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Then she dies or becomes undignified. Two very different things, I might point out. Bob may find it undignified to act as Alice's fetch-and-carry servant.
Oh, certainly, because I'm setting no precedent at all. If the situation appears reversed, Alice-partisans will find some reason this principle doesn't apply.
And how is that not a worse outcome than Bob being expected to pay a slightly higher marginal tax rate‽
'Getting things off a high shelf because he is taller' is a metaphor for paying a higher tax rate because he can more easily afford to.
It's your metaphor, you don't get to abandon it as soon as it turns out it doesn't actually support your case.
There's no limit to your principle; you can dress it up as a "slightly higher marginal tax rate" but nothing in your principle says it ends there. It can be a 100% marginal rate; more, it can require Bob to draw down his wealth to help all the Alice's in the world until he's got nothing left to help with. Or (as in your metaphor) it can require Bob's personal service with no limits to that either.
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In the UK, the government eats everything. I pay:
And everything is hideously expensive because whenever I go to the doctor or anything involving any skilled professional I (and any of their customers including the poor) effectively have to fund their extortionate taxes on top of mine!
Like, I know that ‘pay another 2% of tax that you can easily afford to make sure that the needy are taken care of’ sounds good but it’s a fantasy. The above is where that sentiment ends up. Very quickly you get ‘the government has to tax everyone to make sure everyone gets the support they need to pay their taxes’.
I do not believe that there is any level of taxation that does not either blight the lives of half the population and slowly melt the economy or clearly and visibly fails to take care of the needy. “The poor will always be with you” is not a moral statement, it’s just a fact. We cannot, long-term, take care of everybody that we might like to. And no politics, no ideology however well-meaning can make it otherwise.
--Corvos, 2026
--Paul Ehrlich, 1968
--Alfred Velpeau, 1839
Same
schistcheems mindset, differentdaycentury....You will note that I said nothing about technology. Technology may change this fact, although it's less able to do so given that poverty unlike famine frequently deals in relative goods (status-related), in goods that are extremely inelastic (land) and in goods that are able to absorb extremely high spending (medicine). If you would like to attempt the creation of technologies that will alleviate the majority of poverty-related conditions, then taxing R&D out of existence as they do in the UK and Europe is not the way to go.
More to the point, if you have an argument to make, then please make it. Rolling your eyes and saying 'oh, well, they said we'd never X too lol' is not an argument, and it's beneath you.
I don't think we will ever have cross-galactic teleportation either, but that's what they used to say about going faster than horses amirite? They used to think we'd never have energy too cheap to meter, and actually we don't have energy too cheap to meter, and it's getting more and more expensive. As is almost everything in my country except electronics, because we have reached the apparent end of a very specific confluence of beneficial factors. Some things are possible, some things are impossible, sometimes we turn out to be wrong about what those are.
If you think I am wrong, please make your case. And please explain why your preferred policies have failed so badly in the UK.
Land may be inelastic, but the inelasticity of housing is a choice.
Also a choice; see the writings of Jack Devanney. (Summary will be posted below.)
Artificial constraints such as 'the elites and middle managers must not be stopped in their monkey-dominance games', 'land-owners must never see their assets not gain in value', 'advances in nuclear technology must not be used to make cheaper energy if they can instead reduce already minimal radiation exposure by epsilon', &c., &c.
Thank you, much appreciated.
To some degree, yes. It's a choice that's very difficult not to make - even my father (who is very hard headed about such things) got very short with me on the topic, simply because short-term he simply can't keep his family afloat through 20 years of retirement and medical bills (again, paying all that tax!) unless we can sell the house for a good amount of money. House prices are theoretically crashing in the UK at the moment, at least in certain areas, but nobody is selling because their life plans will explode.
There is a corollary, which is that the poor will not actually thank you for putting them in flophouses or big soviet blocks, or suburb-style council housing with a huge commute. They will take them but they will still feel poor.
I don't believe that nuclear is cheaper than fossil fuels? Though I do believe that much of what you say in your summary is true.
@FirmWeird believes that the economic benefits of nuclear have been vastly exaggerated and someday I want to do a deep dive on what makes him say so. (Nuclear in France apparently requires heavy subsidies but that could be a union or regulation issue).
Here, on the other hand, is where you and I part ways, and to my mind it deeply undermines what you've said in this and other comments. At least if I am understanding you correctly.
Wouldn't It Be Nice If Everyone Was Nice is not a program for government. There is nothing artificial about these constraints. You are going to get monkey-dominance and consequent 'misallocation' of resources. You can shift it to the bureaucrats and the allocators as happened in socialist Britain circa 1970 and communist Russia. You can shift it to the dictator-for-life and his court, or to the trade union leaders, or to the CEOs and middle managers, or to the scientific advisors and their committees as happened during COVID, but I will not accept arguments for high taxes and 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their need' on the basis of 'if people would just' because they won't 'just' and we both know it.
I am not going to ask you to write a 100 page monogram here, but I need something more than 'when I am King I will really crack down on this sort of thing'. Point to countries where it worked and continues to work. Talk about how you are going to address the second-order consequences of what you're advocating. Talk about public choice, or how to prevent the country falling into the kind of tax spiral I've described. Give a much more slimmed down expression of the sentiments you've already expressed and try to state clearly how far you think the obligation to help goes. Something. Because from where I'm standing this kind of politics failed. It failed over and over again, in many different countries, and whenever I buy something in this country or wonder how I'm going to get through my old age I am reminded that it's failing right here, right now.
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