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Life During Class Wartime

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131–140 of 263 posts

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#131

Post by FireBeyond »

timbray wrote: post #99
JuniperMesos wrote: post #95

> As a resident of a wealthy West-Coast New-World city, the effects of pathological inequality are in my face every day: Bentleys gleaming on the road, ragged people huddled in the rain cadging cash outside the drugstores, thousands homeless. I also live in a wealthy West-Coast New-World city, and attributing these phenomena to pathological inequality badly misdiagnoses the problem. Most visibly homeless people in we…

I'm highly unconvinced of the proposition that most homeless are severely mentally ill; the data I've seen doesn't support it. That's some of it, and also addiction. But a lot of them just can't make the rent. Agree on the underbuilding.

One of the challenges here as an ex-paramedic in the PNW who has certainly seen their fair share of homeless is that several of the more prominent studies use HUD's definition of "severe mental illness" that is far more conservative than you or I would expect...

"Requiring hospitalization more than once a month, on multiple occasions in a year".

And that number, per HUD, is 22%.

If you want to look at "untreated mental illness" in the homeless, now you're above 50%.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#132

Post by xboxnolifes »

metabagel wrote: post #129
JuniperMesos wrote: post #95

> As a resident of a wealthy West-Coast New-World city, the effects of pathological inequality are in my face every day: Bentleys gleaming on the road, ragged people huddled in the rain cadging cash outside the drugstores, thousands homeless. I also live in a wealthy West-Coast New-World city, and attributing these phenomena to pathological inequality badly misdiagnoses the problem. Most visibly homeless people in we…

I think you're seeing a segment of the homeless population and assuming that it represents the whole. It's likely that you encounter homeless people in your daily life and don't recognize them as being homeless.

They specifically said visibly homeless.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#133

Post by metabagel »

wrqvrwvq wrote: post #78
tantaman wrote: post #26

Increased taxation would be defensible if it was paired with spending reform. Increasing the tax to just inflate a bureaucracy helps nobody. Increasing the tax and then directly paying people, with no PMC in the middle, seems win-win-win.

I don't think just paying people will make any difference at all. Most of the chronically poor in US at least have underlying problems such as addiction, schizophrenia or other affective disorders. Most chronically homeless people have turned down multiple state subsidized living options or have been booted from them for anti-social behavior. Studies routinely show that 30-40% of food stamps are sold for pennies on t…

> Studies routinely show that 30-40% of food stamps are sold for pennies on the dollar to pay for drugs or other unnecessary things.

There are zero studies which show this.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#134

Post by metabagel »

teyc wrote: post #40

A fairer way would be requiring all excess profits be invested in hard assets like factories, infrastructure etc. capital should be forced into competition and create excess capacity.

This was one of the effects of the 90% rate for the highest tax bracket. It incentivized reinvesting money into the economy, rather than taking profits.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#135

Post by vidarh »

nervysnail wrote: post #72
Muromec wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... was an ideology that gave 200 million of people universal healthcare, universal childcare, public housing and increased luteracy rates but took away democracy and national self determination, unleashed genocide and allied with literal Hitler

How did it take away national self-determination exactly? The Soviet model regarding self-determination was definitely better than what any other nation had. I probably don't have to mention that Lenin wrote a whole book on national self-determination, defending the right to self-determination on the condition that it does not harm the socialist project. Although one may call it superficial, a mere formality no indic…

My view is that Lenin probably meant well, but he made fatal mistakes with "democratic" centralism and the vanguardist approach, which allowed for both his own consolidation of power but also Stalins. And Stalin did not give a shit about self-determination, not just within the USSR, but within the whole Soviet bloc.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#137

Post by aidenn0 »

georgeecollins wrote: post #112
zug_zug wrote: post #3

Yeah I'm glad somebody's talking about it. Wealth inequality seems like it will be THE defining issue of our lives (accelerated drastically by AI). I think there are many practical ways to solve it, and would love to see more proposals out there. Instead I tend to see nihilism or division.

A great practical suggestion comes in the recent book: "The Second Estate" by Ray Madoff. It is an excellent analysis of the changes to tax policy in the US that have gotten us here. (Yes, I know this isn't just a US problem, but the US is the most important part.) One key suggestion is just to make transferring money into any trust (any!) a taxable event so that capital gains must be realized. It sounds trivial but…

Using an asset as debt-collateral triggering gains being realized would be good too. As would unifying the income and capital gains tax.

I disagree with TFA's idea that a wealth tax is the best solution. IMO wealth is easier to hide than income, it's just that nobody bothers right now with there being no wealth tax.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#138

Post by slibhb »

timbray wrote: post #99
JuniperMesos wrote: post #95

> As a resident of a wealthy West-Coast New-World city, the effects of pathological inequality are in my face every day: Bentleys gleaming on the road, ragged people huddled in the rain cadging cash outside the drugstores, thousands homeless. I also live in a wealthy West-Coast New-World city, and attributing these phenomena to pathological inequality badly misdiagnoses the problem. Most visibly homeless people in we…

I'm highly unconvinced of the proposition that most homeless are severely mentally ill; the data I've seen doesn't support it. That's some of it, and also addiction. But a lot of them just can't make the rent. Agree on the underbuilding.

Most homeless people aren't mentally ill. But those "huddling in the rain" mostly are, or are at least addicts.

Non-mentally I'll homeless people are rarely "street people". They live in a car or with friends or in a shelter. Plenty of them have jobs.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#139

Post by aidenn0 »

timbray wrote: post #99
JuniperMesos wrote: post #95

> As a resident of a wealthy West-Coast New-World city, the effects of pathological inequality are in my face every day: Bentleys gleaming on the road, ragged people huddled in the rain cadging cash outside the drugstores, thousands homeless. I also live in a wealthy West-Coast New-World city, and attributing these phenomena to pathological inequality badly misdiagnoses the problem. Most visibly homeless people in we…

I'm highly unconvinced of the proposition that most homeless are severely mentally ill; the data I've seen doesn't support it. That's some of it, and also addiction. But a lot of them just can't make the rent. Agree on the underbuilding.

Good thing that GP didn't say that most homeless are severely mentally ill.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#140

Post by OkayPhysicist »

pitaj wrote: post #51
harimau777 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the government took the money and burnt it that would be a net good for society since it would lower inequality and thereby decrease power imbalances.

Wow this is nuts.

The Government taking money and burning it is called "taxation". With fiat currency, the government makes the money, out of nothing, at its discretion. They then collect most of it back in the form of taxes. Keep in mind, the money they're collecting is going into the pile of infinite money, and Inf + 1 = Inf.

Fiscal policy all about adjusting those levers (how much, and where, the government injects money into the economy, and how much, and where, the government extracts it back out) in order to promote the society we want to have.

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