The Wealthy as Job Creators?

[Jake]

This post is full of irony.

 

I assume this has something to do with taxes and how some people shouldn't have to pay so much when they don't get as much measurable benefit in return

[Texsox]

The vast majority of people lose massive amounts of money on health care. They pay in way more than they take out. That is the entire idea. Most of us give away money.

 

And some cheat the system by never paying.

 

Which if I can say is one aspect of this that I find so interesting. Liberals are demanding that people be responsible for their medical bills by having insurance. Conservatives are demanding that people be allowed to not carry insurance and receive free services. Doesn't it seem like that should be reversed?

[Balta1701]

And some cheat the system by never paying.

 

Which if I can say is one aspect of this that I find so interesting. Liberals are demanding that people be responsible for their medical bills by having insurance. Conservatives are demanding that people be allowed to not carry insurance and receive free services. Doesn't it seem like that should be reversed?

Only if you assume that there's a bigger priority for either side than "who gets the most money out of the deal". On one side it's the uninsured, on the other side it's the people who have large incomes and can afford to buy out of the system.

[caulfield12]

Governments exist to inject fairness into chaos. The reaction to unfairness under government rule shouldn't be, "forget about fairness. We tried fairness and it didn't work."

 

We don't need to undermine the rule of law to give people free education, healthcare, roads, and other stuff. Most industrialized countries offer all of these things. You simply tax people.

 

To sell off the rule of law is to violate the basics of the social contract. One of the basic truths that makes us accept our role in society is the knowledge that there are certain things that apply to everybody. The more special privileges you allow the upper class to have, the more class division will exist. While there are issues of tax unfairness and many lifestyle benefits that go along with wealth, our social order is invested in the attempt to hold all people under the same set of expectations. Right now, if a rich person gets off unfairly because of their celebrity or wealth, that pisses us off. We try to fix the system to prevent further abuses. We shame that person. If the system suddenly tried to allow the wealthy to buy their way out of legal trouble, it brings into question the reasons for existence in the first place.

 

Why have laws? If you can buy your way out of law, then the law doesn't seem proper in the first place. Even when we disagree on laws, the spirit of a law's intent makes us respect it. A law whose apparent reason for existence is government profit offends us; think about our reaction to supposed "quotas" for traffic stops. We could make a law, for instance, that you can only have one child...unless you buy the right to more (China). Unfortunately, this redistributes one of the most important human experience into the upper class.

 

Getting "free education, healthcare, roads, and other stuff" in exchange for undermining the entire purpose of governance doesn't make sense. You see this as everyone benefiting from the rich getting what they want. The question is, why would people accept this? They wouldn't, unless they thought it was the only way to get these services from the government: this is patently untrue, as we see all over the world and in our own history. This proposal amounts to coercion, the illusion of freedom.

 

You give the public a choice of "no public goods, everyone follows the same rules" or "public goods, you can buy your way out of select violations of law," but these are not the choices. The choices are, "the wealthy pay a fair share of their earnings to the public goods that make their wealth possible and follow the same rules as everyone else" or "the wealthy buy their way out of laws, violate the basics of the social contracts, and there is little evidence that they get more or better benefits from the government." There are many other choices in between and outside these as well, and most of them don't involve a fundamental loss of liberty allowed by bribery.

 

 

In all fairness, if you live outside of the major cities, in a farming/agricultural/provincial area of China, you're allowed to have at least 2 or sometimes three children...especially if the firstborn is a girl.

 

Where you have to pay the fines is in the major cities, like Beijing or Shanghai.

 

Recently, there have been whispers of a change in this policy again with an overabundance of people 50+ and a 6/5 male to female ratio.