The funny thing about a pyramid is, it's not a square. Which means that no matter how fluid social mobility in America is, there is only going to be a small amount of 'rich' people.

Capitalism is be definition the system where a few enrich themselves on the labor of others.

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'A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward'. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

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He expresses a desire, not a possibility.

I want to go to a different solar system and explore the galaxy. That's a desire. Reality is that this isn't possible.

So more accurately what McCain should be saying is 'I want everyone to be rich, it's never going to happen though.'

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'A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward'. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

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'I want everyone to be rich, and i'm going to work hard to reach that goal, but it's an idealistic goal.'

There is nothing wrong with a desire. It drives people.

It's a lie though, to be more accurate he could alternatively say only a small percentage of you will ever get rich though.

Desire is fine, as long as the end goal is acheivable.

Telling everyone they can all get rich is like believing in heaven.

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'A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward'. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

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i don't agree with you on that part. There are alot of people who desire world peace, they work hard to attain it, but it's simply a unacheivable goal. Does that make their work not important?

He isn't saying that, he says he wants everyone to be rich.

No, world peace would be difficult, for everyone to be rich would be economically impossible.

For example, the alchemists of the middle ages sought to find a way to transform common metals into gold. The idea, I suppose, being that this would be a great way to make everyone rich.

But what happens when you can turn anything into gold? Gold ceases to have any value! Alchemy isn’t just scientifically impossible. It’s economically impossible! The same thing happens if we print more money- money just looses it’s value, people don’t get richer.

In fact the only thing that can create more value is human labor. It is the productive powers of the worker that capital seeks to capture and put to use making values. After all, what is an economy? An economy is a way of coordinating human labor and distributing it’s products.

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'A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward'. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

http://i38.tinypic.com/716ahj.gif

if robots would take over human labour and computers would take over analyst positions. Then you wouldn't need humans to run the economy.

(yes this is a posibility and yes this has been evolving since the industrial revolution)

Hold on, I will get to your point about 'machines replacing workers', I have dealt with this myth before on another forum, just let me find the word document.

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'A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward'. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

http://i38.tinypic.com/716ahj.gif

The 'turning common materials into gold' could relate to machines also.

Let’s use a machine we are all familiar as an example. Your computer. Now the computer has become capable of doing all sorts of things that used to require a lot of human labor: recording information, complex mathematical computations, type setting, translating, DUPLICATING, etc. These tasks no longer have any economic value. If you wanted to make something worth selling on your computer, the only value it would have would be a result of some sort of creative labor on your part. The work that the computer does doesn’t add any value other than the original cost of the computer (in other words the computer doesn’t create any new value.) Everyone has access to a computer and everyone can do the same stuff on their computer so the work of the computer becomes useless. Just like turning everything into gold would be useless.

So what would happen if capitalists ever got to the point that they tried to replace workers altogether? The economy would cease to function because no value would be created. Profits would fall to zero because capitalists could no longer compete by making labor more efficient. Nobody could buy anything b/c no one would have any money b/c no one would have a job. There would be no capitalism.

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'A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward'. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

http://i38.tinypic.com/716ahj.gif