This sounds nice but in practice will backfire. You need the systems to be universal, so that everyone, including the richest, have a stake in wanting to see them improved. Otherwise you’ll get a two tiered system where the public versions are trash because they’re underfunded and the private versions (what the rich use) are great but also expensive af.
You want things to work like insurance, where everyone pays in but only the people who need them use it. I want Musk to pay a fuckton into Social Security, not nothing at all because he doesn’t use it. Even now there’s a problem with Social Security in particular because, even though everyone has to pay it, it puts a cap/limit on how much you pay, so Musk currently ends up paying his share in the first day of the year, and his contribution amounts to the same as a teacher or something.
Universal programs with progressive taxation, that’s the way. Low taxes at the bottom, high taxes at the top.
Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
It would only work if all the privateers get sent to one specific state like Texas and the two systems are kept completely separate.
Let everyone move to Texas and pay no taxes, but every hospital visit or doctors visit is paid out of pocket or by insurance companies, no one has social security or welfare, every road is a toll road, you pay a private fire fighter company a monthly fee to be on their protective detail, police are private security firms you also need to pay a fee for protection or to investigate any thefts from your property, there’s no mayor or other elected representative for their town because where does the money come from to pay them, the army is also a private security company, the list goes on
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 18 hours ago
Scariest possibility is they use their private army to just conquer us…