151–160 of 202 posts
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I do not see inheritance as a problem. My motivation for accumulating wealth is largely driven by a desire to provide for my future family members. Inheritance tax is theft.
Not paying taxes is theft from the society that lets you accumulate and keep wealth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not see inheritance as a problem. My motivation for accumulating wealth is largely driven by a desire to provide for my future family members. Inheritance tax is theft.
Not paying taxes is theft from the society that lets you accumulate and keep wealth.
Rich vs gifted? Yeah, right, as if you can control for all the other factors and compare the two.
Rich correlates with so many other things (genetics, support network, exposure to the right kind of things).
Gifted is also impossible to ascertain (e.g. exam scores aren't a perfect indicator of gifteness as ability, perseverance, hard working ethic etc all drive success in life).
What's discussed here cannot be science. Take it for what it is.
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One project I think is interesting is LeBron James' school. When I looked at what the biggest changes are between his school and a normal school, it all looks to me like surrogate parenting -- like he is moving elements from the parenting column into the school column: meals, clothing, transportation, scholarships, literally helping the parents find jobs. My vision for what creates academic and financial success is s…
Based on that example and your support for lowering taxes, I think we may have a more basic disagreement. I think good societal change, whether it's improving the quality of the life of the ghetto, or whether it's improving education, is better driven by the government than by rich people taking pity on the rest of us. LeBron's experiment is laudable, but a sustainable solution will come from the government, which is…
Here is a chart of 2015 government spending vs GDP: https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-spending.htm
So the US is on the low end of things with the government spending 37.6% of GDP ... looking at the current level of service provided by the all levels of government, that is based on an almost 40% share of the output of the wealthiest country to ever exist. I think that is a pathetic result. Given 40% of the output of the US economy, I think the government should be able to provide all necessities to all citizens at a high level of service: food, shelter, transportation, medicine, education, law enforcement, military defence.
So based on their huge GDP share and horrible performance, I'm against allocating them a higher share. I think the most promising approach would be pure redistribution since it would sidestep the issue of the government's inefficiency. Just take the money from the rich and literally give it to the poor but I don't think it is politically feasible.
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Luckily, there are massively diminishing returns to money's effect on educational outcomes and overall happiness, so a dollar taxed from the rich is worth much less to them than to the poor it is given to.
Not just educational outcomes. More money has massively diminishing returns to happiness, health, fitness, longevity, creative output, ... The biggest constraint is often individual people’s time/attention; additional money is only slightly (if at all) helpful for the already rich. But a little bit of money goes a long way to help people who are not eating well, don’t have a place to live, need to work 3 stressful pa…
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College is already overpriced because of government subsidies. Your plan would make it worse.
> College is already overpriced because of government subsidies. That is an interesting narrative. Direct state funding per-student for college is down in almost all states over the last 10 years and the last 30 years. Tuition has risen for several reasons: 1- to compensate for lack of state funding, 2- because colleges and universities have larger higher paid administrations than ever before. Some of the subsidies w…
Government backed student loans for anybody who wants them has inflated the cost of college in the United States.
Your plan I refer to, is when you said the government could entirely pay college costs for every willing student.
With all that free money, where is the motivation for schools to improve?
> we could fund university education for all in the margins of what we willingly spend on the military or several other programs
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Not paying taxes is theft from the society that lets you accumulate and keep wealth.
I don’t think anyone is saying avoid taxes entirely. I honestly don’t see why money should be taxed twice. Take income tax, fine, but if I decide to save money for my descendants then let me be. On its face it’s literally just a gift.
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I do not see inheritance as a problem. My motivation for accumulating wealth is largely driven by a desire to provide for my future family members. Inheritance tax is theft.
Not paying taxes is theft from the society that lets you accumulate and keep wealth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Should parents be allowed to try to give their children a boost in life? Like many things in social contract, the answer is - okay to a reasonable degree, but extremes should be discouraged / forbidden. Some concrete examples: annual limits on gift taxes, inheritance tax beyond a certain estate size etc. Policies which will level the playing field between rich and poor kids: - very high rate of inheritance tax beyo…
I am confused about taxes. When a person gives their family member a gift, why do you feel entitled to a portion of this private exchange of wealth?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> College is already overpriced because of government subsidies. That is an interesting narrative. Direct state funding per-student for college is down in almost all states over the last 10 years and the last 30 years. Tuition has risen for several reasons: 1- to compensate for lack of state funding, 2- because colleges and universities have larger higher paid administrations than ever before. Some of the subsidies w…
I don't know about the trends in public budgets directly funding colleges, but... Government backed student loans for anybody who wants them has inflated the cost of college in the United States. Your plan I refer to, is when you said the government could entirely pay college costs for every willing student. With all that free money, where is the motivation for schools to improve? > we could fund university education…
I heard it the first time. Do you have anything new to add, any evidence, or any explanation of how your theory actually works, given that total public funding has declined?
Is it possible you’re assigning causation where there is only correllation? Tuition hikes certainly correllate with loan programs that were put in place to compensate for state budget cuts, I can see how easy it is to assign blame to loan programs, but isn’t tuition going up when state financing is cut the simpler explanation?
> With all that free money, where is the motivation for schools to improve?
Norway’s higher education system is ranked higher than the US, and is free for all citizens. So you tell me.
It’s your assumption that public funding leads to stagnation, an assumption that requires ignoring contradictory evidence in order to hang on to.