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Economy Wealth Distribution: For The Many Or The Few?

DopeM said:
Well, working with your neighbors is essentially that, isn't it?
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sorry my bad, I misinterpeted what you said, I assumed you meant setting up some new community rather than just interacting positively with the neighbors you already had.
 
That's all, for instance rotating crops between neighbors can help preserve the soil for future use. Maybe one neighbor is good working with iron while another can work wood. Maybe one has a few automatic rifles and the other a few pitbulls. maybe one has a distillery and the other a large barn for curing cannabis. These things can be shared. it creates a sense of community and belonging to help each other.

That way when others, with ideas that don't align with you and your neighbors, come by they can be dealt with efficiently. Not that it will matter if it's Gov't panzers but maybe you have a neighbor who can tunnel as well as our ralphie And they never find your daughters
 
Captain.Heroin said:
Aside from corruption issues, why do you think people like me should have more money than I've earned through hard work, "birth lottery" etc? Why do I deserve that?

I don't think you'll be able to convince me of why that might be.

I just don't. Sorry.
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Uhh... I don't?

I just think society shouldn't be stacked against the common people. I think if you work and contribute to society, you should be compensated such that you can afford the things you need to survive and not live in poverty, regardless of what the job is. I think if you get sick, you should be able to get help without going into debt. Particularly, I think preventative medical care and wellness should be provided. We have a huge problem with people having chronic health conditions as a result of not being able to afford routine doctor visits. This ends up putting a huge burden on society/taxpayers/the medical system because millions of people suffer from easily preventable things due to a reluctance to go to the doctor. I think people should be able to go to college, if they want to, without going into 10-15 years of debt and screwing themselves financially for decades, or life (ie, college should cost a reasonable amount). Etc.
 
Xorkoth said:
not live in poverty
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ok specifically why are we supposed to save people in poverty who are already there. not everyone in poverty now was born into it.

there is a component of society of mostly aimless people, or individuals who wish to contribute but can't due to mental health/physical disability. And there are a lot of aimless drug users who burn out and die young.

You'll have a hard time convincing me of what it would be incredibly easy to convince most people living homeless/in poverty; "You deserve a home, right?" I imagine most homeless would say no and not hold themselves to a standard (and I don't judge them for this either).

How would you go about judging those who opted for poverty versus those who couldn't escape it? Or does "everyone deserve a second, third fourth fifth (infinite number) chance"?
 
I'm not talking about people who don't want to contribute to society, I'm talking about people who DO work and contribute to society, work hard, and are still living in poverty because minimum wage is far too low.
 
Yes and how would you segregate people who contribute and those who don't?

If you're disabled/too mentally ill to work, would you still have to act as if you wanted to contribute?

US gov't has a terrible record at giving people who are truly beyond physical incapacity their benefits. I don't think growing the welfare state would work at this point. Even if it was the morally justifiable/right/only correct move to make.
 
I'm talking about people who do work. It's quite easy to separate people who do work from people who don't, you count their hours working at a job. Providing quality of life for people who don't work is another complex matter I'm not trying to get into right now, but in terms of those who do work, I think it's criminal and absurd that anyone works full-time and can't make enough money to survive. And the only reason they can't is because people at the top want to make 10,000 times as much money as the people who are actually doing the work to make their wealth possible, so minimum wage has remained more or less the same while the cost of living has skyrocketed. Try as you might, you can't convince me that isn't unethical and messed up. Why shouldn't minimum wage keep up cost of living increases? Pay rate vs cost of living steadily decreasing for decades means a country is on a trajectory to reach the third world. Is that what you want?
 
I realize that. I'm trying to make one specific point. I am aware there are other problems besides a low minimum wage, that also need to be addressed.
 
Xorkoth said:
I think if you work and contribute to society, you should be compensated such that you can afford the things you need to survive and not live in poverty, regardless of what the job is.
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people's worth should not be determined by how exploitable they are. most essential work can be done through automation now. that only "useful" people deserve to live is a pretty fucked up view to have, considering what all can be done with modern technology

and yes I'm going a bit further than what you said, but my point still stands
 
That's not what I'm saying. I was responding to CH about income inequality. I didn't say I think people who aren't "useful" don't deserve to live. In fact I said maybe last week in another thread about how in a world where our jobs are automated, we shouldn't need to work. If society has the means to support its people, it should support its people. Literally all I'm trying to say is that it's fucked up that someone can work full time and still live in poverty, something I imagine you agree with.
 
My family are hard workers.
They believe in capitalism.
They’re simple folk.

But twice in my life now I’ve watched them lose everything through no fault of their own.

First in the 90’s during the ‘recession we had to have’ when interest rates suddenly soared to a point they had to sell their homes because they could no longer keep up the repayments.

They started again.

Rebuilt, worked hard and had made millionaire status when the GFC caused them to lose 60% of their superannuation, setting their retirement plan back by 15 years.

You’re theory has a few holes Cap.
 
Meth novice 79 said:
My family are hard workers.
They believe in capitalism.
They’re simple folk.

But twice in my life now I’ve watched them lose everything through no fault of their own.

First in the 90’s during the ‘recession we had to have’ when interest rates suddenly soared to a point they had to sell their homes because they could no longer keep up the repayments.

They started again.

Rebuilt, worked hard and had made millionaire status when the GFC caused them to lose 60% of their superannuation, setting their retirement plan back by 15 years.

You’re theory has a few holes Cap.
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And they are like thousands of other families in this country unfortunately. People often ask why "Republicans vote against their self-interest" but in all honesty, most Americans play the electoralism game as if playing with someone who holds all the cards and won't tell you the rules. We are all essentially the poor and down trodden and I don't say that failing to recognize that some people really have it worse than I do because of systemic problems. The point being we have far, far more in common with the people we are told are our enemies than the people we are told are our friends.
 
Xorkoth said:
Why shouldn't minimum wage keep up cost of living increases?
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Because... the cost of living does not have to increase... minimum wage may be (in the minds of some is the) driving factor behind cost of living increases. The gov't is largely to blame for shitty economic decisions over many decades which have eroded away at the value of the USD.

Because... minimum wage is predatory and isn't a living wage.

Because... a minimum wage isn't what the upper echelon of society aims for in life. If you want something significantly better than minimum wage, then everyone can't have a living wage unfortunately.

I do not believe in "there is enough to go around". Someone would have already done it to secure their political party's eternal reign over the modern war-machine totalitarian US style government we have now. The right-leaning people of generations past typically believed that Democrats believe in social welfare programs to keep winning elections.

This obviously has not come to fruition because the Democrats are by and large war-machine sympathizers, supporters of a public police force, large corporations and will take money from anyone. Anyone who doesn't follow this prototype typically doesn't get to win the primary. This is clearly sad because yeah wouldn't it be amazing if the Democrats could just give us all alright jobs, food, shelter, basic needs... gee why haven't they tried... hmmm..... because there isn't enough to go around. It cannot be done or it otherwise would have been orchestrated when the US federal deficit wasn't over one trillion dollars in a deficit.

There's just not enough to go around.
 
Captain.Heroin said:
Because... minimum wage is predatory and isn't a living wage.
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Right, exactly my point.

Captain.Heroin said:
Because... a minimum wage isn't what the upper echelon of society aims for in life. If you want something significantly better than minimum wage, then everyone can't have a living wage unfortunately.
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Also exactly my point. If a small minority insist on accumulating far more than anyone ever needs, then everyone can't have a living wage. That's exactly the problem. So why is the solution to allow them to do whatever they want instead of forming policies to prevent predatory people from accumulating more than they ever need at the expense of others?
 
Xorkoth said:
Right, exactly my point.
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So it looks like if this is the problem and we have two different solutions, we're both right but I can't speak for our plans being 100% foolproof; perhaps both of ours fall apart due to human corruption.

everyone can't have a living wage.
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It's not due to wealth hoarding. It's due to overpopulation vs. resources on Planet Earth.
 
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