Eeyore wrote:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
Do you seriously think reducing western labour rates to a couple of dollars a DAY would help
the poor ?
Yup. If they and everyone else are getting $150 a day anyway to do
nothing.

Tell me who gets $150 a day for doing 'nothing' ?

George bush gets a lot more than that. And he does worse than nothing.
he destroys things.



Not even the ultra-benevolent EU countries pay the unemployed that much. It's more like $24 a day
here.

Well the actual level is not as important - it would match to the 'basic
living standard' of the country.

The theory is you keep necessities free of tax, and labour. You tax
consumption of the most socially damaging sort of luxuries, you tax
fossil energy and you tax other scarce resource HARD.

What you are trying to achieve is a mechanism that does no rely on
legislation, but taxation and subsidy, to bend society towards a new
pattern of living.

You don't attempt to second guess what that might be, you merely work to
make things you know are trouble increasingly expensive. Oil. Debt. Raw
materials.

And you relieve tax on what you want to encourage. Work. Savings. Used
manufacturing goods.

Let people then decide how to spend what they have.


Graham