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Politics : View from the Center and Left
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To: koan who wrote (212910)12/28/2012 9:12:43 PM
From: cosmicforce  Read Replies (1) of 541518
 
I thought that the math might not work... and there are issues with simply assuming that the 1% can carry non-producers (i.e., "the needy"). My numbers are rounded to make it easier to follow.

The net worth of the top 1% is $50 TRILLION in round numbers (Source: CNN).

Assuming that 10% of the people are needy we have a budget of

$50T / 30 MM people = $1.7 M per needy person.

If we could capture 10% of the 1%'s wealth, that leaves $170k per person. Assuming the 10% are needy for 10 years, that is $17k per person per year. If they are 2 people per household then that is $34k per needy pair per year.

The math doesn't work if, as a country, we continue to just fork over the money of the wealthy to people who don't produce anything. Eventually the people with money will leave or will be simply taxed out of existence due to the transfer to the welfare state. They, the "wealthy", are unarguably what drives large parts of the lucrative economy - few modern innovators come from impoverished backgrounds because all modern invention involves a complexity that is above that of a high school educated person. You need resources to become educable.

The way to make it sustainable is to motivate people with wealth to put their money into employment and education. If they don't do that, then they pay it as a wealth tax. I'm not sure how we could administer this, but it seems difficult.
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