Less than a fraction of a percent of the entire planet’s population have more money than there are fish in the ocean. Tax the absolute fuck out of them including all of the money they have tied up in investments and stocks and we’d have enough money to take care of everyone’s needs.
But that’s not really how it works. Sure the money value of the .1% is obscene in the context of your grocery costs or rent, but it’s not really about the money - that just a way to manage resources and productive work, and also somewhat independently to mange investments. If we distributed the billionaires’ wealth out, that wouldn’t increase the resources available, so we’d just get instant inflation to negate the benifits. You’d have more money but there’d be the same availability of stuff in the stores so either we’d run out of stuff in the stores when everyone buys more, or what would really happen is the store owners would raise the prices. And people would still have to do the work that needs to be done for our society to function.
The investments are money that fund companies which employ people. If you pulled all that funding, the companies wouldn’t have the needed capital to operate and many people would lose jobs.
I’m not saying things don’t need to change. Rent and grocery costs are out of whack with lower middle class salaries. Regulation to raise minimum wage and hiring practices to give workers more consistent employment is needed desperately. But unfortunately it’s not so simple as just taking money from the rich to give to the poor.
The current discussion is on housing of which we have way more than enough of. You ask who would pay for it if we eliminated the need for landlords and my answer is the obscenely rich. We can easily house every single person in the world and still have housing left over. The reason we don’t is cause of greedy assholes caring more about profits, however small they’d be, than other humans.
Less than a fraction of a percent of the entire planet’s population have more money than there are fish in the ocean. Tax the absolute fuck out of them including all of the money they have tied up in investments and stocks and we’d have enough money to take care of everyone’s needs.
But that’s not really how it works. Sure the money value of the .1% is obscene in the context of your grocery costs or rent, but it’s not really about the money - that just a way to manage resources and productive work, and also somewhat independently to mange investments. If we distributed the billionaires’ wealth out, that wouldn’t increase the resources available, so we’d just get instant inflation to negate the benifits. You’d have more money but there’d be the same availability of stuff in the stores so either we’d run out of stuff in the stores when everyone buys more, or what would really happen is the store owners would raise the prices. And people would still have to do the work that needs to be done for our society to function.
The investments are money that fund companies which employ people. If you pulled all that funding, the companies wouldn’t have the needed capital to operate and many people would lose jobs.
I’m not saying things don’t need to change. Rent and grocery costs are out of whack with lower middle class salaries. Regulation to raise minimum wage and hiring practices to give workers more consistent employment is needed desperately. But unfortunately it’s not so simple as just taking money from the rich to give to the poor.
The current discussion is on housing of which we have way more than enough of. You ask who would pay for it if we eliminated the need for landlords and my answer is the obscenely rich. We can easily house every single person in the world and still have housing left over. The reason we don’t is cause of greedy assholes caring more about profits, however small they’d be, than other humans.