Reposting my answer to the same question from Reddit:
Redistribution does correlate with wellbeing but so does economic freedom. Nordic countries have both. USA has much lower taxes than the EU but more progressive taxation. The US spends higher % of GDP on education and healthcare, but it’s much less effective, perhaps because of worse corporate governance?
I recommend thinking about specific policies, rather than whole ideologies, where you can actually read some studies, convince someone, move the needle and be sure that you’re correct and some second order effects don’t make your effort counterproductive. E.g. IMO calls to smash capitalism are more likely to radicalize opposition than increase social spending.
I’m pretty confident removing housing restrictions, improving the voting system and farm animals conditions would be great. I care about biosafety, AI safety or homelessness. I can imagine that voicing some of these topics could actually affect something. I can imagine that much worse for promoting the optimal tax policy, both because everybody else cares about taxes, and because I’m uncertain what it looks like.
Reposting my answer to the same question from Reddit:
Redistribution does correlate with wellbeing but so does economic freedom. Nordic countries have both. USA has much lower taxes than the EU but more progressive taxation. The US spends higher % of GDP on education and healthcare, but it’s much less effective, perhaps because of worse corporate governance?
I recommend thinking about specific policies, rather than whole ideologies, where you can actually read some studies, convince someone, move the needle and be sure that you’re correct and some second order effects don’t make your effort counterproductive. E.g. IMO calls to smash capitalism are more likely to radicalize opposition than increase social spending.
I’m pretty confident removing housing restrictions, improving the voting system and farm animals conditions would be great. I care about biosafety, AI safety or homelessness. I can imagine that voicing some of these topics could actually affect something. I can imagine that much worse for promoting the optimal tax policy, both because everybody else cares about taxes, and because I’m uncertain what it looks like.