>Why is being worse for the middle more important than being better for the very poor?

It's not, except for the extremely disingenuous way it was all sold to us. We knew what would happen to the rust belt. We told them "the jobs would come right back" and "it's better for everyone." Well, it wasn't. And if they had the audacity to complain we called them every bad name in the book. And in the blue collar case the poor people that it helped were largely in other countries. Can you imagine a politician making that sales pitch honestly? "We're gonna fuck over the working class, but it's gonna really make our rich richer and some poor people on the other side of the planet will be a little better off." I dare say, that would not have gone over well.

This is all exactly right. Taking issue with global trade has been called “nationalist” and taking issue with global labor is called “racist”. It’s the dirtiest political trick in my lifetime.

You don’t understand. The very poor means chinese/mexican/cambodian/.. workers. The very rich means US billionares.

You can tax billionares more, but they have the resources to get around that. A country is more likely to shoot itself in the foot with that kind of class warfare.

The country might start by standing up for the working class once in a while.

But the billionaires won't likr that any more than taxes, and taxes apparently won't work.

I understand perfectly. Why should we not redistribute wealth from the comfy western middle class to poor Chinese/etc workers?

We can stand up for the working class by paying for extensive welfare spending via taxing the rich.

And why is your conclusion that someone needs to be taxed more? Why not that you should be taxed less?

Presumably because taxing me less doesn't do anything to help those less fortunate than I. Taxing those who make more than me more than they are currently could.

Simply taxing the rich more won't help anyone. You need to reevaluate the budget in any case, and at that point you might just redirect most of the tremendous amount of money already there to the poor AND tax people less.

Indeed better spending is a decent idea. However, wealth inequality in the US is already pretty terrible, it's unclear if it could be fixed at our current tax rates even if we did something drastic like replacing military spending with entitlements.

I don't understand the goal of equality. That sounds like the failed social experiment that was destroying my country for 40 years and the damage is there even now, 30 years after the end. Why is not the goal to lift people out of poverty? The UBI proponents are claiming it can be done with current budget, and if that can be done, surely a little bit more targeted social anti-poverty system should be possible just as well?

For every anecdote there is a counter anecdote! I was born and grew up in a country that (eventually) became hyper capitalist (maybe more like the UK than the US) & then moved to social democratic countries as an adult (first Austria then Germany).

In both of these the quality of life is so much better than in my home land, despite the fact my earning here is a bit lower and I pay more taxes on that earning - you get so much for free/cheap from the government here that I don't mind paying the higher taxes & life is so much less stressful: free kindergarten from age 1, 14 months parental leave, 200 euro per child for 18 years (up to 26 years if they study & don't yet have an income of their own), university is free, healthcare is free (it is nominally free in my home country but here a lot more is included in the free tier & the quality is higher), tenants get protections people from my home country find hard to believe when I tell them, and the list goes on and on.

So yes, life in Moldova, Belarus or wherever you come from is shit but it's not shit because socialism can never work. And nobody is arguing in becoming more like the Ukraine they argue in favor of becoming more like Sweden.

But Sweden, Germany, Austria don't try to make everyone equal.

That was never the suggestion - only more wealth redistribution via taxation vs minimum taxes & minimum services. Less inequality != complete equality.

And even in the Soviet Union salaries differed according to profession (doctors & professors didn't earn the same as street sweepers).

That was not concluded.