Why should we put any faith in a system that allowed this to happen in the first place? (Assuming we aren’t one of the lucky eight.)
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No. That’s not what the proposal is saying at all.
Whether it’s UBI or UBA, I’d expect that whoever’s handing it out would take extra efforts to emphasise the “B” part of the acronym to the public.
At the point that authoritarian arseholes and ideologues take over the system. That’s not an inevitable outcome. A lot of Western social democracies already offer some of these free benefits in one form or another without having the Red Guard along for the ride (it might be argued that such programmes prevent the Red Guard from appearing).
Indeed. The reason they tried it in Russia to such an extreme degree had something to do with the extreme wealth disparity within the country at the time.
As individuals? I’m sure more than the average person, but that’s distinct from the people their (usually publically traded) companies employ. As UHNWIs, the people they personally employ include security details and other guard labour, and that’s no sane way to enjoy one’s personal wealth.
It doesn’t work, but again that’s not what’s being proposed here. If you want to criticise it (and there are such criticisms to be made) then do it on the basis of the proposal and not dogmatic “free”-market assumptions about what you think the proposal is.
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You’re saying the losers should take back what the winners “won” by basically stealing from the losers?
I’M IN!
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For generations, people have been told to look up to the greedy, to see them as smart, to aspire to be like them and have been shamed for failing. It’s a con crafted by those greedy people and has been going on so long that we dropped all pretense of “for the people” and elected a “Me” generation, openly douchey, gasbag as a president.
That really should be the only wake up call needed but I’ll just assume it’s not enough and expect the shit show to keep rolling on. We could grow up a bit as a species and start working together or we can keep going as we have been. Just know history has shown us that the current path leads to catastrophe.
All of the arguments about why something like universal income or universal assets won’t work never seem to explain how this time, unlike all other times in history where fiat wealth is concentrated, the middle class shrinks due to austerity, and capitalistic oligarchy replaces democracy to the beat of war drums, how this time we will avoid the collapse or how this time is actually different. I mean, their arguments might not sound so silly if we hadn’t seen this all before but we have. It has never ended well.
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Pretty much any system will end up with an “elite”, even if that isn’t set up in principle, it happens in practice.
And using the examples of the worst doesn’t exactly destroy the whole concept. It just means there are outliers.
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There will always be some people who have more than other people, but the scale of that imbalance today is beyond anything we’ve seen in human history and it’s only been made possible via bad economic policy.
Eight people owning as much as 3.6 billion people put together isn’t the natural order of things, it’s obscene.
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Speaking of obscene…
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Well you say that, except history has many examples of obscenely rich and powerful people/families. Was the wealth that badly imbalanced in the past as well? Their shear amount was less, but perhaps the proportion was similar? Maybe not - just the point that there has always been the obscenely rich.
I agree that isn’t the way it should be. And I agree that it was bad policy that helped lead to this. But that isn’t enough to make me abandon the “system” (not sure specifically what that means), rather it just needs adjustments.
We certainly haven’t seen this level of imbalance in any society that professed to have even vaguely democratic ideals. It’s impossible to have a truly participatory democracy when a tiny handful of people control all the wealth and resources.
In any case history has also taught us “ruthless accumulation of wealth while the peasantry is left to fight for the scraps” often doesn’t end well for the rich people either.
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Yay, it’s the guillotine part of the thread!
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Honestly, by the end of this documentary I was kind of hoping for that ending.
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Ha, I’ve seen that. I found it pretty easy to substitute the Trumps for that totally out- of-touch set of grifters.
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Dude, I’m considered rich and have a net worth of less than zero like almost every other affluent American. Mortgages and college loans do that.
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But think of all the equity that you have!
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The long term plan isn’t that the basic assets are always provided by a redistribution from a perpetually, heiniously wealthy group to a perpetually struggling group. The long term idea is that providing for basic needs for all makes everyone more productive in the long run.
It is also, in any sane world, coupled with structures that prevent such concentration of wealth amd opportunity from occurring (even with things as simple as anti-trust legislatiom with actual teeth…) so that opportunities are more evenly distributed, not just wealth.
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The shocking aspect of this study is that there are seven people with more money than me.
I demand immediate tax cuts, union busting, and deregulation!
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We should redistribute wealth to those 3.6 billion, and reestablish their faith. 8 easy steps. I agree with you.
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I’ve known quite a few teaching and medical folk; used to be one myself (medical research scientist/academic).
Ain’t none of 'em doing it for the money.
The folks who are primarily motivated by money don’t go into medicine or education. It’s fucking hard work, and the pay isn’t great (especially on the teaching side).
The money-motivated aren’t in the arts and sciences; they’re concentrated in the MBA/Marketing crowd.
A reduction in the encouragement of those people isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
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