dice wrote:Mech Engineer wrote:
You are right...once something is free, the tendency is too look for it instead of working for it. But, if health care is made easier as the first step, that will give a guideline for other things. And, basic food items should be affordable for everyone. That is better distribution of wealth or socialism but it provides a path for study.
There is a fine balance between getting rich through hard work/innovation and getting rich based on monopoly, corporate connections. The system has to differentiate between those two and not let the second group become the majority rich which is what it seems to be happening.
i've long held the position that there should be a balance between the freedom of the individual to achieve/innovate and the needs of society. as such, unsurprisingly to me, the happiest societies are the ones where total taxation is around 50%
world happiness report will be released on friday, but using last year's rankings:
1 finland ($48,580 per capita GNI, 54.2% total tax rate)
2 denmark ($56,410, 50.8%)
3 norway ($68,310, 54.8%)
4 iceland ($67,050, 40.4%)
5 netherlands ($56,890, 39.8%)
6 switzerland ($68,820,
27.8%)
7 sweden ($54,030, 49.8%)
8 new zealand ($39,410, 34.5%)
9 canada ($47,590, 31.7%)
10 austria ($55,300, 42.7%)
11 australia ($50,050,
27.8%)
12 costa rica (
$16,700,
21.0%)
13 israel ($39,940, 36.8%)
14 luxembourg ($72.200, 36.5%)
15 UK ($45,350, 34.4%)
16 ireland ($67,050, 30.8%)
17 germany ($54,560, 44.5%)
18 belgium ($51,740, 47.9%)
19 USA ($63,690,
27.1%)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Reporthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_(PPP)_per_capitahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP_ratioand so the question becomes, how best to utilize government funds. i personally believe that broad-based government health care should be available for all citizens at low out-of-pocket cost (co-pays only - to avoid having hypochondriacs abuse the system). something that every industrialized nation other than the USA has. i also believe in quality free public education. to what age/level that goes i'm not sure. i also believe in the concept of a universal basic income (UBI), which i came up with independently about 20 years ago, not realizing that it was a fairly widely discussed topic already:
-concept dates back to 16th century
-advocated by "father of the american revolution" thomas paine
-widely discussed as "state bonus" in early 1900s
-we've had one for the elderly in the form of social security since 1935
-family allowances implemented in UK in 1946
-"negative income tax" experiments in canada and US in '60s and '70s - nixon proposed one
-alaska has had a "permanent fund dividend" for all residents funded by state oil revenues since 1976 ($1-2K a year to all permanent residents)
-broadly discussed in europe since the '80s
my basic vision is a 50% flat income tax w/ no other forms of taxation (no business tax, no sales tax, no property tax, no...parking tickets/fees!). whatever money the government does not spend gets rebated to all independent citizens (w/ a fractional share for dependents, to be distributed to their caretakers). government expenses itemized and distributed along w/ rebate checks. incentivizes lawmakers to limit government expenditures. based on the USA GNI of $63,690 and assuming that the government uses 40% of its 50% tax revenue, that would leave $6,369 per citizen (around $7300 per adult and $3650 per dependent if doing a 2:1 ratio) to be distributed annually in the form of a UBI