Taxing the rich isn't going to lower our cost of living, the changes needed are far more systemic. Taxes don't decide whether the government can afford to do something outside of the local level. To solve that problem, you need to remove them from power and ensure they cannot take it back.

If you want a quick bandage for the problem without addressing that last point, you're better off implementing fixed, affordable prices for necessities such as food, housing, utilities, healthcare, etc. so they can't be used to price gouge.

This is obviously not sufficient by itself to address all of the problems and it's almost certain it would never be widely implemented by the government of a liberal democracy. Cutting into corporate profits is unacceptable.

Until people realize that they must forcibly take back the power to define how their countries are run (not necessarily violently, but let's be honest, those in power don't even respond to peaceful protests without violence) and then begin to take actions that actually weaken those in charge, we will continue to live under their thumb and suffer the treatment they deem most beneficial to themselves.

One step that can be taken to weaken them is to organize your community to create alternatives to the institutional programs they expect you to rely upon. Develop programs similar to the breakfast programs of the Black Panthers. Organize your workplaces and local communities into workplace unions (not business unions!) and tenant unions organized, run, and composed of the members who will be covered. Force them to negotiate with you and be ruthless at the negotiation table.

Show the people that they DO have power and from there you can begin to build a movement to take it back.

I think depopulation is the best answer to global warming, but it has serious issues for economies.

Fewer births translates into an aging population. Now you have fewer young people doing the business of the nation and more old people requiring support.

To put the icing on top, now the tax base is shrunken. So how do we support the elderly? Hell, how to we provide any social safety nets?

Taxing the wealthy is a huge part of the solution, but it's not the panacea many on here make it out to be. Fortunes rise and fall, not a stable thing to base economic policy on, that requires a predictable tax base. We still need workers, and many jobs are "youth only". How many old garbage men do you see?

Some economic reform will also be necessary at some point.

Are you thinking something like !ubi@leminal.space?

capitalist hellscape

It's hilarious seeing Elon Musk taking up the issue of plummeting birth rates, while simultaneously saying people who work for him who won't commit to giving their life to his companies and sleeping in the office are lazy losers.

capitalist hellscape

Doesn't exist. In fact, the people in the capitalist countries life far better lifes than those poor individuals in communistic ones. And additional, countries with large social-security-system like Germany or France has the same problem, even greater ones.

But the economy! It won't survive without neverending growth.

"Overpopulation" is bunk. We have the resources to sustain 8 billion people, (or more, really) just not 8 billion Americans. But when people say there's too many people, it's usually a eugenicist argument that really means "there's too many people in those poor countries."

yeah our government shut down abortion rights and is trying to make contraception and divorce illegal. that's the way we're "fixing" it here.

1. They do address
2. This not the cause anyway.

Oh cool. Forgot have a futurology.today instance.