Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
For sure in the US. But the thought experiment is also interesting from the standpoint of measuring intranational quality of life and proposing higher taxation. If, at the greatest extreme, a person would sacrifice two thirds of his extraneous income (after housing/food) in order to live in this utopian social environment, then we really ought to be comparing social environments instead of economies when considering quality of life between nations and states. And this probably has some moral application to taxing the wealthy more.
I would take a significant pay cut if I could be assured of having this, maybe half. The hobbies I have that make me truly happy are pretty cheap. But I'd need guarantees that my children and their descendants would have the same deal. Because it's important to note that with less money for myself, there would also be a lot less for me to leave to my children, which means that if that community collapses or regresses, they won't necessarily have the egg nest to make a pleasant life for themselves elsewhere.
BUT I don't think it's a realistic prospect, short of fully automated luxury gay space communism (post-scarcity society). I think this is the deal of capitalism, you can't really modulate it to specific levels. We might get the impression it isn't so because this can take a couple of generations for the problems of "social democracy" to be obvious. Life is pleasant and orderly because other people work to make it so for others in society. They work because they are rewarded. If you reduce the reward, they won't strive as hard, making quality of life drop. And with the workforce mobility we currently have, the highly motivated, quality individuals will easily be convinced to move to a pleasant gated community where they will be surrounded by other highly motivated individual AND also get more money, and your community is going to be slowly only populated by the least ambitious and driven individuals, which will erode the very qualities that you thought you were compromising for.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link