this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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A lot of these are impractical.
For example you have a lot of expenses, but you also want to remove most VAT. But you're also freeing up income for the more poor. You don't need to overdo giving poorer people money, it needs to be enough, not too much. There's better ways to invest that money, for example into increasing the quality of said universally health care. You can always increase the tax on higher brackets to extreme numbers and making transferring money out more difficult.
Likewise, while I am fully behind abolishing company personhood, it is, sadly, absolutely impractical. It should happen, but it won't.
And likewise, a separate senate can be useful, it just needs to be used differently. The idea is to have a second - smaller - group that can essentially send bills back to the bill-writing group for purposes such as "this is worded too broadly" or "this is too partisan" and so on. They cannot actually change law, they're there to make sure that changes to law uphold a certain standard of writing and specificity.
So the system doesn't work (and didn't really in the best of times), everyone else successfully moved forwards - but because the system might work in theory, you should stick with it?
Ngl, sounds like copy-pasted from propaganda brochure.
Don't give "too much money to the poor"? What even is the worst case for that when you have production levels where a) there should be no poor people to even give them money and b) even giving "too much money" to everyone right now wound only marginally effect the economy.
Like, is there a threat that they will use that money to lobby the government to increase taxes for the rich?
Or perhaps that would make for a better world and kinder society which wound be absolutely terrible? Can't live in a society without poor people? Dude.
Americans like to argue that increasing taxes lowers GDP (but actually just short-term stock prices) yet I've never met anyone that in case of eg 90% average tax on their 10 million income would just say 'fuck it, one million is not worth it, it's basically the same as living homeless on the street so I'm just gonna do that'.
How do you mean? Maybe that read wrong - again, not a native speaker - but I meant that instead of just giving everyone more and more free-floating cash, once you've tackled societal poverty to an acceptable enough degree, it seems far more important to transfer extra cash stripped from billionaires etc into projects that enhance the quality of life for everyone, like public free healthcare, free public transport, free internet access, etc etc.
Sure, everyone wants and frankly needs a certain amount of money they can freely spend on luxury items even beyond a basic need, but once a certain level of that is achieved, I feel there's so many society-benefitting projects that should get money first. That is to say, we should not try to repeat the same mistake that ultimate led to the shit we're in now, the whole "more money is more better" error. Enough money + not much need for money to begin with feels much more stable to me.
Oh, yes, I understand that as the same thing - giving money to people (negative taxes) and building them infrastructure (that they don't need to pay for as there isn't a profit invective).
And absolutely the second thing, building infrastructure for the people, is way better and more efficient. I don't need as much money/basic income to live in a world with good public transport, healthcare, housing, etc.
I'm not even a big advocate for money as a concept going forward actually.
Sorry if I misunderstood you (not a native speaker either), we are thinking the same thing, the function of basic income now (overcoming living costs greatly influenced by profit margins) is not the same as what it's function would be if companies had less power over people.
None of this is meant to be what I think is going to happen, it's what I think should happen. I like thinking about solutions. Congress isn't actually capable of implementing this stuff because it's corrupt as shit and we're headed towards a recession.
Yeah fair. On an utopian level I agree with virtually all things 😁
Conservatives are poisonous
What do you mean? I don't disagree, but it's not easy to convince them of that, sadly.
I consider it conservative to instantly dismiss a list of solutions to real problems. "That's impractical" is typically translated to "I'm far too fucking lazy to think about that topic, let's leave things how they are"
Hrm, okay? You yourself really drank the Conservative koolaid though if you can only think in black and white with no further nuance.
Everything is a trade-off in life. Every solution costs something else. Its funny that you accuse someone who couldn't be less conservative if they tried of that, just because I would like to actually change something, not just talk about it - and hence need workable solutions not utopian ideas. Though as I said to the op, on an utopian level I agree of course.
Yes, everything costs something, including inaction, and there is enough budget to cover that cost ... so instead of looking at it like a trade-off you might look at it like a purchase of 'a better life for most' with the 'money/labour you already made'.
Right you instantly dismissed solutions but I'm the conservative. I understand tradeoffs but I read your comment. It was dismissive
Okay, well then in that case it really wasn't meant that way but I'm also not a native English speaker. 😞
Thanks for clarifying. I appreciate this response and I hope I wasn't too rude with mine.