Stephen Hawking says that you Should Support Wealth Redistribution

[GennGreymane]

How is it not?

Income taxes are raised incrementally depending upon your income. To support something like a basic income would require even more raising of taxes.

There are plenty of people out there who have the ability to plan vacations around PTO and unpaid time off.

Why would anyone voluntarily work when more than 50% of their income is taxed?

the brackets are not as tight as you seem to make them out to be.

Also why do people work in countries with higher tax rates?

[Deleted]

I don't know if Hawking is serious about this though... I mean, he's making a troll face that almost seems locked in.

[Deleted]

Also why do people work in countries with higher tax rates?

Why low-end people insist on remaining low-end?
Why high-end people insist on remaining high-end?

Same question

Smart people know WHEN to move. The rest... do not know.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Thought experiment time:

Basic Income exists, you can get food, toiletries, and a limited amount of new clothes each year. Would you choose to not to work, and just live off cheap food / toiletries / lowest rent / limited clothing?

Or would you choose to work, to gain a higher income, to have iPhones and cars and vacations and video games and stuff - in your life?

Most people would want to have a high standard of living but the amount of $$ one earns to the hours worked, is out of wack. There is a reason the US is the most overworked nation in the world.

[StayTuned]

He's absolutely right, just that his ideas need a more advanced level of technology for them to work. Today, we cannot cover a lot of jobs with machines. We can cover some, but certainly not the majority.

[Heiros]

I am surprised no one pointed out the following: why a t-shirt produced 20000 miles away can be cheaper than a t-shirt produced near where you living? If its strickly related to proximity and avalability of the ressources, i am fine with it. But, as a geographer, it makes no sense to waste energy on transport and workforce to move all those ressources trough the planet bases on the simple moneytary fact that some human on some place worth less money per hours worked than others

I am fairly sure that a great part of human disparity come from western power capitalism. And when i hear some pseudo-specialist saying "some country are under-develloped and they will eventualy developt". Saying that modern economy like we have in western country is natural to humans is biased. It is more based on cultural things and we need to understand that our culture within capitalism takes advantage of more " passives" cultures where obeying to order, king, government, religion, ... Is normal.

Capitalism in a world scale free market is simply totaly wrong and lead to importants crisis we have to face right now

Edit: corrected most errors. Sry, english is not my first language and im fighting my french auto-correcter

[Fugus]

I am surprised no one pointed out the following: why a t-shirt produced 20000 miles away can be cheaper than a t-shirt produced near where you living? If its strickly related to proximity and avalability of the ressources, i am fine with it. But, as a geographer, it makes no sense to waste energy on transport and workforce to move all those ressources trough thé planet bases on thé simple moneytary fact that some human on some place worth less money per hours worked than others

That is because it is cheaper to pay the workers there with fewer protections and such and then ship it here than to actually pay living wages. John Oliver had an episode about this topic before actually. And was pointing out the true costs of those $5 shirts and such when you look at the conditions they were made in.

[Roostercogburn]

When I am famous I am gonna say stuff like this to raise political support.

I will give no plans on how to implement this, I will not give a working example of how to do it and make it work, I will just say "This is good. We should do it."

-We should leave fossil fuels and go 100% green.
-We should go full socialist and share the wealth.
-We should cut medical costs in half at bare minimum.
-We should have flying cars.
-We should have no taxes at all, at the same time we should have 99% taxes for the #rich.
-No I will not tell you who counts as being #rich.


Got it? Good! No go do it!

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That is because it is cheaper to pay the workers there with fewer protections and such and then ship it here than to actually pay living wages. John Oliver had an episode about this topic before actually. And was pointing out the true costs of those $5 shirts and such when you look at the conditions they were made in.

While a lot of it is bad, it's not all bad. In some countries where their government actually care for their people, The meager pay Western companies give is actually a huge bump for their standard of living. The only issues arise when their government only cares about exploiting them and refuses to pass basic protection laws.


Also, I find it funny Apple does this and so many people worship them. I mean, Suicide nets man? That is a whole 'nother level of fucked up.

[Heiros]

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While a lot of it is bad, it's not all bad. In some countries where their government actually care for their people, The meager pay Western companies give is actually a huge bump for their standard of living. The only issues arise when their government only cares about exploiting them and refuses to pass basic protection laws.


Also, I find it funny Apple does this and so many people worship them. I mean, Suicide nets man? That is a whole 'nother level of fucked up.[/QUOTE]

I dont have the statistics in front of me but i can assure you that on most cases, implémentation of foreign economy into local economy destroy the local economy and makes peoples living there dépendant to foreign economy

[Vash The Stampede]

Stephen Hawking is an idiot.

I Virginia man am smarters than Haw The King! How do you people plan to deal with a growing amount of unemployed people in the future? The robots and AI will do all the work. Huh, smarties smart smart?

[Gurluas]

This is all about culture. Raise children to follow these values, and such a society can be made. But this goes for all children.

[Karrotlord]

I'd work right until i,reached a tax bracket that was above 50%, then I'd say Fuck it.

Are you not aware of how tax brackets work?

[Zcion999]

Are you not aware of how tax brackets work?

I don't think he does ...


On topic though, the one thing that really makes me kind of doubt something like this with the basic income is what someone earlier in the thread said.

Something like "I can leave any time I want because I don't need the job".

I wonder what kind of havoc it would cause on the job market when, sure I want to work to get more than the basic stuff but as soon as it gets a bit hard I bail because fuck you I don't need this job. I personally love my job, I love what I do but it does sometimes get hard and I need to do stuff I like less or I need to do many more hours than the 40 a week. I am pretty sure no matter the job, no matter how much you love it you sometimes feel bad about that job and humans are emotional beings, I bet it would lead to a LOT of "rage quits" as soon as shit hits the fan even a little bit. I feel like this would cause a HUGE rate of employee turnover and would basically mean that everyone is forever a noob at whatever position they are holding since nothing would keep them there.

[Vash The Stampede]

I wonder what kind of havoc it would cause on the job market when, sure I want to work to get more than the basic stuff but as soon as it gets a bit hard I bail because fuck you I don't need this job.

Depends on the timeline. If we're talking about 10 years from now, then lots of havoc. This is because even in 10 years a good amount of jobs are reliant on human labor. In 30 or 40 years from now it wouldn't do a thing. At that point humans will delve into three general types of work.

Science
Art
Entertainment

Things that would never likely be replaced by machines. But these are mostly luxury professions where you do what you like and not what you have to do. A YouTuber makes videos when he/she feels like it, unless it's to pay rent. A researcher will work at their pace and not that of their employer. A painter will take their time.

Don't know about you but that sounds like a better society. You know how many people YouTube entertainers would love to work on videos but still have real world jobs that they need? Not everyone has the subscribers of PewDiePie.

Also don't under estimate the power of free time. The more time people have the more innovative they can be. In history when you see periods of art and architecture, it was the result of people having more free time.

[Wulfey]

If there is even $1 in taxes, and but $1 in government expenditure; then there was wealth redistribution. The question is how much redistribution. Not whether we will have it. Every last government on earth engages in some amount of wealth redistribution. What scale are we talking about here? Guaranteed minimum income with a 50% top marginal rate like Switzerland? Or a 39% top marginal rate but checks sent to the olds and single mothers like in USA?