Big Big Question

What I wanna know…how will you help others? How widespread will that help be?

Let’s assume a substantial, after all applicable taxes, amount of $30 million. Who will you help and how (with a smattering of ‘why’)? Just family or a multitude of impoverished people?

Would you spend a year locked in Wal*Mart for $2 million? Condition: you are alone, with no contact with outside world (including news), but you do get electricity and full reign over all the goods in the store.

How do you handle panhandlers? Do you give cash? Do you feel guilty about it, either way? Are you actually helping, or just enabling, and is that a bad thing?

If I offered you a million dollars (two million? three million? five thousand?) would you let me have sex with your wife? (Or husband?). Don’t answer that. That’s not my question. (Well, you can answer in email if you want, but I can actually only spare about sixty bucks right now.)

My question is the opposite. What acts would you refuse to do, no matter what I offered you?

To make this interesting, let’s set a few caveats: no acts that cause permanent physical damage. I hope you won’t let me cut off your leg, no matter how much I offer you. No selling children into slavery or anything like that. I’m mostly interested in emotional boundaries.

Would you strip in front of your friends for money? Would you spend two years in solitary confinement for money? Would you eat dirt for money?

What wouldn’t you do for money?

Have you made any attempts to change the environment for the better? If so, what have you done? Do you bring your own bags to the grocery store, or use CFLs? Do you find it easy to live a greener life?

The internet will never be free of spam and shilling and astroturfers — human nature plus a profit motive is a pretty resilient thing — but are we past the worst of it, or are we just in the eye of the storm?

Are things going to get worse? What ground do you see the spammers making? Or are the hard problems solved and it’s all going to get better from here — gmail’s apt handling of email spam-filtering as a promising sign for the future?

Pet animals have a degree of maintenance cost built in that their owners implicitly accept up front: food, shots, routine and incidental medical care.  But now and then a pet gets seriously injured, or seriously ill, and the cost becomes a serious and likely emotionally wrenching question:  how much is too much?

If you have pets, what’s your pet line?   Have you crossed it before?  Approached it?  Had to make the practical decision despite the pain?  Spent the money even if you didn’t have it?  What happened?

And if you don’t have (or haven’t had) pets, is this something you’ve factored into your thinking about a bepetted (or pet-free) future?

Is your pet line a cumulative total (x dollars ever), or a per-incident limit (y dollars per incident, regardless of past history)?

(Humongous sympathy and good thoughts to the close friends who’ve inspired this.)

In case it’s apropos, I’m American.

So, a friend of mine and I got into one of many arguments about my political apathy, and she trotted out that old horse: “You pay taxes, so you should care about what the government does with your contribution.” I was about to say, “Yeah, you’re right, I guess,” when a thought struck me: in what sense do I pay taxes?

I go to work every day and do stuff there. Twice a month, my employer gives me a paycheck. To say that there’s a simple relationship between those acts is already fraught as-far-as I’m concerned, but I’ll ignore that for now. Let’s assume I’m paid in exchange for the work I do.

Okay, on my paycheck there are two numbers. I get the smaller of the two numbers. There’s this fiction that I get the larger amount and then “pay” some of it to the government. But I don’t. I get the smaller amount. It’s really simple. I work X hours; I get paid the net (not the gross). What does the gross have to do with me? Nothing, as-far-as I can see, outside of some collectively-held dream/ritual where we all pretend we get paid the gross.

I could choose to have no taxes withheld. In which case, my employer would hand me the gross. But I’d still have to hand over much of it. So in the end, I’d wind up with the net.

I’m not making a contribution. Contributing is a act of choice. Unless I want to break the law, I have no choice. There’s this fiction that I’m making a moral act, but I’m not. It’s a moral act when I contribute some of my net to the Cancer Foundation. It’s not a moral act to do what you’re forced to do.

There’s a fiction that I’m somehow connected with that “percentage of my pay” that the government gets (and so I should care what they do with it). But how am I connected with it?

This probably seems like trolling — like I’m making an argument against paying taxes. But I’m not. I’m pro taxes. I’m just trying to understand if there’s any way of sensibly interpreting taxation as employees “paying taxes” or “making a contribution.”

I’m also not arguing for political apathy. That’s not the topic here, except in terms of its relationship with taxation. Is it reasonable for my friend to expect me to care about where “my” taxes go. It may well be reasonable for her to expect me to care about what the government does. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about whether or not I should care about what the government does with “my” money. How is it mine?

The legality of smoking cigarettes various already by state and local context: whether you can smoke inside a place of business, or in a bar, or in a public park, is a matter of either statute or at least public debate.

But let’s go all the way. Presume that cigarettes have just fallen under a blanket, unconditional ban: a national prohibition on smoking, in public or private. What happens?

Congrats, you just won a modest lottery that pays an annual pension as long as you live!  It’s not megabucks, but you’ve got a few tens of thousands of dollars after taxes, every year, forever.

In other words: you don’t have to work for a living.  What would you do with your time?  With your life?

If there are things that money can’t buy, does having money make those things nonetheless easier to acquire?  Just how cold a comfort is the idea of the nobility of poverty?

What are the upsides of living without means?  What’re the advantages to being broke?

(Hat tip to Cat and Girl, via the inimitable Dorothy Gambrell.)

It’s a running joke — a metajoke, even, jabbing at hack comics using tired bits — but it’s also an interesting question:

Why is airline food bad? Or meh? Or good, even? Why does it vary? Who gets it right? How has any of that changed in the last ten years? The last thirty, or fifty?

And, to step back a level, what’s the deal with ‘what’s the deal with airline food’, anyway? What’s the history of this bit of cultural self-reflection? When, if ever, was it a fresh and funny standup bit, and who was doing it?

1. What’s your take on government welfare versus personal charity? Should it be the role of government to help the poor and needy or should individuals do it?

2. If you think individuals should care for the poor, do you think such a system is practical in today’s society?

3. Should people be forced to help the poor at all?

4. Is the government really wasteful? Would charities be more efficient? Would businesses?

Blatant ripoff: FMF

What are the criteria you would set if you were the only one to decide who was allowed to emigrate from their country and immigrate to yours?

Would you allow refugees, what type (political/economic/cultural), and what proof would they have to provide of their need? Would you set a net worth limit, so that anyone bringing a certain amount of money was guaranteed entry? Would you set an education limit so that only people with a certain level of proven intelligence were allowed in (perhaps barring refugees)?

Would you marry someone for money? Someone who’s average-looking, no hideous deformities. Let’s also assume you generally like the person; they’re not a total knee-biter.

Hat tip: Free Money Finance

Coke and Pepsi are huge, pervasive brands — Coca Cola is arguably the text-book example of successful aggressive long-term marketing.

So what would happen if these two giant competitors suddenly just dropped their marketing budgets?  Or at least reduced them by an order of magnitude?

Or, more generally, what if exceedingly well-branded companies in general — esp. market leaders and pop culture icons — stopped doing any/much advertising?  And what less-visible parts of the marketing machine would they be losing along the way?

(Inspired by this Ask Metafilter question.)

What would the expected gain need to be for it to be worth it to you to agree to take a job that separated you completely from friends and family for an extended period of time?

(example: a 24 month posting at an arctic research facility with no outside contact)

Here’s a big Saturday morning topic:

Say you want to start your own country.  How?  When?  Where?  And, needless to say, we’re going to need a good name.
(Inspired by this excellent old AskMe question.)

Is the average working American better or worse off than in decades past?

Is it easier or more difficult for an American to achieve a reasonable standard of living?

Is all of the increased wealth of our society going to a handful of folks at the top enjoying a new gilded age?

(Suggested by dbl, as lifted from Greenspun.)

How would you price out the human body, if we’re willing to assume willing sellers and willing buyers?

Certainly there are limited white- and black-market examples that exist already, from organ transplantation (and organ harvesting!) to blood donation and sperm banks. But let’s assume it’s all fair game: you’re willing to sell any part of your body to a willing buyer — assuming you could live, at least a short while, to enjoy the profits.

So, what are you selling, and what’s it worth to you? How many kidneys equal a liver? Can you spare an eye? What’s the angle on a healthy human heart vs. an artificial model?