You know… it might be just a little bit easier (/s) to take people out of poverty if the trillions didn’t go to pockets of ultra rich and the companies.
In a limited capital economy (and we are in such an economy despite capitalists thinking we’re not) every dollar that ends up in a pocket of ultra rich is a dollar that cannot be spent on food and housing by regular people.
Every single dollar in companies and ultra rich pockets comes from regular people’s work. Thus, if someone despite working lives in poverty then they are actively being exploited by the ultra rich. Jeff Bezos and Amazon workers living on food stamps is a great example.
We simply can’t take everyone out of poverty if we don’t distribute the money even slightly more fairly.
Fair enough, but how do we take the money from the rich people if they are the people writing legislation and funding elections? Does it really matter what percent we declare that they are taxed when they pay precisely 0 percent at the end of the day?
It’s not fair to apply that defeatist outlook to one perspective and not the other. You can say that about your idea too, of lifting people out of poverty. How do we lift people out of poverty when the people writing legislation and funding elections have no concept of poor and no incentive to give a shit about the poor?
Here’s the thing, if we imagine for a moment that change can be brought on, then taking money out of billionaire pockets is inherently necessary to solve the issue of poverty. Poverty is not a problem of static amounts of money, it’s a problem of inequality. In the real world it looks like some people have a few dollars to their name while others have billions, but it’ll work exactly the same if some people have a few thousand dollars to their name while others have trillions.
Imo, if we don’t “level the playing field” at least a little bit, what’ll happen is that as we uplift people out of poverty in one way - e.x. giving them a home, feeding them, and educating them - it’ll just get more expensive to do everything else like eat out, go to movies, go on vacation, have internet, have a phone, have electricity and water. We as a society will have freed up some additional money by subsidizing education, housing, food but if left unchecked the wealthier among us will seize the opportunity to take that. And they will, because they have an incentive to. But if you take that extra money away - you can alleviate the incentive and make it not so appealing to try and take every last dollar. And yes, current income tax in most places does not account properly for how billionaires actually hold their money, but they could in this hypothetical scenario. I’m not gonna try and draft legislation here but it’s certainly possible, though it might cause all the billionaires to just leave.
Yea that all makes sense. I guess what I was trying to say was that taking the money out of the hands of the ultra wealthy seems less likely to actually happen than the smaller changes which are indeed happening slowly but surely, like greater access to clean water, food, shelter, education, the empowerment of women, etc. Generally speaking, those small changes are happening across the planet and I have hope that those changes will continue. A world with actual wealth equality just seems like a pipe dream, but on the other hand, things like indoor plumbing seem achievable globally.
You kind of lost me at ‘if we house, feed, and educate people than it will be more expensive to go to the movies or have internet’
The only hope we have of leveling the playing field is to focus on the achievable goals I mentioned. I don’t see why it is necessary to take from the rich to achieve these goals.
Don’t get me wrong, if it was at all possible to level the playing field by redistributing the wealth of the rich, that would be my first choice, I just don’t think that’s possible the way things are. I think it would be defeatist to think that that is the only way to lift people out of poverty.
Edit: one other point is that everyone benefits from less poverty, including the wealthy. The incentive is there for these changes to occur. Poor people don’t make very good consumers. Dealing with the effects of poverty is ironically a massive economic burden on society.
For the record, I don’t think focusing solely on taking money away from the richest people is the only way to lift people out of poverty, I think there are many factors that create poverty and that there being billionaires at all is a contributor to it due to the power they wield with it. Mind you, I don’t really include millionaires in the “wealthy” category here, I’m talking about billionaires - those with many orders of magnitude more wealth than somebody you’d just consider “rich”. I’m certainly not against feeding, housing, and educating people and contribute to efforts to do so locally. I was thinking more along the lines of hypothetically long term eradicating poverty, not how to realistically approach treating it today so that’s probably where our wires got crossed.
You know… it might be just a little bit easier (/s) to take people out of poverty if the trillions didn’t go to pockets of ultra rich and the companies.
In a limited capital economy (and we are in such an economy despite capitalists thinking we’re not) every dollar that ends up in a pocket of ultra rich is a dollar that cannot be spent on food and housing by regular people.
Every single dollar in companies and ultra rich pockets comes from regular people’s work. Thus, if someone despite working lives in poverty then they are actively being exploited by the ultra rich. Jeff Bezos and Amazon workers living on food stamps is a great example.
We simply can’t take everyone out of poverty if we don’t distribute the money even slightly more fairly.
Fair enough, but how do we take the money from the rich people if they are the people writing legislation and funding elections? Does it really matter what percent we declare that they are taxed when they pay precisely 0 percent at the end of the day?
It’s not fair to apply that defeatist outlook to one perspective and not the other. You can say that about your idea too, of lifting people out of poverty. How do we lift people out of poverty when the people writing legislation and funding elections have no concept of poor and no incentive to give a shit about the poor?
Here’s the thing, if we imagine for a moment that change can be brought on, then taking money out of billionaire pockets is inherently necessary to solve the issue of poverty. Poverty is not a problem of static amounts of money, it’s a problem of inequality. In the real world it looks like some people have a few dollars to their name while others have billions, but it’ll work exactly the same if some people have a few thousand dollars to their name while others have trillions.
Imo, if we don’t “level the playing field” at least a little bit, what’ll happen is that as we uplift people out of poverty in one way - e.x. giving them a home, feeding them, and educating them - it’ll just get more expensive to do everything else like eat out, go to movies, go on vacation, have internet, have a phone, have electricity and water. We as a society will have freed up some additional money by subsidizing education, housing, food but if left unchecked the wealthier among us will seize the opportunity to take that. And they will, because they have an incentive to. But if you take that extra money away - you can alleviate the incentive and make it not so appealing to try and take every last dollar. And yes, current income tax in most places does not account properly for how billionaires actually hold their money, but they could in this hypothetical scenario. I’m not gonna try and draft legislation here but it’s certainly possible, though it might cause all the billionaires to just leave.
Yea that all makes sense. I guess what I was trying to say was that taking the money out of the hands of the ultra wealthy seems less likely to actually happen than the smaller changes which are indeed happening slowly but surely, like greater access to clean water, food, shelter, education, the empowerment of women, etc. Generally speaking, those small changes are happening across the planet and I have hope that those changes will continue. A world with actual wealth equality just seems like a pipe dream, but on the other hand, things like indoor plumbing seem achievable globally.
You kind of lost me at ‘if we house, feed, and educate people than it will be more expensive to go to the movies or have internet’
The only hope we have of leveling the playing field is to focus on the achievable goals I mentioned. I don’t see why it is necessary to take from the rich to achieve these goals.
Don’t get me wrong, if it was at all possible to level the playing field by redistributing the wealth of the rich, that would be my first choice, I just don’t think that’s possible the way things are. I think it would be defeatist to think that that is the only way to lift people out of poverty.
Edit: one other point is that everyone benefits from less poverty, including the wealthy. The incentive is there for these changes to occur. Poor people don’t make very good consumers. Dealing with the effects of poverty is ironically a massive economic burden on society.
For the record, I don’t think focusing solely on taking money away from the richest people is the only way to lift people out of poverty, I think there are many factors that create poverty and that there being billionaires at all is a contributor to it due to the power they wield with it. Mind you, I don’t really include millionaires in the “wealthy” category here, I’m talking about billionaires - those with many orders of magnitude more wealth than somebody you’d just consider “rich”. I’m certainly not against feeding, housing, and educating people and contribute to efforts to do so locally. I was thinking more along the lines of hypothetically long term eradicating poverty, not how to realistically approach treating it today so that’s probably where our wires got crossed.
Yup, agreed completely.