Say you’re on a yacht with your principal and they had a few tequilas, and then they’re like, “Oh, come on. Join us.” Ultimately, you have to remember that you are there because they’re paying you. It’s a job. They’re not your friend. Obviously, you need to share compassion and empathy. Sometimes your boss needs you to be a shoulder to cry on.
The top 0.1% in the US have ~20Trillion in wealth. That’s enough for all ~340million Americans to get 58,000. Globally across all ~10Billion people thats enough for everyone to get 2,000. That’s a one time thing, making it an investment isn’t accurate to what it represents in terms of value generated that was not given to the workers.
At the US level 58k would get most people out of student loan debt (29k average)and free from credit card debt(6k average).
At a global level 2,000 would allow the world’s poor to be able to eat a healthy diet(3.54) every day for over 1.5 years or a subsistence diet (0.83) for 6.6 years
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBLTP1246
https://ourworldindata.org/diet-affordability
Yep, that’s about how I remembered it. It would be great, but I’m sure you can see how this wouldn’t change everything (the third world is a different beast, which I just addressed elsewhere). You could get a lot more if you expanded to the top 10%, but that would obviously be more controversial.
I’m not sure what you mean by that. If you had 58,000 dollars in wealth you’d pretty much have to convert it to income the same way as anyone: by building a business, or buying into an existing one. At an optimistic 10%, copying the whole market over the last century, ignoring all the volatility, that’s $5,800 a year.
If you gave that all to the very poor in the US, that could change everything for them, to be fair. It’s not like it’s nothing, but sometimes I see people imagining that every problem in our lives would be solved by simple redistribution.
And yeah, it’s stupid cheap to save African lives. Donate whatever you can, everybody, and vote for more foreign aid budget.
What I’m saying about this amount of wealth is that it is because people were not paid the value of their work. They gained 20T over the years because that is what they make from underpaying and overcharging. That unregulated capitalism is the basis that leads to such obscene wealth. Redistribution is not about investment but changing the underlying system. It’s basically 58k of backpay. People would largely use it to get out of debt and improve their lives in some way.
From then on with the system changed people are getting an extra 5,800/y. Enough for significantly more families to avoid food insecurity and get/stay out of debt. Those two things are the biggest helps you can give people to reduce crime, and improve communities. It doesn’t have to be much as multiple UBI studies have shown.
Hey, I like this plan, don’t get me wrong. I’d recommend a specific maximum wealth, above which taxation is at 100%, to avoid cleverness from the people hoarding it, and that you tax it retroactively a year or so before the passing of the legislation, assuming that’s legal to do in the US. Then it’s a simple-ish matter of distributing it, which US civil servants are pretty experienced with. You might want to give an extended period to pay this one-time tax just to make sure it’s all orderly.
You could just give people their backpay, but I’d actually suggest putting it into a basic income, which would be higher than $5,800 and would have to draw from taxes on the more relatably fortunate (maybe the next 0.4%?). That’s the main thing I know of that could actually eliminate poverty.