Originally Posted by Relentless

People in the Sahara have to 'survive' because there is a fundamental lack of resources. We do not have that problem by any stretch of the imagination. We can produce more food than we need, more energy than we need, more shelter and clothing than we need... And we can do it with less than half our population working to accomplish those goals. Back in the days of the world fair, or when things like the electric dishwasher were invented there was a lot of talk about a future where people lived a somewhat comfortable life without having to work as hard as they did at that time. One person today can produce what 10 or 20 did a decade ago... what 100 did a century ago.

We use cell phones, email, video calling, shared software, free youtube instructional videos that answer most questions and an omnipresent database that answers almost any other. The average person has more information in their pocket today than all of civilization could access only a century ago, and it is available nearly instantaneously. However, instead of raising our standard of living and shortening our work week to three or four days, we have extended the work week of our best 10% to 6 or 7 days while gutting the pay of everyone else. The result is most households have both parents working instead of one, their kids are poorly raised by a combination of nannies and cheap daycare that warehouses them before they go to substandard public school.

The shift in our population, natural acceleration of technology which builds upon itself and surplus we create will require us to rethink the role of half our population. Are we better off paying two people half as much, or paying one enough so that the other can stay home and raise their children properly? Did unions have it right that one guy working 30 hours of overtime is worse overall than two people having a job and doing it adequately? Should we spend 50K per person per year or more to incarcerate a huge and growing part of our population, or make changes that cost less which make life easier on poor people even though they 'didn't work as hard for it'?

Income tax by itself is not the answer, we agree. Nationalism and patriotism have an important role to play. Giving the less able a leg up actually turns out to be cheaper, safer and smarter than making sure they only get what they earn. Currently we destroy food to stabilize price while people starve. Your arguments on income tax are about fairness. Fairness goes beyond a percentage revenue based understanding of our society.

We are doing it wrong. We can do better.