Comment by psychoslave

vladms a day ago

If I would need to choose only between UBI and high taxes on the rich I would choose the latter, because it would reduce the risk of entrenching the differences or giving too much power to a few.

I find more important what is the society's perceived "success" in life. For US (one of the two countries in the study), as a foreigner, I perceive that "success" is considered to be "the self made man". So people feel valuable if they have stuff. I doubt UBI will fix that - and unhappy / depressed people is not great, even if they are not homeless and starving.

In other countries "success" can be considered also about "just" living a nice life, enjoying food, or friends, or sport (even if you are not top). And these countries will try to offer paths to some stability, even for the ones that are not the greatest, such that as many people as possible in the society feel good. Makes a nicer environment for all...

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psychoslave a day ago

>If I would need to choose only between UBI and high taxes on the rich I would choose the latter
There no need to be exclusive, and actually having concentration of wealth in a few hands is already a social construct. A society can also thrive without high income disparities. Taxing the rich is just taxing on what was captured from the non-rich.

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- mlrtime a day ago
  
  >captured from the non-rich.
  What do you mean by this? The economy is not zero sum, it is possible for everyone to get "wealthier", even if the spread increases.
  
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  myrmidon a day ago
  
  This is a good point, but a lot of ressources have a fixed or limited supply (arguably all of them); if wealth inequality increases, the poor fraction of the population will have a harder time competing for those.
  Consider urban housing as an example (specifically price development in terms of median income, and how the supply side reacts to wealth distribution by "overdelivering" luxury appartments from the average citizens point of view).
  Increasing inequality is also problematic because it fosters rent-seeking behavior which is self-reinforcing (because this siphons income from the poor side of your distribution to the wealthy one).
  It might well be better to be less wealthy in a society with lower spread.
  You could also argue that most wealth right now is accumulated/grown by "extracting" a bit of the value from the work of others. Consider Valve (the game distribution platform) for a very obvious example: They make something around $50M per employee in revenue. Are their employees working ten times harder than average game developers (by literally any reasonable metric)? I'd argue that their company became very good at extracting value from the whole market, instead. Absurd wealth does not come from doing lots of work yourself, it comes from taking a little bit from lots of people.
  
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  psychoslave a day ago
  
  People that can be taxed at several order of magnitude of wealth compared to a median income obviously didn’t work several degree of magnitude harder/longer/smarter. They more "efficiently" capture the benefits, certainly, but that’s it. And even there, mainly through network effect and pre-existing social forces.
  If instead distribution of wealth was flatter in an equally wealthy society, a tax could still capture just as much.
  When vladms speaks about high taxes on the rich, it already assumes the continuation of social structure which exaggerates the uneven distribution of wealth.
  
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- vladms a day ago
  
  It is about the practicality of convincing people to do something. Many people I know are inert and would say no to change. Even those that want change have a favorite topic.
  So, personally, when discussing economic topics I discuss the taxes part, which is so clearly unjust when explained (most countries tax less capital gains than work, which results in rich people able to accumulate things faster).
  Additionally, I am not convinced that me or you know exactly what will work - humans are complex. So while I hope that it is possible to have "A society can also thrive without high income disparities.", proposing too many changes at once might result in an undesired result. There are enough examples in history where good intentions led to catastrophes.
  
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  psychoslave 17 hours ago
  
  > Additionally, I am not convinced that me or you know exactly what will work
  Sure. It doesn't mean anyone else know better from some absolute perspective that we should blindly trust.
  >proposing too many changes at once might result in an undesired result. There are enough examples in history where good intentions led to catastrophes.
  Not proposing any change, letting the same egocentric people with selfish intentions always have the last word on what should change or not, also proved to be a sure source of great human catastrophic outcomes.
  
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Ajakks a day ago

Success isn't real. All things are internal, but we make/pretend they are external. I dont care at all of your accolades or accomplishments. Exactly like you dont care of mine. If we ever do care about others' success, its not bc of the other people. We are just playing games with ourselves and calling it stuff like expectations, admiration, respect, and responsibility - its all bullshit.
UBI allows a different life. You can only fail so much, only fall so far - rather than people being lazy, it will be a huge boon for creativity. The 9-5 for 45 is creative death.

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