>When CEOs spend their money in frivolous ways, they generally have enough to not need to fall back on additional public assistance
The wealthy receive the lion's share of the wealth created by public subsidies, whihc they then spend as they please.
1. Marillyn Hewson was paid $30mn as a retirement package last year, and 75%+ of her company's revenue comes from the US government.
2. Hugh Grant of Monsanto was paid $20mn and a significant share of his company's revenue is driven by the US's $20bn farm subsidy.
3. Peter Thiel has saved c.$1bn in taxes by using the Roth IRA structure.
I'm not trying to judge the morality of the above, but to act as though the wealthy don't receive government support tht they spend exactly as they please is a short-sighted position.
I'm not sure if you are mistakenly replying in the wrong place, but that doesn't seem related to the basic-needs argument I (and, in a slightly different way, the thread OP) are making.
I'm making the argument that sure, a CEO has $30mn, but if all that is derived from tax revenue, is it really that different than UBI?
Like sure, they don't need MORE than $30mn, but shouldn't we be asking why they got $30mn of public assistance in the first place? By your logic, shouldn't it be like 3 orders of magnitude smaller (Edit: since only the first $30k or so covers basic needs and the rest is allocated to non-essentials)?
You can argue CEOs are overpaid, and you can argue government contracting companies engage in regulatory capture, but this scenario is so tangential that it has zero bearing on the question at hand.
It is when the government decided to outsource a core function (defense) to private industry, solely to enrich people like the CEO of Lockheed Martin.
The head of Medicare makes $450k, why does the head of a company who basically does a government function make 60x that, if not because the US has decided to offer MASSSIVE public assistance to a very small group of already wealthy people?
EDIT: And my point in all of this which you seem to be missing, is that why do you care SO MUCH about the tax revenue that goes to poor people, when you write off much larger amounts of tax revenue that go to rich people? Is it because you think that spending that money to reward people who enable wars in the Middle East is a less bad outcome than some dude doing smack?
> why do you care SO MUCH about the tax revenue that goes to poor people
I really think you might have made your way into the wrong thread. Both I and the thread OP are arguing against the idea that UBI can replace existing social spending. That is to say, we would still need to keep some of the existing social benefit programs if UBI were implemented.
No one here is saying we should take away benefits from the poor, and anger about gov't contractors is not even a tiny bit related to the actual discussion at hand.
I'm arguing that literally any limit on cash given to poor people is a paternalistic overstep because we do not do the same for the cash we give to rich people.
The metaphor is 'Why do we tell poor people that this $1 can only be spent on certain types of food' when we don't say ' This $1 of pork barrel spending can't be used on CEO bonuses unless that CEO submits to regular drug testing.'
I don't know why this is such a hard concept? Maybe you & I just give up?
The wealthy receive the lion's share of the wealth created by public subsidies, whihc they then spend as they please.
1. Marillyn Hewson was paid $30mn as a retirement package last year, and 75%+ of her company's revenue comes from the US government.
2. Hugh Grant of Monsanto was paid $20mn and a significant share of his company's revenue is driven by the US's $20bn farm subsidy.
3. Peter Thiel has saved c.$1bn in taxes by using the Roth IRA structure.
I'm not trying to judge the morality of the above, but to act as though the wealthy don't receive government support tht they spend exactly as they please is a short-sighted position.