Redistribution of Wealth C/D?

How far does the 'dud' contigent go in their antipathy to redistribution, btw? Do they think, say, that everyone should be just taxed a flat, poll tax amount, regardless of ability to pay?

people should be taxed until we have nurses driving BMWs!!!

Men who wear pillows underneath jumpers to show support for pregnant wives (if any of these people actually exist) have the right idea.

Don't they all?

The crux of the argument is whether giving government the power to redistribute wealth is inherently an abuse of power. Those who say dud tend to distrust government and cite the long, long history of tyrants. Those who say classic tend to distrust the wealthy and cite the shrewd quotation, "Behind every great fortune is a great crime."

Sadly, everyone is right. Power can be abused. Therefore it will be abused. The only solution with a partial chance of success is to fragment power and make its exercise as transparent as possible. The only tool for accomplishing this strategy is government, since private power will always drive toward individual ascendency. But this solution does not inhere in just any government. It must be carefully designed and jealously watched.

The other upshot of fragmenting power is that, correctly conceived and applied, it tends to reduce aggregate wealth by willfully introducing inefficiencies of scale. But a wise populace learns to love inefficiency, since inefficiency limits power more surely than any other mechanism.

There is this defensive myth perpetuated by the middle classes that the poor are poor because they don't work or can't work or don't work hard enough. This is total bullshit. Millions of ordinary people work themselves into an early grave because their jobs are simply not given adequate financial reward.

What bugs me about this is that it was industrial capitalism that deskilled the workforce in order to get labour more cheaply. Its sick that the defenders of capitalism are the ones who complain about how the poor are the ones bleeding the system dry. Let's take a closer look at where the money comes from. When Chinese workers make your shoes in sweatshops for a dollar a day, someone else is making a fucking killing on the strength of what these workers do - someone sat on their arse is making a fortune because these people are working themselves into an early grave. You think the poor aren't working hard enough? Whose the twat creaming off the profit without lifting a finger, that's the workshy one!

"There is this defensive myth perpetuated by the middle classes that the poor are poor because they don't work or can't work or don't work hard enough. This is total bullshit. Millions of ordinary people work themselves into an early grave because their jobs are simply not given adequate financial reward."

Wow, this must be satire. Leftists feeling the need to defend those poor who had nothing to do with their situation. Yeah there are some mentally handicapped who are homeless who can be taken care of by charities. As for the poor "working themselves to an early grave" boo hoo. If you understand the way our society works it is easy to get ahead. My parents came here with nothing, worked their asses off being rewarded with nothing but managed to save enough to invest in their future. If people are not forward thinking enough then they suffer. That is the way of the world, if you can think of a better system that will WORK then by all means. However, you shouldn't go around trying to implement money systems based on how people SHOULD behave but on how they actually DO behave.

How far do the 'dud' contigent go in their antipathy to redistribution, btw? Do they think, say, that everyone should be just taxed a flat, poll tax amount, regardless of ability to pay? In fact, should the poorer be taxed even higher, because they use services more?

Redistribution of wealth would happen naturally if people were paid what they were worth. If businesses want to be treated as, in a sense, individuals, with freedoms and liberties, why shouldn't they be held to certain ethical standards like individuals in society are?

I'm also interested in why some of you are assuming that a certain pattern of wealth distribution is a priori right or wrong.

Right. There we have it. This is why those good for nothing rich bastards can't pay each seamstress a thousand dollars a day to make some Nikes.

I do think law is wholly coercive, yes, and you haven't done anything to convince me otherwise. You haven't once even stated any kind of fact (nor logic besides whatever your own eternal, internal logic is) and besides I don't believe in such a thing as facts. I am sorry my account of the StAtE is too squared off for you, but thats the way the geometry is calculated.

You know, we all think we are brilliant geniuses and if only the world would just understand! We could set everything straight with our right-mindedness and cure polio etc. etc. Continually talking past each other, however, seems to have put this at an impasse. I'd go re-distribute some of my money, but I still have to pay my bills this month.

Mr. Hamrin, are you in fact posting from a small town in Minnesota?

Its true! Don't let them take me away!

So like I said, after further clarification, I am seriously done w/the thread and I'd advise everyone else to walk away slowly, but don't turn yr backs!

http://www.techcentralstation.com/092903A.html

two-thirds of tax goes to pay for Social Security, education, and health care

but what do you expect? That is what tax is largely for!

If there were no homosexuals in Britain, the Government would have to invent some. In fact, it turns out that this is pretty much what they have done.

Not necessarily; I just thought it was germaine and rather novel given the thread.

It leaves a lot of important questions open and fails to address exactly how this privatised welfare sector (hospitals, schools, etc) will provide quality services for everyone regardless of ability to pay

This kind of makes me think you didn't even read the article very thoroughly.

It's no good arguing that this proposal will give people more money in their pockets and so everyone will be able to afford decent education and decent healthcare - markets don't work like that.

how do markets work, exactly?

The cost of healthcare will rise if their are more consumers than there are services.

Not necessarily.

Ultimately, if you treat the welfare sector as a market then you will inevitably benefit the rich and punish the poor.

How?

Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA)
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/financialhelp/ema/

The Govt in England are going to pay kids ! in 16 + post compulsory education [6th form/FE coleges etc]

If your household income is: [this money is paid directly into student accounts]
up to £19,630 per year you get £30 per week
£19,631 - £24,030 per year you get £20 a week
£24,031 - £30,000 per year you get £10 a week

And you could also get a bonus of £100 in January and July -and again in October if you come back for a second year. Bonuses depend on the progress you make with your course.

Why are the govt introducing these allowances? and doing the direct opposite for 18 + uni/ HE sector:

i.e Labour continued with Tory idea of Student Loans
and introduced the concept of tuition fees

Is it right these allowances are means tested? what about the family with household income just above 30K they pay the texes but get no benefits

Is the £30 allowance over generous? for a 16 year old

Surely the students that need more help from the Govt are the 18 + HE sector? not the 6th Form/ FE sector?

discuss.

EMAs are Urgent & Key for getting non-traditional learners to stay on at 16, people who have no history of further or higher education in their family. they are means-tested but have been piloted for the last 3 or 4 years in various deprived areas up and down the country, so they've had a chance to work out what the best option is. with any means-tested benefit you can argue that those just above the threshold lose out, but you've got to have a threshold somewhere.

also HE can go take a running jump, it's at level 2 and level 3 that the country needs more skilled people, not churning out more generations of english graduates (sorry that's a bit excessive, but you know what i mean). isn't giving someone from a deprived background a chance to live up to their potential more important than giving the middle-classes the sop of free degrees?

(martian, you've backed a loser here btw, i could go on but i'm too full of GIANT YORKSHIRE PUD at the mo)

(alsoalso, more importantly, they are looking to introduce a similar scheme for adults without level 3 (a-level level) quals, which is even more U&K)

I am also surprised that is being introduced with hardly any media comment/ debate - will this come next week?

x-post I actually agree with the Lib Democrats viewpoint of scrapping tuition fees and re-introducing student grants - funded by introducing a top band tax rate of 50 % for over 100K. That's redistribution of wealth.

i don't know this for sure, but i wonder if the bands are related to the working family tax credit bands? also in the pilots they tried various different amounts, and that's why they settled on £30.

i assume it's because the people who drive the news (both jounros and politicians) have no experience of the sector having gone public school/grammar straight to university, "tecs" being for the thick kids, and FE policy isn't a vote winner or loser in terms of "worcester woman" (or whatever we're calling floating voters this year)

i don't suppose you've heard about the skills strategy or success for all either

i wasn't implying any ignorance on your behalf, merely that these rather major education policies get zero airtime (to the point where the chair of the education select committee had to DEMAND that discussions on the skills strategy be given airtime on BBC parliament, only days after they'd been showing non-stop HE debate).

also i realise this has absolutley nothing to do with the rest of the thread, but having read the last 50 posts up there, i don't think that's necesarily a bad thing...

http://www.letpandasdie.com/

Should there be any limit to how filthy rich you can get if you're not breaking any laws?

Do we have any reason to complain about drug companies, Microsoft, oil companies or any obscenely rich bastard who spends every last dime on himself while taking advantage of every tax deduction he can?

I remember this thread.

Theoretically money is a store of value so as long as the company is creating something of value it makes no sense to complain about how much money they make. That's given a perfect market of course, so there are problems.

As far as spending every last dime on themselves, you are putting Microsoft here for what? Don't they give a lot to charity?

The only harm I see in unlimited wealth accumulation is unlimited power accumulation. Otherwise, I don't care how rich and selfish other people are. I do believe in progressive taxation though, and I believe in social welfare programs and the public good, and I suppose that has some kind of indirect redistribution built in to it.

As far as spending every last dime on themselves, you are putting Microsoft here for what? Don't they give a lot to charity?

Because people complain about them. That is all. I tried to come up with generic things people complain about. Had I said "Nike" you could easily say, "SLAVE CHILD LABOR!" so I did not say "Nike."

HI DERE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2005/05/23/PH2005052301719.jpg

Is he singing the Song of the Vajra?

"Do we have any reason to complain about drug companies, Microsoft, oil companies or any obscenely rich bastard who spends every last dime on himself while taking advantage of every tax deduction he can?"

In a word, NO.

I mean, we can complain all we want. But if our 'reason' is merely our own lack of resources, lack of ambition, or plain old bad luck - I say stop whining and be grateful you don't live in Cuba.

Grateful to whom? Just everyone in general you meet?

Or like God and stuff?

Hmmm...Founding fathers? Parents? God? Whatever you like. That's not really the point.

I need to know what I'm doing here alright?

https://www.thecut.com/2019/03/abigail-disney-has-more-money-than-shell-ever-spend.html

we lived in a big enough house that we would always get two doorbells on Halloween — people would ring the front and the back thinking it was two houses. But again, it wasn’t lavish. There weren’t private airplanes and things like that until I got older.

This is the weird thing about my life: I am usually excited to meet someone in direct disproportion to how excited they are to meet me. I’m kind of a lefty, New York City, Manhattan, pointy-headed intellectual type.

When I meet people, I have an unfair advantage in being able to make them laugh because all I have to do is make a joke about Tinkerbell or Cinderella, and they love you for it. In some cases, all I have to do is not be a huge asshole. It’s like people think you’ll come in on a chariot or something. Within about an hour, invariably, they’ll say, “Oh my God, you’re so down to Earth.”

Did you have a moment in your life when things started getting lavish and you realized, “Oh, I’m super rich”?
When I went off to college, Michael Eisner came in and reinvigorated the company, and then the stock price, which was basically my family’s entire net worth, was ten times, 20 times, 50 times what it had been when I was growing up. So all of the sudden, we went from being comfortable, upper-middle-class people to suddenly my dad had a private jet.

if I were queen of the world, I would pass a law against private jets, because they enable you to get around a certain reality. You don’t have to go through an airport terminal, you don’t have to interact, you don’t have to be patient, you don’t have to be uncomfortable. These are the things that remind us we’re human.

Are you cautious with money?
You know, I’m not. I’m 59, and now that I’ve been living in the world on my own and managing my own money for a while, I have developed the opposite view of almost everything that my parents did. I started giving money away in my 20s, and my parents thought that was crazy. But it was mine to give. Luckily, my grandfather gave us money directly, which was great because I never had to go to my parents and ask for anything. I was totally independent at 21. So I started giving money away. Within a couple of years I was giving away more money than my parents, who had much more money that I had, which they told me was embarrassing to them.

I spent most of my 20s in graduate school, and graduate school is where people shame you for having money.

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classic

"I was totally independent at 21."