Perhaps you find that defensible, perhaps you find that appalling, but argue that position, not one that isn't true.
this is kind of reductive claim. in one sense, it's trivially true that the earth has more raw resources than humans can consume even over the course of centuries. AFAIK it's also true that, under the current system of organization, the global economy produces enough finished goods to feed, clothe, and house everyone (though people often bring up logistical caveats here, eg, distributing stuff in places where there are no paved roads or airfields).
the real question here is whether we would still have that quantity of finished goods under a different system of organization with different incentives. to be clear, I don't discount the possibility that we might have even more! but it seems more likely to me that people would simply produce less stuff if they didn't get to keep the surplus by default.
Of course people can keep the surplus. Some of it. But we're a far, far cry from the point where people will stop working when only getting a percentage of their labor's worth (or their parent's labor's worth, as is often the case).
some caveats apply to this offhand quip (very different tax laws and perhaps even widespread evasion meant almost no one was paying an effective tax of 90%, regardless of actual income). I suspect you know this.
I'm sure there's a lot of slack in the tax brackets. I doubt we are close to a laffer curve inflection point. all I'm saying is I'm not convinced by the style of argument that goes "we already have enough food for everyone; we just need to radically reorganize the economy and then no one will go hungry!". more analysis is needed.
Over 20% of the money in circulation in the US was printed last year. i.e. the pot is much bigger now. Also, while tax rates were high back then, loopholes were proportionately larger!
The kind of poverty where you starve and have to wear rags is becoming rare even in Africa. From this point of view, the system has clearly worked and the pendulum even went too far, with obesity becoming a serious problem in places that aren't typically considered rich (Mexico, Brazil).
Housing is a different problem. We have a housing crisis because many people want to live in a few select urban hotspots of the world.
What you call incentive is really compulsion, just of a more extreme form.
In that context, why focus on giving small portions of wealth to those in poverty (even if they aren't working as hard as you think they ought to)?
- it wouldn't be liquid, so you'd be giving part ownership in assets
- the value would be slightly less than median yearly income per recipient. At a pretty sizeable 5% average return, the individuals would net about $2,000 a year.
- if they chose to sell the assets, they would end up with about one year's median income and then it's gone
I'm not sure how much money you think lives up at the top, but redistributing it is not sustainable, and it's certainly not enough to magically pull everyone out of poverty indefinitely. (Or even for very long, at that.)
There are a ton of reasonable discussions to be had about imbalanced power structures between socioeconomic groups, but this whole redistribution thing is just a fantasy.
One can look at a million/billionaire and say, "oh, this person has 50 cars. That's way too many cars for one person to have! Let's give them away to people who actually need cars!" So you seize them and give them away—along with the other 12,000 super wealthy people that own 50 or more cars—and then you have... 200,000 people who still don't have cars.
For groups that preach so frequently about global and ecological sustainability, there's a disturbing blind spot for economic sustainability. I think that's more a feature of envy than responsibility, unfortunately.
What you've done is described a position ("redistributing all of the top 5%'s wealth at once"), described the problems with it, and then criticized my obvious blind spots due to this oversight. Forgotten in this tale is that I never held that position in the first place! You are criticizing your own invented argument.
Also, even if I did favor redistributing all wealth in the top 5% of families, a simple back-of-napkin calculation shows that your argument is wrong.
107 * 10^12 (total networth of US households [0]) * 0.619 (share owned by top 5% [0]) * 0.05 (rate of return) / (315*10^6 (population of US)) = $10k/yr for every person in the US just off of the returns from that wealth, which is 5x your estimate. The US Census poverty threshold is making below $13k/yr. If that wealth was held for you until you were 18, that would be every young person starting their life with $180k in savings, which is another $9k/yr with 0.05 rate of return.
Obviously, there's a whole host of issues with this, including some of the ones you mentioned, and (of course) price inflation, but I am not sure how you calculated your numbers.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
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People just do not understand this. You could take away every penny from every billionaire in this country. If you sold everything they had, you would not have enough money to fund the federal government for even one year. And now the money is gone; you can no longer collect tax from the ex-wealthy.
Nevertheless, "just tax the rich" is treated as the solution to all problems. I guess people hear all the talk about the "top one tenth of one percent" and they imagine literally bottomless bank accounts.
To take that away from people is truly dehumanizing, but sounds like a typical socialist scheme (destroy the family, destroy individualism, everything has to be the same).
It's better the 1 rich person is forced to consume that in his lifetime. By doing so that money is redistributed back to the economy, and his 3 kids are also productive.
In scenario 1 only 1 out 4 people work. In scenario 2, 4 out of 4 people work.
Also - it's hypocritical for 'pull yourself by your bootstraps' for children born poor, and 'guaranteed basic income' for children born rich. That is more dehumanizing than not being allowed to pass off inheritance.
> 1 rich person saving his money so his 3 children never have to work is bad for the economy.
"Your rights are bad for the economy, we are taking everything from you. Back to work, pleb".
I think you misread the sentiment. What a lot of us would like to see is a more meritocratic system, where children start off on more equal footing and either earn their wealth or not. But inherited works against that. It is difficult to listen to arguments against taxing the wealthy heavily "because they earned it" while at the same time hearing support for what amounts to aristocracy.
The idea that we have to come up with a good reason _not_ to heavily tax people is backwards. The only reason you need is that people have rights. A man owns what is his and you have absolutely no right to it.
This is all beside the pont anyway. Increasing tax revenue will not solve any of the problems you are trying to solve. As I said elsewhere, you could tax 100% of every billionaire in this country, leaving them homeless, and you would not have collected enough money to fund the federal government for even one year. You could sell off your entire "aristocracy" and it wouldn't make a dent. The strategy of "just spend more money" does not work.
And how are we to do that without taking money from somewhere and using it to help people up?
> The idea that we have to come up with a good reason _not_ to heavily tax people is backwards. The only reason you need is that people have rights. A man owns what is his and you have absolutely no right to it.
Case in point. You can't take money away from rich kids via inheritance tax (nevermind that they'd still have innumerable advantages from growing up in a wealthy household), you can't tax the wealthy, but you're somehow supposed to help poor children up anyway. Who's paying for that?
Furthermore, I disagree with the statement on the grounds that national infrastructure and protections are doubtless large contributors to anyone being able to amass that kind of wealth in the first place, therefore it is not unreasonable to expect that a portion of that wealth be contributed back.
I think you would find that to make everything equal, you would have to take children away from their parents at an early age. Because having caring, loving parents is also an advantage. At least so far not all kids in a school turn out the same, even thought they all have the same teachers and lessons. Must be the parents that make the difference.
I don't think that would be desirable. I don't want my children to be raised in a government institution to make them exactly the same as everybody else, just for the sake of an arbitrary metric ("equality" measured in some arbitrarily chosen terms).
In fact why not get rid of parents altogether, and create children in labs? I bet that is the socialist dream fulfilled.
(Sorry about the cheap comment - I couldn't resist)
Also, sorry, but I don't care how productive other people's kids are, or "the economy". I care about the well-being of my kids. yes, I want everybody to be happy if possible, but my kids have priority to me.
And what exactly is "hypocritical"? What are you referring to? You assume everybody should have the same starting position in life, and I reject that notion.
Children of course are not at fault for the actions of their parents (like if they are drug addicts and have an unwanted child they can't afford, the child is not to blame - but neither are other people's children or parents). But that doesn't mean every child should automatically get the same "starting money". This is not a game of monopoly.
As I said - people compete to give their children the best odds. That is not even unique to humans, it is true for all of nature.
If you take that away, why bother with anything? Why should you bother to get a good job to be able to support your family? Just fuck and live the good life, and dump your children on society to be taken care of.
Already in the west everybody gets a pretty good deal in the form of an education.
* There is a caveat that it should be a new investment rather than a purchase of the existing one, the latter is zero-sum.
Yeah, I disagree. We're talking about on the order of tens of millions of dollars or more being passed from one parent to one child.
> So you are only deserving of a life free of poverty (even if you're lazy) if your parents happened to be rich?
This is such a twisting of my words I am not even sure how to respond. Are you saying the only way out of poverty is to steal everything you want from the rich?
Everybody should have a fair chance, but people who worked harder should also be allowed to benefit. Why should anybody be entitled to the fruits of their labor?
Society has limited resources. Until we manage the post-scarcity utopia, I would prefer my tax dollars go to someone who will use them to build a better life.