Time for a mass redistribution of wealth

reply to post by spiritualzombie



The important message in your OP for me is that these few rich are not like you and me. They suffer from their own sickness. Illness. Psychopathy, one which lays dormant within a fair portion of the species.

Like you I recall that Monopoly game. I wanted the other players to just keep playing so that I could win more and more. Give them credit. Allow them to accrue debt.

Now I was never a brilliant person, but even as a young person at the time, I could see the relationship between me, the happy winner, owner, landlord, and the other players did not make for a fun game. Why, I even got to the point that I began to parcel off a few of my lesser monopolies to the other players just to keep them in the game. I of course would receive as payment free passage and the two hundred dollars they would receive each time from going around go.

Unlike the game however, this system of "wealth to the top" is supported by so many people who will never get to the top. Or even near the top. It is supported only by the dream, the fantasy, the illusion that if one works hard enough and with a little bit of luck, they just possibly might . Believing that the very rich are just successful versions of themselves. Sad.

Chrisfishenstein
reply to post by spiritualzombie

 

Good luck talking the most wealthy & powerful in the world share their wealth with the rest of the peons on this earth!

Our monetary system was EFFED since Woodrow Wilson accepted the Federal Reserve and sent us down a path to destruction ever since.....You have to have money to make money...T!

edit on 1/30/2014 by Chrisfishenstein because: (no reason given)

That is PRECISELY the issue!

It is not the current wealth the ELites have that is the issue. The CONTROL over future wealth that their current wealth commands.

INVESTING in a nutshell. When the rich can use their current money to BOGARD the future wealth..

Commodities mostly. The rich use their current money TO PICK OUR POCKETS CLEAN. By investing in core goods they raise the price of everything everyone needs.

Every time we purchase ANYTHING, a portion of the price goes DIRECTLY to the rich! ffs, i would spend my life destroying them if I could instead of knowing they "get a cut" of everything i must buy!

onequestion
People cant see how greed has destroyed the world and they think because someone went out of their way to rig and earn more money the 3 billion other people on the planet, no matter what, those people are dumb, lazy, and stupid.

They dont deserve to eat and have a house to live under.

It's not that. It's the means being suggested.

If we take it violently, we're no better than they are for massing it.

Theft is as much a sin as greed, but the supposed solution to greed is mass theft?

I was always taught that two wrongs don't make a right.

reply to post by TerryMcGuire


See, I never wanted to keep playing once it was self-evident who had won. There was no more point, and I never made up schemes to keep gaming them into it.

But to me, I learned early on that the point was playing the game, not necessarily the winning. I wanted to play and play well, and if that got me a win, so much the better, and if not, then at least I knew I played the best game I could.

reply to post by spiritualzombie


No.

As ketsuko pointed out, the redistribution of wealth concept is flimsy because it forces you to make grand over-generalizations about entire groups of people.

Who gets to make decisions regarding an income that is "too high?" Why do they get that kind of power?
When is a person's income "too high?" How do you decide something so subjective?
How long will the "redistribute the wealth" plan be implemented?
What if, after the redistribution, some people spend themselves right back into poverty?

Have you heard the stories in the news of the people who win the lottery, are financially set for life, and then--within a few months--are right back where they started? When does personal merit play a role?

Money in the United States is not a shared resource. What I mean by that is: the money that I make as agreed up on by my employer and myself is none of your business. The money that I earn belongs to me and only to me. NO ONE, has the right to dictate what I do with it. That is despotic.

The progressives would have you believe that money in the United States belongs to the collective--like, we all throw our money in a giant, national pot, and then everyone simply takes their share.

This, simply, is not the case.

A CEO is an employee of an organization. His salary, whether it's 6 figures or less, was determined between himself and his employer...the owner. It was a private transaction, and the transaction itself did not take from an imaginary, community chest of money. The money paid to the CEO comes directly from the owner's resources.

The redistribution of wealth is nothing more than financial, Nazism.

The Battle of Waterloo was the end of any chance for humanity to throw off the debt yoke around our necks....
After the Rothchilds bank took over the UK economy at that point the rest has been an exercise in slow inexorable strangulation.....

thesaneone
You know whats worse then greed?
Jealousy.

People need to stop worrying what the other guy has and be happy with what they themselves have. I'm not mad at the guy down the street who has a sweet ride that he worked hard for but it might motivate me to work harder for something I WANT as long as I take care of my basic NEEDS first.

I would say greed and jealousy go hand in hand. Greed has the power to bend laws in their favor which can create such a world of unfairness and injustice that fills people with despair. This despair turns to jealousy.

TerryMcGuire
reply to post by spiritualzombie

 

The important message in your OP for me is that these few rich are not like you and me. They suffer from their own sickness. Illness. Psychopathy, one which lays dormant within a fair portion of the species.

Like you I recall that Monopoly game. I wanted the other players to just keep playing so that I could win more and more. Give them credit. Allow them to accrue debt.

Now I was never a brilliant person, but even as a young person at the time, I could see the relationship between me, the happy winner, owner, landlord, and the other players did not make for a fun game. Why, I even got to the point that I began to parcel off a few of my lesser monopolies to the other players just to keep them in the game. I of course would receive as payment free passage and the two hundred dollars they would receive each time from going around go.

Unlike the game however, this system of "wealth to the top" is supported by so many people who will never get to the top. Or even near the top. It is supported only by the dream, the fantasy, the illusion that if one works hard enough and with a little bit of luck, they just possibly might . Believing that the very rich are just successful versions of themselves. Sad.

Yes!

The monopoly game memory is that ill part in all of us. And that game encourages greed. It doesn't end after the players have built a living for themselves, it ends only after one person rules them all. Like a game for the dark side. And of course as the winner you want to keep winning, and you don't want people quitting the game or worse, storming your office with pitchforks, so you come up with a credit and debt system to keep it going, and give them false hope.

Greed needs to be recognized as an illness. If politicians, or people in general were identified as having this illness, it could effect elections, it could effect the way we choose things. The directions we go, if the concept of greed as an illness was accepted by civilized society. There is plenty of evidence to support the ill effects.

Awareness is so important.

I don't like the idea of redistribution, but, I think if those billionaires sold stuff for what it was actually worth, then the country wouldn't be struggling the way it is now. They celebrate record profits and give each other psychotic bonus'-It's sickening. If everything was cheap the whole country would prosper together. Inflation/wall street speculators are a big part of the problem too. Just my 2

reply to post by ketsuko


Suggest a medium for us to fix our current debt issues and economic problems that stem from greed and people being sociopaths dont care about anything or anyone but themselves?

reply to post by neo96


Are you that blind that you cant see that a small percentage of people hoarding all of this nations wealth isnt a problem?

If they dont spend the money they have then it doesnt circulate.

Holy crap you guys dont want to admit that there is a handful of MEGA wealthy greedy people causing a lot of real serious world problems.

ketsuko

onequestion
People cant see how greed has destroyed the world and they think because someone went out of their way to rig and earn more money the 3 billion other people on the planet, no matter what, those people are dumb, lazy, and stupid.

They dont deserve to eat and have a house to live under.

It's not that. It's the means being suggested.

If we take it violently, we're no better than they are for massing it.

Theft is as much a sin as greed, but the supposed solution to greed is mass theft?

I was always taught that two wrongs don't make a right.

I agree, and nowhere in the OP is the suggestion of violent taking. A focus on redistribution is important in deciding which legislation to focus on.

reply to post by spiritualzombie


I'm going to copy and paste this from another thread, because I think it would actually help us to bridge the gap between the rich and poor:

abolish all income taxes against the individual, and all taxation against businesses.

Basically, no more interal taxation.

"But what about all that stuff taxation pays for?" Hold on.

If we abolished all internal taxation, both individuals and businesses would have more of their money to spend as they see fit. This would benefit everyone.

The next step would be to raise tariffs on trade to greater amounts to make up for the loss from doing away with internal taxes on income.

This would cause the price of goods produced in other countries to soar, making foreign bought merchandise expensive for people in the US. As a result, the bulk of the goods that we buy would skyrocket in price and less and less people would purchase them. American companies that had moved manufacturing plants overseas would begin losing money, this would give them the incentive to bring back all of our lost manufacturing jobs--on top of the incentive created when all internal taxes are abolished.

City governments can generate revenue through sales taxes. Counties can rely on their cities for hand-outs, and states should rely on their counties. This bottom up approach, would ensure that legislation would not interfere with the function of towns/cities.
Federal government can generate revenue through high tariffs on trade.
The majority of federal programs are useless, and no one would even need them anymore when citizens keep 100% of the money they earn, and all of the manufactoring jobs that we lost come back.
The United States would once again export something other than "culture." We would stop being a nation of burger flippers.

Foregien countries could begin rebuilding their infrastructure since they would no longer have to internally compete with American businesses. That would be more, sincere, global competition.

As Ketsuko pointed out in the other thread, we would have to do away with 100% of the government interference in business for this to be effective--otherwise, companies would go bankrupt before they could even get their plants back to the US due to all the red tape involved.

reply to post by onequestion


You have to fix the people and the culture, and that is not a mechanical (i.e. legal) fix. What is being advocated here is social justice. Social justice is the idea that you can use the law to give everyone equal outcomes by disadvantaging some to the advantage of others. What happens in the end is that there are always unintended consequences. The laws you pass wind up disadvantaging some you never intended for them to and over-advantage some beyond what you intended. So, you create in inequalities in the system that need yet more laws to address opening up even more problems in the system.

Since we are using game analogies here, I'll use one. For anyone who has ever played an MMORPG, you are likely familiar with the concept of "balance" between archetypes. This is especially true of games that have PvP systems. Most games enter into a cycle of neverending patches where different character archetypes are either "nerfed" (weakened) or "buffed" (strengthened) because of the perceived inequalities between them. Often this opens up new loopholes in the rulesets that can be exploited by savvy players that only lead to new rounds of nerfs and buffs in subsequent patches and "balance" where ever archetype is perfectly equal to every other is never, ever achieved.

Having paid attention to these kinds of debates before here is the take on it.

What do you do in say 10 years when those who are in the same boat, are back in the same boat again and are looking for handouts again, cause they were unwise with what they had?

While there are those who would be wise and not spend the wealth, rather keep it and manage it very well, the same can be stated about those who will not be so wise and go back down the same path that they took in the first place.

Every time I hear redistribute the wealth I look at South Africa and a lot of the African countries today where there is serious social issues that are going on. And most, being former colonies, did not learn the lessons that they should have, instead, took the wealth, and then decided to hand it over to those who did not earn it, did not understand its nature or the care that it takes to grow and maintain it. Well now they are starting to see the stuff settle and ultimately are in a poorer position than before, save that those who they took from have left the country and are just deciding it is not worth it to stick around and help out.

If they want to help out the country, to try to give assistance to the people, then we need to take a look at ourselves and the laws of the country. Look at all of the laws, and look at some of the issues that many small businesses go through just to start up. Not to mention a lot of the tax loopholes that many of the mega coorporations take advantage of to avoid if not have a smaller burden of to pay. That is where you begin, and then look at making it easy for someone to start a business, and grow it, make it fit right in and then help nurture it to be a success or a failure.

But to take and just redistribute the wealth, all that is going to do is create more problems in the long run and cause more chaos and problems for the country and people

i realized the senselessness of redistribution while making up a financial plan for sales of a mmorpg video game. the plan was to sell the video game to players with the proviso that their game purchase and continuing subscription fee, would earn them a percentage of the profit. in essence, the players would be co-owners of the mmorpg. its success or failure would be directly related to their decisions just like any CEO of a corporation effects the corporation's success. then i realized, what happens if some unforeseen difficulty arises and the game begins to accrue more debt than profit? soon the players owe money for playing the game and any money they pay would not go to bolster the game but to pay the debts of the game. and if the debt was substantial, they could end up losing everything they otherwise owned, for playing the game. and all it was, was a video game.

when you redistribute wealth so that each person has an equal share of profit, they also stand to earn an equal share of the debt. this resolves down to people standing in line, in frigid or sweltering temperatures for several hours, just for a roll of toilet paper.

onequestion
reply to post by ketsuko

 

Suggest a medium for us to fix our current debt issues and economic problems that stem from greed and people being sociopaths dont care about anything or anyone but themselves?

The "debt" issue is a moot point. At least the national debt.

The Federal Reserve is a private entity, they charge the federal government arbitrary interest rates for every Federal Reserve note that the federal government borrows.

The problem is that, congress has the authority to print/mint our currency. Congress could easily print our currency and issue it interest free. If the Federal Reserve were an actual member of the federal government, then the concept of Congress having to borrow from itself, and then charge itself interest would be ridiculous.

Take away the Federal Reserve's charter, disband them, and simply refuse to pay off the debt. Problem solved.

spacedog1973
reply to post by spiritualzombie

 

Personally, I don't think its the game at all - its learned behaviour. All you want and more could be enacted through legislation to help shift the balance of wealth, but the very same people who would benefit (who comprise the vast majority of people) would vote against it, due to the division between themselves.

History shows it to be true. You have people thinking their material wealth (trinkets essentially) are more important than social equity. That is learned behaviour and will persist no matter the background culture or how it changes. People so obsessed that other people don't get access to their trinkets and meanwhile overlook that people effectively own them and their trinkets many times over.

Change the education, change the people, change the system. Otherwise, it will come crashing down as everyone scurries to their learned respective positions.

I agree. Education is so important. We have a society that applauds greed and excess. Greed stays in power by enticing those who have nothing to work harder so they may one day be a rich person too. It's disgusting. It's the dark side.

Kids need to be taught how to identify a person suffering from greed, This will effect the type of person they want to be, and will also effect who they vote for, and this will make even greedy people feel compelled to do things to appear less greedy. Education will force change. Not through violence but through enlightenment.

ketsuko
reply to post by TerryMcGuire

 

See, I never wanted to keep playing once it was self-evident who had won. There was no more point, and I never made up schemes to keep gaming them into it.

But to me, I learned early on that the point was playing the game, not necessarily the winning. I wanted to play and play well, and if that got me a win, so much the better, and if not, then at least I knew I played the best game I could.

But with monopoly, the winner is the person who takes it all. Becoming the single ruler, taking everything from everyone, is the only way that game ends. This is a bad thing.

I think winning is a great goal... but it should be where we ALL win. Through co-op. There can be some more powerful than others... Some who are lowly grunts getting down and dirty in the thick of it, but all working together... and the most powerful players making sure that everyone is well stocked with food and health. So we can all win together.

reply to post by onequestion

Are you that blind that you cant see that a small percentage of people hoarding all of this nations wealth isnt a problem?

Nope not blind at all rather clear as day seeing the communist manifesto being peddled in this thread.