this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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My thought is, sure we can tax the rich and make them less rich. But I find it hard to believe that the government is going to magically allocate those resources in a way that actually benefits Joe Schmoe. On top of that, even if you totally liquidated every billionaire, you'd get less than $2k for every person in America. Make it $4k if you only distribute it to the bottom half. Sure, it would be nice and I think billionaires are a scourge, but I don't think it's going to fix the problems people think it will.
Seems to me that the people going on and on about eating the rich would get a lot more done if they focused on achievable policy goals that directly affect their community. I would bet money 95% of the clowns that keep going on about this stuff don't even know who their city councilman is and have never been to a town hall meeting.
But if you inverse those thoughts or even pull back a bit, it's the same defeatist perspective. "Sure we can allocate taxes better but I find it hard to believe we'll ever be able to tax the rich." These aren't unrealistic changes or even far fetched, it just comes down to informing people and making the change. Most average people don't know what the Military Industrial Complex is or how it works and by telling them and illustrating how bad it is, politicians who'd like to remain politicians might listen to their constituents a little bit more than their wallet. Not entirely but enough.
Eating the rich is just a vivid expression to get the point across. A motto of sorts that just gets the idea across that the ultra wealthy need to be reconstituted into society at large. Be it through harmless proposals of policy and ranging to, well, the French Revolution. You don't need to know who your city councilman is nor your town hall to agree with something and make a change. I personally don't have time to attend a town hall with the oldest people in my county who are more interested complaining about a bakery not being in the right zoning area than change their mind about local taxes.
Change is slow and it starts with education. Being pissy or condescending also isn't a very good way to convince people you're right. If anything, they'll put extra effort into being wrong to spite you.
My main thing is that I'm tired of hearing people whining about it all the time, yet they do nothing themselves and don't even provide any actionable policy proposals. A comprehensive solution will have to involve both some mechanism to reduce the outsized influence that specific individuals and organizations can project onto society, including but not limited to corps and rich people, AND policies targeted to actually directly improving social welfare like healthcare, housing policy reform, overhauling disability, SNAP, and similar benefits, etc.
A lot of this needs to happen at the local level, especially housing reform, and even if you can't attend your local town hall, you can email your councilman. That's the person who controls whether or not that affordable apartment complex or homeless shelter goes up, and things like that will make a much bigger positive impact on your community than any amount of rich people eating. For the sweeping reforms, proving that things like this work at the local and state level is the first step to bringing them to the national level. The ACA for example was directly copied from the system Massachusetts had come up with.