Disproportionate Gap between the rich and the poor

[SobaViolence]

The Star (http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1165316588765&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home)

85% of global wealth in hands of 10%
Yawning gap remains between assets of rich and poor, report says.

The richest two per cent of adults still own more than half of the world's household wealth, perpetuating a yawning global gap between rich and poor, according to research published Tuesday.

go unfettered liberal capitalist democracy, go! (n)

[EN[i]GMA]

Yeah, before liberal capitalist democracy everyone was equal.....ly poor.

I don't know what to do about any of this shit and neither does anyone else. But in the meantime, I'm not going to feel guilty about being privileged. If I did, I wouldn't be able to type this.

[Auton]

I love capitalism. and i'm serious.

[Pres Zount]

People were worse of before capitalism, but hopefully people will be better off after it.

[Ali]

People were worse of before capitalism, but hopefully people will be better off after it.Which people?

It's all about balance. When wealth accumulates in one place, it's taken from another.

[D_Raay]

Capitalism justified itself and was adopted as an economic principle on the express ground that it provides selfish motives for doing good, and that human beings will do nothing except for selfish motives.

[Pres Zount]

Which people? Uh, humans.

[Ali]

Which people? Uh, humans.
What you mean by 'better off'?

Colour TV? Clean drinking water? Guess how many people don't have access to which...

[EN[i]GMA]

What you mean by 'better off'?

Colour TV? Clean drinking water? Guess how many people don't have access to which...

And?

Capitalism then can't be said to have made them worse off if, for their entire history, they've had clean water or color TV.

[Schmeltz]

There are quite a few populations who were arguably quite better off before the advent of capitalism if only because they were autonomous and self-sustaining. Capitalism, and all the history behind it, has served a great many people extremely poorly and continues to do so.


It's all about balance. When wealth accumulates in one place, it's taken from another.


Wrong. It's all about ideas. One person's trash is another's treasure, and many of the wealthiest people in the world own vast assets that consist of nothing more than numbers on a screen or a sheet of paper.

[EN[i]GMA]

There are quite a few populations who were arguably quite better off before the advent of capitalism if only because they were autonomous and self-sustaining.

I'm sure you could find some examples, though I'd say there will always be argument over what's "better."

It's just very hard to determine.


Capitalism, and all the history behind it, has served a great many people extremely poorly and continues to do so.

There's no denying that. But every sort of social system has served people poorly in instances. That will always be the case.


Wrong. It's all about ideas. One person's trash is another's treasure, and many of the wealthiest people in the world own vast assets that consist of nothing more than numbers on a screen or a sheet of paper.

These figures are misleading, I think, because you take an objective criteria, how much someone "owns", and then, from that, you try to extrapolate other things, like quality of life, overall happiness, etc., when really, it's quite impossible. Someone can be "poor" and still be perfectly happy, to the point which further money would do little or nothing to increase their happiness. Is someone who chooses to be relatively "poor", or doesn't wish to become "rich" really, in a certain since, poor? Sure, certain things are unavailable to them, but they might not want them anyway.

Sorry if this is coming off like an apologia for the rich, like "the poor are happy with their plight", because it's not, I'm just pointing out that stretching these numbers to mean more than really mean is pointless.

As Schmeltz said, it's paper, and it's divorced, quite a bit, from the realities people face daily.

[Pres Zount]

What you mean by 'better off'?

Colour TV? Clean drinking water? Guess how many people don't have access to which...
Obviously not all people, I guess I'll make an amendment and say that capitalism is better than feudalism. Since most starving non-TV owning countries never made the qualitative leap from one to the other, I'm going to negate them from my original statement. hahaha.

EDIT: oh, and better off as in not everyone is dying by the age of 40.

[sam i am]

When wealth accumulates in one place, it's taken from another.

That is blatantly and derivitively untrue.

Ever heard of economies of scale? Productivity increases? Investment?

Evidently not.