[lbo-talk] cushy life

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Tue Jan 25 08:52:04 PST 2005



>From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
>
>Sorry, John, I misinterpreted your statements; I
>thought you were advocating equal shares of material
>goods for all, i.e., that everyone gets the same
>amount of value of stuff. It turns out that you accept
>something like Marx's needs principle ("To each
>according to his needs"), which means nonequal shares.

AFAIC, there is only one area where people's *needs* vary, i.e., medical care. Apart from that, I see no problem at all with giving everyone in society the same income. You mention:


> >most people wouldn't be interested in a large
> > library
> >of philosophy books, but I would;

Under the equal-income scheme, if you want to spend a lot of money *owning* philosophy books instead of borrowing from a public library, then you'd simply have less discretionary income to spend on, say, foreign travel or neckties. So what? I myself would be much more interested in spending money on gardening than dining out or going to concerts. But no one needs to own tons of books *and* travel the world constantly *and* have the biggest garden *and* dine out often *and* have the best seat at the opera. People who sincerely believe they do have a need to possess more than everyone else in multiple categories are sociopaths whose real need is for intitutional care.

I don't see how imposing equal incomes is at all unfair.

Carl



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