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Comment by sebastien_b | Hacker News Reader

Funny how this yet-another-rich-white-guy “solution” doesn’t indicate exactly how it’s to be funded.

Specifically, how said rich-white-guy would pursue (ie. not fight) the means to fund it. More specifically: increasing taxes on the rich, and closing off loopholes the rich use to avoid said taxes.

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To be fair, the USA federal government has plenty of money to pay for programs like this, they just choose not to. The lion's share of the money goes to the military, so there's quite a lot of room to re-allocate funds that would directly benefit people.

Napkin math: 4,000,000 babies per year in the USA * $6750 = $27 billion.

USA 2020 defense budget: $738 billion

So this would cost ~3.5% of the 2020 annual budget of the defense department.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the current system depends on keeping a cadre of people on the financial hairy edge so that they can be coerced into doing the actual work. If everyone were a millionaire, the result would not be a bunch of happy, financially independent people, it would be rampant inflation while the newly expanded money supply went chasing after what remained of a rapidly shrinking pool of accumulated goods, and then, when those were gone, we'd end up right back where we started, just with a few extra zeros on all the price tags.

"Not to put too fine a point on it, but the current system depends on keeping a cadre of people on the financial hairy edge so that they can be coerced into doing the actual work."

Not just to do the work, but also to do the dying.

Enlisting in the military is often a resort of financially destitute people who don't see many other options.

It's not something most people want to admit given the US worship of our veterans but the military in the past 40 years has largely been a successful jobs program.

"the military in the past 40 years has largely been a successful jobs program"

Well, among other things, like participating in mass murder.

It's not something most people want to admit

I think it's pretty well known and understood. Not only a successful jobs program: a training/education one too, and the prime social ladder.

The proposal isn't to make everyone a millionaire, it's to give everyone an index investment at birth that they can't touch until they retire, at which point it would presumably be worth around a million dollars.

btw I'm not saying this is a good idea, I just wanted to make the point that there is plenty of money to pay for something like this.

> depends on keeping a cadre of people on the financial hairy edge so that they can be coerced into doing the actual work.

Which is maybe why Bill Ackman's proposal here doesn't really make money accessible to working-age people, when they most need it to set up a less hairy lifestyle.

The spending on the military is actually much larger, because the US also spends a lot of money on veterans.

$250.9 billion for 2021, according to this article:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-passes-2509-bi...

Military spending is around 15 percent of total federal spending. Definitely not the "lion's share of the money".

https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/is-us-defens...

It's the single largest category of spending, outside of medicare and social security, which are taxed and funded within their own category separate from regular income taxes, and are "mandatory spending".

Also note that Brookings tends to lean pro-military so 15% is likely an under-representation.

If you remove mandatory spending it's more like 50%: https://prospect.org/economy/tax-dollars-really-go/

Medicare and social security are significantly higher and growing faster than military spending. They are the lions share.

sure, although seems a little disingenuous to compare those since medicare and social security are not funded via regular federal income taxes, they are taxed in their own dedicated categories and rates.

So weird to me that nobody has managed to package social support as a matter of defense.

Ackman has been extensively on the record for years as a supporter of higher taxes on the wealthy and closing the carried-interest tax loopholes that hedge fund managers use

Yes a lot of people are “supporters”, but how many have actually taken actual steps to achieve what they support.

Too damn many of them are all talk and no action (or their actions contradict their past words when it means it affect them negatively).

Bill Ackman is Jewish.

As is Yogi Bear. It's unclear what either of those self-generated factoids has to do with the article.

The parent is a response to the GP calling out Ackman as a “white guy”.

This white-bashing has become so pervasive and accepted that people don’t even notice it anymore. I’m a brown, recent immigrant so probably more likely to notice.

Substitute any other group in place of “white guy” and it’s a major faux pas. The double standard is mind-boggling.

You could reply to my post with “OK Boomer”, and it’d fit. :)

(Except I’m not really that old yet).

P.S. I specifically said rich white guy.

But he's not even ethnically White. And it wouldn't justify your subtly racist jab at White people anyway.

No.

I love how you call me, a white guy, a racist towards another white guy.

Or are you implying that “rich” is a race of its own now?

Sadly, that's quite common.

Don't be obtuse. This has nothing to do with the 'rich' part.

I wonder if you would make the same disparaging comment now that you know Ackman is not White: "yet-another-rich-jewish-guy..."

I suspect not.

I honestly had to look it up, because I always thought "Jewish" referred to religion (and there still seems to be questions of whether it still can refer to race or not these days).

Regardless, looking at his picture, anyone could be forgiven for assuming he is "White".

I guess I'll leave out any semblance of race in my "rich guys" comments, lest I upset the snowflakes.

Fair enough, your generation was not this obsessed with groups and identify.

Those not on the left weren’t either, but we’re policed so much by the SJWs that we are just punching back.

How’s that relevant?

Did you miss the parent comment?

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