[Peace-discuss] Dan Price's twitter.com post misses the objectively more important point

[J.B. Nicholson]

Someone who runs a company (I don't know or care which one, it doesn't really matter) 
named Dan Price posted https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1244014634883039232:

> 5 years ago I cut my CEO pay from $1.1M to $70k so I could pay all my employees at
> least $70k. That's not good enough anymore. Today I cut my pay to $0. I'm
> committed to laying off 0 of our employees. It's not much but it's what I can do.
> We'll get through this together.
and https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1244054136796196869 which reads:

> Our COO, Tammi Kroll - the highest paid person at our company - is also cutting
> her pay from $275,000 to $0. She already took a million-dollar paycut, leaving her
> Silicon Valley executive job, to come here. We've lost half our revenue but
> together we're going to have 0 layoffs.
In this thread there was only one followup -- 
https://twitter.com/CannonsGray/status/1244198575745236993 -- worth reading:

> Is this virtue signalling?

Yes, Dan Price's posts were. This thread also missed an objectively far more 
important point which powerful businesspeople are highly unlikely to ever raise: 
we've failed by allowing a system which grants this power and largesse and makes it 
voluntarily as to who gives and who benefits. The public shouldn't have to rely on 
the generosity of wealthy people to meet their basic needs. That's what the state is 
for, to make sure we all aren't poor and desperate for some wealthy people to look 
kindly upon us in our time of need.

So as generous as this is for the few people who work for Dan Price & Tammi Kroll's 
organization, the far larger national population who won't receive such a benefit 
also has a legitimate need for the things money can buy. We should not have a 
precariat. Therefore we need a system for our collective needs: programs including 
Medicare for All, a national jobs program, UBI, and more. Currently the state is 
working out a way to ensure payment to the wealthy big business owners. So it's not a 
question of what we can afford, it's a question of whom shall benefit (cui bono?). 
All of these programs are eminently affordable particularly if we gut the 
euphemistically named "defense" budget by at least 50%.

-J