Is poverty created by the rich (by taking more than their share)?

[begin_within]

[Junkdrawer]

1. Well, underfunding education certainly doesn't help...

I'm all for the "give everyone a fighting chance" promise...

[Angry Girl]

2. Depends what you mean by "their share"

If it's the current Bush administration and the reigning GOP you're talking about, then they can NEVER take more than "their share."

But still, somehow, the poor get screwed....

[JAbuchan08]

3. In short, yes.

Think about it. The first person to become wealthier than his neighbor by declaring himself - through use of force - to be in possession of land/resources that were previously unclaimed and/or held in common by the community.
But let's face it I'm no economic theorist, but I do know that any time some one person has an inordinate amount of power over other people (by whatever means this is achieved ie force or money) that person is a tyrant.

[mmonk]

4. No

It's denial of opportunity by stacking the deck.

[Angry Girl]

5. There should be limits to the amount of stuff one person can have

The founders of the United States were a bunch of rich guys and they certainly left the laws wide open so as to ensure their economic reign, it seems.

I mean, how bloody hard would it have been to add some kind of upper limit to the assets one person can have?

It's like this hunger thing: It's not like people are starving because there's not enough food in the world to go around. More like not enough WILL for the food to get around.

[wrathofkahn]

35. Ummm...

You do realize that to be intellectually honest, you're going to have to take some assets away from some folks who financially support progressive causes, don't you? George Soros is worth billions. Your logic dictates that there should be some sort of "ceiling" on what he could have. Do you figure that moveon.org would have gotten the kind of startup cash that it got if someone had come along and just told him that he had too much stuff?

How about Michael Moore? He made, what, $50M off of Fahrenheit 9/11? (Yes, I know that's what the movie actually grossed, not what he was actually paid, but I'm working on the KISS theory here). Should there have been a policy or law in place to tell him to not make too much money off of his movie, or else someone's just going to come take it away? Do you still reckon he would have made his movie under those circumstances?

Or, how about this: Eddie George, former Tennessee Titan, was a big supporter of Al Gore in 2000, using his celebrity power and, yes, a lot of his money, to GOTV and pump up Gore in his bid for Tennessee. Should there have been something in place to prevent Eddie from earning all this money, which he then used for a good progressive cause?

Should we be telling Hillary that she shouldn't have gotten that advance for her book because, well, it's just too much money? How about John Kerry? He spent a lot of his own money on his campaign. How far do you figure he would have gone if he had been told he had too much stuff?



See, that's the problem with the whole "income cap" or "assets cap" thing: there are too many innocents who get hurt in the process, and in the long run, the overall cause gets hurt.

[Angry Girl]

39. I have no problem with that.

WTF is one person going to do with $50M??? Put a cap on it and let the surplus go to social causes, like housing, health care, better food, day care centers, education, parks, etc. etc.

[wrathofkahn]

41. That's fair.

At least you're intellectually honest about it.

[Nye Bevan]

46. So when some rich guy has amassed all the stuff he is allowed to have

he shuts down the company he has built and lays off all his employees.

My boss is stinking rich but I want him to want more so that I will still have a job!

[aquart]

6. Yes.

Although they consider it merely their fair share. Because God loves them and wants them to have it.

[bloom]

7. That is part of it.

That doesn't account for all of it.

[AndyTiedye]

8. It Depends on How They Got Rich

Robber barons were called that for a reason.

[Neil Lisst]

9. The Rich need poverty to live well

What good is a patron without some peasants?

They have to have servants and caretakers who make little money.

[ConsAreLiars]

10. It's not how much they get,. It's how they get it.

The way things are, increasing the rate of profit means reducing the standard of living for the general population. Doing so is the First Law of Corporations if they are for-profit enterprises.

[Terran]

11. Well, think about the salaries of CEO's

Do they need that much money? No. And if you took some of the excess tens of millions, you could probably fund health insurance for a lot of people who work FOR those self-same CEO's.

[ultraist]

13. excellent example

That's basically it in a nutshell. The elitists refuse to pay their fair share so that resources are not distributed fairly. If they did pay decent wages and pay out a fair amount in taxes, we could nearly eliminate poverty by providing decent educational systems for ALL, health care for ALL, job training FOR ALL, a living wage FOR ALL and social programs that would empower and lift people out of poverty. We could reform our systems so that we actually had social justice. After all, it is about JUSTICE.

In a country with as much wealth as ours, it's difficult to understand why we have such a high child poverty rate. Children who grow up in poverty, do not have a fair chance to succeed, they do not have equal access to opportunity.

[eallen]

12. In capitalist societies, generally not.

In a functioning capitalist economy, the amount of wealth is constantly growing. This confounds many people, because they observe that the land, and water, and air are not growing. That's true. But it shouldn't take much more thought for them to convince themselves that the US is much wealthier now than it was two centuries past. Wealth doesn't grow by making more, but by making better, and often by making what wasn't ever made before.

The next important thing to understand about a capitalist economy is that people generally get rich in it by helping it to grow. Not always, of course. Capitalism is a messy thing. It is an evolutionary algorithm, and like biological evolution, it is full of parasites and dead-ends and trickery and claw and sucker. And like biological evolution, it adapts and advances. Except quickly.

Now, none of that is to say there aren't important issues around inequity and opportunity and helping those who do not find their way in the capitalist economy. At the same time, it is important to realize where wealth originates. It is not from the sweat of labor. People living long ago after the agricultural revolution sweated more than we do now, and lived dirt poor. It is from the advance of technology and business processes and marketing and investment mechanisms.

[ultraist]

16. Uh, ya...

"Now, none of that is to say there aren't important issues around inequity and opportunity and helping those who do not find their way in the capitalist economy."

Like considering the oppressive forces of racism, sexism and classism that shuts out so many from having equal access. (Just a few little issues to consider).

If people paid their fair share in taxes, resources would be distributed more equitably.

The gap between the rich and the poor has increased significantly under Bush. Cutting taxes on the rich and allowing big corps to engage in corrupt businesses practices, raping and pillaging the people, only serves to exacerbate the problem.

[eallen]

18. Hey, I agree with you. Bush's policies have been terrible.

We have to get past the false rhetoric that equates criticism of Republican policy with the notion that capitalism is bad.

[misanthrope]

17. True enough but...

...couldn't one say that the capital to fuel research and experimentation that develops technology came from sources that ultimately had their origin in labor?

[eallen]

20. Sure. So?

Everything done in the economy is done by people. Marx pushed on this as "proof" that something was wrong, but (a) that ultimately was just him assuming so, and (b) the one aspect of capitalism he really seemed to miss was the importance of investment as a discovery method, rather than just as deployment of known capital assets.

[SlightlyWorried]

24. Wow. Clearly someone missed their economics classes.

"At the same time, it is important to realize where wealth originates. It is not from the sweat of labor."

Uhm no. Marx's labour theory of value is still the best theory of price determination that we have. From the rest of your trite bable I am sure that you would say something like "supply and demand" but of course the question follows: why? And the labor theory of value answers the 'why' better than any other theory so far.

I have no idea what the rest of your crap is saying since it is so devoid of any actual substance but I had to call you out on the only actual concrete thing you wrote and of course it was 100% incorrect.

Sorry, pal.

[tx_dem41]

25. Can you provide an example of a thriving economy where...

Marx's labour theory of value is the best theory for price determination over supply and demand? And, please...it isn't China.

Perhaps you should get your nose out of Marx and Engels and survey the real world. Without looking at the real world around you, and the history of successful and failed economies in the past, your post is nothing but trite "bable" , devoid of any actual substance.

Sorry, pal.

[eallen]

26. Yeah, that theory of labor explains oil prices so much better....

Than supply and demand.

:rofl:

[eallen]

27. PS: The cause and effect go exactly the other way around.

The labor theory of value assumes a closer relationship between cost and price than actually exists. Investors and managers plan, want, and hope that they can sell products and services for more than they cost to provide. Most of the time, it doesn't work out that way. Sometimes it does.

Once you realize that the relationship between cost and price is quite haphazard, that both vary in time for separate and independent reasons (eg, scaling factors for the first, market saturation for the second), and that it is only in the successful cases that the amortized cost comes in less than the amortized price, the labor theory of value starts to seem pretty antiquated, as indeed it does to most economists.

[chaska]

32. I disagree with this....

"In a functioning capitalist economy, the amount of wealth is constantly growing."

All wealth comes from the earth. It is a closed system. To take from that wealth deprives another of that wealth.

But enough of this rarified air. On a day to day level, wealth is created through the exploitation of cheap resources (raw materials like oil) and cheap labor. Was there ever a rich man that didn't get that way on the back of another man?

[Xithras]

37. Incorrect.

I'm a software programmer, and I create wealth every day simply through the power of my mind. I create a new product, and that product has value without any deprivation of resources. In essence, I have "created" wealth.

There are countless other service and knowledge fields where the same rule holds true. Your claim only works if you ignore every economic sector other than manufacturing.

[eallen]

42. Nothing could be more mistaken.

Wealth is not measured in kilograms. And for good reason.

Here's an interesting question for you to ponder. Suppose you were granted a second life, and you had one choice: to be born in London in 1500, or London in 2000. Which would you choose? And why?

To me, there is no doubt about the answer. While I might encounter some interesting historical people in 16th century London, the fact is that for almost everyone of that time, life really was savage, nasty, brutish, and short. Most of all, people were, compared to today, impoverished. London today is a vibrant city with cheap and instant communication, a wide range of opportunities, an educated populace, clean water, advanced medical care, and rich entertainment. It is, in short, much wealthier than it was five centuries past. That is what wealth is. Not how many pounds of dirt and trees and stuff are around. If you weighed the amount of stuff for a twenty mile radius around central London, it might not have changed that much, measured in long tonnes. But wealth isn't measured in long tonnes.

[davekriss]

14. I'll let Big Bill Haywood answer this one for me...

"For every dollar the boss has and didn't work for, one of us worked for a dollar and didn't get it."

[Ksec]

15. They are being allowed to be greedy

The GOP is adopting a greed is good ideology. Ive heard many wingers say they like the rich worsip because someday theyre gonna be rich....I doubt any of them will even get the chance with their idiot policies.

This culture of greed will be their legacy , that and corruption

[Eric J in MN]

19. Yes, but it's an issue

of how we structure our society, rather then an issue of the rich being good or bad.

[SammyWinstonJack]

21. Greedy bastards! What do they care about hard it is to get by

working two or three jobs? CEOs make up wards of 200 times what the rank and file workers make. Is that fair? Something is very wrong with this system! CEOs get golden parachutes while workers get screwed on health insurance and pensions. Just plain wrong! Outsourcing and union busting while the rich get tax breaks! Just plain wrong and they will pay for it, eventually!

[spindoctor]

22. poverty is required to sustain the rich

Historically every empire requires a great deal of free (slaves) or cheap labor to maintain its expansion and supremacy.

Rome for example was built and serviced by vast numbers of slaves.

Now I'm assuming that your question is a domestic one, but look at it from a global perspective.

Our current economy is very much depending on cheap labor in China and the likes. In a way the enormous profits that corporations make, allow us to keep up our expensive millitary that is then used to maintain the status quo.

Without access to low wage workers, we might have to cut in our military budget and we can't have that because then we might actually have to follow the rules instead of dictating them.

In a nutshell, that is why poverty is a requirement for a rich society. Indirectly this also leads to the domestic economical divide because anybody who is not with the establishment (i.e. our own not-low-enough wage workers) is nothing more than a liability to the system.

Does this mean that the rich create poverty? No, but we condone it because it is in our (supposed) best interest to have it.

[otohara]

23. You Mean Making $14 Million or More Per Year

is too much for any one person to make? Then yes, they are creating poverty. It's absurd how much money some people make and think they deserve it. Like those ass wipes I worked with in broadcasting.

[devilgrrl]

28. Hey Bob. Why all the questions? Have any of your own answers?

Or do you just enjoy starting flame baiting threads to get your post count up?

[begin_within]

30. My threads are never flame baiting. All my posts are phrased as questions.

[devilgrrl]

34. You wouldn't happen to have any opinion in regard to these questions?

It would be interesting to hear what you had to say.

[sweetheart]

29. poverty is created in the heart

by having no love
no sense of inner peace
and no matter the posessions,
contracting in to "me" and "my"
forgetting the rule of ego and property,
that to "own" something, you must assert the
individual ego and its independence. A very
valuable thing indeed for survival, but certainly
nothing else. And people are collapsed back in
to themselves, robbed of confidence by mind-rape
media and monopolists who thieve away social
confidence ontologically.

Rather the economic cause of poverty is the interitance of
"economics" over the past 3 centuries of being a science of white
men who had/have a certain sense of patriarchal value, and through
these econometric agents, economists have failed to weigh the value
of the underclass to capitalism, this value is stolen by this
economic voodoo, and those persons become the poor. They are
disenfranchised from their rights through poverty, without even
the means to fight for rights they don't know they should have,
like so many serfs in russia, if the company man is turned out of
his company house, he loses his identity, his reputation and his
strategic value contribution to the society, stripped and stolen
by the company that offshores. The kapitalists disenfranchise
labour and through this theft, they become rich, and the ones stolen
from, become poor.

It is a call to arms in a civil war against the evil men who want
a slave police state, that they be thrown in the dock for treason
to the heart of the american project.

[bluedawg12]

31. I asked a similar question recently about poverty

and wealth distribution.

I have zero background in economics and I hear bits like: supply side economics, I looked up Milton Friedman daddy of this concept.

I tried to understand what Marx wrote about the working class struggle by reading his manifesto on line a while back.

It's a complicated question and I never thought that the supply of dollars was limited to an "x" amount of bills that had to be divided up like a pie. I could be wrong.

The problem is what I recently read about called anarcho-capitalism, or laissez fair capitalism, which says that the only duty corporations have is to share holders and for profits.

This has led to an obscene exodus of manufacturing jobs to cheap foreign labor markets.

This gives permission to CEO's and their obscene bonuses and wages because they claim they made money for the shareholders and they are worth gold. (puke)

This justifies off shore tax havens (Cheneyburton).

This justifies sending/selling technology that could damage our national security. i.e. planes, and computer tech.

There should be a social contract between business and society and their duty to the workers and their nation.


If the Democratic platform could not only educate the public about how un-American current business practices are but also have good policy solutions for this mess, it would resonate with the public.

They are screwing American workers by promoting a “global economy” and of course a one world economy would put more money in their pockets.

And, they also set the stage by blowing unions away in the public eye- read some of the old neo-conniver crap back in 1996 and how anti-union they were. That trickled down to the MSM and the public.

[Cleita]

33. That's a no brainer. Of course it is.

eom

[OnionPatch]

36. I believe it is in a way

The way I see it, labor is undervalued. Poor people with little education are taken advantage of by those with more power. Not intentionally but because of their desperation and powerlessness the poor are basically forced to work for less than they really need to make a decent living. This is actually almost natural in some primitive way. (Dog eat dog, pecking order, etc.) Power accumulates power. It's not always a conscious act to rip off the poor. (Although I think sometimes it IS conscious) It's just basic human selfishness to keep more of the pie for yourself. I think we can and should do better. It's a moral issue and I shake my head that the so-called religious in this country don't see it as such.

I believe it's immoral to pay an employee less than a living wage. If your company can't make it without what amounts to slave labor, you shouldn't be in business. Too bad our whole economy is now addicted to cheap labor. More compassionate business owners are forced to compete with those many who use the cheapest possible labor.

Of course there are a gazillion other issues that affect the whole system, but "extortion" of cheap labor from the desperate is a root of the whole thing. Keeping them desperate enough to work for those wages is part of the plan. Alan Greenspan actually talks about the need to "keep labor anxious" so labor costs stay cheap.

In this overpopulated era, diminishing resources are also part of the problem. It used to be if you were poor, you could always make a living off the land. Not so today.

[Swamp Rat]

38. The rich invented poverty

[sepia_steel]

40. Often, it certainly is.

Look at the business practices of Wal-mart, for example. All while the CEO SWIMS in cash.

[yvr girl]

43. You can't make a blanket statement like that

Bill Gates has made BILLIONs of dollars for himself, but he has also created many other millionaires. He was instrumental in changing the world from one where only large corporations and governments had computers to one where millions of people used computers from their homes and offices. (He also gives back lots of money to the underprivileged.)

Some people get wealthy because they are talented, or they have a big idea that they are able to capitalize on.

People should all be treated equally, and have equal access to some fundamental things. But the truth is, people may all have the same value, but they are not equal. Some people are smarter, work harder or get along with others better. They tend to succeed more.

That being said, history is full of people who have taken more than their fair share.

[pattim]

44. No, imbalance is part of capitalism

and capitalism creates a higher level of wealth in general. But if you mean illegal defraudment, yes. Enron created poverty by stealing wealth, yes. But not all who are above average in wealth have stolen it. Fairly earned wealth--that which is earned when all parties involved start on equal footings--does not "create" poverty.

[bluedawg12]

45. I blame gloablization and putting schools

in China instead of the USA and giving good jobs to over seas workers before our own workers have employment.

look at post Katrina NOLA- workers coming in from texas- and from over the border- that would be fine if the NOLA workers had been given a leg up on getting back home for those jobs.