Your obvious simple-minded reply is surely going to prove this is a bad idea. /s
No, going to a little kid in Africa who’s starving and handing him a $1000 probably would not be a good idea. Duh.
But taking $10 billion dollars and ensuring that money gets spent on feeding children, building houses, roads, giving medication, job placement, creating jobs, building schools is something. It’ll do $10 billion dollars more work than what would be done without it.
but yeah, since it’ll be ‘hard’ and all that, we shouldn’t do it.
If he’s starving, I assume he’d start by buying some food
ETA: and if you want to tell me that there’s no food in all of africa that a person can buy with money, then (a) no, and (b) famine isn’t the same thing as poverty - both can be solved with money, but the logistics are quite different
For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.
Anyway I’ll agree that “solving poverty” is probably impossible, both because it’s a purely relative thing and because people are awful, but that’s no reason to balk at eliminating extreme poverty. It’s a worthy goal, despite being no solution to all the world’s problems, and commanded of us by many religions and philosophies. Certainly Christians, Jews and Muslims have no excuse for being rich when others of their people are needy - it’s quite literally against their religious law.
nice one. how about instead we feed 100 kids with that $1000 instead of him getting ripped off by some street vendor since he probably has no concept of what $1000 can actually buy.
When I think about Universal Basic Income, I think back to this video. I think that there is probably a sweet spot where if you give people just enough money, their natural tendency toward want to excel will still flourish, but if you give them too much, they might actually under-perform.
So if even if you believe “incentives are better than handouts”, it might be the case that a little handout might still be necessary, but there’s probably evidence that if you just toss out free money, people won’t actually be motivated.
Still, the billionaire issue is a real one – and growing disparity is a problem.
However, it’s generally not so simple as “this person is so rich, they should really share” – because a lot of assets and wealth are not liquid, and are tied up in a complex relationship with other peoples’ money… so there needs to be a rethink of the whole system, but one that doesn’t kill incentives entirely…
I like this idea better than anything our city/county tries, which always involves raising everyone’s property taxes to redistribute that via “non-profits” to the few who never pay taxes, thereby pushing many closer to the bottom by driving up housing costs, etc.
Here’s something to consider, or eye opening depending on how you sway on this subject. Out of the super rich, there are only a few that actually do donate any reasonable amount. It’s funny, I was just watching a video interview that was just posted on another community I belong that I’ve seen before. It’s an interview with Bill and Melinda Gates where they tell Chris Anderson that their wealth from Microsoft was early on set to go back into society. Here’s the interview I was talking about: https://www.photographytalk.com/forum/the-lounge/276139-didn-t-know-this-about-bill-and-melinda-gates These two I find so charming and humble. They speak about getting the idea in 1993, and by 1999 were really on path to giving back.
As I said, and it’s my personal opinion, these two really raise the bar. But would be huge if more would do the same. Think about all the good for man kind that could come out of this. I get it, society needs contrast, but this can be shown, while saving lives and preserving more for tomorrows generations.
Isn’t that the truth! I know a few dead beats who are like that. And it sucks for those of us who work our butts off. I’m one of those, working butt off, going to school and paying taxes. Yet others find ways to avoid and makes it more costly for everyone else in the long run!
It’s great when billionaires decide to dedicate time and energy to philanthropy, but It would be even better if the worldwide economy wasn’t structured in such a way that millions of lives depended on the largesse of a handful of super-rich people.
I’d like to point out that it turns out between 3 and 5 million of the people living in extreme poverty (out of almost 800 million globally) are in the US. I’m pretty sure having more money can solve their poverty, even if there are people in much less developed regions for whom that isn’t true.
But the only way for those people to not be super-rich and keep accruing so much extra capital is a massive redistribution of wealth. Whether by investment, philanthropy, tax or the rising of the proletariat the issue hard to approach delicately.
I’m no economist, but since home prices are basically determined by how much homebuyers in an area are able to pay, then I’d expect that when tax rates (or interest rates) go up, home values would fall, and ultimately the effect on total housing costs shouldn’t be much different? Although I guess assessed home value for tax purposes may not follow housing market trends on any reasonable timescale.
