It seems we’re (very) slowly getting there. At least for some professions.
I’d say your model equates wealth with happiness. I equate security with happiness. Being confident in one’s skills and ability to move forward brings benefits wealth really doesn’t bring just by itself so, yes, most people should want that.
Now, I’m not an idealist, I know they should want it but also that they don’t want it and wouldn’t want it, which is at the core of the issue of what we are facing now: misallocation of capital by people having too much money available. Expansions are good and create a lot of wealth but without contractions, people just loose all sense of reality, become frivolous and get ready to get reaped by the first major real hardship that goes their way.
Many do notice. My opinion, here, has as much stated facts behind it as your own, despite filling less lines of text, because you have provided none.
We pay for it. I don’t think we understand each other, here, and I have a feeling I am working from the core principles of Mustachianism as first explained by Mr. Money Mustache: “financial freedom through badassity”, so I don’t really understand where you come from.
The concept is that we need less external wealth because we have more personal skills and ability to handle hardship. Taking a simple example: if I can handle colder temperatures in Winter, I need less heating. My anti-fragility pays for itself and then some, society doesn’t have to subsidize me.
In short, by working on my skillset, I don’t need you to pay for my needs (though working together toward common goals increases our resilience and output), meanwhile, by wanting all the riches you can get without caring of doing things yourself, you commandeer a lot of unrenewable resources that really, in some sense, you are taking (stealing) from me, since I can’t use them anymore.
We can’t meet on the same ground and we don’t seem to be able to understand each other, but your view is only increasing the expenses we keep having to make in natural hazard monitoring/protection, land irrigation, Summer cooling and Winter heating while mine would reduce our needs to expend resources toward that as a society (and thus would allow for less taxes, isn’t the world a marvelous place?)
There is no global solution. The solutions can only come from individuals adapting their lifestyle voluntarily, which is why I’m not so positive about the future and pretty much convinced we are doomed. People who want to help write books, give conferences and participate in education and vulgarization in all forms and about all topics. More than that is just crossing fingers and hoping that the more consumption-heavy people get hurt first, hard enough and early enough for those who have instead focused on getting more resilient to still have a chance of having a meaningful life when all is said and done.
I’ve been working 80% and am well aware of what they’re writing.
My mental model has been basically: due to the tax progression, money earned on monday is not taxed at all, each subsequent day is taxed more, and from money earned on friday, a really big chunk is taxed away. My biggest issue with going to 100% would actually be that it wouldn’t be worth it, due to a significantly lower hourly post-tax rate than my average rate at 80%.
Exactly, you got it! I don’t understand why high income guys of all wouldn’t do their math on this.
Especially since time is so much more valuable then money. Our time on earth is limited.
I personally don’t understand why high income guys do not move to a canton with low taxes. I pay ~22%, even on income above 500k. If I would start to consider working less because of taxes (which is somewhat understandable with high tax rates, but simply ridiculous that the state incentives working less), I would definitely move.
Ideally, we would simply have no progression (as some other countries), this would solve this problem.
The situation I described is a bit different. My status quo is that I’m already working less, for reasons unrelated to taxes. When thinking about whether to go back to working more, I’m telling myself: “not worth it due to taxes.”
Well, life is not only earning a salary and paying taxes, people have social ties, friends and family !
Also, some parts of Switzerland consist of small cantons, but if you work in the middle of a large canton (Bern, Vaud, Wallis), the nearest low-tax canton is far away…
Last, you need to compare taxes + housing costs + commuting costs. Low tax rates tends to be correlated to high housing costs; in my canton the correlation is quite strong between communal tax rates and housing costs.
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It’s a bit tangential to the main topic, but the article made me wonder, how much pocket money do swiss late teens and young students get on average from their parents? Does anyone have some estimated numbers?
Maybe the experience of heightened parental “generosity” led to a different attitude towards money in today’s youths?
Actually there is a requirement in Switzerland but I guess as usual we don’t take this things very seriously (no complaint tho). Are you sure there is no Impressum? Sorry I don’t bother to check myself 
If you want you can report them 
I didn’t find it. It’s maybe on a sub page or maybe white-on-white
I did find it on the source of the page, not as link though, or at least my browser can’t find it as link (I hate those pages on one line)
That’s an interesting question and I had to take some time to reflect on it.
First, I don’t really think that 100% of us are doomed, I think things will self balance and many will suffer terribly. While I think there are ways to mitigate the impact that would have on ourselves, I don’t think there’s a reliable way to make sure we’re not among the ones who suffer: a lot of that would be due to circumstances outside of our control (luck, really).
Second, I think that by working together and cultivating a collaborative mindset, we can reduce the total amount of suffering that needs to happen, thus also reducing the risk that we end up being one of those who suffer horribly.
Third, my experience with people with egoistic tendencies is that they make everything terribly more complicated than it actually has to be, and tend to add to the problem rather than the solution. Most of the problems I am currently trying to solve come from clueless people with selfish tendencies having both too much money and too much time. I’m solution driven so this kind of gets on my nerves.
Fourth, having experienced first hand complicated situations made worse by people thinking only about theirselves, I’m trying to avoid falling on that range of the specter in order to make things easier to solve and more enjoyable to live as a whole.
My framing of this is that some people are focused on increasing the size of the global pie, while some put their energy toward getting the biggest possible part of the pie, no matter if it shrinks while they do so. The efforts made by the laters tend to drain the energy of the formers away from their purpose (which they enjoy) of making everybody’s life easier (and theirs too in the process). I have yet to find a way to isolate myself with like-minded people where we would together create the biggest possible pie and let the freeloaders get their shrinking one all for themselves as seems to be their wish.
Not only 20min
Well,
You don’t get to choose your birth conditions. Sure, now, many/most of your circumstances are a given and you can optimize for your own situation, but you don’t get to do that before birth. By increasing the median wealth, we’d increase the odds that people get born with the resources they need to actually show their merit.
Sure, and the moral and ethical ones are the ones you keep attacking on the grounds that the government shouldn’t interfer with our money. Whether you like it or not, what we have now is the current consensus about morals and ethics in Switzerland. That they don’t fit yours doesn’t make it any different. That being said, debating and staying open minded is important, we (society as a whole, through its individual components), keep evaluating every piece of data and theory that gets thrown at us. Complete libertarianism hasn’t found its way (yet) because it has failed to convince a majority of people involved so far. I’m afraid the burden of proof falls on the shoulders of those who want to change the consensus.
So do I. I strongly prefer a society where stuff is earned based on merit and not on birth. I want every child to have a fair shot at a successful life regardless of the mistakes their parents may have done, and I want generational wealth to play the least possible factor because inheriting education, a network and wealth isn’t “merit” but “luck”.
We did. It’s what a semi-direct/representative democracy is for. Society, which until one gets of older age, is mostly our ancestors and parents, has set a set of rules first through conflicts, then voting and consensus. This is where we are. Each generation gets to change things, with more power to do so later on the way.
She is entitled to support from the man who ran away if he did so. Even in a 100% privatized world, she could have taken insurance against the death of her partner but there would very likely be no such things for him running away. That’s where current ethics and morals (which aren’t yours, but are still ethics and morals, which you deem should be considered) weigh toward society weighing in to make the person who flees their responsibilities actually hold up to them.
We can debate about society acting by substitution through subsidies if the person leaving their (at least sex-)partner with kids can’t be made to pay for it but mandating that some amount of money directed toward the raising of children be spent is the very least thing a society should do in this context (and it’s not free, so some of your money would still go toward the justice system).
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cool. let’s make sure single raising moms (or dads) are held accountable for their lack of responsibility of trusting that partner who eventually flees the family. Force them to stay home with the kids, prevent them from generating income. Make sure the kids pay for their parents irresponsibility by growing up in severe poverty and insecurity. Prevent any support that would decrease the children’s rightfully inherited chances to live a fucked-up life.
Solution: Everybody, just don’t make families. Your partner might just run away. It’s too risky.
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This is so utterly deranged and out of sync with reality.
Thinking this to the end would mean
- lower class families being outright banned from having children
- punish children for things outside their control. Makes great citizens!
- family & friends helping is out of the question. According to your logic, one cannot burden them with the mistakes of others.
- let’s come up with a general acceptable set of rules under which getting children is considered “responsible” without violating any other constitutional/ human rights
- Collapse of our society due to a huge lack of children, as birth numbers would further plummet
- good luck securing pensions
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In my opinion, the idea of working less is nonsensical. I have zero plans of not working after I FIRE. The question should be “Does the work I’m doing make sense?”
Obviously sitting in an office doing arbitrary work, or making or marketing yet more consumer goods are habits we could happily do away with.
But on the other hand, there are deserts to reforest, waste to clean up, organic food to be grown, sustainable housing solutions to develop, oceans to restore, and the list goes on. All of these are very labor intensive, and require as many ready human hands and minds as possible. We need at least 100 years of hard, sensible work until manking even sort of breaks even with regards to a good life for all, in complete harmony with nature. If all current jobs were automated, that would really be just the beginning, as it would free people up to do sensible work.
The human tendency to work as little as necessary is the reason why mankind has made such slow progress with regards to any of the things that really count. But here again, the work has to be sensible, which in the current economy often isn’t the case.
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