Double your salary or better society?

Haha what the * is money when your dead?? A better society any day of the week.

 

Money doesn't necessarily buy you happiness and I think there are a lot of people who are greedy and don't need large sums of money to live. If I did agree with this option then I would be contradicting myself with my opinions on Thatcher.

I would go for £35k option and to be honest, I like to see people who work their arses off in low paid jobs reaping some rewards from society.

 

Tbh it all depends in what you are accustomed with.

Me personally having spent most my days going from one kinda * paying job to another, 35k a year right now would * feel like I'm earning 70k

Edit : I forgot to answer the question lol having a kid now I would love a better society for her to grow up in without a doubt.

If I was single etc i would go for the 70k get money * * na wha am saying fo sho!

 

I'd opt for the bigger salary for the sake of my family.

I'd stick out living in a rubbish society for a decade or so before moving abroad to raise children.

 

Option 1--No brainer:bbpd:

 

Agree 100%

Some man. I tip my hat to you


Myself Option 1 of course. I would love a society where everyone felt valued no matter what kind of contribution they made. A happy society and a fairer society in a proper sense, not the New Labour "fair for all (my rich mates)" kind of way either.

 

I would honestly go for 2 and I put it the rest of yous that you're lying :icon_mrgreen:

 

Why not work for £70k a year and then give half of it to the charities of your choice? That way you can help who you think deserves it the most while still earning a level of income that you think is fair?

Arguably if people followed that rationale then there would be less need for government intervention. If everyone gave to those less fortunate you wouldnt need to fight against the government - the opinion of the government would just become less significant.

One of the reasons I vote to double my salary is that I simply dont believe my extra contribution would go to who I want it to go to, or those who I feel deserve it. If I do it myself then I take control of who benefits from my work.

 

Anyone that voted for the higher salary IS A *

 

Hardly, you have no idea what individuals would do with the extra money they earn, they may well give some of it to charity.

I do not trust the government with anyone's money, i wouldn't trust them to use the money wisely to help the worse off.

I would take 70k and as Sween said i would give money to charity, so i know who i am giving it too and that it will actually make a difference.

 

This is what I was going to say

 

Bull * *. You know as well as i do only something ridiculous like 20p in a pound actually gets to the charity.
What your saying is you might throw some crumbs to the people that might deserve something (and very few charities actually contribute directly to society as a whole like policing, social housing, parklands and safe places for kids to play) whilst sat in your castle having your cake and eating it.

 

You hardly sit in a castle on 70k a year, its about you and your family first. You don't have to donate money to charity, you can donate items, clothes, electronics, food.

Things like that will have a better chance of positively affecting people's lives than giving a corrupt government more money.

Don't try and paint me as a 'bad' one because i would choose 70k, most people would and i have absolutely no qualms about doing so, if you would genuinely choose 35k over 70k then good man. I have very little trust in government to do anything right, would rather give personally.

 

I'm not taking a pay cut for any body:icon_mrgreen:

I would take the £70k & help my nearest & dearest directly.

i would employ my mam & dad on the minimum wage as gardener, driver,
chief cook & bottle washer.20 hours between them.

I would let my wife pack in her job & do my ironing & shower settertuper.
On minimum wage.20 hours a week

My two children could do the decorating & any other menial tasks eg. shopping cleaning my shous etc.20 hours between them.

This would mean i have to scrape by on about £40k a year but
at least i could sleep sound at night (if my beds made right & turned down) knowing i have shared my money out with my nearest & dearest

 

How generous of you.

 

Well firstly it depends on what charity. You could donate it to a whole host of local charity groups where you know every penny goes to the charity if that is your issue. Donating £35k a year you could even set up your own charity. I dont undertstand why you have such a negative idea of people actively giving to charity while a positive one in the government taking money off people in taxation and spending it on what they like?

Many charities contribute directly to society as a whole. Charities like Shelter contribute to housing issues, health charities obviously contribute to health, environment charities contribute to local green projects, and kids charities help kids.

And £70k a year wouldnt buy you a castle. It would buy you a nice standard of living for yourself and your family. And if you have cake it is nice to share it, but it is still your cake.

On a side note,

I wonder how many people who voted yes currently earn above £35k? The reason I ask is that I think peoples attitude to giving in theory would differ based on how much money the question is hypothetically talking about against what they currently get. It is far easier to say Id give the money away when you arent currently earning £35k or above and you do not see yourself as likely to earn that much, but it would be a lot tougher to actually take a pay cut to bring you down to £35k (or any hypothetical level). If the question was flipped to regard taking a pay cut to help support the worlds poorest, I wonder if the poll would look different?

 

Option 1. Although, I clicked 2 by mistake.

 

Maybe a better way of phrasing your question would have been to put it like do you double your salary at the expense of public services or have better public services and no salary increase?

 

Thankfully there are plenty people who don't put a monetary value on happiness, or we'd be in a sorry state. Sadly most people are materialistic and shallow and base their happiness on their bank balance, when the reality is the humblest people are often the happiest.

It's all about contentment and living within your means. Are you happy with a 40 inch tele or do ye need to have the biggest available?

My dads biggest regret in life is working away from home to earn more money when he could've worked for less and spent more time with his family. Granted, he only realised this in his latter years, but it's something that i will never forget. I will never put money before the things i value most.

 

Was completely gobsmacked by UncleHo's vote until I reached the end of the thread and saw his explanation.

For me, this isn't even a choice, the answer is just obvious. Like many here £35k would mean approximately tripling my wage, which is the only complicating factor, but in fact the question would have been as easy if the question had been a choice between £15k and £75k. A more difficult question would be a choice between staying on my current wage in a fairer society or £75k in an unfair one, but only relatively speaking, the answer is still obvious.

One thing I can state with confidence is that it is categorically not true that most people would take the £75k but say they wouldn't. Why do people hand in lost wallets, then? In any case, this is not about a choice between selfishness and "doing the right thing" (an extremely artificial distinction in this case); this is about thinking through consequences. Anybody that thinks that it is possible to live in a selfish society but insulate you and yours from its corrosive and damaging effects is kidding themselves. The poor get the worst of it to be sure, but life is worse for all in unfair, unequal societies.

Something else that is very striking is that several of the people who stated they would take the £75k have effectively stated (if I have understood correctly) that they don't trust enough to take option 1. They don't trust Government not to misspend the money (tbf, they have a point in this country- but that's more an argument for changing government), they believe that most people would really take option 2 (whilst claiming they'd take option 1). It is well-known that in societies where people don't trust each other, they are more selfish. This causes a vicious circle because if people are selfish, why the * would you trust them (and if you don't trust them only a fool would be the only one not to be selfish)? This is the damage that has been done in this country by the media largely accepting the assumptions of neo-liberal economics, evolutionary psychology and other such ideologically loaded disciplines.

But the feedback loop can go the other way too. You only have to look at countries like Norway. People mostly trust each other, so their behaviour is informed more by a sense of fairness than of self-interest, which in turn makes it more rational to trust...

Would you rather live on £75k in the US, constantly worried about maintaining your relative wealth and handing on your privileged position to your kids (because certainly nobody would want their kids to be poor in such a place!), protecting them from the high crime levels, getting them a decent education etc; or on £35k in Norway, with no especially privileged position to have to defend (or fight to pass on to your kids), low crime levels so your kids are pretty safe, good education for all, a good society to live in even if you're poor (so you can let your kids follow their dreams wherever that takes them rather than worry about them becoming poor) etc?

For me it's just obvious. You may think I'm wrong, but I hope i've made clear that from a certain point of view option 1 seems totally rational and that this has nothing to do with pretending to be virtuous ands that it emphatically isn't true that 99% of people would take option 2 regardless of what they claim in public.

Finally (sorry this is so long-winded) ronven makes an excellent point in a brilliant satirical manner and I'm not going to try and copy that (I couldn't), but apologies to all the others who made the same points as me earlier in the thread. Some points are worth repeating.