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In 2019 the US federal budget is $4.407 trillion. [1] The combined wealth of America's top 400 billionaires in 2017 was 2.7 trillion. If the social democrats got their dream and took all of their money we could fund the government for only about seven months. When will D.C. and the American people realize that tax rates aren't the problem?! It's the spending stupid! Edit: Yep, keep downvoting facts people. That will…
In 2019 the US federal budget is $4.407 trillion. [1] The combined wealth of America's top 400 billionaires in 2017 was 2.7 trillion. If the social democrats got their dream and took all of their money we could fund the government for only about seven months. When will D.C. and the American people realize that tax rates aren't the problem?! It's the spending stupid! Edit: Yep, keep downvoting facts people. That will…
Why 400?
Why 400? Why Billionaires?
And think about it, with the wealth of 400 people a 331,194,000 person country's gov't programs, including a massive defense program, can be paid for for 7 months! That's a long time for .00012% of the population. The numbers are so big that the human brain just casually slides the scale logarithmically to ignore the sheer magnitude of wealth those 400 people hold!
When you ban the rich(or for that matter tax them so heavily they are no longer billionaires) and also raise minimum wage. Everyone ends up in the middle class. That's called communism.
When you have equality of outcome, the 180 IQ software developer who is extremely successful gets the same pay as a 80 IQ. What's the incentive to work or do anything more than that 80 IQ person? ~10% of the population has an IQ below 80. If I don't get my Mclaren and private jet, why bust my ass?
The problem with communism that you lose your purpose. Then you must have work camps; where you are forced to work. It's the only way for communism to work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why 400?
Yeah, arbitrary cutoffs make me question things in statistical analysis. This isn't much different. Why 400? Why Billionaires? And think about it, with the wealth of 400 people a 331,194,000 person country's gov't programs, including a massive defense program, can be paid for for 7 months! That's a long time for .00012% of the population. The numbers are so big that the human brain just casually slides the scale loga…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know, there are a lot of problems with your logic. I'm a product of a Jesuit University where I was forced to write paper after paper on topics around morality, good, evil, justice, and similar themes. Justice has a lot of different potential definitions - many (most) of which wouldn't define "adding value" as a "just" way to get rich. A different definition of "just" might more likely define a massive distributi…
I define a 'just' society as one in which initiating violence is forbidden and you must only use reason to persuade people to action. It is in line with the commandments "Thou shalt not murder/steal", which would be in effect even (especially?) if you think you are making the world a better place through wealth distribution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, arbitrary cutoffs make me question things in statistical analysis. This isn't much different. Why 400? Why Billionaires? And think about it, with the wealth of 400 people a 331,194,000 person country's gov't programs, including a massive defense program, can be paid for for 7 months! That's a long time for .00012% of the population. The numbers are so big that the human brain just casually slides the scale loga…
Are you aware this would be just a one time 7 months ? The following years (decades) nothing. Or problably even a small negative impact (because those 400 will then for sure pay no taxes and do no charities).
Theory: We should tax the rich.
Straw-man: If we took the 400 richest people it would only fund the gov't for 7 months!
Accept Fallacy: Oh, then taxing the rich won't work!
Reject Fallacy: Ok, but there are more than 400 rich people, and no one is saying abolish taxes on everyone else. So perhaps there is a better balance, where those with incomes a certain multiple of local medians pay a higher progressive tax rate.
What I pointed out above was just the weird cutoff of 400 to arrive at 7 months. Why not a base 10? 100,1000,10000 richest. Or something like "The richest 674 people in America could fund it for 1 year" (made up numbers). When an arbitrary number is selected, I just get skeptical. Especially when it anchors to nothing else. What metric/group/club is there that top 400 American billionaires make up. Why do I care about 7 months?