of action as immoral. But you fail to see the entire backstory of that wealth, which usually involved someone, somewhere doing a great deal for a number of people, for which they were voluntarily willing to give the provider work credits. If there was an immoral choice, it was of the person who bought the thing, selfishly fulfilling their own needs rather than giving that same money to the poor.

No man owes any other man anything other than following the rules that enrich all. Take people in Africa. The woman who has ten kids so they can look after when she is old is a vile human being - her selfish actions make the world a worse place, and impoverish her culture and surroundings and destroy the environment. Why should we reward such destructive selfishness? Why should the man who sacrificed to get rich, helping others as a side effect, give money or help to such a horribly destructive person? Aid has not helped Africa one bit, for example. It's just encouraged more and more breeding which leads to more and more waste and suffering and long term environmental destruction and famine.

I don't know why you went to welfare queen theory, but it's not a particularly good look.......

You are not reading carefully. I was speaking only of those people who would gladly do the same job for much less money. And I specifically said that the money shouldn't be taken from them to give to others if it would do more harm than good. The only thing I am saying for sure is that if you find yourself with a lot more money than you would have required to keep on doing what you are doing, you are immoral if you keep more than a modest fraction of that excess . And someone who takes it from you to do good with it is doing the right thing.

I agree with you. The problem is that most people don't realize that "principle" should usually be given a non zero but finite value. Then you weigh it up vs the weight of the practical. That's why the Zsa Zsa Gabor prostitute joke is flawed.

Do you think that Sam Walton or Bill Gates would have taken a different path if they knew that after they achieved a ten million dollar bankroll their income over a million a year would be taxed at a 90% rate?

Reality is sometimes ugly, and at odds with both our mental models of people and our mental models of fairness. Don't shoot the messenger. The truly bad are the ones whose actions taken to achieve their irrational moral view of the world, actually make the problem worse.

Yes of course. Without the allure of superb riches, you generally don't give up your youth to sit in a garage writing code when you could just as easily make excellent money in the private sector, given that you're a four sigma outlier.

When you put a cap on earnings, or an ultra high tax rate, investment incentive goes away as well. Why would you invest $20 million in startup Uber, say, when you'll lose 90% of what you make?

When you put a cap on wealth holdings, the power of the wealthy to drive a luxury goods economy and innovation disappears as well. You know why low end phones look so nice? Because high end iPhones pushed forward design and that effect trickled down. Half the clothes in Kmart are knockoffs of high end designers designing for wealthy clients. Recent improvements in satellite technology have come from Elon Musk risking his own personal wealth of a couple of hundred million - which he made from the sale of a software startup he worked on (again, hoping to get very wealthy) - in starting a satellite company. If 90% of what he made over $10 million was taxed, would he do that? Why? No one makes 80% loss/20% win bets when you lose 90% of your winnings, yet these are what move society forward.

In your system, everyone over $10 million - which contains an outsized portion of the people smart enough to make intelligent bets and move forward business and technology - would simply stop risking their money, because 90% skews the line so hard that risk is no longer worthwhile. In your system, you won't even get sufficient accumulation of wealth for someone to take these kinds of bets. For example, Musk received $165 million from the sale of PayPal, of which he owned 11%. Under your system, he would have had a mere $25 million. SpaceX would not exist.

I cannot believe we're even having this discussion. Chalk it up to the influence of the utterly insane leftists, who comprise much of the media and academia.

The idea that hyper-taxing the rich has net social benefits is a wacked out delusional from people incapable of thinking clearly.

There's obv a middle ground between DS & TS.

Denmark taxes its highest earners up to almost 60% and they routinely rank number one in quality of life. They also have free college education (with a student benefit, they 'pay' you to go to university), universal healthcare etc etc.