40 hours per week = food and shelter (plus consumables related to employment)...That's a survival wage.
Add 25% to that to cover a 10% savings rate and 10% "entertainment"...now it's a living wage.
How does that sound for a starting point?
It gets funded the same way everything else does at the Federal level...by being spent into existence.
in case you're wondering.
x +0.25x = 1.25x
10% * 1.25x = 0.125x
0.125x * 2 = .25x = 20% of 1.25x
Thanks Heckler for posting this. Its funny how when something gets clearly explained using actual facts (as opposed to Fox News), the dialogue quickly drifts away. It a better starting point for a discussion than some have put forth.
If a person wants to starve to death ? How is that your business to determine the running of that persons life? If you are aware a person needs help and wants help, what is preventing you personally from giving them some?
A good education? Please explain how a "good education" can be had, if it is funded thru means that are not "good". Shouldn't children be taught bullying is wrong?
Tell me what you think the characteristics of a free market are....this should be interesting. Your first attempt was wholly lacking and frankly very inaccurate.
Rob, your utopia runs off these axioms:Everybody in the world is born with an equal chance at a good life. Property is the single most important right that a person has. This right takes precedence over the life and liberty of others (although that's important too, just not so important).The govmint can do nothing good. Collective action can do nothing good. Only individual action is good.
Your Utopia is great; Everybody achieves what the can and want, everybody respects everybody else, we are free to do whatever we want.. However it exists only in your mind which is a blunt but persistent thing.
Its an understatement that most people don't have a Great Mind. They only know what they know. Many, perhaps most, tend to be facts driven rather than philosophy driven. Philosophy is useful too but it doesn't hold most people's interest.. I fall in this camp. Highly respected people with Great Minds use philosophy to define their world, but they can seem a little strange to most of us when their philosophy isn't rooted in facts. This is doubly true for philosophers that don't have a Great Mind (aaHEMmmm....). Sane people are always checking inner thoughts against what's actually happening in the world to make sure that inner "reality" matches the real reality (yeesh that was a clumsy statement but I'm lazy).
Facts: Everybody is not born with an equal chance. We only own property when we can defend it. We have laws enforced by our govmint to help us do just that. Our govmint is a collective of people. Most are good workers who try to accomplish their tasks, some are not. The only way for a society to endure is when the majority of people agree to act according to the same principles. This is collective action, not necessarily good or bad. Individual action can be good or bad but it cannot stand against a collective. Property can either be legally obtained by making or buying it, a gift or inherited. By collective action we agree that this person has a right to it. Is that Bad or Good? OOPS that's drifting into philosophy talk. This agreement regarding property is necessary for an efficient society. Without it, people must waste resources defending their stuff or they will take other peoples stuff that they didn't produce or earn themselves.
There is no free market so I'm not going there. A market is an agreed upon way to facilitate the conversion of production into consumption. An economic system like the one described by the video posted by heckler seems like a fair description of how it works today.
We are living in a time where the top 1% are accumulating ownership right of more and more of the resources of this world. There are two kinds of "wealthy" people -- a few, like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sam Walmart (I forget his name) create wealth by coming up with a better way to either produce something or a more efficient way to distribute production. They become astoundingly wealthy but also to a benefit of society. I don't like Walmart but a lot of people shop there.
The rest of the 1% inherit their wealth or are crafty accumulators of it via rent-seeking, corruption, theft (e.g. Wall Street during the '00's). These crafty accumulators game the system to accumulate wealth and do not produce anything. It is these people that need a good beating in their wallet. Not because they are evil but because they aren't producing anything with their wealth. These people eventually destroy value by excessive consumption and speculation. As we saw in early part of this decade, the 99% bear the brunt of their mistakes. These people will stop at nothing to defend their social position and continue to feed their unbalanced desire for more...unless they are stopped by the collective action of the 99%.
Our system will achieve balance at some time. But like a dam that accumulates more water than it releases, our system can break catastrophically if we let current trends continue. If the system breaks, what then? I'd rather not find out.
People like RR can rant against the govmint all they want. The govmint is a part of our society and the society is the 100%. The 99% don't have to let the crafty 1% continue to gorge until enough hungry people without hope for their children -- and badly educated to boot -- crash over their walls. Because the dynamics of the system is out of balance, the system has to change and it will, one way or another.
I know, tl:dr
