Oxfam says world's rich could end poverty

reply to post by 11235813213455
Well...actually if he was here I am pretty darn sure after seeing what this worlds become ...yes he'd agree 100 on that with me.

reply to post by FyreByrd


I'm not so sure on this one...

From an objective point of view taking this into account, if the less well off people earn a fraction more than they need to live on, they/we should give up a proportion of that extra money... I don't so I can't really agree/disagree with this.

Wait, if we end poverty, then the troglodytes will continue to breed like jack-rabbits. If we keep the women's body fat below 10%, problem solved!

Let's see, 7 billion people living in mediocrity and without the means to strive for excellence, or a few billion barely making it, a few billion capable of striving for excellence, and a few million who call the shots.

Your choice.

reply to post by ANOK


Agreed. And its not just that people are taking more than they need but that a few are taking more than the rest of the whole damn world needs. You can't justify a billionaire with a kid starving to death.

Originally posted by Def Youth
reply to post by ANOK

 

Agreed. And its not just that people are taking more than they need but that a few are taking more than the rest of the whole damn world needs. You can't justify a billionaire with a kid starving to death.

Seems like a bigoted blanket statement directed at a class of people based on their income. Do you personally know any billionaires? How could they possibly all be bad? Surely you can't believe that they ALL are how you describe.. Bill Gates? John Huntsman Sr.?

There is a tremendous amount of good being done in the world by billionaire philanthropists.

Originally posted by geldib
reply to post by yourmaker

 

If we were all equally rich, who would do the dirty work? Who would work as garbage men and other equally dirty jobs. I think minimum wage should be higher, and executives pay reduced to compensate.

edit on 20-1-2013 by geldib because: (no reason given)

I know a 'garbage man', he loves his job and is a decent human being and gives a lot back to the community. He also makes a decent.

You may be refeing to jobs that are done by slaves (for all intents and purposes), jobs that are physically damaging to workers and the like. I'd love to garden everyday - but not work on a factory farm with all the poisons they are exposed to. I recommend the movie "I Witness" - is pretty obscure as a tale of this use of 'human resources'.

Thanks for responding.

Originally posted by infolurker
There is no such thing as ending poverty as there are political interests and government agencies that ensure that it cannot be won.

Since 1964 the United States has spent 15 TRILLION dollars with nothing to show for it. We are now spending a Trillion a year.

www.thenewamerican.com...$15-trillion-and-nothing-to-show-for-it

www.cato.org...

Despite this government largess, more than 46 million Americans continue to live in poverty. Despite nearly $15 trillion in total welfare spending since Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty in 1964, the poverty rate is perilously close to where we began more than 40 years ago. Clearly we are doing something wrong. Throwing money at the problem has neither reduced poverty nor made the poor self-sufficient. It is time to reevaluate our approach to fighting poverty. We should focus less on making poverty more comfortable and more on creating the prosperity that will get people out of poverty.

So, the richest 1%, Take ALL their money, throw it at the poor and then what? After it is used up, then what?


The ONLY way to end poverty is to "teach the poor to fish" not give them free fish.... and that isn't going to happen, who would be left to vote Democrat for more free stuff (US anyway)?

edit on 20-1-2013 by infolurker because: (no reason given)

You are right, this is a systemic problem. Can we change it? I think it's possible if, and a big if, we can slowly remove fear from peoples lives.

Think of all the horrors that we perpetrate on one another because we are afraid. Isn't that what greed is. A reaction to the fear we won't have enough, or that somebody will take our stuff.

All this recent gun talk - is all about fear - pro-gun and anti-gun. Is it helping anything or anyone?

I'm glad that people are participating in this abstract thread. Moral? Ethical? Spiritual? Is Money our God? How do you show compassion?

Originally posted by geldib
So you want to argue over a minor detail instead of discussing the topic?

Nope.

Originally posted by geldib
Lets here your thoughts on the subject.

Okay.

If you can work, and there is work available, you work.
If you can work, and there is no work available, you help out in the neighbourhood.
If you can't work, you do whatever you can.

Nobody at any point should ever be allowed to be homeless or starve, nobody should fear the cost of living whether they work or not, everybody has the right to live.

Originally posted by beezzer
The point is, then what?

Say all the worlds wealthy level the playing field with their "wealth".

Then what?

It won't stay static. What will happen when there are poor again, do we go after those who have just a little more?

That is precisely my point. We can't imagine it? There is a SciFi book which I cannot recall the name from the eighties I think that posited a universe where a susistance level of care was guareented for everyone. Anything above that level of existance required study, work and effort. The point being that everyone was encouraged to do work they loved and provided meaning in their lives - they didn't have to chose based on security concerns for self or family. They were able to devote themselves to their chosen work and society benefited thereby.

If someone knows the book, I'd love to remember the name. It follows a young women on here 'wunderhaur' (spelling sorry) a time (think gap year) when young people are encouraged to 'find themselves' before advanced studies and begining a career. And it does explore this idea, and those who chose not to follow convention as well. I think the title includes "Peter Pan" but I couldn't find it on amazon - there is so much with Peter Pan in the title and is probably out of print.

Imagine that world. A world without poverty. If we can imagine it, we can work towards it.

Originally posted by beezzer

Originally posted by ANOK

Originally posted by beezzer
The point is, then what?

Say all the worlds wealthy level the playing field with their "wealth".

Then what?

It won't stay static. What will happen when there are poor again, do we go after those who have just a little more?

The means of production would have to be owned in common, that is how you stop one group of people causing another to become poor. People become poor because someone else is taking more than they need. If everyone has access to the means to produce (land mostly) then there is no reason they would become poor other than by their own incompetence.

So change the cause, not the symptom.

Idealistically, I would agree. But humans, being what they are, are far from the idealistic vision you may have.

What is the cause in your opinion? (I assume you mean the cause of poverty)

Ideals are extremely important. Life requires a goal to strive towards and ideals provide that goal. It's the basis of all religious and secular striving. It used to be that 'religious, moral, ethical - unselfish' goals offset to some degree the selfish ones of 'property, weath and power'.

Just look at the changing "most admired" lists from year to year and you see the shift from unselfish to selfish goals of every more people.

Originally posted by ANOK
We our selves could end poverty. Stop supporting capitalism and get behind worker ownership. Poverty is a result of the means of production being monopolised by a minority class for personal gain.

It may not be the revolution’s dawn, but it’s certainly a glint in the darkness. On Monday, this country’s largest industrial labor union teamed up with the world’s largest worker-cooperative to present a plan that would put people to work in labor-driven enterprises that build worker power and communities, too....

Worker Ownership For the 21st Century?

Thank you, thank you. Just the kind of goodies I was hoping for, in fact loads of goodies from everyone.

Originally posted by 11235813213455

Originally posted by ANOK
We our selves could end poverty. Stop supporting capitalism and get behind worker ownership. Poverty is a result of the means of production being monopolised by a minority class for personal gain.

It may not be the revolution’s dawn, but it’s certainly a glint in the darkness. On Monday, this country’s largest industrial labor union teamed up with the world’s largest worker-cooperative to present a plan that would put people to work in labor-driven enterprises that build worker power and communities, too....

Worker Ownership For the 21st Century?

Why repeat in the 21 century that which was a proven abject failure in the 20th?

Are you talking about the fall of the Soviet Union? The totalitarian system failed and took the socialist bits with it, but that does not imply that a more egalitarian/socialist/democratic system would. This is an evolution towards and just dismissing things out of hand blocks progress.

I could say that republican (as in a repulican form of government) capitalism is an abject failure as well.

Originally posted by beezzer
Idealistically, I would agree. But humans, being what they are, are far from the idealistic vision you may have.

But the irony is you support a system that perpetuates bad Human traits, it doesn't protect us from corruption and greed, it creates it.

Human nature is not to exploit other people for personal gain. Human nature is cooperative and altruistic, it has to be for us to have gotten this far. It's the capitalist system that causes the majority of our problems, through poverty and lack of faith in the future etc.

The condition of man is a condition of war, wrote 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes. A quick glance through history books and today's news headlines certainly seems to support the longstanding idea that humans by nature are aggressive, selfish and antagonistic.

But this view simply doesn't fit with scientific facts, write researchers featured in the new book "Origins of Altruism and Cooperation" (Springer, 2011), edited by Robert W. Sussman, PhD, and C. Robert Cloninger, MD. The book's authors argue that humans are naturally cooperative, altruistic and social, only reverting to violence when stressed, abused, neglected or mentally ill...

"Cooperation isn't just a byproduct of competition, or something done only because both parties receive some benefit from the partnership," says Sussman, professor of physical anthropology in Arts & Sciences. "Rather, altruism and cooperation are inherent in primates, including humans."

For example, Sussman says, chimpanzees have been observed to adopt unrelated, orphaned infants, despite the significant amount of effort and time required to care for the infants.

Humans naturally cooperative, altruistic, social

Yes most of the Human race is mentally ill. Why? Because we have been conditioned, due to the competitiveness of capitalism, to act against our own nature in order to survive.

Originally posted by FyreByrd

Originally posted by 11235813213455

Originally posted by ANOK
We our selves could end poverty. Stop supporting capitalism and get behind worker ownership. Poverty is a result of the means of production being monopolised by a minority class for personal gain.

It may not be the revolution’s dawn, but it’s certainly a glint in the darkness. On Monday, this country’s largest industrial labor union teamed up with the world’s largest worker-cooperative to present a plan that would put people to work in labor-driven enterprises that build worker power and communities, too....

Worker Ownership For the 21st Century?

Why repeat in the 21 century that which was a proven abject failure in the 20th?

Are you talking about the fall of the Soviet Union? The totalitarian system failed and took the socialist bits with it, but that does not imply that a more egalitarian/socialist/democratic system would. This is an evolution towards and just dismissing things out of hand blocks progress.

I could say that republican (as in a repulican form of government) capitalism is an abject failure as well.

Socialism & communism cannot exist without the capitalist system so it's obvious which system is the parasite and which is the host. I think that their track histories from say 1750 til now make it pretty obvious that extractive systems of redistribution have been the true abject failure. You just can't explain away all that history.

reply to post by FyreByrd


Nope Russia was not socialist, nor communist. They were a republic with state-capitalism.

The Bolsheviks fooled the people into supporting them so they could take state power. Those that understood what communism really is didn't support the Bolsheviks and in fact apposed them...

Left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks were a series of rebellions and uprisings against the Bolsheviks led or supported by left wing groups including Socialist Revolutionaries, Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and anarchists. Some were in support of the White Movement while some tried to be an independent force. The uprisings started in 1918 and continued through the Russian Civil War and after until 1922. In response the Bolsheviks increasingly abandoned attempts to get these groups to join the government and suppressed them with force.

Left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks

This is why it's really important to understand the meaning of terms, because government will trick you into supporting something not in your best interest.

Originally posted by 11235813213455
Socialism & communism cannot exist without the capitalist system

No, capitalism, socialism/communism are economic systems and not compatible with each other.

Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production. Socialism is the workers common ownership.

there's (more than) enough of everything, for everyone, on this planet, including money. however, without their financial advantage, the rich would no longer be rich. they wouldn't be poor, they'd be equals. but they would be sad, as the pursuit and accumulation of more and yet more wealth and property is the only thing that, to themselves, validates some peoples very existence.

how much is enough? for some, enough is far more than they could possibly ever use or need.

If we are not our brothers keepers than we are no different than animals.if we are animals then we should be living by the natural law of survival of the fittest and not man made laws.
Man made laws impede the fittest while protecting the weak to ensure that they keep the gains that they inherited from their fitter ancestors.
The wealthy protect themselves and their wealth with man made laws while at the same time telling everyone else that we must live by the law of nature,survival of the fittest.
Mankind and society would evolve ten fold if we weren`t letting our natural talents and abilities waste away while we spend 90% of our time just trying to survive from day to day.
Modern man likes to think that all his technology and knowledge makes him more evolutionary advanced than his primitive ancestors but he is not very much different than his cave dwelling ancestors,like them he still spends most of his time trying to provide himself with food,clothes and shelter.
We should be using our advanced technology and knowledge to provide for our basic needs for survival so that we can better spend our time working toward our own evolution.
Mankind has the knowledge and technology to free ourselves from being slaves to our own survival but we just don`t have the courage or will to free ourselves.

Originally posted by ANOK

Originally posted by 11235813213455
Socialism & communism cannot exist without the capitalist system

No, capitalism, socialism/communism are economic systems and not compatible with each other.

Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production. Socialism is the workers common ownership.

I am very familiar with their definitions and it doesn't change the veracity of my comment.

So explain this to me since Marx himself failed to do so in his writings. Tell me what the feedback mechanism looks like for the allocation of resources when the worker and not the product being produced is the value. How is demand and therefore market pricing conveyed in socialism?

Hint.. it's kind of why it doesn't work..

Originally posted by RoScoLaz
there's (more than) enough of everything, for everyone, on this planet, including money.

This is true. The system of capitalism has to keep resources artificially scarce, in order to maintain high prices and high profits.

Whether today's global overcapacity is seen as cause or effect of the economic crisis, one thing is certain: it isn't easy to make a profit in a world awash with overproduction. Capitalism is born in conditions of scarcity and is unable to function outside of them. So it seems logical that the crisis creates a tendency to restore these conditions artificially. But how does this affect the chances of the global economy to find a way out of its present predicament?....

....But how? Austerity measures are imposing themselves. Consumers, workers, companies, governments must spend less to make room for future payments to capital because otherwise, the value of existing capital collapses. But all these austerity measures, which will become sharper as time goes by, undercut demand. The overcapacity of the economy increases. Opportunities for productive investment diminish. The trend pushes owners of capital towards speculative investment, to the formation of new bubbles of fictitious wealth whose implosions will create new shocks. Governments are inevitably driven to contradictory policies. What they create with one hand, they destroy with the other. Their austerity measures undermine their recovery policies, and the latter, by creating new debt, new claims on future profit, undermine the former. What is the way out of this dilemma?

So what do they do?

1. Raise profits by lowering wages.

2. Raise profits by cutting faux frais, by shedding as much as possible superfluous constant and variable capital.

3. Raise profits by artificially creating conditions of scarcity.

Artificial scarcity in a world of overproduction: an escape that isn't

Profit is not made in a system awash with overproduction, so what do they do? ‘The Tao of Undersupply'....

"For every mid-level managing job opening up, there's scores of people willing and able. For every company needing to hire an ad agency or design firm, there's dozens out there, willing and able. For every person wanting to buy a new car, there's tons of car makers and dealers out there. I could go on and on. I could also go on about how many good people I know who are caught in oversupplied markets, and how every day they wake up, feeling chilled to the bone with dread and unease. So maybe the thing is to get into ‘The Tao of Undersupply'. If only 100 people want to buy your widgets, then just make 90 widgets. If only 1000, make 900. If only 10 million, make 9 million. It isn't rocket science, but it takes discipline.1" Hugh MacLeod Liberal-Conservative member of the Canadian House of Commons.