I think you missed the point. First, the back of the napkin exercise I conducted was merely to point out just how big of an impact can be had without even hardly inconveniencing just a handful of people. The people I was referring to, would still have a billion dollars and a 20 million dollar a year income from interest. Second, not ever person in the US is poor. We don’t have to raise every single person in America out of poverty. Third, I Believe billionaires ARE the source of poverty. Fourth, I Believe you were off by three orders of magnitude. Six percent of 5.2 trillion dollars is actually $312 billion dollars, not million dollars. Fifth, I’m not suggesting that billionaires can just be taxed to the point that they alone can provide a salary to every person in America. What I’m suggesting, is if a system existed that was even slightly fair, billionaires wouldn’t exist and hopefully neither would the working poor.
just how big of an impact can be had without even hardly inconveniencing just a handful of people.
Which is to say, no real impact at all. There are 340 million of us, a plan that can potentially help less than 2% of them is no plan at all.
Second, not ever person in the US is poor. We don’t have to raise every single person in America out of poverty.
So you’re not talking about UBI, but just another welfare program.
I redirect you to where I pointed out that the amount of yearly aid your plan produces is nothing compared to the $1.2 TRILLION the US already spends on welfare. It is completely naive to think that a slight increase in welfare spending is going to create the kind of change you’re claiming it would.
Third, I Believe billionaires ARE the source of poverty.
You can believe it all you want, but the evidence simply does not support that conclusion. Go look up how many inflation-adjusted billionaires there were in the world a century ago compared to today, then go compare the incidence of global poverty back then to today, too. It’s literally an inverse correlation.
Fourth, I Believe you were off by three orders of magnitude. Six percent of 5.2 trillion dollars is actually $312 billion dollars, not million dollars.
My mistake, will correct my comment, but the point still stands, because $1000 isn’t anything resembling life-changing money, either.
What I’m suggesting, is if a system existed that was even slightly fair, billionaires wouldn’t exist
Not only can they exist, but it is literally inevitable, and moreso with each passing day, especially as the global population increases, more and more technology becomes more scalable, new technologies emerge, and more and more economy is globalized.
There are over 8 billion people on Earth today. One piece of software that catches on can produce $1 billion in profit in just a handful of years. OnlyFans was founded in 2016, less than a decade ago, and SIX years later, in 2022, it was valued at not $1 billion, but $18 billion.
wouldn’t exist and hopefully neither would the working poor.
Long-term poverty literally cannot be solved with an injection of funds alone–this is a very superficial take. The vast majority of poor people who win lotteries of multi-million amounts that can easily make one ‘set for life’, are broke again in just a few years. And you better believe government welfare isn’t giving any poor person tens of millions of dollars.
On the other hand, simply being raised by two parents instead of one, makes a person up to FIVE TIMES less likely to be impoverished long-term in adulthood. If we reduced the single parenthood incidence by even just 5%, we’d reduce long-term poverty to a degree even completely liquidating all billionaires would not accomplish.
Billionaires are largely a boogeyman, and time and effort and resources spent complaining about them, if applied to creating the changes that we DO empirically know actually lift people out of poverty, would do a hell of a lot more good. That’s what frustrates me.
Hating the rich is not the same as loving the poor.
I think you missed the point. First, the back of the napkin exercise I conducted was merely to point out just how big of an impact can be had without even hardly inconveniencing just a handful of people. The people I was referring to, would still have a billion dollars and a 20 million dollar a year income from interest. Second, not ever person in the US is poor. We don’t have to raise every single person in America out of poverty. Third, I Believe billionaires ARE the source of poverty. Fourth, I Believe you were off by three orders of magnitude. Six percent of 5.2 trillion dollars is actually $312 billion dollars, not million dollars. Fifth, I’m not suggesting that billionaires can just be taxed to the point that they alone can provide a salary to every person in America. What I’m suggesting, is if a system existed that was even slightly fair, billionaires wouldn’t exist and hopefully neither would the working poor.
Which is to say, no real impact at all. There are 340 million of us, a plan that can potentially help less than 2% of them is no plan at all.
So you’re not talking about UBI, but just another welfare program.
I redirect you to where I pointed out that the amount of yearly aid your plan produces is nothing compared to the $1.2 TRILLION the US already spends on welfare. It is completely naive to think that a slight increase in welfare spending is going to create the kind of change you’re claiming it would.
You can believe it all you want, but the evidence simply does not support that conclusion. Go look up how many inflation-adjusted billionaires there were in the world a century ago compared to today, then go compare the incidence of global poverty back then to today, too. It’s literally an inverse correlation.
My mistake, will correct my comment, but the point still stands, because $1000 isn’t anything resembling life-changing money, either.
Not only can they exist, but it is literally inevitable, and moreso with each passing day, especially as the global population increases, more and more technology becomes more scalable, new technologies emerge, and more and more economy is globalized.
There are over 8 billion people on Earth today. One piece of software that catches on can produce $1 billion in profit in just a handful of years. OnlyFans was founded in 2016, less than a decade ago, and SIX years later, in 2022, it was valued at not $1 billion, but $18 billion.
Long-term poverty literally cannot be solved with an injection of funds alone–this is a very superficial take. The vast majority of poor people who win lotteries of multi-million amounts that can easily make one ‘set for life’, are broke again in just a few years. And you better believe government welfare isn’t giving any poor person tens of millions of dollars.
On the other hand, simply being raised by two parents instead of one, makes a person up to FIVE TIMES less likely to be impoverished long-term in adulthood. If we reduced the single parenthood incidence by even just 5%, we’d reduce long-term poverty to a degree even completely liquidating all billionaires would not accomplish.
Billionaires are largely a boogeyman, and time and effort and resources spent complaining about them, if applied to creating the changes that we DO empirically know actually lift people out of poverty, would do a hell of a lot more good. That’s what frustrates me.
Hating the rich is not the same as loving the poor.