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Comment by HoldOnAMinute | Hacker News Reader

I don't need software developer salaries to go up. That would be kind of selfish and narrow minded.

What I need instead is something that takes the burden off my entire society and gives them a breather. Universal health care to start. They could also use a higher minimum wage, and lower housing costs.

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>Universal health care to start

That already exists in any other country but the USA. Aim higher.

Multiversal healthcare?

You have my vote.

Is it more selfish and narrow minded to wish for a "utopia" that is economically unsound and happens to be your personal preference, or to wish for productive workers' salaries to increase - something with an actual track record of improving any society it occurs in?

All perl programmers should be wishing for ponies, that's definitely less narrow minded.

Universal healthcare is very sound economically. Costs are lower and outcomes better than under private insurance, and overhead is dramatically reduced.

This is not true, the Kings Fund publishes a report that the Guardian fauns over whenever it comes out because it shows how "cost effective" the NHS is, yet if you read it you find that actual health outcomes are generally worse than other, insurance based systems. Give me wealth and health over a postcode lottery produced by utopianists.

What part of universal health care, higher minimum wage and lower housing costs sounds like "utopia" to you?

That's just the system we have, but slightly better and completely achievable.

It doesn't sound like utopia to me, hence the quotation marks. Eminently achievable, but not actually good. Only those engaged in utopian thinking - with a heavy slice of ignorance of basic economics and history - would think it is utopia or leads to it.

The economically sound thing is to accrue more power to those with wealth. The owners will have access to a machine that turns money into money without a cent flowing outside of the owner class. That'll improve society /s.

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