The poor demanding more and more; the evil of the idea of relative wealth

The term "rich" and "wealth" should not be relative terms but terms that are objective and defined.

For example; if everyone in the world only had enough to eat one meal a day, except for one person who can have 2 meals a day.

Liberals would say the person who had 2 meals a day is "rich", but that should be wrong, everyone in the world under that standard is poor. Rich and wealth should not be defined as "how much more you have than others" but rather as "how much you have."

The poor of today, easily exceeds the lifestyles of the rich from 100 years ago, I'd even say from 40 years ago. And yet, they are still demanding more, because they measure their wealth against the rich.

1) Muscle meat used to be reserved for the rich, while the poor ate organ meat, now, with the advancement of society, everyone can eat muscle meat, and yet the poor seems to forgotten they didn't have this luxury in the past.

2) Only the rich and wealth could read in the past, and now, just about everyone can.

3) Only the rich had the ability to access information, and now with the existence of the internet, which would have been superpowers or magic to people from 50-60 years ago, everyone has instant access to information (some people still don't have internet but a lot do).

4) People nowadays live much longer than people in the past, and yet the poor still demands more in terms of healthcare.

The problem is that essentially, if you measure wealth on the basis of how you compare to someone else, it will never bring you happiness and you will never be satisfied.

Liberals; stop comparing yourself to your neighbor. Income inequity is dumb, stop comparing your money to others.

 

Lee_Wang_Tran, can it, please?

1 out of 5 children in Utah alone suffer food insecurity.

Just can it.

 

The history of humanity has been a history of a few very rich people with most being poor.

With capitalism if regulated to weaken the power of the rich to skew it in their greed we saw the rise of a large middle class who were able to prosper by their labor. But as a regulated capitalism was dismantled the rich at the top could assume more of the economic pie and the middle started going away as people were forced downward by the change in capitalisn that was structured to send more of the pie to the top. The giant sucking sound was one of the tools that allowed this to happen.

Most people want to be paid enough by their labor to not be poor and to have financial security. And the kind of capitalism in place determines if this happens or not. We have had that kind and now we dont.


The American people by and large have never had animosity towards our rich elites so long as the people could prosper by their work . Indeed we as a people have looked up to and admired our rich.

It is only when people lose the ability to not be poor while still working hard that animosity arises in regards to our elites who are getting richer as the middle shrinks. For the system is creating this change in prosperity from hard work. And when it is a fact that the greed of the rich changed the system class warfare comes back.

Some people the apologists for the greed of the elites will always blame the people who are poor instead of blaming the elites whose wealth bought the change in the system. As they bought globalism from both our parties.

There have always been times when the rich bent over working people to enrich themselves more . And when that happened there have always been people driven by ideology who blamed the working poor and middle instead of blaming the culprits.


Fact is capitalism can create a large middle and minimal poor when it is structured to do that or it can be structured to enrich the top and hardly anyone else. To ignore that is a most basic form of stupidity and ignorance that comes mostly from ideologically driven minds that put ideology above people.

 

We are dealing with a situation here that is grossly misrepresented in the first place- and promoted by people who think as socialists do.

This centers around the idea your income or assets matter, but your productivity and management of your money is irrelevant. Thus, if someone earns or has more than somebody else, an injustice must exist, and it is righteous to take from those who build value to subsidize those who don't. Not just to help those who truly can't- but those who won't; to bring them some form of equality with those who who do for themselves and earn what they have made.

In other words- the core concept of socialism is what we commonly call theft. Socialism seeks to legitimize theft when done as a function of government as opposed to a function of individual thieves.

Literally every program proposed by Bernie Sanders for example relies on that specific concept and kind of funding. They try to tell people that "somebody else" will be paying the bills. They bandy the word free around like it actually meant things they offer have no cost to do. While a nation can act to insure that everyone has access to opportunity, it cannot control what people choose to do- and it should not try nor take the responsibility for it.

If a person buys into the idea that things can be free, that is is acceptable to steal under the guise of entitlement- If you choose to avoid responsibility for yourself, then decisions you make day by day will cumulatively insure that you will never accomplish anything of consequence, that you may wind up living in a tent... telling the world how unfair it is because you are poor, when someone else is not. The socialist view basically sees those who acted diligently and consistently made sound choices in life as being obligated to compensate and protect those who didn't care at all. In the general sense, this punishes those who lift the nation and make it strong- and encourages those who live off it as parasites, and make it weak. Aside from sympathetic motives to make us think subsidizing that behavior is somehow magnanimous, when it fact it is an enablement that insures the person will not find the motivation to alter their circumstances- and only that person has that ability. This is grossly unsound as a parameter for any society or species to thrive.

The problems is human nature. The "easy way" is always an appealing concept, as is "free". Both are usually illusions- and the weaker the spirit and identity of the person, the more this is true.
Sadly, we have been allowing such weakness to gain ground in our society for several generations now. IF we fail to turn away from those illusions, our society is in harms way; at risk of going into a decline from which there is no escape- and one in which all those who followed believing it to be easy will find it to be far harder and more hopeless than they ever thought possible.

Our future depends on our ability to depend on ourselves- because there is no one else. If each of us took care of just one person..... all people would be cared for. That is how nature has produced millions of species that have thrived for millions of years- and they have done so without governments, health care, or any of the myriad tools we use to try to keep order among ourselves. Whats' more- they have thrived without poisoning the earth, covering it with trash or using up all the natural resources. Nature has few rules, but they are very important. One is- If you won't hunt.... you don't eat.

 

Food insecurity, what does that even mean?

Does it mean they are starving or afraid of starving? Huge difference between the 2.

 

I agree that measuring wealth only relatively is a bad idea. But people should be able to have to opportunity to better their situation if they put in the work. And the easier we can make this for people the better. And we should make sure that a good part of our economic growth is going to working class people. The wealthy people taking most of the growth will result in unnecessary poverty, social strife, and the rise of socialism.

 

You are not in charge of the definition, my friend. It means their next meal is not secure.

Do you care about children have a secure food environment instead of food insecurity?

 

Why?

 

A lot of it is high cost of housing. In some places permitting fees have jumped 170%. Nobody wants to allow multi family units to ease housing shortages. Lots of people fleeing CA and exacerbating the problem.

The economy is pretty good, wages have risen at a rate 3 times national I believe. It just costs a lot to live where everyone else wants to live. I would guess poor budgeting by families may play a part as well. Usually does.

 

If it means, if daddy gets fired, we won't eat. Then yeah, I don't care about that problem.
I would care if they were actually starving, like no food, but not if they are afraid of having no food.

Food insecurity is dumb, if it's not measuring actual starvation but the chance of starvation.

How many of those food insecurities become reality and these kids starve to death?
Any numbers?

 

You proved his point. 4/5ths don't. That's an amazing accomplishment. Can things be better? Sure, he doesn't preclude that it can be better. But it won't necessarily be better by taking away from the other 4/5th's, but by improving the situation of the 1/5th. Wealth isn't a zero-sum game, it's only viewed that way in a negative sense. But if you have the tools and technologies to make money for yourself, the ability to get richer is there.

Taking from others is basically a shortcut for wealth, that doesn't work in the long run.

 

Since 1971 productivity has grown 80%.
Hourly wages. 39%
So by your position Minimum wage should be $18.
Fair enough.

 

Productivity has grown, and it is consumers that have reaped the benefit of that productivity.
Technology, medicine, and all other types of improvements have made bounds and leaps.

For workers, they should earn more if the demand and the supply warrant it, guess what? It doesn't.

 

now is it because some one else is poor it because mommy or daddy or not prefer drugs to working?

 

You are ignoring that Upper management and investors are reaping the windfall of productivity increases not the consumers so your argument of supply and demand fails. There has not been deflation comparable to the increase in productivity to indicate it's the consumers that benefit.

 

The flip side of "food insecurity" is "hypernutrition", and it looks like Utah is doing it right.

 

You are the one who made the charge, so come up with the numbers, my fried. That you think 'food insecurity' is dumb is a dumb thought. Teach in a school where a kid comes up to you and says, "I am hungry." I have. My wife has. My son has. No child should have to worry about if enough food is available.

 

Who said anything about drugs, garyd? You are illiterate about this issue.

 

Back when I was paying $3,000 per month in child support for 15 years, I had food insecurity. Rent insecurity, too. And electric bill insecurity.

Get over it.

 

Food insecurity.
Funny

 

Productivity has grown because of automation and technology not because of employee effort. Therefore the bulk ofvthe benefits should go to those who made the capital investments not those whoes jobs got easier.

 

You've never looked up how productivity is calculated have you?

 

Which type are you talking about, StillBlue.

"The basic formula for calculating productivity is a ratio of outputs produced to the inputs used in production. Productivity = Output / Input There are so many different kinds of production processes and all these production processes have peculiar inputs which differ from one process to the other."

https://www.bing.com/search?q=how+i...Li9S*cXN3cSatk7FPOhpb6F5*k*7I&plvar=0&PC=HCTS

 

Feel free to enlighten me.

 

Not fair enough.
If you have a job and you manually produce widgets- lets say you make 10 a day in 8 hours.
Then your boss invests $50,000 in a CNC Widget making machine, which reduces the stress on you, takes less skill and effort, increases product quality and produces 50 widgets a day- in 8 hours.
So you think that the boss should pay you for the gains that result from his $50K investment, which will also be taxed, need maintenance and depreciate in value over time?

Of course you do. Because the objective is to take more money for less work, and take credit for the things that other people make happen.
You see your employer not as your customer- but as your enemy, so that's fair.

Funny how when that same person is a customer elsewhere, they expect low cost, good service, quality products, courtesy and gratitude for things like patronizing a customer in a restaurant.

Businesses, as employers- are not social service agencies. They are not there to replace your parents and provide for you. They are YOUR customer. YOU are in the business of selling them your services for an agreed on compensation. They owe you nothing more than that. How long has it been since you treated your employer like a customer? Thanked them for their business, asked them if everything you provided was satisfactory?

Most of the changes in productivity and quality we see today come from technical advances, not from the productivity of people. Automation, robots, precision engineering through CAD/CAM systems.
50 years ago a machinist had to be a highly skilled person, and it took many years of dedication to become a good one. Today, a "machinist" clamps a billet of metal in a CNC milling machine, indexes the starting point, and pushes a button. Then the software takes over the machine- and he just watches in case some thing happens, like a bit breaking or the machine halting on an error. That same person is usually incapable of making most any basic part on a manually operated (non-CNC) machine. In other words- he is incapable of doing what a person in the same category would have been able to do in 1971, your base year.

Businesses pay people based on what they are worth, and on what the market dictates. You are free to sell your services to anyone, at any price you wish- if you can find someone that looks at your product and service and finds it has enough value to be worth it. If nobody thinks you are worth $18- there's a good chance you aren't.