The very poorest should be no more than three times worse off than the very richest

I guess this is a philosophical point. It would have to be worked out on a global scale, so no country could offer higher wages. Surely an improvement to how things are now.

No. If a poor person chooses not to work or do anything, he doesn't deserve to be propped up because some people say that the rich shouldn't be three times richer than the poorest. It's lunacy.

On the other hand, the poorest have nothing. When you multiply nothing by three, you get nothing. Perhaps no one should have anything then?

This will get you attacked for being a communist/socialist etc etc.. while I agree you are dead right.. Its easier said than done.

The way the global economy makes its rounds, this kind of thing is slowly happening. Asia is on the way up, also south america, then the middle east, hopefully then Africa.

Its just a matter of time.

Originally posted by octotom
No. If a poor person chooses not to work or do anything, he doesn't deserve to be propped up

See, its easy to say and preach that (Its a very cold war US, excessively brute force capitalist way of thinking) when you are not the one who was born into a country with very little food, no education, little medical facilities and no jobs.. where all you can really do is starve and die a horrible and painful death... This also happens in areas in wealthy countries where social circumstances make it almost impossible to do any thing except turn to crime to make money.

For one, I would easily give up a quarter of what I have to help these kinds of people survive or even just to feel safer at night. We kind of have social policies like these in Ireland but not as developed as those in France or Sweden..

I suppose it comes down to how you were educated to think.. its all about perspective.

You do realise the majority of people on here are Americans....and the majority want no part in socialism or communism.So expect some harsh replies although i agree with you 100%,i think you will find more europeans will agree with you and i think we are heading that way which is a good thing.You will get the usual replies for me saying this,which i could recite in my sleep...but i would have no problem with the state taxing the hell out of rich people and taking alot of their salary away each year.

reply to post by Dermo

For one, I would easily give up a quarter of what I have to help these kinds of people survive or even just to feel safer at night. We kind of have social policies like these in Ireland but not as developed as those in France or Sweden.

Do you give up a quarter of what you have though? No, you don't. When it boils down to it, people think it's a great idea to help other people, but they don't want to give up what they have. They want others to do it.

The social policies in France and Sweden work due to high taxes. It's like that here in Germany too. There is only so much that you can do the "socialistic" thing though because people will take advantage of the system. Then people start asking the government to do more and more and start relying on the government to survive. That's not the way that it should be.

In America, there are states that have social programs and just hand out money to the poor to help them survive. These happen to also be the states and areas where crime is the highest. People get the handouts and then don't want to work anymore and just rely on those that do work to pay their taxes so that they can get the benefits. I'll never forget, when I stilled lived in Florida there was a woman paying for baby formula with food stamps for her baby. I didn't understand why--she can get milk for free!--but everyone hits a hard time now and again. After I checked out, I spotted her outside--hopping into her brand spanking new Lexus SUV.

i dont mind being called a socialist. There are far worse "ists" one could be.
Dividing the wealth fairly. Most poor people are not lazy like some like to make out. They are poor because a capitalist system creates poverty as well as wealth.

Believe it or not, the gap between rich and poor in the uk is bigger than in the days of Oliver Twist.

please sir, can i have some more

[edit on 3-6-2009 by woodwardjnr]

I thought the level of prosperity was indirectly proportional to your golf score.

Or maybe it was completed passes.

Anyway, if we're going to start some type of "cap and trade" system to keep everybody some where near even (and that's what you're talking about) I think it should be based on ranges of intellect, or maybe skill.

Oh wait, that's what we're doing now.

So, we'll throw all that out and we'll pay the 16 year old at the local burger joint $7/hour, and we'll pay the owner $21/hour. Now, if the owner gets all jicky on us and comes up with the uber-burger that makes him so much money he's pulling $100/hour...the 16 year old high-school drop out has to be raised to $33/hour.

At which point none of the other $7/hour people working at other companies who don't have an owner that came up with the uber-burger won't be able to buy anything at the burger-joint but I'm sure your system has someway of getting that all evened out again, right?

Great - "we'll pretend to work and they'll pretend to pay us". Reminds me of something.

crap, utter crap, sorry. and i'ld describe myself as socialist in the extreme.

the problem isn't what the rich have, the problem is what the poor haven't got. you'll never improve the situation of the poor by punishing the rich, that'll just make everyone equally poor.

Punishing hard work and rewarding laziness never works. If I work 10X's as hard as you do why should I only get 3 X's the pay?

If you punish hard work...hard work goes away.

BTW has anyone ever found the "Missing Millionaires" from Maryland? Maryland raised taxes on the rich.....and the rich left!

Thomas Edison on success: "There's no substitute for hard work."

Harvey C. Fruehauf on Success: "There's no ceiling on effort!"

Uknown: "Some people dream of success... while others wake up and work hard at it."

Colonel Sanders: "“I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me. And I have done that ever since, and I win by it. I know.”

Proverbs 12:24 "Work hard and become a leader; be lazy and never succeed."

Thomas Jefferson: "I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have"

I don't care what country you are in, what color your skin is, what anatomical parts you have, if you work hard you will succeed wherever you are. And if you don't want to work hard -- which many don't -- then move to wherever the OP is and leech off of him/her.

I disagree The very poorest should be much better off than the richest as poor people already know how to get by with less...

I grew up on a ranch and you could say we were working poor... we knew how to to make our own clothes butcher a cow, grow and can our own food... fix a broken pickup truck, Heck I once helped dig a well... and birthed a baby in the back of a truck... rich folks live in a totally different world than the rest of us.... thankfully they hire people like me to do all those little things they cant do for themselves

[edit on 3-6-2009 by DaddyBare]

Originally posted by woodwardjnr
i dont mind being called a socialist. There are far worse "ists" one could be.
Dividing the wealth fairly. Most poor people are not lazy like some like to make out. They are poor because a capitalist system creates poverty as well as wealth.

Believe it or not, the gap between rich and poor in the uk is bigger than in the days of Oliver Twist.

please sir, can i have some more

[edit on 3-6-2009 by woodwardjnr]

Oh my...

You are killing me.

"No one should be too rich or too poor."

The insanity of this arguement, the complete disregard for the individual, is staggering.

Forget the "Rich/Poor" aspect. What you are telling people is that we all need to abandon our individuality. "You don't matter."

"Who cares about your skills, desire, ability, wants. You don't matter. What matters is that you subject yourself to the collective. When one of us prospers it comes from the loss of another. Money is a zero sum game. Brcause there is only X money the gain of one is the loss of another. Because Bill Gates is rich there is 100,000 people around the world who are living in abject poverty."

The theory is completely wrong. It has been proven wrong and it is uninformed.

No one wants people to suffer but...people are rich people are poor. Thank God we all have the chance to be rich.

Originally posted by pieman
crap, utter crap, sorry. and i'ld describe myself as socialist in the extreme.

the problem isn't what the rich have, the problem is what the poor haven't got. you'll never improve the situation of the poor by punishing the rich, that'll just make everyone equally poor.

Excellent post!

After reading posts from you on other threads I would have never dreamed of ever agreeing with you but you have hit the nail on the head here.

For me, I want the owners of the company I work for to stay nice and wealthy because I know I will have a secure job because of that.

Originally posted by octotom
Do you give up a quarter of what you have though? No, you don't. When it boils down to it, people think it's a great idea to help other people, but they don't want to give up what they have. They want others to do it.

How could you possibly know how much taxes I pay? Also, I said I would.. and I would.

I am in a middle tax bracket but because I am in the early stages of starting a business, I am in the middle of a couple of years of very low tax.

When my income level rises to the point where I am paying 40%+ tax, then yes, I will be giving almost 20% towards social policies.. If I reach a 50%- tax bracket, then I will be giving 25% of my income towards them.. I have no problem with this

Social policies being welfare, free healthcare and a plethora of other things that will affect society.. you understand if you live in Germany even though Germany is one of the lesser "Socialist" countries in Europe.

The social policies in France and Sweden work due to high taxes. It's like that here in Germany too. There is only so much that you can do the "socialistic" thing though because people will take advantage of the system. Then people start asking the government to do more and more and start relying on the government to survive. That's not the way that it should be.

Believe me, i understand all this exceptionally well..

I don't believe in ground up social welfare like in Ireland.. I believe that you should be at a point where you either barely get enough to survive and are forced to work wherever the social workers deem necessary for you to work in order to pay for your welfare OR have paid enough into the social welfare scheme in order to take a decent cut if you LOSE your job (not quit) for a specific length of time with the payouts dropping incrementally until you are getting nothing but basic and are on the workers scheme. Healthcare should be free unless you want to pay for insurance for exceptionally good care... there are also a number of other things I believe should be there.. On top of providing a service, this also creates jobs and keeps money circulating in the economy. For a government with no social policies to keep this amount of people employed, they need a war and a lot of soldiers to pay.

While you obviously see bad points in the social end, I see very bad points in brute force capitalism. If capitalism with socialist policies can be kept at a level where taxation never needs to pass a 50% incremental bracket for the highest earners and the social policies are a mix between those in France and Ireland.. then this is the system I would prefer to live in.

After I checked out, I spotted her outside--hopping into her brand spanking new Lexus SUV.

That really annoys me too, as I was saying, the system should be very tight in order to stop people taking advantage.

Originally posted by Valhall
I thought the level of prosperity was indirectly proportional to your golf score.

Or maybe it was completed passes.

Anyway, if we're going to start some type of "cap and trade" system to keep everybody some where near even (and that's what you're talking about) I think it should be based on ranges of intellect, or maybe skill.

Oh wait, that's what we're doing now.

So, we'll throw all that out and we'll pay the 16 year old at the local burger joint $7/hour, and we'll pay the owner $21/hour. Now, if the owner gets all jicky on us and comes up with the uber-burger that makes him so much money he's pulling $100/hour...the 16 year old high-school drop out has to be raised to $33/hour.

At which point none of the other $7/hour people working at other companies who don't have an owner that came up with the uber-burger won't be able to buy anything at the burger-joint but I'm sure your system has someway of getting that all evened out again, right?

Great - "we'll pretend to work and they'll pretend to pay us". Reminds me of something.

Surely youv'e missed the point of the thread. the owner of the burger joint wont be able to make $100 an hour, because if the very poorest are still getting $7 the richest cant be 3 times as wealthy.

Now i take it your American and always looking for the elusive "uber burger", surely no burger is worth a $100 dollars of anybodies time and if it was then the high school drop out would deserve his $33 . But he wont because he's being paid $7 and his boss $21. Thats the way it works. at least we'd all have money in this scenario. we may not get the Uber burger, but i probably wouldn't want one anyway



[edit on 3-6-2009 by woodwardjnr]

reply to post by Dermo

How could you possibly know how much taxes I pay? Also, I said I would.. and I would.

I said nothing about your taxes. One doesn't need to pay taxes in order to give 25% of what they make to the poorest among them or in another less fortunate part of the world.

I think that due to socialism, people feel that the only way they can help people is through being taxed. Why wait until you're in a high tax bracket? Why not start now?

If I had a dollar for everyone of these bleeding-heart rich folk who come into town from their private islands in the Spring and start talking about how "evil" rich people are and how we need to redistribute wealth to the poor people I could quit my job and live on one their private islands on the lake.

The kicker is that these never-worked-a-day, ivy-league, bleeding-heart, islanders do not consider themselves rich.

You cant be rich if you're wearing sandals and vote (D). Even if you're sitting on 20 million dollars of your grandfathers money.

Here's an idea you guilt-ridden yuppies in denial of your own wealth: charity. participate with your own time and money. Leave me the hell alone.

For the record I work 12 hour days and barely break 30K and I like my job and like where I live and I really like my life. Stop taking things from me you damn politicians. The only problems I have are federal, if you catch my drift.

Originally posted by octotom
I think that due to socialism, people feel that the only way they can help people is through being taxed. Why wait until you're in a high tax bracket? Why not start now?

I know this argument lol - I'v had it before. I get what you are saying but I am too busy to walk around all day every day putting euro coins in poor peoples polystyrene cups... If i did, I would also be poor very quickly because I would not be working..

With the system that is in place in "western" countries and the way capitalism creates charities that only give a small percentage of donations to those who need it.. Thats where the problem arises with donating it directly to those that need it.

Social donation thtough taxation is the best way, in my opinion, to ensure that money gets to those that need it while also ensuring that money stays in the economy and goes back to the gevernment through taxation etc etc.

Know what I mean? Or are you just going to keep your own view and not respect anything past that?


[edit on 3/6/09 by Dermo]

most people are born into wealth or born into poverty. who has more chance of becoming rich? The African child born into poverty or the American child into a history of wealth. is this fair/ i just want to see a fairer way of living. i did state this would be needed on a global scale.

[edit on 3-6-2009 by woodwardjnr]

Originally posted by woodwardjnr
most people are born into wealth or born into poverty. who has more chance of becoming rich? The African child born into poverty or the American child into a history of wealth. is this fair/ i just want to see a fairer way of living. i did state this would be needed on a global scale.

look at the way you've phrased it, do we use the people that are richest as our bench mark or the people that are poorest?

we can't make everybody as wealthy as americans, the planet can't sustain it.
we wouldn't want to make everybody as poor as the people living off a rubbish tip in somalia.

where is your point of fairness?