Wealth Distribution

Is there something wrong with taking benefits?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Is-there-something-wrong-with-taking-benefits/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

Only a working-class member of society can pose this question because the little people are perpetually shamed when they take more than they need. This guilt may have begun in our early history while struggling for survival as tribal units, where scarcity was an omnipresent threat due to our level of development and not a consequence of the corrupt politics defining our world today.

If one tribe member took more than they needed, then it was apparent to all members that they all suffered. Greed was naturally restrained at that level, and like all traditions and attitudes inherited from our history, guilt-shaming people for taking more than they need has been passed on throughout the generations.

It’s been an effective means of encouraging people to consider the needs of others. Still, society is no longer plagued with the existential threat of scarcity by our physical incapacity to meet our needs. The threat of scarcity has transformed from a physical limitation to an entirely artificial construct created by the powerful in society to leverage the lion’s share of benefits to themselves. Scarcity has been transformed into a systemic issue enabled by politics, gluttony, and greed. Taking more than one needs at a local banquet no longer results in someone dying of hunger. However, we can still recognize and react viscerally to someone who gorges themselves to the point of vomiting up their overconsumption.

We don’t react that way with the wealthy, whose overindulgence is invisible to most because it manifests as an economic abstraction — numbers in a system characterized by intricate mathematical gymnastics. We don’t react that way to the Walton family underpaying their people and cutting back on staffing to the degree where the few employed are overworked and so radically underpaid that they need government subsidies to survive. We envy their successes and reward them with more benefits.

There isn’t a wealthy person on the planet who doesn’t take advantage of every benefit they can.

They do that as a matter of course and as a matter of pride. Donald Trump has bragged about circumventing his tax responsibilities, and the people cheer him for his success while envying it and wishing they could do the same.

We’ve created a double standard in a society where the privileged few are rewarded for taking advantage of benefits they don’t need while victim-shaming those who rely on benefits they desperately need to survive on the bare necessities.

There is something wrong with this picture, but we seem to prefer to ignore it when designing policies and creating legislation that dramatically affects the lives of billions.

Whether your issue with whatever benefits you or those you know may be taking advantage of, I would suggest we’re only playing into the biases corrupting our systems by focusing on what individuals do when availing themselves of benefits, We would all be far better off addressing the issue of benefits from a systemic level because the sentiment resulting from a fixation on what one’s neighbours are spending their food stamp money only enables the billionaires to justify their tax cuts and increase their subsidies.

After all, the legal concept of “lost opportunity cost” was entirely devised by a rich asshole who justified an entitlement to money beyond the tangible losses incurred in a conflict. It’s a legal argument flatly denied to someone who can’t afford to support it in a pay-to-play legal system.

Try not to forget how Elon Musk tried to sue his advertisers on Xitter for abandoning his platform because he felt entitled to the benefit of their advertising dollars.

This particular move is the equivalent of seeking a benefit from being paid for a job from which one has been fired. With this kind of toxic attitude of entitlement to benefits, I don’t think there’s any little person on the planet who should feel guilty about taking a benefit.

If we fix this surreal hypocrisy, we can discuss what is wrong with taking benefits.

What if all the wealth in the world got distributed evenly?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “What happens if all the wealth in the world got distributed evenly to every human being for 1 day? Would we return back to capitalism?”

People would do far better thinking about the system that creates income disparity rather than imagining pipe dreams that would accomplish nothing.

Firstly, redistributing all the wealth in the world equally would not magically create a world of millionaires. For example, if Elon Musk were to redistribute approximately 400 billion to America’s 350 million, they would end up with only $1140.00.

The entire world’s wealth is approximately $454 trillion; if you divide that by 8 billion people, each person ends up with $56,750.00. You can’t buy a house for that in most developed countries. It’s nowhere near enough to make fundamental changes in a person’s life.

The problem may seem that we have money hoarded by too few people — such that eight people own half of the world, but that’s a symptom, not the cause of the problem. The problem is caused by how money is distributed throughout our capitalist systems.

The problem is caused by centibillionaires and corporate executives earning thousands of times more per hour than the average employee.

When that ratio was only 23 times more than employees per hour (as it was in the 1970s), more people had disposable income. When most of a population has a lot of disposable income, they buy many more goods and take advantage of many more services, which creates many more jobs and opportunities for self-employed people to sustain themselves. In short, the velocity of money in an economy is much higher — which means cash changes hands much faster than it does today when it’s mostly tied up in significant investments and essentially hoarded by too few people.

This is called a force multiplier in the economy and why the middle class is called the economy’s engine. Everybody wins.

You should ask instead: Why don’t we cap an upper limit on personal net worth to ensure the economy works for everyone? This strategy not only supercharges an economy like a finely tuned vehicle, it also eliminates government corruption. With a global cap of one billion in personal net worth, we could forever eliminate the threat we face by a globalist oligarchy.

We could end a centuries-long class warfare overnight with the stroke of a pen.

We could end poverty almost overnight.

If we were united in solidarity on this point alone.

It may seem impossible, but it would happen if eight billion people decided they wanted this to happen.

Try to think about that.

It would also end wars around the globe.

The war in Ukraine would end overnight.

Vladimir Pukin’, his oligarchic buddies, and all the rich techbros thinking they could reinstall a modern monarchy would be disempowered overnight.

No more familial dynasties. No more Walton family treating their employees like dirt while forcing them to get government handouts because they’re not being paid enough.

No more arrogant stupidity by people thinking they’re better than the rest of humanity that they regard like pack animals instead of human beings.

We would reduce and eliminate many social problems because money would flow freely. People would not be dying from poverty. A child would not be dying every five seconds from hunger. Homelessness would disappear. Altruism and food banks would become moot.

Fight for a global cap of one billion because that’s more than enough to live in bloated luxury.

If we need one goal for eight billion people to rally around, we should make this our goal (along with UBI).