Thought of the Day - Indigenous Hippy Population

Postulate: "Third world countries do not breed, nor can they sustain, indigenous populations of hippies. They can, however, easily support hippies bearing currency from first world countries."

This came up in conversation because one of our co-workers, who they consider a hippy because he attends events such Burning Man and used to live in Maine, was having problems with a Philippine bond trade today. And at some point, they got to talking about whether hippies have a language of their own. So they put two and two together and called me up to ask whether the Philippines has hippies... to which I responded with the above.

On a related note, we got to talking about whether the progressive tax system was fair. On first blush (or 'first Bush', as Freud wanted me to slip), I considered it ok and decided to take the side of it being on the whole, a positive thing to have in place. My argument ended up being a bit contrived, in retrospect. I put forth that in the end, the wealthy person derives more benefit from the government than the less wealthy. For example, the well maintained road network or the peace created by the armed forces all nurture an economy that ultimately benefits the wealthier person more. Another way to look at it, if the poor person were to get a tax cut, the wealthy person which actually benefit because almost inevitably, that money would be chanelled back into the economy which means more profits for corporations which a wealthy person has a larger stake in, either through stocks or by being an executive. I don't think you could say the same thing if you flipped it around and gave the wealthy person the cut.

His argument, which I now think I buy, rested on the distinction between what is fair and what is good for society. It is certainly good for society if the rich's wealth was redistributed to clean up the inner cities, fund the arts, and finance hippy lifestyle. However, is that really fair? If I work harder or somehow created a situation that allowed me to be compensated more (how compensation is determined is a whole 'nother can of worms), is it fair for me to be penalized? Is it good? Maybe not. Or maybe it is good -- if that wealth was distributed more, maybe it would cause people to spend more which would drive the economy and make me richer in the end? But that was my argument against the system.

And so it turns out that my argument really was just an argument that the progressive tax system is "good". I couldn't really make a convincing case for how it was fair. Taxing more as you earn more is really a toned down form of socialism. Doing what's good for society as a whole, rather than the idea that what benefits the individual benefits society. Tony 1, Ed 0.

(Tony, by the way, deserves credit for coining the term 'indigenous hippy population').