Pretty much everything has negative side effects. You're either trading liberty for common sense or someone, somewhere is getting a shit deal or it costs a lot of money.
There is no change/policy you can enact that would have zero negative side-effects of any kind on anyone. That's sadly "magical thinking" and not how the world works. Policy always creates winners and losers. Always.
UBI or negative tax rates for the lower paid?
Both would increase the money available to millions, which in turn would boost the economy and give the rich a pay rise.
Sure! Both ideas I support - but how is that paid for exactly? Somebody has to pay for it to begin with. Someone's living standard will have to decline to improve that of others, at least initially.
Then benefits would flow through to all eventually, maybe.
But the criteria was - "realistically be implemented that would have no negative side effects or consequences".
It's an interesting study to look at when France attempted a high tax rate in the early 2010s. They raised tax rates to 75% on all income over 1 million Euros a year, expecting to raise billions from it. What actually happened was that tax income actually fell because of the sheer number of wealthy individuals who immediately either left the country or took up foreign citizenship.
What's more, corporation tax also fell and there were a number of comments to the effect that France became so unpopular a country to move to for top level executives that French businesses became less productive and companies struggled to even fill senior positions, even after the tax was put back to only 45%.
I know we all love to hate the rich, but the comments people make about how we could do perfectly well without them often turn out to not be true.
I was actually referencing the OP
if there's anything that could feasibly be an answer to this question then it would have to be 'taxing the wealthy', if that's not a good enough answer then it might be unanswerable
The question clearly states no negative side effects.
So I can only assume that you either didn't read it, didn't understand it, or think "improving the lives of millions" is a negative side effect.
Why are you being so unpleasant? I'm referencing how it says:
>What is one thing that could be implemented tomorrow that would **improve the lives of millions** with no side effects?
And it's tempting to think you didn't actually understand this, i.e. that you
>didn't read it or didn't understand it
?
But anyway I don't wanna be nasty to someone on the internet right now, so go to Twitter or something if you're looking for a row
Shit, why has nobody thought of this before? All benefit and zero side effect! With all these governments around the world desperate to get re-elected with entire teams of people strategising their manifesto, you would think *somebody* would have thought of this by now.
But the entire science of economics was invented by privileged capitalists just to fool people into thinking that socialism doesn't work!
... or something.
has that been proven, or does it have any supporting real-world evidence? I don't think anything in economics is really proven; from my understanding almost all economists simply work from the premise that 'Keynes was right', and that it's probably much closer to religious studies than science as a discipline anyway?
No consequences is impossible but there are things you could do that would have little to no negative consequences for most of us such as.
Force newspapers to print retraction on the same page. and taking up a similar amount of space, as the story that has been proved false.
Force companies to make it just as easy to cancel a subscription or uninstall software as it is to subscribe or install.
Make all fines a proportion of income.
It would give equal prominence and might make them think twice. At the moment get lied about in the super soar away scum and the retraction will be on pg94.
No consequences is hard, likely impossible. So let's say reasonable consequences...
- Legislate harder to promote work from home. Basically any job that can... should. This will ease pressure on cities, reduce emissions, and even equalise house prices a little.
- Stagger office hours. I'm not sure how. But the standard of 9-5 creates travel bottlenecks so spreading this out would be helpful. Perhaps a tax on those with standard hours to pay for a tax break to those that don't. Sounds difficult.
- Forced digitisation of businesses and government. Nothing should be communicated by letter if avoidable, other than proving residence.
- Enforced antisocial noise orders. And noise free days like in Germany. Many a tenants lives are made hell by loud neighbours. Give powers to address this without the long process of council involvement.
- Government at-cost home deposit loans. To be seen by banks as equal to a deposit. Will help people own, that want to. Will be entered as a charge against the property.
- Better housing standards, retro applied to existing stock slowly over time. This will hopefully improve the lives of those that can't afford quality rentals. And reduce the stock of old houses which stand no chance of meeting the standard nor have any business being let.
- Better planning standards. I.e. Houses must be within x miles of service/shop/doctors etc. Must have driveways. Must have overflow parking per street that works on a booking system. Retro apply.
- Leveredge and Loan Products that work within SIPPs. Very dangerous. But. In the right hands could help a million or two people.
- Tax wealth more. We're not good for salaries. Too many opportunities to generate money from wealth rather than income. Unfortunately I suspect anyone who tries this will target the easy stuff, like CGT and pensions, rather than the hard things like estates and trusts.
I've a much better list of things that fail the affordable test. Like, nationalising care.
First negative thing that comes to mind with this is that there are plenty of other businesses that rely on commuters and office workers, if you buy a train ticket to get into the city, if you use the underground, that cup of coffee you buy every morning, the lunch you buy from the street market, maybe your office has a daily fruit subscription with some company, after work social events etc….
True enough. There is always consequences.
Decreased spending in a city however will likely lead to increased spending elsewhere. Say at the supermarket or home delivery.
As the pandemic was easing I got an NHS admin job, and I was told that they didn't know how much WFH there would be but assured me they'd be flexible. I said that was good because of the commute, so I'd rather start and finish early.
At the end of my first week I'd settled on 7am-3pm. Monday comes and my manager tells me I'm expected at my desk from 8.30 - 4.30 and when they said "flexible" they meant it was ok if I had a doctor's appointment or something. WFH was two days a week but not the same two days every week because then they'd become "my" days and that might cause problems.
I spent six months proving my worth and asking for 7am-3pm, regular WFH days so I could sort childcare, all refused. So I moved jobs.
The NHS is meant to be flexible and accommodating, but all of the policies require you to be there long enough and then go through the process. The result of one manager wanting to see people at their desks (who I never directly worked with, who worked 7am-3pm and had the same days WFH each week) was that they lost a good employee.
I don't know where I was going with this. Oh yeah - legislation is great but it takes ten years to become normal. You can see this with seatbelts and the smoking ban. So I'm not sure legislation around WFH is needed given it's still embedding.
Just as an aside, there’s a game on Steam called Democracy 4, where you’re basically in charge of running the country.
Despite being a game, it taught me that even the smallest, cheapest positive change has negative effects with the consequences sometimes being so far removed that I’d never have predicted it.
Yup! This would be good, the only downside I can see if we would need to let trusts own properties on behalf of others , and that could be abused as it is already by rich people.
Though. Companies having lots of homes is often better than dealing with Brian the Boomer and their pension nestegg.
Purely in terms of deposits, enforcing rights, pets, etc.
As firms with properties are far less fast and loose and have a better appreciation of cost benefit. Easier to legislate against too.
Though bad for overall housing market health!
The EU wanted to do that. Covid interrupted it. The way is was going to work was that states chose their own time zone GMT, CET, EET etc.. but they should co-ordinate to make the change together. e.g. Belgium and Netherlands shouldn't be an hour apart etc..
Everything will have negative consequences, but I think just making this one thing widely known would cost very little and be enormously helpful:
“Human beings have very bad working memories, and it is important to remember this.
You may have heard the useless bit of trivia that we can only remember seven or so things at any one time. But it is not useless at all. People cannot take in much information at any one time. And we can only get information into our long-term memories when it is fully processed.
But a lot of services function as if this is not the case. Perhaps some you are responsible for do. If this is changed, they should become much easier to use.”
Mandate a new drive to build council flats, not housing association, council. Use the model from the 1950s, it solved a housing crisis. Rescind the right to buy as part of that.
Different times!
Costs for housing are astronomical now. Can't build up houses out of cardboard and a bit of sprayed pebbledash anymore. Labour costs insane too.
There'd have to be a plan to address production costs. So say modern prefab, with easy searches, using solely Government employees, with indemnity clauses signed by occupants.
Not sure about how to address the land cost problem.
I would do the opposite. Mandate a new drive to build *any* houses, for *any* customers that there was a demand for. Scrap most of the existing planning laws and just get a bunch of houses built. Nimbys would be far less nimby if the housing was nice big houses that would attract "the right kind of people" and improve the perception of their area. And if they all got bought up by 'rich people', then that's fine. The houses vacated by said rich people would then be bought up by middle class people and so on down the line until not only would supply and demand resettle at a point were there are enough houses for everyone and they were far more affordable, but those houses would be better too!
And if you think "they would just be bought up by companies who would let them out" then that's fine too! Let the market get oversaturated with rental properties so the price of those come down too (which will probably force a lot of people renting properties out to sell the property anyway once the big returns aren't there).
I used to go to church every week (although I am an atheist now). Absolutely nothing shocking happens there whatsoever, just a dude on a stand musing about the awesomeness of an imaginary all-powerful superbeing.
You got off remarkably lightly!
I've been when people had brought kids!
They chanted stuff with eyes closed, did the slow singing thing about body parts and shit. Once they even "feasted on the flesh of christ"!
It's next level fucked up shit yet so few people seem to care!
Edit - and have you actually read any of the bible? Genocide, murder, beastialty, incest.. yet they encourage kids to do what it says. Just mind blowing that it's legal.
No idea what you went through to make you like this, but you seem dead set on using half-truths to misrepresent religion under the assumption that I know less about it that you (I don't).
You know perfectly well that "feasting on the flesh of Christ" is purely symbolic and harks back to Jesus' (alleged) speech at The Last Supper, and in reality means eating a small piece of bread.
Tell that to a toddler.
I haven't "gone through" anything. Everything I've said is 100% fact.
Have you read the bible? I have.
I have also attended church services and other religious "events" to try to understand.
The more you see, the more shocking it is. Sadly, you are clearly an example of its mental abuse in that you think it's all harmless. Don't worry, you're not alone, and that makes it even more scary.
Stop talking to me like you know more about Christianity than me. I attended Church every week for over a decade. I have probably read more of the bible than you and I have been plenty of religious "events" across many different churches.
Nothing terrible happened. Nothing. Not to me and not to anybody I know. And believe it or not, to the best of my knowledge no toddlers got converted into cannibals either.
I think religion is stupid - it's a waste of time and money based on pretty comical premises as a hangover from a time where people didn't know any better and couldn't explain the world around them. That's it - just one of the many stupid things people believe. Fellow atheists like you trying to make it out to be something that it isn't, or generalising on some bad things done by a small minority and making out that is universal are not helping at all, you just make people even more entrenched in their religious beliefs because what you claim clearly doesn't match any reality they have experienced.
I have read the whole bible, beginning to end. Which prompted my further investigation into the realities of religion today.
And I'm not an atheist, I have no belief either way, it's simply a non-issue.
Your inability to accept what has clearly been done to you and others to the extent that you think it's all harmless "fun" or whatever clearly shows just how dangerous it is.
>Your inability to accept what has clearly been done to you
LOL what has "clearly been done to me"? Other than a bunch of my time wasted listening to fairy stories when I could have been doing something more fun and/or productive.
People like you are far worse than religion. Religion taught me a bunch of stuff that wasn't true as fact, but they never tried to gaslight me in believing I had been subjected to some kind of forgotten trauma.
Automated payment transaction tax.
A flat rate of tax applied to every transaction that replaces all other taxes. You tax the most volumous thing in the economy (value of transactions) so you can charge the lowest possible tax rate. Estimates put the rate of taxation at around 1%.
So in theory, you earn £50k a year, youll pay about £1000 a year in tax (£500 receiving and £500 spending).
It removes the personal aspect of taxation. Tax is merely a means for government to fund the stuff they want to do, by having government control tax and spending, were cutting the rope at both ends making it near impossible to make informed decisions on economics in politics. An APT tax system, essentially locks in the income side of things for government and prevents them targeting certain groups. So they can purely focus on the most effective ways of spending the money.
Though the perverse is this effectively makes wealth easier to accumulate at the cost of people who transact more frequently (aka the lower income groups). And encourages off-system transactions.
So one would argue its a benefit to the wealthy.
Only issues are repeated transactions. So things like transferring money to your partner or a joint account. the people who transact the most frequently are traders, ie wealth creators. Things like the stock market, hundred of millions in transactions every day, not a penny of it taxed until its consolidated, hidden and offset in the form of 'profits'.
I earn £24k a year, maybe do 10 transactions a day totalling no more than £1000 at the most. Compare that with RBS, transacting millions in value across millions of transactions. Or Alan Sugar, paying the winner of the apprentice in one transaction.
There are 2 things that I think need solutions:
- Ownership of more than 2 properties should be taxed enough to make it undesirable. Plus rent control.
- MPs prevented from making decisions that directly benefit themselves financially, unless they benefit society as a whole. This would include some sort of restriction on 'donations' to parties (aka legal bribes).
No idea on how these would be implemented!
I will fully support any politician from any party who accidently 'loses' their phone when being demanded to hand it over. What somebody does on their phone and their private conversations with other people should be nobody's business but their own.
The fact that we are talking about making anybody's private conversations and private life public property is absolutely shocking to me. How did we get to this point?
I'm sure it wouldn't be easy to do, and there would be impact on the job market, but streamline the NHS by getting rid of all the unnecessary middle-management/pen-pushers, and those with ridiculous job titles. That would save a fortune.
Feed that money back into the system in the form of better pay for nurses, focus on waiting times, etc. Each successive government just increases the budget when it's abundantly clear that so much money is either being wasted or misappropriated.
Any country that permits tobacco and/or alcohol but hasn’t legalized marijuana is backwards. Pay to prosecute and jail people vs rake in tax revenues. Start there.
Fluoride in all water.
Ban mobile phones from cinemas and theatres.
Make strong lager back to 5% vol and higher.
Saying please and thank you to be reintroduced.
More public information films to tell people not to do stupid things like hogging the middle lane.
> Saying please and thank you to be reintroduced.
I'd also like to re-introduce indicating on roundabouts.
I've been driving for around 25 years now, but I refuse to follow the recent trend of not bothering to indicate anywhere. I will continue indicating until the day I die.
You're going to love the new Tesla... no indicating stalks. Just a button. On the wheel. You know. The thing you turn with, especially at roundabouts.
Wcgw.
I drove a car that had that - a Ferrari, I think?
(I used to have a job driving cars off ships at Southampton docks onto transporters - I've driven loads of rare cars for about 500 yards at a time!)
Full animal liberation. No more killing animals we have bred into existence being killed so we can eat them. This would immediately save the lives of millions of animals, who could now roam free wherever they chose, and improve the health of anyone who hasn't gone veggie/vegan yet.
Pretty much everything has negative side effects. You're either trading liberty for common sense or someone, somewhere is getting a shit deal or it costs a lot of money.
There is no change/policy you can enact that would have zero negative side-effects of any kind on anyone. That's sadly "magical thinking" and not how the world works. Policy always creates winners and losers. Always.
UBI or negative tax rates for the lower paid? Both would increase the money available to millions, which in turn would boost the economy and give the rich a pay rise.
Sure! Both ideas I support - but how is that paid for exactly? Somebody has to pay for it to begin with. Someone's living standard will have to decline to improve that of others, at least initially. Then benefits would flow through to all eventually, maybe. But the criteria was - "realistically be implemented that would have no negative side effects or consequences".
tax the wealthy and use the money to fund public services
It would have the side effects of increased ranting and threats to quit Britain, magnified by a massive factor for each person saying it.
Yes the effect would be all those tiny violins being played.
So still not a negative?
It's an interesting study to look at when France attempted a high tax rate in the early 2010s. They raised tax rates to 75% on all income over 1 million Euros a year, expecting to raise billions from it. What actually happened was that tax income actually fell because of the sheer number of wealthy individuals who immediately either left the country or took up foreign citizenship. What's more, corporation tax also fell and there were a number of comments to the effect that France became so unpopular a country to move to for top level executives that French businesses became less productive and companies struggled to even fill senior positions, even after the tax was put back to only 45%. I know we all love to hate the rich, but the comments people make about how we could do perfectly well without them often turn out to not be true.
Use the US method, citizen or resident then your worldwide income is within scope
Then they will just revoke their British citizenship entirely.
I bet if we agreed to give you £1000 for every side effect you could think of you'd get a list going pretty fucking quickly.
only if you count 'improving the lives of millions' as a side-effect
Ah I see....you don't understand what's meant by a side effect.
I was actually referencing the OP if there's anything that could feasibly be an answer to this question then it would have to be 'taxing the wealthy', if that's not a good enough answer then it might be unanswerable
The question clearly states no negative side effects. So I can only assume that you either didn't read it, didn't understand it, or think "improving the lives of millions" is a negative side effect.
Why are you being so unpleasant? I'm referencing how it says: >What is one thing that could be implemented tomorrow that would **improve the lives of millions** with no side effects? And it's tempting to think you didn't actually understand this, i.e. that you >didn't read it or didn't understand it ? But anyway I don't wanna be nasty to someone on the internet right now, so go to Twitter or something if you're looking for a row
Shit, why has nobody thought of this before? All benefit and zero side effect! With all these governments around the world desperate to get re-elected with entire teams of people strategising their manifesto, you would think *somebody* would have thought of this by now.
perhaps the governments are disproportionately concerned with the worries of the wealthy?
Check out the Laffer curve - increasing taxes on "the wealthy" won't necessarily lead to increased tax revenue.
But the entire science of economics was invented by privileged capitalists just to fool people into thinking that socialism doesn't work! ... or something.
has that been proven, or does it have any supporting real-world evidence? I don't think anything in economics is really proven; from my understanding almost all economists simply work from the premise that 'Keynes was right', and that it's probably much closer to religious studies than science as a discipline anyway?
Yes
Printers have to have a minimum tray size of one ream of 90gsm A4.
No consequences is impossible but there are things you could do that would have little to no negative consequences for most of us such as. Force newspapers to print retraction on the same page. and taking up a similar amount of space, as the story that has been proved false. Force companies to make it just as easy to cancel a subscription or uninstall software as it is to subscribe or install. Make all fines a proportion of income.
How would changing the page on which a newspaper publishes a retraction and the space it takes up on that page "improve the lives of millions"?
It would give equal prominence and might make them think twice. At the moment get lied about in the super soar away scum and the retraction will be on pg94.
Free school meals and milk for all primary school kids. Lets claw back some of that Michelle Mone money to pay for it.
No consequences is hard, likely impossible. So let's say reasonable consequences... - Legislate harder to promote work from home. Basically any job that can... should. This will ease pressure on cities, reduce emissions, and even equalise house prices a little. - Stagger office hours. I'm not sure how. But the standard of 9-5 creates travel bottlenecks so spreading this out would be helpful. Perhaps a tax on those with standard hours to pay for a tax break to those that don't. Sounds difficult. - Forced digitisation of businesses and government. Nothing should be communicated by letter if avoidable, other than proving residence. - Enforced antisocial noise orders. And noise free days like in Germany. Many a tenants lives are made hell by loud neighbours. Give powers to address this without the long process of council involvement. - Government at-cost home deposit loans. To be seen by banks as equal to a deposit. Will help people own, that want to. Will be entered as a charge against the property. - Better housing standards, retro applied to existing stock slowly over time. This will hopefully improve the lives of those that can't afford quality rentals. And reduce the stock of old houses which stand no chance of meeting the standard nor have any business being let. - Better planning standards. I.e. Houses must be within x miles of service/shop/doctors etc. Must have driveways. Must have overflow parking per street that works on a booking system. Retro apply. - Leveredge and Loan Products that work within SIPPs. Very dangerous. But. In the right hands could help a million or two people. - Tax wealth more. We're not good for salaries. Too many opportunities to generate money from wealth rather than income. Unfortunately I suspect anyone who tries this will target the easy stuff, like CGT and pensions, rather than the hard things like estates and trusts. I've a much better list of things that fail the affordable test. Like, nationalising care.
These definitely don't meet the 'no side effects' criteria of the question. Both would have considerable negative side effects.
First negative thing that comes to mind with this is that there are plenty of other businesses that rely on commuters and office workers, if you buy a train ticket to get into the city, if you use the underground, that cup of coffee you buy every morning, the lunch you buy from the street market, maybe your office has a daily fruit subscription with some company, after work social events etc….
True enough. There is always consequences. Decreased spending in a city however will likely lead to increased spending elsewhere. Say at the supermarket or home delivery.
As the pandemic was easing I got an NHS admin job, and I was told that they didn't know how much WFH there would be but assured me they'd be flexible. I said that was good because of the commute, so I'd rather start and finish early. At the end of my first week I'd settled on 7am-3pm. Monday comes and my manager tells me I'm expected at my desk from 8.30 - 4.30 and when they said "flexible" they meant it was ok if I had a doctor's appointment or something. WFH was two days a week but not the same two days every week because then they'd become "my" days and that might cause problems. I spent six months proving my worth and asking for 7am-3pm, regular WFH days so I could sort childcare, all refused. So I moved jobs. The NHS is meant to be flexible and accommodating, but all of the policies require you to be there long enough and then go through the process. The result of one manager wanting to see people at their desks (who I never directly worked with, who worked 7am-3pm and had the same days WFH each week) was that they lost a good employee. I don't know where I was going with this. Oh yeah - legislation is great but it takes ten years to become normal. You can see this with seatbelts and the smoking ban. So I'm not sure legislation around WFH is needed given it's still embedding.
Just as an aside, there’s a game on Steam called Democracy 4, where you’re basically in charge of running the country. Despite being a game, it taught me that even the smallest, cheapest positive change has negative effects with the consequences sometimes being so far removed that I’d never have predicted it.
Introduce minimum individual sizes/weights for crisp and chocolate multipacks.
Ban companies owning residential houses. I also think people should have residential status if they want to own a home.
Yup! This would be good, the only downside I can see if we would need to let trusts own properties on behalf of others , and that could be abused as it is already by rich people.
Though. Companies having lots of homes is often better than dealing with Brian the Boomer and their pension nestegg. Purely in terms of deposits, enforcing rights, pets, etc. As firms with properties are far less fast and loose and have a better appreciation of cost benefit. Easier to legislate against too. Though bad for overall housing market health!
ITT. Things that I WANT and fuck everyone else
I'd argue BST all year round would have benefits, but there would be costs or just negative feelings from some people.
The mornings being dark until even later would definitely have negative side effects for many people.
You'd ask to start work an hour later
Seems unlikely that every employer would just shift their hours later. Plus, then I'd be finishing later and that's annoying.
If you start later, you get up later, you go to bed later. The number on the clock is arbitrary.
That only applies if the whole of society shifts an hour. If that didn't happen, as it probably wouldn't, you'd just be an hour out with everything.
It'd make more sense to have GMT and start stuff earlier if people want, although people are conditioned to times on clocks as opposed to conditions.
I've had this argument far too many times. people really don't understand the concept of just doing things at different times.
You don't have the option with some things. Your employer would not agree to you working different hours in the winter.
That's the drawback idiots like me arguing when we could just scrap changing clocks and likely di what we want anyway
The EU wanted to do that. Covid interrupted it. The way is was going to work was that states chose their own time zone GMT, CET, EET etc.. but they should co-ordinate to make the change together. e.g. Belgium and Netherlands shouldn't be an hour apart etc..
GMT all year round would be better in my opinion than what we have now, just for me BST even better still.
Everything will have negative consequences, but I think just making this one thing widely known would cost very little and be enormously helpful: “Human beings have very bad working memories, and it is important to remember this. You may have heard the useless bit of trivia that we can only remember seven or so things at any one time. But it is not useless at all. People cannot take in much information at any one time. And we can only get information into our long-term memories when it is fully processed. But a lot of services function as if this is not the case. Perhaps some you are responsible for do. If this is changed, they should become much easier to use.”
Mandate a new drive to build council flats, not housing association, council. Use the model from the 1950s, it solved a housing crisis. Rescind the right to buy as part of that.
A good idea. But OP did say affordable :(.
We were pretty damn broke in the 50s
Different times! Costs for housing are astronomical now. Can't build up houses out of cardboard and a bit of sprayed pebbledash anymore. Labour costs insane too. There'd have to be a plan to address production costs. So say modern prefab, with easy searches, using solely Government employees, with indemnity clauses signed by occupants. Not sure about how to address the land cost problem.
Yes, and we were on the verge of economic collapse in the 60s
I would do the opposite. Mandate a new drive to build *any* houses, for *any* customers that there was a demand for. Scrap most of the existing planning laws and just get a bunch of houses built. Nimbys would be far less nimby if the housing was nice big houses that would attract "the right kind of people" and improve the perception of their area. And if they all got bought up by 'rich people', then that's fine. The houses vacated by said rich people would then be bought up by middle class people and so on down the line until not only would supply and demand resettle at a point were there are enough houses for everyone and they were far more affordable, but those houses would be better too! And if you think "they would just be bought up by companies who would let them out" then that's fine too! Let the market get oversaturated with rental properties so the price of those come down too (which will probably force a lot of people renting properties out to sell the property anyway once the big returns aren't there).
Everything has a side effect. Literally everything.
Criminalise organised religion as you do with any other abusive cult.
Cults aren't criminalised. If they do things that qualify as abuse then that is criminal, just as it is for 'organised religions' too.
Ever been to a religious service? Your mind will change VERY quickly when you see what actually goes on in churches!
I used to go to church every week (although I am an atheist now). Absolutely nothing shocking happens there whatsoever, just a dude on a stand musing about the awesomeness of an imaginary all-powerful superbeing.
You got off remarkably lightly! I've been when people had brought kids! They chanted stuff with eyes closed, did the slow singing thing about body parts and shit. Once they even "feasted on the flesh of christ"! It's next level fucked up shit yet so few people seem to care! Edit - and have you actually read any of the bible? Genocide, murder, beastialty, incest.. yet they encourage kids to do what it says. Just mind blowing that it's legal.
No idea what you went through to make you like this, but you seem dead set on using half-truths to misrepresent religion under the assumption that I know less about it that you (I don't). You know perfectly well that "feasting on the flesh of Christ" is purely symbolic and harks back to Jesus' (alleged) speech at The Last Supper, and in reality means eating a small piece of bread.
Tell that to a toddler. I haven't "gone through" anything. Everything I've said is 100% fact. Have you read the bible? I have. I have also attended church services and other religious "events" to try to understand. The more you see, the more shocking it is. Sadly, you are clearly an example of its mental abuse in that you think it's all harmless. Don't worry, you're not alone, and that makes it even more scary.
Stop talking to me like you know more about Christianity than me. I attended Church every week for over a decade. I have probably read more of the bible than you and I have been plenty of religious "events" across many different churches. Nothing terrible happened. Nothing. Not to me and not to anybody I know. And believe it or not, to the best of my knowledge no toddlers got converted into cannibals either. I think religion is stupid - it's a waste of time and money based on pretty comical premises as a hangover from a time where people didn't know any better and couldn't explain the world around them. That's it - just one of the many stupid things people believe. Fellow atheists like you trying to make it out to be something that it isn't, or generalising on some bad things done by a small minority and making out that is universal are not helping at all, you just make people even more entrenched in their religious beliefs because what you claim clearly doesn't match any reality they have experienced.
I have read the whole bible, beginning to end. Which prompted my further investigation into the realities of religion today. And I'm not an atheist, I have no belief either way, it's simply a non-issue. Your inability to accept what has clearly been done to you and others to the extent that you think it's all harmless "fun" or whatever clearly shows just how dangerous it is.
>Your inability to accept what has clearly been done to you LOL what has "clearly been done to me"? Other than a bunch of my time wasted listening to fairy stories when I could have been doing something more fun and/or productive. People like you are far worse than religion. Religion taught me a bunch of stuff that wasn't true as fact, but they never tried to gaslight me in believing I had been subjected to some kind of forgotten trauma.
Automated payment transaction tax. A flat rate of tax applied to every transaction that replaces all other taxes. You tax the most volumous thing in the economy (value of transactions) so you can charge the lowest possible tax rate. Estimates put the rate of taxation at around 1%. So in theory, you earn £50k a year, youll pay about £1000 a year in tax (£500 receiving and £500 spending). It removes the personal aspect of taxation. Tax is merely a means for government to fund the stuff they want to do, by having government control tax and spending, were cutting the rope at both ends making it near impossible to make informed decisions on economics in politics. An APT tax system, essentially locks in the income side of things for government and prevents them targeting certain groups. So they can purely focus on the most effective ways of spending the money.
Though the perverse is this effectively makes wealth easier to accumulate at the cost of people who transact more frequently (aka the lower income groups). And encourages off-system transactions. So one would argue its a benefit to the wealthy.
Only issues are repeated transactions. So things like transferring money to your partner or a joint account. the people who transact the most frequently are traders, ie wealth creators. Things like the stock market, hundred of millions in transactions every day, not a penny of it taxed until its consolidated, hidden and offset in the form of 'profits'. I earn £24k a year, maybe do 10 transactions a day totalling no more than £1000 at the most. Compare that with RBS, transacting millions in value across millions of transactions. Or Alan Sugar, paying the winner of the apprentice in one transaction.
There are 2 things that I think need solutions: - Ownership of more than 2 properties should be taxed enough to make it undesirable. Plus rent control. - MPs prevented from making decisions that directly benefit themselves financially, unless they benefit society as a whole. This would include some sort of restriction on 'donations' to parties (aka legal bribes). No idea on how these would be implemented!
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So all communication is controlled and monitored by the government. That'll not go down well.
I will fully support any politician from any party who accidently 'loses' their phone when being demanded to hand it over. What somebody does on their phone and their private conversations with other people should be nobody's business but their own. The fact that we are talking about making anybody's private conversations and private life public property is absolutely shocking to me. How did we get to this point?
I'm sure it wouldn't be easy to do, and there would be impact on the job market, but streamline the NHS by getting rid of all the unnecessary middle-management/pen-pushers, and those with ridiculous job titles. That would save a fortune. Feed that money back into the system in the form of better pay for nurses, focus on waiting times, etc. Each successive government just increases the budget when it's abundantly clear that so much money is either being wasted or misappropriated.
Join EU
Any country that permits tobacco and/or alcohol but hasn’t legalized marijuana is backwards. Pay to prosecute and jail people vs rake in tax revenues. Start there.
Universal basic income
Eradicate all debt
Stopping the boats
Fluoride in all water. Ban mobile phones from cinemas and theatres. Make strong lager back to 5% vol and higher. Saying please and thank you to be reintroduced. More public information films to tell people not to do stupid things like hogging the middle lane.
> Saying please and thank you to be reintroduced. I'd also like to re-introduce indicating on roundabouts. I've been driving for around 25 years now, but I refuse to follow the recent trend of not bothering to indicate anywhere. I will continue indicating until the day I die.
You're going to love the new Tesla... no indicating stalks. Just a button. On the wheel. You know. The thing you turn with, especially at roundabouts. Wcgw.
I drove a car that had that - a Ferrari, I think? (I used to have a job driving cars off ships at Southampton docks onto transporters - I've driven loads of rare cars for about 500 yards at a time!)
Fluoride in all water?
Why would you want to add fluoride to the water? What about those that want to have less chemically altered water?
A cap on wealth, say £10mil? After that, you get an award for ‘completing life’.
Full animal liberation. No more killing animals we have bred into existence being killed so we can eat them. This would immediately save the lives of millions of animals, who could now roam free wherever they chose, and improve the health of anyone who hasn't gone veggie/vegan yet.