It's more comfortable than you were without the healthcare. Or let's invest it in education, so you have a decent community college around and can better yourself and make more than $15k.
I feel like we're playing whack a mole here, your complaints are all over the place.
Sure, but we tax the fuck out of the new income and spend it on social programs to improve the quality of life for everyone.
This isn't about making everybody rich. This is about making sure that everyone can live comfortably.
OK, great so helath care for everyone. But I'm still only making $15000 a year. I'm still poor as fuck. That's not comfortable.
We could take enough money from the very wealthiest Americans to pay absolutely everyone in the country a base wage of $60,000 per year. And properly fund widespread social programs.
And they'd still be richer than everyone else. That is how much money we're talking about here.
That's $18T a year. The 0.1% are rich, but that's more than America's yearly GDP.
Sure, but we tax the fuck out of the new income and spend it on social programs to improve the quality of life for everyone.
This isn't about making everybody rich. This is about making sure that everyone can live comfortably.
OK, great so helath care for everyone. But I'm still only making $15000 a year. I'm still poor as fuck. That's not comfortable.
I think the best demonstration of this I've seen is a flash game about being a farmer in the developing world. I forget the name of it. It's obviously a drastic oversimplification, but it gets the point across.
There are lots of people who try to argue that if you just work hard, you can escape poverty and be rich and such. Well, yes and no. In the game you start farming and making money. You are just scraping by, but if you had an extra worker you could be doing ok. So you have a kid. While the wife is having the baby, she's not working. Oh shit. Now you work even harder and get sick. Oh shit. Now the baby comes out. Now you're fucked.
I've used this analogy before. Imaging playing against someone in Monopoly. You start with $1. They start with $10000. You can't possibly win. You can't even start to try to win because you can't even afford a single property.
Health care and education are the starting money of life. If you don't have to worry about dying, or being uneducated, then you have a chance at life. If you fuck up, you still fuck up. But you now have a chance. If you do work hard you will be able to move up in the world without being randomly completely ruined. It will still be fair and capitalist. Lazy asses and dumb asses still won't make it in life. But at least people won't be completely fucked by randomness before they are even born with absolutely no chance of winning.
I feel like we're playing whack a mole here, your complaints are all over the place.
The point I'm trying to get across is that you can't legislate the poor to not be poor and similarly can't legislate the rich to not be rich. You can't balance the inequities of society with taxes. I'd rather spend my time looking for opportunities to make money than trying to tax the rich more than me.
Sure, but we tax the fuck out of the new income and spend it on social programs to improve the quality of life for everyone.
This isn't about making everybody rich. This is about making sure that everyone can live comfortably.
OK, great so helath care for everyone. But I'm still only making $15000 a year. I'm still poor as fuck. That's not comfortable.
We could take enough money from the very wealthiest Americans to pay absolutely everyone in the country a base wage of $60,000 per year. And properly fund widespread social programs.
And they'd still be richer than everyone else. That is how much money we're talking about here.
That's $18T a year. The 0.1% are rich, but that's more than America's yearly GDP.
OK, you're right, that was a bit of an exaggeration. Let's go with families instead. Or cut out everyone under 18.
I feel like we're playing whack a mole here, your complaints are all over the place.
The point I'm trying to get across is that you can't legislate the poor to not be poor and similarly can't legislate the rich to not be rich. You can't balance the inequities of society with taxes. I'd rather spend my time looking for opportunities to make money than trying to tax the rich more than me.
We don't want the poor not to be poor. We don't want the rich not to be rich. We just want the poor to have the opportunity to not be poor if they try very h ard. We want the rich to have a chance of not being rich if they fuck up big time.
The way we have it now, a person who is poor can not move up no matter how hard they work unless they are so incredibly lucky that nothing bad ever happens to them. That's very unlikely as bad things are very likely to happen to people who are poor.
Also, people who are rich and fuck up, like those banks that fucked up our economy, are still crazy ass rich golden parachute instead of in jail where they belong.
Also, people who are rich and fuck up, like those banks that fucked up our economy, are still crazy ass rich golden parachute instead of in jail where they belong.
A golden parachute would be a terrible idea. You would just plummet to your death.
The point I'm trying to get across is that you can't legislate the poor to not be poor and similarly can't legislate the rich to not be rich. You can't balance the inequities of society with taxes. I'd rather spend my time looking for opportunities to make money than trying to tax the rich more than me.
Yes you can.
Universal health care.
One of the BIGGEST reasons people can't start businesses is that they can't risk not having health care, and can't afford health care on their own.
One of the BIGGEST reasons people can't take job risks is that health care is tied to jobs. New job fails? No more health care, and good luck with COBRA.
Remove the risk of not being able to get your teeth or broken leg fixed, and more people will be able to strive for better without having to risk their very lives.
I'm a little late to that part of the conversation, but you guys saying poor people just don't manage their money well, and $40 a week shouldn't make a difference, wow. If anything, poor people manage their money better than most of us. (YES there are the exceptions where someone bought one too many plasma tvs they couldn't afford and went broke, I'm not talking about those). Poor people HAVE to manage their money. They have to be super picky about what they spend and scrutinize every dollar that comes through. This is how you get the extreme couponers, for example.
My parents are good examples. They have always been good with their money. They have taught me well, and I have great credit because of it. But for some reason life really hates them and keeps giving them hardships out of their control. They held on as long as possible, after medical problems, having shitty jobs, etc, but finally had give up their good credit and file bankruptcy. They have ridiculous jobs right now that barely pay them anything. $40 a week (remember thats $160 a month) would mean I don't have to give them money anymore to pay their bills.
You do realize the very poor people can't afford the luxuries we can. And by luxuries I mean internet, tv, food thats not the basic cheap stuff, any kind of vacation, a tasty drink every now and then, I can go on and on. Yes you can be very frugal with food, for example. Many a time someone on this forum has argued that you can get healthy food for cheap. But sometimes poor people just need that favorite key lime pie of theirs to boost their morale because everything else sucks. Like my mom.
How is it okay to say "you poor people shouldn't be buying this or having that, you just suck at managing money"? Why should poor people have to sacrifice little joys in life and you get all the stuff you want? Why can't they have that extra $40 a week?
So the take away here is that if you aren't rich, you're fucked, just become a professional criminal.
I'd be interested to see what would come from an an ROI and Risk Assessment looking at various criminal enterprises vs. legitimate businesses.
Meth Lab vs. Restaurant Grow Op vs. Technology Start-up
If you assign values for "time in jail" and "chance of death" and take into consideration that only 1% of grow ops are busted (made up number) and only 1% of start-ups succeed (again, made up number) and you don't care about morals, what is the "smartest" investment.
I think rather than increasing tax rates, which will never make it through the legal system, more people should be focusing on making the multitudes of methods for tax evasion less effective/impossible. The rich dude paying very little in taxes isn't going to give the government that much more money with higher tax rates if he's still illegally avoiding taxes. The government needs to put their foot down on all the obvious methods of tax evasion. The laws are written with obvious enough loopholes that high school students could probably figure out how to get around it.
All of them. All money would be taxed at the appropriate rate, and there would be no trick that could get that rate reduced in any way without money laundering.
I think a lot of alimony stems from a time when wives did not pursue careers and were expected to be homemakers, and thus were at an extreme economic disadvantage when their wage-earning partner left them. I think you will see that change over time as this gap starts to disappear. I think it is indeed unfair that the male partner is often decided against in court in terms of property disputes, but it's kind of like affirmative action in that it was meant to rectify a historical disadvantage. I hope families of the future are more equal and that courts will not favor one side or the other. I think that marriage as a legal contract should be reevaluated in many ways. Prenuptual contracts are a very good idea. I do think that both parents need to be financially responsible for their children.
What about us divorced guys who have to send vast amounts of money to ex-wives?
Well, if I were in charge you wouldn't be sending any moneys.
So who pays for the kids? They got your DNA, you are in it for the long haul. Don't spread your DNA around if you don't want to be responsible for the results.
I think rather than increasing tax rates, which will never make it through the legal system, more people should be focusing on making the multitudes of methods for tax evasion less effective/impossible. The rich dude paying very little in taxes isn't going to give the government that much more money with higher tax rates if he's still illegally avoiding taxes. The government needs to put their foot down on all the obvious methods of tax evasion. The laws are written with obvious enough loopholes that high school students could probably figure out how to get around it.
People have tried to do that time and time again. It always gets beaten down by lobbyists until it's useless.
So who pays for the kids? They got your DNA, you are in it for the long haul. Don't spread your DNA around if you don't want to be responsible for the results.
Well, I think alimony shouldn't exist at all. Child support is a different story, but there are so many circumstances that you can't come up with one system to decide what's fair. You really need to give a judge more discretion, but it seems like too many family court judges are unfair as it is.
I've seen a couple cases where you have poor parents with no moneys. But they pay to raise the child by borrowing from the mom's parents. Then when there's a divorce suddenly this dad has to pay for this kid, but has no money. All the money still comes from grandma. It's like, he wasn't paying before, now he suddenly has to pay, but can't. Catch-22. Don't divorce and live shittily. Divorce and get busted for being unable to pay child support.
I can tell you this for sure. I have no statistics, but I have been in a lot of police stations. I always look at the wanted posters while I wait. Every single time, in CT and Beacon and NYC most of the posters are for dudes who are delinquent on child support. That tells me that the system is broken and needs serious fixing.
Of course, there are these crazy dudes who go around making 100 babies with many different ladies. And there are women who let them. I don't know what to do about that.
Also, for the splitting in half of the shared belongings. That should only cover the shared belongings. As the law is now, lets say I marry and divorce a homeless girl with no prenup or anything. She could claim half of my stuffs even though I had all these things before the marriage. Half my books and computers and such, gone. That's BS. Anything you owned before the marriage should not get split in half. Only things that are true shared belongings should be split. It really incentives lying to marry people who are wealthier than you and then finding any excuse to divorce.
Also, the half splitting probably shouldn't even be half. If one person made all the money, and the other person sat at home and didn't work, they probably shouldn't get anything other than what they owned before the marriage. If one person made twice as much money as the other person, then there should probably be a 66/33 split of the shared belongings, not 50/50.
The problem with this, though, is that a rich person could trap someone else in a marriage. Like, if you leave me you'll be homeless with nothing, so you can't leave! Hahah! It's unfair no matter which way you go.
All in all I'm not sure why we need to legally recognize marriage in the first place. It just causes all these problems, and I'm not sure what problems it solves.
Comments
I feel like we're playing whack a mole here, your complaints are all over the place.
There are lots of people who try to argue that if you just work hard, you can escape poverty and be rich and such. Well, yes and no. In the game you start farming and making money. You are just scraping by, but if you had an extra worker you could be doing ok. So you have a kid. While the wife is having the baby, she's not working. Oh shit. Now you work even harder and get sick. Oh shit. Now the baby comes out. Now you're fucked.
I've used this analogy before. Imaging playing against someone in Monopoly. You start with $1. They start with $10000. You can't possibly win. You can't even start to try to win because you can't even afford a single property.
Health care and education are the starting money of life. If you don't have to worry about dying, or being uneducated, then you have a chance at life. If you fuck up, you still fuck up. But you now have a chance. If you do work hard you will be able to move up in the world without being randomly completely ruined. It will still be fair and capitalist. Lazy asses and dumb asses still won't make it in life. But at least people won't be completely fucked by randomness before they are even born with absolutely no chance of winning.
The way we have it now, a person who is poor can not move up no matter how hard they work unless they are so incredibly lucky that nothing bad ever happens to them. That's very unlikely as bad things are very likely to happen to people who are poor.
Also, people who are rich and fuck up, like those banks that fucked up our economy, are still crazy ass rich golden parachute instead of in jail where they belong.
Universal health care.
One of the BIGGEST reasons people can't start businesses is that they can't risk not having health care, and can't afford health care on their own.
One of the BIGGEST reasons people can't take job risks is that health care is tied to jobs. New job fails? No more health care, and good luck with COBRA.
Remove the risk of not being able to get your teeth or broken leg fixed, and more people will be able to strive for better without having to risk their very lives.
Pay for it by taxing the ultra wealthy.
My parents are good examples. They have always been good with their money. They have taught me well, and I have great credit because of it. But for some reason life really hates them and keeps giving them hardships out of their control. They held on as long as possible, after medical problems, having shitty jobs, etc, but finally had give up their good credit and file bankruptcy. They have ridiculous jobs right now that barely pay them anything. $40 a week (remember thats $160 a month) would mean I don't have to give them money anymore to pay their bills.
You do realize the very poor people can't afford the luxuries we can. And by luxuries I mean internet, tv, food thats not the basic cheap stuff, any kind of vacation, a tasty drink every now and then, I can go on and on. Yes you can be very frugal with food, for example. Many a time someone on this forum has argued that you can get healthy food for cheap. But sometimes poor people just need that favorite key lime pie of theirs to boost their morale because everything else sucks. Like my mom.
How is it okay to say "you poor people shouldn't be buying this or having that, you just suck at managing money"? Why should poor people have to sacrifice little joys in life and you get all the stuff you want? Why can't they have that extra $40 a week?
Meth Lab vs. Restaurant
Grow Op vs. Technology Start-up
If you assign values for "time in jail" and "chance of death" and take into consideration that only 1% of grow ops are busted (made up number) and only 1% of start-ups succeed (again, made up number) and you don't care about morals, what is the "smartest" investment.
Yeah, you really are just plain ol' fucked if you're too poor.
I think that marriage as a legal contract should be reevaluated in many ways. Prenuptual contracts are a very good idea.
I do think that both parents need to be financially responsible for their children. So who pays for the kids? They got your DNA, you are in it for the long haul. Don't spread your DNA around if you don't want to be responsible for the results.
I've seen a couple cases where you have poor parents with no moneys. But they pay to raise the child by borrowing from the mom's parents. Then when there's a divorce suddenly this dad has to pay for this kid, but has no money. All the money still comes from grandma. It's like, he wasn't paying before, now he suddenly has to pay, but can't. Catch-22. Don't divorce and live shittily. Divorce and get busted for being unable to pay child support.
I can tell you this for sure. I have no statistics, but I have been in a lot of police stations. I always look at the wanted posters while I wait. Every single time, in CT and Beacon and NYC most of the posters are for dudes who are delinquent on child support. That tells me that the system is broken and needs serious fixing.
Of course, there are these crazy dudes who go around making 100 babies with many different ladies. And there are women who let them. I don't know what to do about that.
Also, for the splitting in half of the shared belongings. That should only cover the shared belongings. As the law is now, lets say I marry and divorce a homeless girl with no prenup or anything. She could claim half of my stuffs even though I had all these things before the marriage. Half my books and computers and such, gone. That's BS. Anything you owned before the marriage should not get split in half. Only things that are true shared belongings should be split. It really incentives lying to marry people who are wealthier than you and then finding any excuse to divorce.
Also, the half splitting probably shouldn't even be half. If one person made all the money, and the other person sat at home and didn't work, they probably shouldn't get anything other than what they owned before the marriage. If one person made twice as much money as the other person, then there should probably be a 66/33 split of the shared belongings, not 50/50.
The problem with this, though, is that a rich person could trap someone else in a marriage. Like, if you leave me you'll be homeless with nothing, so you can't leave! Hahah! It's unfair no matter which way you go.
All in all I'm not sure why we need to legally recognize marriage in the first place. It just causes all these problems, and I'm not sure what problems it solves.