Cotye Allen

ENG 170-31

Dylan Haughton

15 February 2023

Equality and Happiness for Utopia

Utopia; a word with a simple textbook definition but an unlimited number of meanings when placed in the eye of the beholder. Utopia is described as a “perfect” world, but when you take into consideration every being has their own idea of perfection, can there ever actually be utopia? Each person has opinions- which more or less decide the foundation of an individual’s perfect world- but everyone has their own views and thus many have opposing opinions. Sure, there will be plenty who have a mind for utopias that could make the majority happy. However, a handful will still not be pleased, which means it’s not perfect and defeats the definition. This cannot stop one from attempting to create a utopia, though, which is what I will aim to do. My thoughts on a perfect world may be dystopia for some- for whatever reason- but I aim to provide my personal takes that may align with the majority. In my utopia manifesto, I will aim for various solutions to current issues. Three modern ideals I’d like to tackle are the procurement of free healthcare, free education, and changed tax rates based around extraordinary higher income, which all correlate to the overall thesis for my utopia; happiness and equality of the individual and how it can create a better future. Each contributes extraordinarily to the wellbeing of people, and people are the core part of any society. Without happy people, you will have an unhappy community and thus, an imperfect community.

The physical and mental health of each person is incredibly important. If you cannot think you cannot function, and if you cannot function, you cannot live a happy nor productive life. I believe there should be free options for therapy to aid those who find it helpful, since healthy minds work the best. It is proven that when someone has bad mental health, it brings a negative impact to their place of employment and lowers the quality of the individual’s work. (cdc.gov) Free healthcare should extend to gender affirming surgery as well, since dysphoria takes an extraordinary toll on one’s mental health. (pubmed.gov) This is in connection with free therapy, as gender affirming care requires a lot of assurance that it is the proper choice. Many people cannot afford luxuries such as therapy or gender affirming surgery, so if this is provided to them, more people will be comfortable with themselves, their emotions, and therefore happy. The money to do so will be taken from taxes, changes to which will be discussed later on.

Alongside health, education is possibly one of the most important things anyone could have. It is often said that knowledge is the key to the universe. The more people who are educated in everything vital to society or furthering our world, the greater results we will have. Say there are thousands of people who cannot afford higher education, but they are incredibly smart with lots of potential. With education they could have become the next Einstein, but without it, they couldn’t become something greater. And so, that would be an unknown loss for our world if another couldn’t make the results that individuals could have. Using taxes, secondary, post-secondary, trade-schools, and college up to undergraduate degrees will be free. Depending on the degree or career focus, such as medical degrees, there will be free education extending above undergraduate. Tuition will be free, however, room and board will still need to be paid, but there will be financial assistance. Along with free education, comes the sense of equality that they can have the same opportunities as those from families much more well off. Equality sparks happiness, and in that better work ethic when paired with free healthcare to keep up a person’s mental state. (uopeople.edu)

Taxes are one of the biggest concerns for people, and there will be a lot of people unhappy with my take. Taxes should be based on the income of a household or individual- though they are now there are some modifications I’d like to make. There should be a max amount of how much taxes are if one household income is below a certain point, but anything above that point has higher tax rates. This would mean that anyone who is incredibly rich or wealthy would have to pay a lot more taxes. Yes, this would take away from their luxury somewhat, but they do not need several private jets or vacation homes to survive. The richest people in the 1% have more money collectively or even double than that of the other 99%. (reliefweb.int) There is no reason why that much money should be in the hands of one person, especially when considered rich among the rich. There would still be enough left for them to live more wealthy lives than others. It would just mean more of that majorly unused money would go into our government to assist our economy as well as pave the way for the future generations. (equitablegrowth.org)

Overall, I believe that obtaining these three things could lead to a better society and eventually lead to something close to utopia. By appeasing the much larger percent of people who are less fortunate, it’s making much more of the country happy. The healthy, educated minds with less stress on life destroying taxes produced from this reform would, I believe, make the majority happy and crumble the inequality that money makes.

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019, April 10). Mental health in the Workplace. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved February 9, 2023, from https://www.cdc.gov/workplacehealthpromotion/tools-resources/workplace-health/mental-health/index.html

Nair, M. (2022, November 24). 5 reasons why college should be free: Uopeople. University of the People. Retrieved February 9, 2023, from https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/5-reasons-why-college-should-be-free/

Survival of the richest: How we must tax the super-rich now to fight inequality [en/ar] – world. ReliefWeb. (2023, January 17). Retrieved February 15, 2023, from https://reliefweb.int/report/world/survival-richest-how-we-must-tax-super-rich-now-fight-inequality-enar

Taxing the rich: The effect of tax reform and the COVID-19 pandemic on tax flight among U.S. millionaires. Equitable Growth. (2022, August 10). Retrieved February 9, 2023, from https://equitablegrowth.org/taxing-the-rich-the-effect-of-tax-reform-and-the-covid-19-pandemic-on-tax-flight-among-u-s-millionaires/

Tordoff DM;Wanta JW;Collin A;Stepney C;Inwards-Breland DJ;Ahrens K; (n.d.). Mental health outcomes in transgender and nonbinary youths receiving gender-affirming care. JAMA network open. Retrieved February 9, 2023, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35212746/