The United States has experienced a 12% increase in homelessness, to its highest reported level. Federal officials Friday said soaring rents and a winding down of coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more Americans.
Wealth disparity is not relevant to this discussion. It doesn’t say anything about where the bottom tier is.
If we had full UBI, free homes, free food, free healthcare, etc and some small portion of the country were quadrillionaires, we’d have massive wealth disparity and no loss of quality of life.
Wealth is not zero-sum, and the high and low do not necessarily have anything to do with one another.
Bruh, not to shit out an old conservative adage, but that money has to come from somewhere. You’re missing the entire nuances of how the monetary system works, and the whole argument of where the money should come from for these things. A country where wealth disparity is increased because the tax comes from the middle class looks very different from one where it comes from the upper classes and massive corporations.
This also has nothing to do with the money disparity.
Like, I agree with you regarding taxation in broad terms. But the objective reality is the wealth disparity does not have any impact, on its own, on anyone’s individual well-being, the same way me acknowledging that it doesn’t has no bearing on whether or not wealthy people should pay more taxes.
If we cannot discuss things in a real world framework, were basically just writing fan-fiction of reality. That is a MAGA way to create policy, not a real world methodology.
The way you’re trying to frame this is magical thinking where wealth disparity within our society doesn’t come with sets of nuanced issues that don’t directly effect the wellbeing of society as a whole. After a certain rate of wealth disparity, for instance, those with the most can directly control those with the least with any number of creative ways that mostly amount to “I have money so I can buy people.”
From controlling government officials, to controlling individual level situations like law enforcement and judiciary measures so that they can essentially do whatever they want, which is never used for the betterment of others and always to the detriment of the masses. To leave these things out of a conversation about wealth disparity and quality of life is just disingenuous man.
This isn’t magical thinking, it’s simply understanding that wealth is not zero-sum.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/seven-deadly-economic-sins/wealth-is-positivesum/78D2A23B03BB245AF40C45B5C1F6C9FF
This is indeed bad, but is a measure of the strength of institutions, not wealth disparity. Wealth doesnt win elections on its own - 2012, 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 all featured out-spent candidates who won. Trump famously won despite being outspent handily in 2016
I’m genuinely flabbergasted that some people perceive this as some sort of hot take and not just acknowledging the reality at play here.
Another awful take courtesy of you.
It’s not a take. This is just correct information that you don’t like. There is 0 opinion in the above.
You would be delusional enough to believe that.
It’s okay, I’m going to put you on my ignore list now. You’re not worth arguing with because every post you make is asinine.
Goodbye.
Have a good one!
The rich people who go on TV and say “people don’t want to work for me anymore, that’s why we need to cut benefits” certainly see wealth as zero-sum. They know if we had all those things you listed their business would stop working.
Or they’re lying for their own gain
Also this is a question of incentives, not wealth. They believe people who get benefits are incentivized not to work. This has been proven soundly false in recent tests of UBI.
What are they seeking to gain if not wealth?
Elected office.
They get elected to office to do what exactly? I hear they have the wildest orgies.
But seriously, politicians serve money to make money. So I don’t see how this dodges the point.
Politicians serve their constituents - they consistently vote in the way their constituents want, and in the last 6 years the Republican Party has been turned inside out by those constituents.
It’s impossible to argue otherwise in the face of the very real power people wield, from primarying their representatives to taking over local school boards.