I think rich people should be forced to share their wealth. Tax on high income earners should be 90% or more.
A powerful central government is obviously going to spend the money far more wisely than any individual could do.
And since rich people don’t need the money any more it’s obviously fine to steal music, movies, software etc by downloading it. Shit, those people aren’t even working and they’re making more money.
How much healthcare do you need?
“I’m sorry, Mr Jones, but unfortunately you’ve already spent your quota of healthcare money and your surplus wealth is going to be donated to the public fund. There are lots of people who are worse off than you, having chosen to spend their money on beer and cigarettes, who need treatment they can’t afford.”
Personally, I’d rather have the choice of what to spend my money on without anyone lecturing me about what’s right.
[quote=“Terry Pratchett”]The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.
The point was that Sybil Ramkin hardly ever had to buy anything. The mansion was full of this big, solid furniture, bought by her ancestors. It never wore out. She had whole boxes full of jewellery which just seemed to have accumulated over the centuries. Vimes had seen a wine cellar that a regiment of speleologists could get so happily drunk in that they wouldn’t mind that they’d got lost without trace.
Lady Sybil Ramkin lived quite comfortably from day to day by spending, Vimes estimated, about half as much as he did.[/quote]
Give a bunch of people a large sum of money each, and see what they do with it.
Some would invest wisely and lead long comfortable lives. Some would manage it badly and watch it dwindle. Others would blow it on extravagances they can’t really afford.
Many of us have the ability to earn a relatively large sum over the course of our lives. And we have the opportunity to invest, mismanage, or waste it. Who has the right to judge anyone else for having more material possessions, or for having spent their money on something else that is important to them?