Comment by DamnYuppie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DamnYuppie | Hacker News Reader

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I am curious about this sentiment, the one about cutting off peoples heads and all. The times in history that this happened all you did was replace one ruling elite with another ruling elite. It didn't improve the lives of the lowest, in fact it usually really works out poorly for the poorest. See the rain of terror or the over throw of the Czar's in Russia.

In the U.S.A if you took EVERYTHING from all of the billionaires, there are ~700 of them you would net under $5T in total [1]. The existing debt of the USA today stands at a hair under $28T [2]. The estimated budget deficit for the next 10 years is $1.2T a year [1]! You do realize you can lop off all the heads you want, take all the money you want, and you will not have solved anything! You would still be a debt slave :( Raising taxes by itself will not solve anything you ALSO need to decrease spending, but no one wants to hear about fiscal responsibility.

The heads that need to go are those of corrupt politicians.

[1] https://inequality.org/great-divide/updates-billionaire-pand... [2] https://www.pgpf.org/national-debt-clock

The ones who actually did it (Russia) ended up worse off, but workers everywhere else in the world gained, because the elite became more willing to let go of certain privileges to pacify the working class.

The goal of threatening to kill someone isn't to murder them for the sake of murder, it's to negotiate with them from the fairly sensible starting point of "give me what you want or I'll kill you". If what they want is "fair wages and a decent life," that seems reasonable enough.

I am not sure that is true. Most of the Western world was reeling from WW1 at that point in time. Lots of young men were removed from the labor force. Quickly there after the rest of the world went into the Great Depression. After that they were on to WW2. I am not sure there are any direct lines that can be drawn from Russian's overthrow of the Czars. There were just too many confounding things that were going on to make a claim that the rest of the world improved because of it. One thing we can say, and it was still my central thesis, is that the majority of those who most supported the over throw didn't benefit from it at all.

I did not say it is rational, but you simply cannot ignore its existence in hopes it goes away.

edit: Come to think of it. You cannot ignore it precisely, because it is not rational. Rational people you can bargain with.

Agreed, I didn't think you stated it was rational. I was just mostly curious about the demographic of those people who think like that. I am not ignoring it, I am just really curious why so many others are ignoring so much human history on this subject. I am not saying their aren't grievances or lots of areas to improve upon, but it seems like a lot people who are upset because somebody else has something they want and all they care about is they want it. Like kids in a grocery store screaming that they want ice cream.

I wish I knew. I don't share the sentiment, but I understand its roots. And if things get bad enough, the demand will change from ice cream to yet unknown something else. If we take the analogy further, it would appear that we have no real parent figures now. No one wants to talk about the stuff that has to be done that you already alluded to ( lower spending AND higher tax burden ). All we have is a TV show.

Demographics-wise, I assume people younger than me, but I may be oversimplifying it. In practical sense, the more you earn, the less likely you are to support tax increase on yourself so maybe it is more tied to socio-economic status. Sadly, I have no data to back this up.

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