Hacker News Reader

Comment by Applejinx | Hacker News Reader

I think those latter people are just as capable of being my customers and providing an environment where _I_ can invent/produce something of note.

Why should I care whether they toiled miserably in order to be able to buy my thing? Maybe it would be better if they were leisurely, the better to go and search out the best things, allowing me to devote my efforts to MAKING said best things. Let 'em be thing-mavens, sipping lattes. They can compete over who is the coolest thing-maven.

You're not thinking creatively enough.

View on HN

If they’re living off their own resources, enjoying their life, while I work to make something they want to buy, more power to them, that’s awesome.

If they’re living off the taxpayer dime, enjoying their life, while I work to make something for them to buy, then turn around and, as the taxpayer, give them the money to buy my thing, that’s substantially less awesome.

I think your mistake is:

"living off their own resources" generally equals, for many people: "living in active exploitation in a ruthless work environment destroying their mental and physical health, because they literally need money to live, like anyone"

Whereas:

"living off the taxpayer dime" generally equals, for many people: "living free to do whatever they wish, for the most part" [and you find this absolutely abhorrent]

If it's working out that well for me that I'm thousands, millions of times richer than them (since there's a LOT of them and they all want to buy my things) I'm still getting a lot more from them than they're getting from me. Let 'em have some of it back, I will still be obscenely wealthy off exploiting their inability to produce on their own.

Still seems like you're not quite grasping how this works.

You’re right; I’m not quite seeing how your proposal works mathematically. Perhaps you could illustrate it with a simple but closed-loop mathematical model to help drive your point home?

It is completely possible to tax the rich enough to fund social programs, but allow the rich to live exactly the same life they'd otherwise live. They'll just have less money to pass on to their descendants, which is fine by me. Multi-generational wealth transfer is inequitable and anti-progress.

I'm not going to dig up concrete numbers at this point, but it's not difficult to take a look at what the top wealth-holders and income-earners have, and what the people at the bottom need, and reconcile the two.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com