Four days ago.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50236455
This kind of thing will be as regular as clockwork in a few years time. Still there are a lot of people that will simply not believe it.
Four days ago.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50236455
This kind of thing will be as regular as clockwork in a few years time. Still there are a lot of people that will simply not believe it.
The deniers have transitioned to doomers. Originally they said we needn’t fight climate change because it wasn’t real. Now that’s it’s undeniable they say we can’t fight climate change because it’s too late.
That’s because the ultra wealthy are funding new talking points.
These days I believe the ultra-wealthy are just a fun scapegoat. Sure, they are guilty of many sins, but most of the time people mention them, there's never any concrete plan to make things better, other than a vague "eat the rich," which we all know will never happen. (And it's really unclear how eating the rich allows us to, say, move around without burning more gas.)
These rhetorics have a distinct feeling of "I found another out-group to which I will assign all the blame, which is very convenient, because I don't want to ever hear 'The earth is going to shit and I could have done something about it.'"
The top 0.001% has about 6% of the planet's wealth. ~60K people have a tremendous influence on politics, media and political discourse. Just a staggering amount of resources and power. Hardly an "out-group".
In addition to making us feel better, eating the rich takes them off the table and might allow democracy to slowly work again, whereby decisions are made by the people for the people. Lots of damage to undo ahead of any of this, though. And it starts with eating the rich... Or at least looking at wealth taxes, banning lobbying, getting money out of politics as best we can, etc.
We cannot solve/tackle climate change when we don't even have functional governments that actually try to genuinely support their citizens needs.
Look at the amount of wealth these people have: https://dreamagainusa.org/
The others are surviving
Wild to think that if you won the powerball right now and took the cash option, after taxes it would put you in the 0.1%, and they would all look down on you because you coasted up to the top and practically have nowhere to go but back down.
No one is required to have an answer to a problem in order to just identify that problem.
One nice benefit of eating the rich, is that we're then free to use the wealth they've hoarded in ways that benefit the public.
There is a pretty good chance that within a very short few years you'd have new people like that. It's a systemic problem.
Well sure, and if you only shower once, you’ll quickly get dirty again. Cleanliness takes constant effort.
That's a fair point.
It would, that's why a solution needs to be paired with an aggressively progressive tax system. Beyond some point, the tax rate needs to become 100% of all wealth above it.
About progressive taxes. That would make the super rich not super rich. But it would not fix state finances. (Also of course it's not realistic to think that the super rich will just give 100% of their money for nothing in exchange).
If the state needs money, it needs to take it from where it is, which is still with the masses. In Germany, at around maybe 90k EUR income is a particularly bad place to be. You are nominally considered to be a good earner. But at that point you already give around 70% on the next EUR you earn for various taxes and social security. If you are financially responsible not only for yourself but for other people (which is not reflected in lower taxes unless you're legally married), you can still get along fine, but it might not feel like you are a good earner. I was in a similar situation at one point in my life, it had taken me hard work to earn that money, and I have to say I was a little pissed about the tax situation.
I think I understand why progressive tax systems exist. Given our societies' structures, they probably _have_ to exist. But also I wonder if long-term they _contribute_ to income and wealth inequality. It reduces incentives for those who earn less to earn more (which of course for many people is not easily possible, but for some it would be, by working more, working harder, looking for a different job, etc.). It also allows employers to spend less on their workforce, meaning you could understand it as a kind of subsidiary for employers. Of course, lower salaries might be the only way for employers to even offer a product at prices the market wants to pay. But again it also reenforces inequalities in the income structure.
> That would make the super rich not super rich.
Tough... thoughts and prayers.
Probably reading something into this that I didn't mean?
Society idolizes the rich and then acts surprise when our society enables them.
If you call people out for their hypocrisy they act like a doomer victim.
“We’re going to follow the Four Stage Strategy.”
Yes, prime minister
[flagged]
The line I hear all the time is: "Why do I care if sea levels rise a couple of inches? I don't own a house on the beach!"
The craziest to me is the people who do own houses on the beach who want the government to bail them out. Even without El Nino or climate change, that's a hazardous location. Do not ask for my insurance or tax dollars to (literally) bail you out!
Good news, insurance companies are running for the exits on locations increasingly at risk. Homeowners are left screaming in fear of losing their homes after they realised insurance companies can just refuse to offer insurance after just 1 year. Even new homeowners desperate for a home are realising after they bought a new home in a floodplain, it turned out that developers/government tricked them into buying a massive liability where in a few years their million dollar asset becomes nearly worthless.
Bad news, neoliberal governments (even in Australia) are responding to this with socialising the risk via government insurance where rest of population who picked low-risk locations will still have to cover the high risk homes. Oh, and the government are still approving new homes in high-risk areas instead of increasing denisification of low-risk areas close to cities.
It's really painful to watch all this play out slowly.
Lots of areas have natural hazards. Should we help out people hit by tornadoes or floods?
With climate change induced problems, at least there’s some justification. We collectively (as a country… you and I personally might not have been alive or voting when the mistake was made) failed to elect governments that would prevent it, so we we collectively get to pay for it.
Hell no. Those beach houses are owned by the relatively wealthy; why should the general populace bail them out?
Means-tested disaster recovery assistance could be worth considering I guess.
They all fail the means test. They own beach houses!
> failed to elect governments that would prevent it
That’s a bit binary and harsh. There are other issues people also vote on, not just this one.
Maybe that was a reasonable thing to do, no need to re-litigate the past. But, we collectively made a prioritization decision. We don’t get to just ignore the downsides of that decision.
“You think the people [who own houses by the beach] aren’t just going to sell their homes and move?”
https://youtu.be/RLqXkYrdmjY?t=4m05s
If they might convince some fool to do it, they’d be fools not too eh?
That’s a lot of money!
>The craziest to me is the people who do own houses on the beach who want the government to bail them out.
This should surprise nobody.
Take a step back and look at the voting patterns of coastal communities. The ones in CA might disagree with the ones in NC about guns and abortion and what values ought to be taught in schools but at the end of the day these people's core belief seems to be that the government should (with the resources it has taken from others via coercion) "do things" and so of course it follows that the government should bail them out, however unfair it may be to those who have to pay for it.
Why shouldn’t insurance cover it if it’s in their policy?
Many policies don't cover flooding. You're expected to get supplemental flood insurance, which is not cheap.
They are working so hard to make AC into culture war.