This is a guaranteed losing platform
“There a billions of desperately poor people in the world, and in order for them not to have a strong interest in either immigrating into the developed world by any means necessary or smashing the international order, both of which produce adverse consequences that was have to deal with, their relative standard of living must improve, which also had costs for the developed world, but much less than continuing to deal with the consequences of the current level of structural inequality.”
> Perhaps we should accept that on moral grounds: we’ve been rich enough for long enough to be able to share some of the proceeds of prosperity with our brothers and sisters. I think I know what the answer would be. The answer would be OK, fine, but get rid of the trunk. Because if we are experiencing a relative decline why shouldn’t the rich – why shouldn’t the one per cent – be slightly worse off in the same way that we are slightly worse off?
For the US, the policy challenge is that the distribution of net tax payers is significantly more biased toward the top end of the income range than in many countries in Europe (i.e. it is more progressive, ironically). There is no practical way to sustainably raise substantial tax revenues without expanding the number of people who pay net taxes. This means substantially raising taxes in the 2nd (60-80%) quintile, who have five-figure household incomes on average, and probably the 40%-60% quintile as well.
Any definition of "rich" that could generate substantial net tax revenue is going to come significantly out of the pockets of the middle class. Convincing someone earning $90k in California that they are so wealthy that they should downgrade their lifestyle would be an unenviable task for a politician.
"From another perspective, the story of the last ten years has been one of huge success. At the time of the crash, 19 per cent of the world’s population were living in what the UN defines as absolute poverty, meaning on less than $1.90 a day. Today, that number is below 9 per cent. In other words, the number of people living in absolute poverty has more than halved, while rich-world living standards have flatlined or declined."
The proposal is to make the effect explicit rather that political populism of trying to reverse the current trend for those at point B in the chart.
If the latest presidential election in the US has taught us anything it should be that middle class people with stagnating wages couldn’t care less about the troubles of the worlds poor.
The middle class doesn't see themselves as net beneficiaries in wealth transfers, so you have to completely rewire their thinking.
Also, roughly 50% of the country isn't interested in any additional taxation, period. They don't care if you try to tell them how they will benefit because they see themselves as the aspiring rich.
Finally, the goal is of this policy is to increase taxation of the top x%. The same people with armies of lobbyists and the majority of politicians (GOP or DFL) already in their pockets. Good luck.
Unless you are specifically talking about Minnesota state politics, the two major parties are not the Republican Party (nickname “Grand Ole Party”, or GOP for short) and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL for short.)
Well "nothing can ever get better" doesn't sound like much of a winner either.
We can talk about whether it's a good or moral idea to transfer wealth, but let's not pretend like that's the only way to deal with poverty.
I keep seeing people say this but is there not a finite amount of wealth in the world at any given time?
There are also the finite land and natural resources required for wealth creation.
It expressly refers to relative, not absolute, wealth, which necessarily is zero-sum. (There's also quite a lot of evidence that relative, not absolute, wealth is the more important driver of exoerienced utility: humans are strongly programmed to be satisfied or not based on performance relative to expectations set by social environment, not absolute material condition. For this reason relative wealth is generally more important.)