People living in poverty should not have to deal with others wanting power over them. A chocolate bar? Its sad how this isn’t even an exaggeration. Its as if being poor is a punishment and those in this situation should not be able to have any ounce of pleasure in their lives!
And of course tax payers dollars is somehow justification for such an attitude. Personally, knowing that part of my paycheck benefits people who should be living with all their needs met…instead of some fucking rich persons pocket or the military is so meaningful.
But just in general, buy a chocolate bar. Buy a toy for your kid. Upgrade your phone, buy something that will make you happy. Life shouldn’t be a bleak existence for anyone, just because of their social class. Let them have some type of freedom.
The bizarre nature of the US economic system means that poor people in the US can have a smartphone (under $30) and a choice between 20 different colors of $1 socks but then have no choice but to die of a tooth infection because that costs hundreds of dollars in order to access treatment.
This shit that “nobody starves, doesn’t have running water, has untreated parasitical diseases, etc. in the US” is flat out nonsense. And I can’t imagine how these beliefs could withstand any actual extended contact with poor communities in the US unless someone was intentionally refusing to acknowledge what was right in front of their eyes.
it’s important to remember that the conservative government has been decimating the uk long before the brexit referendum was called by david cameron, and the tories will continue to enact their cruel policies as long as they are in government (regardless of what happens with brexit and who their leader is).
one of the most annoying things about royal weddings is all the middle class liberals who come out with their tepid takes about how they ‘don’t mind the royals, actually’ as if a liberal having no problem with unearned wealth and privilege is some massive shocker
Innit. Especially now these two are ‘socially conscious’, the mc liberals can really give that royal arse a good tonguing. The Queen knows what she’s doing, she’s adapting the monarchy to the times. They could go on for another 50 years like this.
The royal family existing is profitable for the UK as a whole, because it basically funds half the tourism industry. They’re obnoxious, but getting rid of them would actively harm the working class in many of the places most hostile to the working class. Get off your bloody high horse.
actually socialising their wealth would benefit the working class directly and we’d get even more tourists when the palaces are fully open to the public, like in the other countries that have done the sensible thing and gotten rid of their monarchies.
Proposal for a new law: you get a maximum of ten million dollars.
Yep, no one living or doing business in the US is allowed to own more than $10 million in personal assets. Investments, savings, real estate, cars, gold, everything; you hit that cap, and anything over is seized and redistributed as no-strings cash payments to everyone else. You get caught sneakily using a shell corporation or offshore accounts or anything else clever to subvert that limit, it’s a criminal penalty. Greed in the First Degree.
I’ll be merciful here; that’s ten million per individual so your spouse and children can each have their own ten million, it’ll go up with inflation, and I won’t even include your house. (Maximum one house per adult, and only if you actually live in it, so don’t get creative. Farms/ranches can be counted as homes, but only if you live full-time and personally work on them.)
Yeah, this means that certain people would lose literally billions of dollars. But they’d still have ten million! How bad can you feel for them? That’s still enough money that you can livecomfortably without putting in another day of work in your life. It’s very hard to make a case that anyone needs more than that.
I haven’t worked out exactly what the redistribution payments would be, but my extremely-poorly-sketched guess is at least $50K per non-ten-millionaire person when the law first goes into effect. Not enough to be set for life, but it would be a hell of a lifeline for a lot of families. More importantly, there would be a continuing benefit from companies being unable to divert all their profits to upper management and wealthy investors. They’d have nothing to do with that money except reinvest it in workers and facilities.
And I wouldn’t worry about demotivating workers. If an ordinary person is debating whether it’s worth their time to go back to school or apply for a management position or open their own shop, they’re not going to be thinking “Why even bother? All I stand to earn is ten million dollars.” Not if they have any sense of perspective.
Oh, but high achievers will stop working or leave the country once they get their ten million. Good! That’s the point! They’ve earned all the money they need, so they should let someone else have a chance! If they love their job and don’t want to quit, they can still do it for a minimal salary and distribute the rest among their employees. Or they can quit, and we can learn that this whole “only ultra-rare magically gifted people can be successful CEOs, so they deserve to be treated like princes” thing was a wealth-worshipping myth anyway.
We’re in an economic emergency situation right now. 20% of households with children don’t have enough to eat. 500,000 people are homeless. More than a quarter of people struggle to pay their medical bills. Sorry, but it’s a sad fact: Ultra-rich people are a useless luxury that we can’t afford.
I haven’t thought through all the details or economic impacts or long-term consequences of this, but I think by now it’s clear that the people who make the real laws don’t either.
To all the people replying “but rich people will just leave”:
– Well I certainly hope the door doesn’t hit their asses on the way out. They have no irreplaceable talents or knowledge.
– There will be measures in place to prevent them from taking more than $10m with them when they move out.
– The US is a huge market and has a tremendously valuable workforce. My plan might not work for starting a new country on an empty island, but we’ve got shit worth sticking around for. Even if McDonald’s moves out, it will still be worthwhile to sell hamburgers to Americans. Even if Microsoft moves out, America will still have lots of talented software engineers. I don’t think we need billionaires to organize all our bountiful supply and demand into a functional economy.
– Foreign companies won’t be allowed to do any business here if any of their employees/partners/investors has over $10m. This will cut us off from a lot of business, but again, because we are the US and have so much to offer, it will be worthwhile for smaller foreign businesses to trade with us, or possibly even for large ones to retire all the rich guys to come into compliance.
– I’m not entirely serious about this and I’m no economist. I just wanted to entertain the notion of radically interrupting America’s slide into oligarchy, of taking action based on the premise that vast inequality is wrong rather than merely unfortunate. We have to do something about this situation, so fuck it, here’s something.
I like this idea.
It reminds me of an idea I’ve entertained with a similar level of semi-seriousness: requiring all holders of federal-level public office to donate their personal assets (money and real estate) to the government as a condition of taking office. For the duration of their government service, they live in assigned middle-class housing and receive a salary equal to the median income across the entire country. Whatever said income is at the time they leave office, that becomes their pension. They are barred from receiving income from any other source, for life.
It’s tyrannical and wildly impractical, but the benefits speak for themselves. The 1% would be discouraged from holding public office (since they would forfeit their wealth), and lawmakers would have every incentive to set policies that raise the median, instead of funneling everything to the top.
Also like.
Currently people on ssi have an asset limit of 2000$. No I did not miss a 0 or anything. For perspective a wheelchair usually costs at least that by itself and this applies to a bunch of stuff, you literally are banned from saving for emergencies.
So what do you do? You go over the limit and you have to spend it. This would not have any effect on EARNED MONEY, as long as you spend it immediately upon making it. It doesn’t prevent making money, just hoarding it.
So basically this would be encoragement to say, pay your fucking employees instead of sitting on your riches like a fucking dragon as the economy tanks
kids aren’t starving to death for the most part, everything is a-okay, let’s cancel social progress and have a set-money-on-fire party instead
Well, I mean, as long as kids aren’t literally dying from lack of food.
Nevermind that kids who deal with food insecurity (meaning: they don’t always know when they’re next going to be able to eat, they’re frequently hungry without being able to solve that problem) struggle in school, because hunger is distracting, stress and worry (which are normal when you don’t have enough to eat) are distracting, and also if you’re running low on blood sugar your brain just can’t function at optimum. Nevermind that they frequently also struggle to behave ‘appropriately’, because hunger is frustrating and constant hunger is exhausting, not to mention the aggravation of knowing that it’s unfair that they have to be hungry when their classmates have plenty to eat, when food is getting thrown away in front of them. Nevermind that they’re much more likely to suffer from preventable illnesses, because chronic hunger fucks up one’s immune system and leaves one vulnerable to diseases, nevermind that malnutrition in childhood can permanently stunt people’s growth and development, causing chronic lifelong issues.
None of that matters. They’re not actually dying.
…hey anon? Get bent. You don’t have to have the worst possible problem out of a given category of “problem” in the world in order to have a valid problem that deserves to be addressed.
“Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, S.D. ― Dominique Amiotte, 17, always makes sure to keep a few extra tampons in her locker. It’s not much, but it’s enough to encourage at least some of her struggling friends to come to school when they have their periods.
About half of Amiotte’s girlfriends can’t afford tampons or sanitary pads. As a result, when they menstruate, they’ll skip school for as long as a week. This can lead them to fall behind in class, contributing to the already abysmal graduation rates on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There are no official records on how many of the young women at the reservation’s 13 schools have felt the consequences of this issue, but individuals we spoke to say it’s an inescapable part of everyday life.
“It makes me angry,” Amiotte told HuffPost unflinchingly while seated in an empty classroom at the Crazy Horse School, where there are 70 girls enrolled in middle or high school classes.”
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.