> Lifting one group up is almost always at the expense of other groups, which is isomorphic to punishment.
Not necessarily. Life is not a zero sum game.
Who is hurt by better funding for schools in poor neighbourhoods? Who is hurt by training cops to not shoot first and ask questions later? Who is hurt by encouraging home ownership by black people?
> Who is hurt by better funding for schools in poor neighbourhoods?
Whatever that money would otherwise have been spent on is harming the recipient of that now foregone benefit. If you raise taxes to do it, taxpayers are harmed.
> Who is hurt by encouraging home ownership by black people?
If home ownership is a good thing, whoever would have otherwise bought those marginal houses is harmed.
You missed the part where it’s not a zero-sum game. If you’re interested in the economic concepts behind why an economy is a positive-sum game in an open system, look up: production possibilities frontier (PPF) and comparative advantage.
An economy would become zero-sum if we ran up against the limits of the universe. Until then, rest assured that opportunity can grow for both sides in a transaction.
The whole economy is indeed nonzero sum, but the topic is not the entire economy, but allocation of limited dollars between different groups. It is zero sum here in this limited context.
Investing in education has a very high ROI. Investing in better education in poor neighbourhoods will actually save you money in the long run. The fact that that is not happening is what's really hurting people.
>Whatever that money would otherwise have been spent on is harming the recipient of that now foregone benefit.
This would only make sense if the amount of welfare for rich people weren't outrageously high in the form of regressive income taxation, non meaningful wealth taxation, corporate tax breaks and subsidies, loan forgiveness programs for business owners etc etc all that on top of a nearly trillion dollar budget for military kit that sees what 40% usage?
That’s strange because the 2022 deficit alone exceeds defense spending by a factor of ~2. DoD spending was up ~10% since 2012, which social security spending was up ~50%.
> Social Security spending is from a dedicated levy, which generates more income than it costs
Your information is out of date. Costs have exceeded tax income since 2010 and have exceeded total income (tax plus interest) since 2021.
The OASI trust fund that pays social security retirement benefits is projected to have a $53B (3.8%) actuarial shortfall this year, up from $40B last year. The trustees project this shortfall will increase every year thereafter until the fund is completely depleted ten years from now (assuming no change in law)
To become solvent over 75 years the SS tax rate would need to be increased by 27.7%, from 12.4% today to 15.84%. Eliminating the payroll cap (currently $160K) would buy 25 years, but only if the corresponding benefit cap was not also raised.
Yes, those numbers are all from the document I linked, the most recent annual report released in March.
Social Security (OASDI) is not very sensitive to inflation since the salary cap on contributions is indexed to average wages and adjusts yearly. The benefits paid out are also adjusted by periodic cost of living adjustments. So when inflation goes up both contributions and withdrawals rise by roughly equal amounts.
The US national debt has risen because of extreme tax cuts. It was pretty low until Reagan, who cut a lot of taxes and had the debt start spiralling out of control, yet most social programs started way before Reagan.
The military spending that really added to the debt were primarily the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is a very similar argument to "piracy is a moral ill because it deprives corporations and artists of money that would otherwise be spent on them." And it falls apart for similar reasons.
When more people are capable of buying houses, more houses are built to meet the demand.
> If you raise taxes to do it, taxpayers are harmed.
This is not true. If I, a taxpayer, want my taxes raised for the sake of extending equality to a historically and currently oppressed group, then I am not harmed.
If you, a taxpayer, disagree with the notion of restorative justice, I posit that your overall happiness would be helped more by empathy and less by "lower taxes".
> This is not true. If I, a taxpayer, want my taxes raised for the sake of extending equality to a historically and currently oppressed group, then I am not harmed.
If you want your money used to pay for reparations you can donate to a charity with aims aligned with that desire. No one is arguing about what you do with your money.
> If you, a taxpayer, disagree with the notion of restorative justice, I posit that your overall happiness would be helped more by empathy and less by "lower taxes".
A functioning society requires accepting other people have different priorities and values from yours.
> If you want your money used to pay for reparations you can donate to a charity with aims aligned with that desire. No one is arguing about what you do with your money.
I can also advocate for the state to do it on my behalf. I prefer that solution, because a larger amount of resources can be allocated.
> A functioning society requires accepting other people have different priorities and values from yours.
I accept this, but the values expressed disturb me.
> I can also advocate for the state to do it on my behalf. I prefer that solution, because a larger amount of resources can be allocated.
The only reason a larger amount of resources can be allocated is because you are advocating for using state violence to force people who don’t agree with you to also pay for your ideas. That’s what taxes are, fundamentally.
> A functioning society requires accepting other people have different priorities and values from yours
a functioning democracy requires accepting that, in the event that your values conflict with those of the majority, your values lose and theirs win
we saw on January 6th in the US what happens when a loud minority can't accept that
unfortunately, some are under the misunderstanding that democracy means all ideas are equal and have equal value, or indeed universally have positive value
To tune this a bit: our society operates under a rule of law with checks and balances (and some bedrock law in the Constitution that is significantly harder to modify than the rest of it) because a system as simple as "in the event that your values conflict with those of the majority, your values lose and theirs win" is known as a "tyranny of the majority" and is not particularly desirable.
If the majority says, for example, some race is inferior, that's not sufficient to anchor the law and we have a 14th Amendment to protect against such abuse.
to elaborate: our society does indeed consist of checks and balances, and part of that is ensuring that, in the event that the values of the minority conflict with the values of the majority, we don't have a "tyranny of the minority", or minority rule
if the minority says, for example, some race is inferior, that's even less sufficient to anchor the law, and insufficient to overrule the majority saying it isn't
I completely agree and I cannot think of a single instance of that happening in the history of the United States, with a possible exception of the nation's ongoing collapse into oligarchy and rule by that minority.
Not necessarily. Life is not a zero sum game.
Who is hurt by better funding for schools in poor neighbourhoods? Who is hurt by training cops to not shoot first and ask questions later? Who is hurt by encouraging home ownership by black people?