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Originally Posted by punky
It depends, does he deserve a beer? There are a lot of people I am sure, can't afford a beer - do I have to go out and buy them all beers? What if my mate doesn't deserve a beer, do I still have to buy him a beer, even though I have more than him?
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He's
your mate, of course he deserves a beer
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Originally Posted by punky
Fairer, isn't always better. Take the idea (which I support in principal only) for example. People say that gender shouldn't be a factor in car insurance premiums. Is it fair that women get charged less for car insurance, because they won the gender lottery? Of course not. Is it in everyone's best interests? Yes. If this enforced equality takes place, will men get a discount? No, women will pay more. Okay, until you look at the real world data. In quite a few households, men are the only source of income, and in the majority of the rest, they represent the bigger income. If this fairer car insurance system comes into affect, rather than improving men's lives, it will harm them because they'll be paying more, than the sexual-discriminatory previous system. Men and women will be paying more, and so be poorer. Noone wins, except for batchelors who will have their morale boosted a bit.
The idea is to burden as few a people as possible, not to burden everyone fairly. A fairer tax system that makes many poor people poorer. Is that a good idea?
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Insurance is based on average risk factors across a whole range of demographics. Men pay more because they, as a group, represent higher risk as based on historical precedent. Engineers, meanwhile, pay less than say marketing consultants, because they are a low risk group. All those factors, not just gender, come into play in determining a premium (I have an insurance company as a client). I'm sober now so I have no excuse for not really knowing what point I'm trying to respond to or make
I'm probably being a bit thick here but I can't get to grips with how income related tax can adversely affect the poor. As I understand under these propsals those that earn more will pay more, those that earn less will pay less. It's a tax which reflects ability to pay.