Originally posted by spellbound
I can't believe the greed of the world's wealthiest people.

When is enough money enough?

Some of these people have more money than they could spend in their lifetime, probably. And why aren't they spreading it around to the poor people, the homeless people, the starving people?

I despair when I think of all the suffering that could be alleviated.

Oh boy! You're telling me that all I have to do is be a homeless bum in order to receive handouts from super-rich people?

Where do I sign up?

Giving money to the poor won't make them less poor. The concept is disturbingly similar to what we are currently experiencing on a national level. The only way a person or a country can escape poverty is to produce more than they consume. If I give a million dollars to a person, in all likelyhood, I will get all that money back after they spend it. They will still be poor, and I will still be rich. Unless that money is invested in a means to produce something in excess of that million dollars, the poor person has no hope of escaping poverty.

Originally posted by mrbarber
Giving money to the poor won't make them less poor. The concept is disturbingly similar to what we are currently experiencing on a national level. The only way a person or a country can escape poverty is to produce more than they consume. If I give a million dollars to a person, in all likelyhood, I will get all that money back after they spend it. They will still be poor, and I will still be rich. Unless that money is invested in a means to produce something in excess of that million dollars, the poor person has no hope of escaping poverty.

Look a couple of posts before yours and look at the video I provided. It takes less than you know for people to be able to rise above poverty, to start their own businesses, feed their families, etc.

It would be enough if I could keep everyone from dying from lack of water or food.... How great that would be... Help your fellow human and grow, thats what life is really about. At least to me... I mean I bet i'd be popular if I brought food to everyones table.

Originally posted by noonebutme
EDIT: for the record, I don't abuse animals. I actually value the lives of animals *far* more than any human life and have personally gone to some extreme 'extremes' to protect an animal or two from abuse.[edit on 6-11-2009 by noonebutme]

This statement has upset me. I'll eat a big, fat, juicy animal to comfort me self.

Enough money, in my opinion, is to be able to maintain a roof over your head, feed and cloth oneself and family, and have a small reserve for emegencies. That is all that is required if you are grounded and of a steady mind.

The simple solution is to cap wealth at a billion dollars.

No one "needs" more than that.

Reach a billion, congratulations, you're now economically retired.

I wouldn't worry that the economy will collapse because these folks can't accumulate more. For the most part, they contibuted little besides ruthlessness and a willingness to skirt laws.

For the record, Bill Gates didn't invent MS-DOS, he bought it for pennies from the inventor after he blocked the sale to others through family influence. He himself has never invented squat. He then made an illegal deal with Intel & IBM to bind MS-DOS exclusively to their products. Those deals were eventually exposed and Microsoft fined, but the damage was done. He successfully killed far superior operating systems like Atari and Amiga. So now everyone uses Windows, the crappiest OS ever invented, and thinks each new piece of crap from Microsoft is "better"...little do most know that they could have had the functionality of Windows 7 twenty years ago if Gates wasn't an unethical crook.

And if you examine his foundation closely, he doesn't give money away, he gives Microsoft products away, seeding the ground for profit from upgrades while getting a nice tax write-off. I wouldn't call that philanthropic.

A lot of the super-wealthy would be living on the street if you gave them a $50,000 stake and told them to start again, because laws have changed and a lot of how they made their money is now illegal. Most fortunes are not made by hard work, that's a myth. Most fortunes were made by robbery, smuggling, labor exploitation, and political favoritism. Just look at Wall Street. Do you really think the CDO brokers "work hard"? If so, please define your terms. What makes their labor worth tens of millions in bonusses? What exactly did they personally produce worth those sums? As far as I can see, CDOs are misspelled: the proper spelling is S-C-A-Ms.

I've no problem with people earning enough to set themselves up for life. But like the liquor ads say: "know when to say when". Since the super-wealthy can't control their addicted behavior, we need to control it for them. The easiest way is to make them prove they aren't funding terrorism by not knowing what each of their companies are actually doing. Make each of them actually work in the the companies they own so they actually know what is being done there. Make it a death penalty for the entire board of directors if a company is shown to be financing or supplying terrorism. Of course, that means executing most of Wall Street, but the trade-off would be worth it, since most terrorist organizations would collapse into merely local annoyances without the financial backing big banks supply.

Anyone who takes more for themselves than over 1,700 of the people who work for them is a terrorist anyway: a quiet one wielding a far more insidious and deadly weapon than a bomb. Such people wield the weapon of controlled choices, and the choices they offer are a mixed bag: Hobson's, Catch-22, Morton's Fork and Sophie's. Ask any good inventor who tries to market his product without corporate backing. He'll usually go broke and then be forced to sell it anyway for a pittance. Few will know his or her name, but the new product will be associated with the genius of XYZ corp. Name one of your friends who has earned their way to a higher station or status than their peers and parents. Most likely you can't because social mobility has become rare.