Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change
by walkedaway on Thursday July 01, 2021 @06:15PM
(#27705554)
Why do you think you're entitled to 100% of my wealth?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change
by jessaustin on Thursday July 01, 2021 @06:20PM
(#27705608)
I doubt I'll get it. I don't even get a discount on healthcare.gov. Mostly I'd like to see USA governed by its citizens rather than the rich. If they weren't rich anymore that might happen. Of course the point is that the rich won't allow this. The system will not fix the harms it was designed to create. If something like this went through it would probably take from the (5-1)% and give to the 0.1%.
Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change
by walkedaway on Thursday July 01, 2021 @11:47PM
(#27707638)
Got it. Make everyone poor and suffer. Great plan.
Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change
by jessaustin on Friday July 02, 2021 @08:59AM
(#27710916)
The cutoff I've seen for the 1% is $11M net worth. Is everyone poorer than that, "suffering"? What kind of world do you live in?
Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change
by walkedaway on Friday July 02, 2021 @11:43AM
(#27712968)
By definition there's a new 1% when you take the top 1% and make it 0. Then you take the new 1%. And so on.
Simple math. Everyone ends up with zero.
Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change
by jessaustin on Friday July 02, 2021 @12:02PM
(#27713229)
Haha that's the most amusing slippery-slope argument I've seen recently, and it also has a pleasing Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox aspect to it as well. Bravo!
Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change
by trboyden on Saturday July 03, 2021 @09:43AM
(#27721577)
It's easy to throw around numbers without understanding the people behind them. Say the plumber whose business is worth $10 million dollars, pays himself $100k, and re-invests the rest back into his business and his employees. Is he rich? No. That's the problem with ideological socialism. You just want to stick it to the guy who is rich on paper - it has nothing to do with actually improving peoples lives.
Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change
by jessaustin on Sunday July 04, 2021 @11:07AM
(#27730202)
I'm not a socialist at all, let alone an "ideological" one. My motivation is not to make people poor. My motivation is to arrange some sort of sovereignty for the vast majority of people. As long as billionaires choose all our public officials [0] while paying minimal taxes [1], we don't have majoritarian rule. If we did have it, this country would be better-run and better for both the people who live here and everyone else in the world.
Even if we can assume there is a single ten-millionaire working plumber (and really, that's far-fetched), such a person won't be harmed if all of the billionaires get trimmed back to her level.
[0] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...