There are a billion rich people and a billion poor people (and a bunch in the middle we’ll ignore)
Each rich person cares about themselves 5x as much as all poor people put together
The poor people get 100x the welfare from $1 as the rich people
Then the rich people care so little about the poor people that they wouldn’t want to donate unilaterally, but they would still support taxes to fund foreign aid until they reached the level where the poorest billion valued money only 5x more than the richest billion.
Yeah, this makes more sense. For the scheme to work, the proportion of rich people multiplied by the disparity between rich and poor has to be high enough.
If you want an example with more modest numbers:
There are a billion rich people and a billion poor people (and a bunch in the middle we’ll ignore)
Each rich person cares about themselves 5x as much as all poor people put together
The poor people get 100x the welfare from $1 as the rich people
Then the rich people care so little about the poor people that they wouldn’t want to donate unilaterally, but they would still support taxes to fund foreign aid until they reached the level where the poorest billion valued money only 5x more than the richest billion.
Yeah, this makes more sense. For the scheme to work, the proportion of rich people multiplied by the disparity between rich and poor has to be high enough.