[muuh-gnu]

> For example, with basic income

Oh a UBI communist again. Sooner or later every problem discussed leads to someone suggesting the good ole "tax the rich".

> paying people to stay home to care for their kids.

Why should I pay somebody else to stay home with _their_ kids?

What you and other UBIs are suggesting is nothing else than "redistribute other peoples wealth" communism.

It _only_ works if you take (by force) from one guy and give it to the other guy. It is not a _solution_ in any form, it is simply mugging.

[dang]

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10524024 and marked it off-topic.

[pbhjpbhj]

>Why should I pay somebody else to stay home with _their_ kids? //

A very short and simplistic argument:

Does having rich people benefit all of society? If it doesn't then we should tax the rich to create more wealth-equality. If having wealth inequality does benefit society then we - democratic societies - should enable parents to raise their children to become rich [not necessarily financially but in skills at least] so that they can benefit the rest of society.

Another very simplistic argument is that we require the younger generations to work when we get old, children are a necessary part of the continuation of the state. If the state is valuable, or at least more valuable than other modes of government that would otherwise take hold or encroach on the population, then its continued existence should be encouraged. If a state government is damaging to child rearing then ultimately it will fail as the population of the state falls below sustainable levels. [Barring models that are selective from a surrounding population, in which case the state would have to encourage the surrounding population to generate more population with the characteristics they select for.]

[muuh-gnu]

> Does having rich people benefit all of society?

Who cares?

> If it doesn't then we should tax the rich

So if society is comprised of 10 people, and you devour one of them and redistribute to the other 9, thats OK simply because the 9 recipients benefit?

> If having wealth inequality does benefit society

Youre constructing your argument from a false premise, that the mob, or "society" as you call it, has a moral right to do everything it wants as long as it somehow extracts a benefit from that action.

If you can gang up and rob your own rich, why not arm up and attack a neighboring country and enslave its population? It would be a benefit for the stronger society after all. Or why not introduce slavery again? It certainly would be a benefit for the society of slave owners. Etc. Going by your "benefit über alles" line of thinking, you can legitimize basically any kind of atrocity imaginable.

[zanny]

> you devour one of them and redistribute to the other 9, thats OK simply because the 9 recipients benefit?

Because obviously anyone proposing progressive taxation wants the terms to be "once you make a million dollars, all assets are seized and you are left to die in the woods, filthy elitist". Definitely not anything, even in the most extreme case, like "oh hey, you made a million dollars this year, that is demonstrably enough to not only fund all your needs and probably 99% of conceivable wants but also those of at least a dozen family members or more", so we are going to take every cent you make beyond that and redistribute it to those who don't have enough to even fulfill their own needs".

That is not eating the rich. It is obviously way too redistributive and would catastrophically disincentivize wealth creation and probably wreck the economy, but even in the most extreme case it is not locally "devouring". You still have a million dollars a year, enough to afford almost anything.

And thats just the unreasonable super-communist perspective. A real world progressive tax rate that optimizes for societal wellbeing would probably be a NIT that guarantees at least 30k and caps your income in the hundreds of millions with the bisection at the peak income happiness threshold thats around 90k per person.

I'm sure "devouring" all the income beyond 500 million dollars of someone who made that much this year will certainly destroy them, at least as much as deep poverty and systemic inequality is definitely not destroying the minds of the children and the health of the parents living in it today.

[consz]

Do you consider taxing a rich person the same as devouring them? If not, what do you think is the point of your hypothetical?

[muuh-gnu]

What makes you think I will try to constructively respond to your question if you dont try to constructively respond to mine?

[consz]

You did not post anything worth constructively responding to.

[muuh-gnu]

Why did you waste your time responding then, and still do?

[pbhjpbhj]

All those that believe democracy is an overall good supposedly believe in the benefit of the majority, all those that are socialist believe that benefit to society is important - those two categories probably account for a majority of the population of the world.

It is often remarked that capitalism is a beneficial regime because of the "trickle down effect" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics).

>So if society is comprised of 10 people, and you devour one of them and redistribute to the other 9, thats OK simply because the 9 recipients benefit? //

That doesn't benefit all of society now does it?

>If you can gang up and rob your own rich, why not arm up and attack a neighboring country and enslave its population? //

Attacking a neighbouring country won't benefit society it will be a substantial detriment as would enslaving members of society.

The thing about "rob[bing] your own rich" is that the many of the richest members of our societies [in the UK] are rich because of chance, because of rent seeking, because despite the world belonging to mankind they by violence [usually of their ancestors] have acquired a larger share of it's resources. Why is it unjust to redistribute such wealth?

Let's flip your first question - if society is composed of 10 people and one of them has enough food to feed 10, should we just let 9 starve so that the 1 can keep "his" portion? Or to look at it a different way: how about we look at an island that's got resources to feed them all, they each are provided a random share and one has the most fertile and productive part - they all work equally hard and he always has excess and grows fat and rich in resources whilst the others suffer to varying degrees. Why should the benefit born of random chance overrule our humanity?

"We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down." (Dabla-Norris et al., http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42986.0)

[FWIW I don't agree that GDP is the best measure of improvements in society but it at least appears to indicate the efficiency - within humanitarian bounds - of a capitalist system. I'd prefer to follow happiness quotients.]

[muuh-gnu]

> That doesn't benefit all of society now does it?

How does then involuntary wealth transfer from the rich to the poor benefit _all_ of society, including the rich?

> Attacking a neighbouring country won't benefit society

Wat? If attacking and robbing a neighbouring society wont benefit the attacking society, how does attacking and robbing the rich neighbour benefit the poor attacking neighbourhood? Its the same concept, just another scale.

Conquest and enslavement have been successful empire-building strategies for millenia.

> are rich ... because of rent seeking

Whats wrong with that? I work and build a house, you need a stay and pay a monthly rent, whats wrong with that except your envy?

> the world belonging to mankind they by violence [usually of their ancestors] have acquired a larger share of it's resources.

We're not talking about wealth-by-robbing, as you see above. Youre explicitely throwing chance (aka inheritance) and rent-seeking into the mix, even though they are completely moral ways to accumulate. If my ancestors were hard-working accumulators, and your ancestors wasteful rakes, it is difficult to construct an argument why half of my inheritance should be awarded to your ancestors progeny instead of my ancestors progeny. Why should the ant be forced to take from his children and give to the grasshoppers children?

> should we just let 9 starve so that the 1 can keep "his" portion?

If the society is composed of 10 people, 1 is rich and 9 are starving, who is "we"? "We" is either the rich guy or the 9 starving ones. There is no single entity called "we" that can impartially and benevolently move around wealth. So if he robbed you, it is not "his" portion in the first place, then its ok for its rightful owners to take it back, including by force. But if he didnt rob you, and just accumulated it by hard-working and saving, then it indeed _is_ his portion, and youre shit out of luck. If you can construct an argument why its ok for you to attack him because you brought yourself in a situation where you literally cant survive anymore without attacking a hard-working innocent accumulator, then he has every right to also premptively attack you in order to prevent your planned envy-motivated attack. Youre essentially advocating for an vicious, eat-or-be-eaten climate of constant conflict.

[meric]

The thing about "rob[bing] your own rich" is that the many of the richest members of our societies [in the UK] are rich because of chance, because of rent seeking, because despite the world belonging to mankind they by violence [usually of their ancestors] have acquired a larger share of it's resources. Why is it unjust to redistribute such wealth?

Can you categorically say all of the richest in your country are rich because of chance and rent seeking?

Even if yes, can you categorically say all of the richest in your country are rich because of their exploitation of British people? Or did some of them rich because of their ancestors exploitation of India or through the Chinese opium trade?

I get what you're saying with not letting the 9 people starve, but justifying it by saying "they deserve their stuff taken because they're exploiting us" is the emotional logic that led to holocaust, or the cultural revolution, events where millions are displaced and killed.

Cows & Pigs don't deserve to be murdered for their meat, but we do it, to live.

You got to do it, not because they deserve it, but because it's what you got to do. If you are going to do it, own it.

[muuh-gnu]

> Cows & Pigs don't deserve to be murdered for their meat, but we do it, to live.

We dont _need_ to eat meat. We _want_ to eat meat. We want it so much that we'll kill them to get it.

But for some psycho-social reason unknown to me, we're not willing to flat out admit that, and spend aeons constructing convoluted arguments why we are so so sorry but cant avoid killing them.

> If you are going to do it, own it.

As you can observe, exactly that last bit absolutely doesnt work. For some reason theyll fight tooth and nail to avoid admitting "I'll kill you now because you taste soo delicious".

[meric]

Inequality in a society leads to instability in that society, and tears it apart. That's why we tax the rich to give to the poor, to reduce the rate inequality arises and attempt keep chaos at bay. When a society breaks down, everyone suffers greatly, but eventually as a new society arise, equality is reset, and people can improve their livelihood over time again. That's how it was with the Roman Empire, with each of the successive Chinese dynasties, with the Islamic Caliphate, and many other empires that have arose and fallen in the past[1]. So it will be with the 'West' we live in.

[1] The Fate of Empire - Sir John Grubb http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2014/092814_files/...

[e12e]

> It _only_ works if you take (by force) from one guy and give it to the other guy.

That's how taxation and government funding works.

Are you advocating no taxation, and no government?

[muuh-gnu]

Whatever I'm advocating, youre advocating flat out mugging, and to conceal that, youre giving it other names.

Muging, aka forcible redistribution of other peoples wealth is called "communism", so stop pretending youre advocating something completely different by rebranding it over and over and over again.

UBI _doesnt work_ without forcibly taking from one group of people and giving it to another group. How forcible redistribution ends up you saw in Soviet Russia. Are you earning so little that you'd rather see our economy crumble like Soviet Russia, than to have hard working people keeping their wages to themselves without being mugged by envious low-earners?

[e12e]

I'm sure we can agree to disagree on what are the most viable and desirable ways to distribute wealth, but any form of taxation is backed by force, and any spending of that tax leads to it being given to someone else. If you don't pay taxes, you go to jail. When government hires someone to do a job, they give some of that money to someone else.

[muuh-gnu]

> most viable and desirable ways to distribute wealth

None.

> If you don't pay taxes, you go to jail.

"If you dont pay protection money, we demolish your restaurant."

So essentially youre advocating for a society thats indistinguishable from a Yakuza-run shanty town.

Congrats, which basically ends our small discourse.

[spacehome]

I don't agree with you, but I'm sorry you're getting downvoted for contributing constructively to the conversation.