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[scriver]

Yes, obviously Max only wants to complain about how he doesn't have it. Maybe you should follow your own advice and give some concrete examples of how he could improve his life instead of just spewing empty phrases and insinuating he's just a lazy bum.

[Leafsnail]

Or...and I apologize, but it must be asked...or do you want to complain about why you can't have it?

Ok, that's enough.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/JAQing_off

Stop it.  Or are you too busy murdering children to concentrate on not asking insulting and misleading questions in your posts?

[Gantolandon]

You seem to be mistaking "there should be a much less severe disparity between the rich and the poor", with "no one should be rewarded more then anyone else regardless of their contribution".

Actually, the most rewarded contribution seems to be just sitting there and consuming a lot of luxury goods.

[da_nang]

Well, since someone's preaching action instead of chit-chat:

Amount of taxes to be paid = TLC*CDF(Gross Income)*Gross Income - YSI

CDF is the cumulative distribution function of income, updated annually, that maps gross income to a percentile in the Kolmogorov sense.

TLC is the Tax Leniency Coefficient and is an arbitrary real number between 0 and 1. Does what it says on the tin. People "vote" on the specific value.

YSI is the Yearly Survival Index and is the minimum amount of money required for a citizen to survive that year. Updated annually.

Negative taxes is money going the opposite direction.

Thoughts?

[i2amroy]

WHile I might not agree with Lord Bucket on his approach, I must agree with him on the fact that, unlike many other disadvantages in life, being poor is something that can be changed.

Spoiler: So you may not have money, but there are plenty of things out there that you can do. (click to show/hide)

Now you might say "what about start-up capital? What about this? Or that?" The fact is that while things like money can make getting more money much easier, they are not a requirement. How do I know this? Because I have a grandmother who is a multimillionaire, put three kids through college, and goes on trips around the world fairly often, yet managed to start with virtually nothing. She earned it all by squirreling away every little bit extra that she had and it's still a habit she continues to this day (it can even be a chore to get her to do simple things like turn on the A/C at times).

Things to do:
Get in touch with any local farmers markets. I know for a fact that you can eat well enough, and healthily, on only a few dollars a day. Grow your own food if possible, even if it's just in an old pot in the window (look at Germany. Many people there, even the better off, still grow things in windows). For a couple of cents worth of water each day and a month or so you can get a fair amount of food. Look around your area and see if there are any community gardens near you that you can become part of. Cook from scratch instead of from mix/pre-made foods. Learn how to sew and fix clothes instead of buying new ones, or even learn to make your own completely. Recycle paper whenever possible. Reuse shopping bags as garbage bags. Learn how to do simple plumbing and electrical repairs yourself. Buy rechargeable batteries if you can, electricity is cheaper then new ones. Learn your city bus system and get a bike, just because your job requires you to have a car doesn't mean you need to use it to get there. Make your own bread. Unplug chargers whenever not charging something. Turn off your A/C and heaters unless you absolutely need them, it's cheaper to wear a sweater or shorts. Turn down your water heater or turn it off if it doesn't require a pilot light, then only turn it back up/on shortly before you need hot water (the chinese do this already!). Take short showers. Turn off lights you aren't using. Pack your lunches. Stop drinking coffee, soda, or alcohol (water is cheaper!). Don't chew gum. Stop smoking, or at least try to cut back. Check to see if there are any recycle centers in your area that may pay you to recycle. Buy generic, or local if possible. Turn off the t.v.

And then after you have penny-pinched everything you can get, start to snowball your debts. Pay only the minimums on all of them except the smallest, and put everything else you have in your income towards paying that off. Then do it to the next biggest debt, and the next biggest debt. After that Start investing everything you have left, and re-invest everything you make from those investments. I won't say that it will be easy, it's a lifestyle that you need to adopt, but it is possible.

You seem to be mistaking "there should be a much less severe disparity between the rich and the poor", with "no one should be rewarded more then anyone else regardless of their contribution".

Actually, the most rewarded contribution seems to be just sitting there and consuming a lot of luxury goods.

I would like to point out that the money had to come from somewhere. Even inherited money was earned by somebody back up the family tree at some point. And for those who invest their money, then consider that the contribution they are making is capital towards running something else. After all venture capitalists don't actually "do" anything, but they still allow things that do that would otherwise fail start, which is a "contribution". Sure wealthy people might be "just sitting there", but for most their money is still actively contributing through investments, as well as the fact that just because they aren't doing anything now doesn't mean they haven't done anything, ever.

[Eagle_eye]

Plain and simple, the deck is stacked against the poorest of the poor, because we have to pay for it with everything we've got.

I want to respond to this...but I'm not entirely sure how. So please, bear with me for a moment.

A few posts ago you explained your situation. It sounds difficult. And yes, surely some people have things easier than you do. I acknowledge that. However, I notice that in this previous post you seem to be spending a great deal of effort explaining why you can't win.

You say that the deck is stacked against the poor. And that's true. It is. But...and I apologize for saying so, I'm not trying to diminish your situation...poverty is not unique in being a disadvantage. There are people who are stupid. Is it fair that they're stupid? No. Nevertheless, they're stupid. And there are people are who ugly. Is it fair that they're ugly? No. Nevertheless, they are ugly. There are people with medical problems. There are people who were born into difficult situations. There are people who have accidents. There are many possible disadvantages, and they're not all handed out equally.

Being poor is merely one disadvantage. Yes, it may be terribly inconvenient, but so are others problems that a person might have. Disadvantages can be overcome. Being ugly does not mean being single and alone for a lifetime. Being stupid does not mean failure. There are plenty of succesful stupid people. Look at politics. Being poor, like these other circumstances, is not an insurmountable condition. But unlike these other circumstance, it's not permanent. A stupid, ugly person who nevertheless somehow gets a girlfriend and finds happiness will still be stupid and ugly. Poverty is completely correctable. If you can climb out of the hole...you'll be out.

That's irrelevant. Simply because poverty can be overcome by a tiny proportion of people who are unusually lucky in ways that have the potential to offset their disadvantage does not mean it is acceptable. If there was a way to give all stupid people normal intelligence, that would be good. There isn't. We can't fix genetics. We can, however, fix poverty. Whether people can get themselves out of it is irrelevant. We know for a fact that most of them won't, and they will suffer as a result. We have a moral obligation to prevent that.

[Xeron]

Allow me to add.....The rich people keep the poor ones down.Its Capitalism 101.If you can't go higher make sure everyone goes lower.

[MaximumZero]

Well, since someone's preaching action instead of chit-chat:

Amount of taxes to be paid = TLC*CDF(Gross Income)*Gross Income - YSI

CDF is the cumulative distribution function of income, updated annually, that maps gross income to a percentile in the Kolmogorov sense.

TLC is the Tax Leniency Coefficient and is an arbitrary real number between 0 and 1. Does what it says on the tin. People "vote" on the specific value.

YSI is the Yearly Survival Index and is the minimum amount of money required for a citizen to survive that year. Updated annually.

Negative taxes is money going the opposite direction.

Thoughts?

Sounds good in theory, and it's nice and simple (and therefore would only have a couple of potential loopholes to close,) but who picks the numbers in the formula? What about "hidden" funds, like offshore accounts? What about other taxes, like sales, services, property and estate, State, FICA, and specific goods (like fuel)?

[Svarte Troner]

Why rich people suck.

[ed boy]

Well, since someone's preaching action instead of chit-chat:

Amount of taxes to be paid = TLC*CDF(Gross Income)*Gross Income - YSI

CDF is the cumulative distribution function of income, updated annually, that maps gross income to a percentile in the Kolmogorov sense.

TLC is the Tax Leniency Coefficient and is an arbitrary real number between 0 and 1. Does what it says on the tin. People "vote" on the specific value.

YSI is the Yearly Survival Index and is the minimum amount of money required for a citizen to survive that year. Updated annually.

Negative taxes is money going the opposite direction.

Thoughts?

I'd have to ask you to clarify what you mean by 'Kolmgorov', first. I'm not familiar with that term in the sense of CDFs, and wikipedia isn't helping me out. You're also ignoring the fact that the government needs to take in money. That method would mean that the government would lose all their tax income, and would have nothing left over the pay for necessary services.

There is a very large issue here that people seem to be ignoring. Lots of references are made to the 'average income' and stuff like that, but that's actually a very complicated and hard to define concept, even if you only refer to the arithmetic mean.

How does one calculate the average? Such a method only works if you take your averages over a population where most of the people are in a small difference from the norm. That is actually very hard to do.

In London, the cost of renting an average flat in London is around £1200 per person per month. Most other cities have prices for the equivalent about a third of that, and some cities have prices of less than a fifth that. If you take the average over the whole country, then you could easily see someone be unable to pay for a roof over their head, but still have the government demanding money from them.

Now suppose you want to avoid that, so you divide up the country into smaller sub-areas and take averages over each area. You still have the problem that some people have greater costs. Someone with lots of children and elderly relatives to take care of might find it impossible to meet basic needs while the government demands money from them, while someone else who is single and without others relying on them might have plenty of money and still be getting more from the government.

There's no clear idea of 'average' that can be applied on a large scale, so if you keep saying that people's richness depends on the average, you're going to run into some very large problems when applying any policy based on the average over a large scale. Even over a small scale, it can very enormously.

Allow me to add.....The rich people keep the poor ones down.Its Capitalism 101.If you can't go higher make sure everyone goes lower.

Some rich people keep some poor people down, and some do not. Similarly, some people get rich by a method which benefits others.

Why rich people suck.

So you're saying that the punishment for stealing should be based on the amount stolen?

[Eagle_eye]

Stealing is too broadly defined. What the homeless guy did was absolutely justified, and he shouldn't be punished at all.

[GreatJustice]

Plain and simple, the deck is stacked against the poorest of the poor, because we have to pay for it with everything we've got.

I want to respond to this...but I'm not entirely sure how. So please, bear with me for a moment.

A few posts ago you explained your situation. It sounds difficult. And yes, surely some people have things easier than you do. I acknowledge that. However, I notice that in this previous post you seem to be spending a great deal of effort explaining why you can't win.

You say that the deck is stacked against the poor. And that's true. It is. But...and I apologize for saying so, I'm not trying to diminish your situation...poverty is not unique in being a disadvantage. There are people who are stupid. Is it fair that they're stupid? No. Nevertheless, they're stupid. And there are people are who ugly. Is it fair that they're ugly? No. Nevertheless, they are ugly. There are people with medical problems. There are people who were born into difficult situations. There are people who have accidents. There are many possible disadvantages, and they're not all handed out equally.

Being poor is merely one disadvantage. Yes, it may be terribly inconvenient, but so are others problems that a person might have. Disadvantages can be overcome. Being ugly does not mean being single and alone for a lifetime. Being stupid does not mean failure. There are plenty of succesful stupid people. Look at politics. Being poor, like these other circumstances, is not an insurmountable condition. But unlike these other circumstance, it's not permanent. A stupid, ugly person who nevertheless somehow gets a girlfriend and finds happiness will still be stupid and ugly. Poverty is completely correctable. If you can climb out of the hole...you'll be out.

That's irrelevant. Simply because poverty can be overcome by a tiny proportion of people who are unusually lucky in ways that have the potential to offset their disadvantage does not mean it is acceptable. If there was a way to give all stupid people normal intelligence, that would be good. There isn't. We can't fix genetics. We can, however, fix poverty. Whether people can get themselves out of it is irrelevant. We know for a fact that most of them won't, and they will suffer as a result. We have a moral obligation to prevent that.

>We can fix poverty

Well no, not really. Welfare, for example, has a tendency to create dependency which actually causes more poverty in the long run. In the short run you could seize the extra assets of the rich and "end" poverty, but this would (A) destabilize the capital structure, resulting in huge economic problems and (B) leads to massive abuses. Just like you can't generalize the rich, you can't generalize the poor, either. Some people, the ones you want to help, really are decent people who fall on a stroke of bad luck and probably deserve a break. Yet to help these people, you first have to basically rob other people who did nothing wrong, and then you have to additionally help the sort of people who are poor because they're lazy and live by leeching off of the good will of others. Bad luck in wealth isn't fair, but then life isn't fair. Rich philanthropists lose their fortunes and die destitute. Kids graduate from school, celebrate, and promptly drop dead of unknown causes. There's nothing to be done except improve the conditions so as to increase class mobility.

[Eagle_eye]

Or you could simply get rid of capitalism. It's a broken system that encourages people to compete, rather than work together, in hopes of personal reward. If everyone has the basic necessities, and is then given money with which to buy luxuries based on how much work they put in, noone is dying, and you still have a productive workforce. Noone deserves to die, no matter how worthless to society they are. As I've said previously, I don't care if they're a pathological liar, horribly lazy and a crackhead, they still deserve to live, and depriving them of that is murder.

[EveryZig]

Well no, not really. Welfare, for example, has a tendency to create dependency which actually causes more poverty in the long run. In the short run you could seize the extra assets of the rich and "end" poverty, but this would (A) destabilize the capital structure, resulting in huge economic problems and (B) leads to massive abuses.

I would agree that poverty is most likely inherent in capitalism, which is one of the main reasons why I really dislike capitalism (though I also agree that nobody has come up with an even remotely viable alternative to it).
Still, some capitalist economies are better than others, so it is at least theoretically possible to reduce poverty.
As for the dependency, from what I have heard (though I don't know enough economics to be sure), the well fare trap exists mostly because of problems in how the U.S. welfare system (diminishing help faster than their own income increases) rather than being inherent to all plausible forms of welfare.

Just like you can't generalize the rich, you can't generalize the poor, either. Some people, the ones you want to help, really are decent people who fall on a stroke of bad luck and probably deserve a break. Yet to help these people, you first have to basically rob other people who did nothing wrong, and then you have to additionally help the sort of people who are poor because they're lazy and live by leeching off of the good will of others.

I think this argument kind of misses the larger picture for the details. If you consider a rich person to be on average the moral equal of a poor person, then I would say that taking from the rich to help the poor still morally comes out ahead. I say this because the taking would cause less evil than the helping does good both in quantity (there are more rich people than poor people) and in magnitude (a small amount of wealth for a rich person is a large amount of wealth for a poor person). If you can help a lot of people a large amount by harming a few people a small amount, I say that doing so have a net benefit for human well-being.
Of course, my above argument does assume that it is possible to implement such a system without it being entirely crippled by corruption and incompetence, which I admit may not be the case.

[ed boy]

Stealing is too broadly defined. What the homeless guy did was absolutely justified, and he shouldn't be punished at all.

What exactly do you mean by 'justified'? My dictionary provides two definitions; To have a reasonable reason for doing something, or to have proof of right to something. If you mean the former, then the rich guy was justified (it's perfectly reasonable to want more money). If you mean the latter, then neither of them were justified. If you're using another definition, please give it.

As to he shouldn't be punished at all, then you have a few possible areas to place your objection. It might be because you think what he did should not be considered illegal, that what he did was misclassified, or that his punishment was inappropriate for what he did was classified as (or some combination of these).

He was convicted for first degree robbery. In louisiana (where the incident took place), first degree robbery carries a punishment of 3-40[URL=http://years, which is in accordance with what he recieved. First degree robbery there includes not having a weapon but leading someone to believe you do when you rob them, which he did. If you're considering it from a legal point of view, then you cannot object to what happened to him.

If you're considering it from a moral point of view, then things become more complicated, and it becomes a lot harder to discuss. If you believe this because it is derived from some other more basic moral axiom of yours, then please give this. If it is not, then it's not something I can talk about further.

Noone deserves to die, no matter how worthless to society they are. As I've said previously, I don't care if they're a pathological liar, horribly lazy and a crackhead, they still deserve to live, and depriving them of that is murder.

Without getting into the realms of grey areas that brings up (abortions, people in comas, etc), there's a pretty big problem with that view - society needs people to die. Old people don't work, but still consume lots of resources, especially medical ones. There is a minimum ratio of productive people to unproductive people needed for human civilization to continue. With improvements in healthcare, our ratio is getting worse and worse] years, which is in accordance with what he recieved. First degree robbery there includes not having a weapon but leading someone to believe you do when you rob them, which he did. If you're considering it from a legal point of view, then you cannot object to what happened to him.

If you're considering it from a moral point of view, then things become more complicated, and it becomes a lot harder to discuss. If you believe this because it is derived from some other more basic moral axiom of yours, then please give this. If it is not, then it's not something I can talk about further.

Noone deserves to die, no matter how worthless to society they are. As I've said previously, I don't care if they're a pathological liar, horribly lazy and a crackhead, they still deserve to live, and depriving them of that is murder.

Without getting into the realms of grey areas that brings up (abortions, people in comas, etc), there's a pretty big problem with that view - society needs people to die. Old people don't work, but still consume lots of resources, especially medical ones. There is a minimum ratio of productive people to unproductive people needed for human civilization to continue. With improvements in healthcare, our ratio is getting worse and worse. Although you believe that nobody deserves to die, the more it's avoided the worse for society.

Just like you can't generalize the rich, you can't generalize the poor, either. Some people, the ones you want to help, really are decent people who fall on a stroke of bad luck and probably deserve a break. Yet to help these people, you first have to basically rob other people who did nothing wrong, and then you have to additionally help the sort of people who are poor because they're lazy and live by leeching off of the good will of others.

I think this argument kind of misses the larger picture for the details. If you consider a rich person to be on average the moral equal of a poor person, then I would say that taking from the rich to help the poor still morally comes out ahead. I say this because the taking would cause less evil than the helping does good both in quantity (there are more rich people than poor people) and in magnitude (a small amount of wealth for a rich person is a large amount of wealth for a poor person). If you can help a lot of people a large amount by harming a few people a small amount, I say that doing so have a net benefit for human well-being.
Of course, my above argument does assume that it is possible to implement such a system without it being entirely crippled by corruption and incompetence, which I admit may not be the case.

That's a pretty big assumption. You're also assuming that the rich aren't going to avoid getting their money taken, that other people won't try to abuse the system to get more than their fair share, and that you won't undermine the system into something worse.