> solve poverty
How?
How?
there are solutions that have worked in the past. the problem is the US center-right doesn't like them because they can be abused, and it's far worse for one person in a million to have something given to them that they don't deserve than for a million people to be helped.
What does the US center-right have to do with Portugal?
There are serious problems with welfare programs. They’ve been the downfall of entire countries. Look at Argentina where the bloated government payroll can be viewed as a sort of work for welfare program. The country can’t afford it and its currency blows up on a regular basis as a result.
That’s not saying you should have no welfare programs, but there’s a balance to be maintained. Probably it should be time limited so people are given a sort of “financial rehab”, but not disincentivized to work. And it shouldn’t stop if you get a job, why, just why would you want an incentive against that.
Some people seem to think there can be consumption without production or life without work, but that’s logically incoherent.
Anyone who wants to live in a better society, who realises this policy would help achieve that.
> Why would those people want to work if they can just freeload?
Because most people want more than just the absolute necessities of life.
You'd be surprised.
Or was it that unclear that I was talking about solving poverty, with the idea that all the money that goes for ultra rich could actually be distributed better?
> Solve poverty > How? > Maybe a first step would be to prevent the ultra rich to get even richer.
If you can't understand the similarity between this and "looking at the ultra rich to help solve poverty", honestly I don't know what I can do.
Then if you want to solve inequalities, do you think it's easier to start by solving inequalities between the poor people, or is it easier to start by taking money from those who are insanely rich for no good reason?
Step 2) ????
Step 3) Equality!
That escalated quickly. I would be tempted to say that you completely, absolutely hallucinated the meaning of my words, but then... well English isn't my first language, so maybe that's on me.
Are you assuming we already have enough resources to solve poverty? Isn't the actual issue that even with perfectly equal distribution we don't have enough resources for every body?
If the pie isn't big enough, why is the communist's focus always on how to divide the pie, rather than growing the pie? Do communists have anything to add at all when it comes to increasing productivity so we can all have more?
Wasn't lack of productivity exactly what killed communism? Even China didn't wake up until it opened its markets.
Inequality isn't increasing because poor people are doing worse. Poor people are doing better. Poor people's conditions are improving faster than they ever have. It's true that the richest people's wealth grew even faster than that, therefore increasing inequality.
But if you really care about the wellbeing of the poor, then you wouldn't distracted by inequality when the conditions are improving. You'd interrupt the most successful ever for the worst system ever, driven by jealousy, bitterness, and moral indignation.
There are many systems that would probably be considered communist in the US (at least by those of you who seem to have no clue about anything that is not libertarian) that work really well without genocides. But you'd have to open a book that is not US-centered to see that.
I still object to communism, and populist memes like "eat the rich." At best they're immature, at worst they're agents of chaos and destruction who actually harm the lives of millions when they get what they want.
Really? 30 million deaths wouldn't give you pause? Therac-25 killed or injured 6 people and we still talk about that.
Communism doesn't deserve another chance.
The point of the parent is that the fact that USSR collapsed does not mean communism (or any kind of less liberal system, for that matter) is fundamentally bad. Just like getting a crash does not mean that the language is fundamentally bad.
What about this one, following your reasoning: "The Nazi were producing cars, and the Nazi brought us into a world war. Therefore no one should ever produce cars again".
What you are demonstrating is that it is impossible to talk with you. Not sure if that is because you can't understand a basic sentence or just because you aren't open to even learn what a word means before making completely wrong conclusions, but I don't care. We won't have a constructive discussion, let's stop here.
So to within a rounding error, no, it's a poor country full of poor people with an irrelevant number of billionaires. You could destroy all foreign investment and future growth by confiscating literally all of their wealth for 1 year of modestly higher government spending.
[1] https://profilbaru.com/article/List_of_Portuguese_by_net_wor..., ignoring people who nominal "citizens" but live and hold money elsewhere.
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/275337/government-revenu....
Well shit, get on it Portugal! /s
In fact, you can subsidize housing costs from all the savings on healthcare costs.