From: Steve Clancy <stevie-c@technologist.com>
> These comments seem very puzzling to me. Why do people become
>wealthy? Either by inheriting wealth, working and earning wealth, or by
>theft of wealth.
I more or less agree here
>We may or may not agree on the merits of taking money from
>those of us who inherit wealth or earn wealth, but we usually agree that
>increasing wealth by simply taking it from someone else is not right. So
>why would you propose to do just that - take from the rich to give to the
>poor, by coercion?
Naturally I don't mean stealing as in a crime, but as in taxation.
>You appear to be disregarding liberty and personal
>freedom in favour of some misguided socialist notion of equality.
No. I am "disregarding" it in favour of correcting an inequality
> OK, so I agree that the amount of poor may seem to be a great
>injustice. But why forcefully tax wealthy simple on the basis that they
>have more money than others?
It will not help to tax the poor ;-) Besides, to make an oversimplified example. If a person has NO money at all and is at the verge of starving to death, and somebody else has $1000 Billion Dollars and the cost of keeping the poor one alive would be $1000, then the cost of keeping the poor person alive is pretty neglible for the wealthy and thus represent very little loss of wealth and liberty. For the poor one on the other hand it means all the difference in the world. the $1000 is worth far more for the poor than the wealthy.
Naturally it would be nonsense taxing somebody who has $2000 to give some of it to one who has merely $1000. The problem is in finding the right balance.
> Socialists would argue that capitalism's success lies on
>exploitation of workers
Maybe they will, but I don't considder myself to be a socialist and cannot answer for those people. I think that bussines is great. I love capitalism and I love to buy stuff ... The explotation of workers seems like a pretty old fashioned idea. Especially for people working in the IT biz like I do where there is a lack of skilled workers.
> So we can now state that the capitalist system is currently being
>run by a mixture of decent business people and selfish arseholes. From this
>we could argue that some people are poor because;
> a. they want to be so.
> b. selfish arseholes effectively 'oppress' them.
c. They are unable to bring themself out of their memetic and genetic condition.
In the old days when most Danes lived in the country there was something called a "bad family". A family that had been up to no good for generations. Where the parents where loosers, drunks, beggars etc. and the kids would grow up and be the same.
They still exists but are harder to find these days because we don't live in smalltown societies anymore. The kids often ends up being criminal, working in the sex industri, being on wellfare, getting no education etc. I have worked with these kids, and their minds are wired in a way that is hard to believe. Their memetic makeup is twisted in unbelievable ways. Some find that being on welfare is is cool, and cheating the system is the coolest of all. They don't see that ultimately they are cheating themself. They often think that everything is the societys fault. And naturally they will. Because everything they get, they get from society. Their parents (in)directly teach them that that is the way it is done.
Children of people with social problems are most often those who get social problems themself.
It is this wheel of missery that needs to be broken. This I believe can only be done by giving the kids better oportunities than those of their parents. Better education, better friends etc.
>Argument a. seems unlikely so we could assume that b. is true.
>So we can now argue that it is the selfish arseholes responsible for
>denying some their freedom they strive for. If this is the case (which I am
>inclined to believe is more often than not) then it is clear that rather
>than taxation on those who are rich, legal discourse be taken on those who
>oppress rights of freedom (the selfish arseholes in this case).
I don't believe that oppression by the rich is the problem at all. Not here in Danmrak at least.
> So we can still address the problems of the poor while not having
>to revert to authoritarian means of state 'redirection'.
Here I don't agree.
The real problem here in Denmark though is that most of the tax's goes to serve the middle class. Taking from the middle class and giving to the middle class. That is an absurd idea, but it steems from the fact that middle class voters is by far the largest voter group thus the politicians must serve their needs. Paradoxically they are also the group who has the most money. Thus the money must come from them too. Or so the logic goes :-)
Hilsen/regards
Max M Rasmussen
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Denmark
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