I have been following the European debt crisis quite closely in the hopes that they can avoid another global meltdown, and was pleased to see that the EU came up with a rescue package. Of course I know it will eventually come out of our pockets (I live in Europe), and I am well aware that the banks and the wealthy are getting off pretty easily at our expense, but frankly that doesn’t both me as much as it might bother other people. It is more important to me that my wife and I have secure jobs, our house price remains stable, our investments don’t plummet, etc.
But that got me thinking, if instead of bailing out the debt indirectly through taxes, what if they asked us to make a voluntary contribution directly? So I thought I would pose this to Dopers. How much would you pay to a common pot, if anything, to avoid another meltdown and to put the world economy firmly back on track? Let’s assume the money is put to good use without corruption, etc, and it actually has the desired impact. It would also be interesting to see how this is broken down by income quartile (but you don’t have to specify this if you don’t want).
Me, I am in the second income quartile (i.e. between 25 and 50 percent wealthiest) and I would be willing to pay $5,000.
I am posting this to IMHO as I want to know people’s opinions. Although I am sure some people feel very strongly about this, I am not looking for a great debate.
Also $0, and according to wiki, I’m in roughly the top 10%. I chose a recession-proof, high paying career field for a reason. The more things go down the toilet, the cheaper I can buy your house. That doesn’t mean I want things to go to shit, but I’m sure as hell not going to pay anything to stop it.
0$ for me too. I have money to spare but I don’t believe in bailing out systems that have proven themselves unsustainable in the long term. It isn’t doing anyone any favors and probably makes things worse overall. Just let it crash and burn especially when it comes to foreign countries like Greece. I wanted the U.S. to let the housing crisis crash a lot harder than it did as well just to get things over with and teach some valuable lessons for the history books.
Every time the stock market blips I lose thousands, so I’d be willing to chip in that amount to stabilize the world economy. Say $10,000. Top quartile.
Your first problem is going to be convincing me that paying money into a pot somewhere is going to fix the problem. Good luck with that.
Are you talking all at once, or over the next ten years or so? And what is everyone else going to be doing? Is the money just coming from me, and the Greeks and the Italians and OWS expect to share in the benefits without experiencing a proportionate amount of the pain?
I actually would go for something like that as well but I would want it to be a special tax just for that and EVERYONE has to pay in and hurt some for it. No worldwide charity drives for me though thanks.
I won’t pay anything to bail out Greece or Europe. I think the problems of moral hazard are bigger than the problems we’ll get if we let economies fail every once in a while.
If there was a magical way to actually undo the damage, create better incentives, and make people use more foresight and caution, I’d be willing to contribute quite a lot.