Topic: The Economic Gap has Exceeded the Tolerance Limit - page 2. (Read 483 times)

Everything sounds nice, but there are a couple of points:
1. The income and "assets" of the listed people are not money! Imagine ! They don't have a warehouse with wads of money! They have a market value for their tangible and intangible assets.
2. Secondly, they earned them and paid taxes. And they gave jobs to many people. And they built a lot of things - for people.
Now the question is - why should they take, sell all their factories, factories, patents, and give money to those who have been fed with the whole world for decades so that they can eat it again?
And let's add a tax to you and the rest of the citizens - will you just give 25% of your income to feed those people? Or at least 10%? Do you agree?

People in ground zero are expected to be devastated. When I said there's actually joy in disaster, I was referring to majority of the government agencies, politicians, private companies, NGOs, and other organizations and agencies that are responding to it. They may seem to be the good Samaritans, but most of them are actually just exploiting the opportunities provided by disasters.

There's so much money during disasters. Calamity funds are released. Strict procurement laws could be waived. All kinds of grants and aids are coming from all directions. There's also a spike in the demand of certain goods and services. Infrastructure and all kinds of projects abound. Corruption almost always accompanies disaster response efforts.

So whenever the rich helps the poor, it does not necessarily mean the rich means it. It could simply mean that by helping, the rich gains something.

This reality isn't fair,but guess what?It isn't supposed to be fair.
Capitalism isn't fair,but do you think that feudalism was fair?Do you think that the slave-ownership system that was before feudalism was fair?I don't think so.
Communists and socialists were promising a fair world,but their totalitarian regimes weren't fair and they failed miserably.
The human civilization exists in a system that cannot be changed-a rich minority dominates over the poor majority.Any attempt to change that system ruins everything.
Perhaps the people in North Korea are equal,but Kim and the party elite are privileged and control the entire country,so there's no equality even in a communist country.

I understand your frustration and fully agree with you, its not fair. There is no real argument why any one person needs more than 1 bn USD. How can you spend such kind of money in a lifetime? I wish we as ordinary humans could do something, unfortunately it's not realistic at the moment. In my opinion society is not ready to make policies on a global level. When it comes to Super rich we can't just change the laws in one country. Let's say in USA, China or Europe we would create a wealth tax of 25% above 10 million net worth, then the rich would just find ways to circumvent the law. First of all rich people like to put their money in trust and not in their personal names. So it becomes hard to proof that one person owns all that money. And we still have plenty of tax havens in the world. As long as small countries compete against each other to attract the most rich people in the world it is not going up work. Also the most trastic way is for the super rich to get out of some form of wealth redistribution would be to return their passport and become a citizen of a different country.

This is quite a depressing revelation. I have never been close to a disaster zone, and have no experience of such a situation. Do you think an element of the joy might be poorly-expressed relief from the survivors that they themselves could have been victims, and are thankful for having a narrow escape? Or is it really merely an absence of empathy?

While I am not saying that human beings are necessarily bad and unjust and unfair, the problem with us is that we always want to be pleased. So when we lend a hand, it is almost always to please ourselves more than pleasing others. The direction would always be inward or toward us. There's oftentimes a helping hand, especially in times of disaster, but the primary consideration would always be that it shouldn't be too bothersome. Or if it is, at least there will be a kind of compensation in whatever form. Humans always ask first, "what's in it for me?" We always have motives.

I've been involved in a number of disaster projects in the past, and the common thing when disaster strikes is that, except those who are hapless victims to the tragedy themselves, people are joyous. When disaster strikes, there's money overflowing; there's opportunity for tax discounts plus free promotion; there's a huge demand for goods; and so forth.

We are not God who can create endless justice. But we are endowed with reason to make a path of justice at least one second for many people to feel. For example, a few months ago in early January I went to a place where a natural disaster was flooding, which was caused by the felling of trees without selective logging by factories protected by the government (damn) resulting in rainwater not being absorbed by the trees and consequently affecting the residential areas of surrounding communities. For almost 1 month distributing aid from donors in the form of food, drinks, clothing and temporary shelter to accommodate victims who lost their homes and all their valuables.

We can't create justice that makes them happy forever, but we have a duty to cheer them up so that they can at least smile for a short time and feel like there's still someone out there who cares. That's when the rich people's economy is tested and should be able to care.

The gap is widening for many reasons; if a lazy man and his family suffers due to poverty then we cannot do anything about that but if a family suffers due to inefficient or corrupted government then I agree redistribution of economy worldwide is more important. In my opinion, all the human across this globe must get same level of opportunities and then they will build their wealth up to their efforts.

But, I am not ready to agree that gap in economic is not exceeding the tolerance limit; because we do have this same kind of situation for years and nothing major happened due to this. At the same time, rich are becoming richer and poor becomes more poorer. So, some initiative we must need right away.

I agree that it's not fair, and that redistribution is very important. The gap has been widening over decades, and that's not supposed to be happening when society is getting more prosperous. That's why it's important to adjust tax legislation to ensure that the richest people in the world can't get away with paying low or zero taxes. It's also important to change the culture itself, so that it's considered a matter of prestige not to own tons of houses, planes and cars (for instance, due to the environmental impact), and to pour your extra wealth into socially responsible initiatives of your choice (donating to human rights organizations, opening schools and hospitals, setting up scholarships for the least advantaged people). I think more people should read Rawls and consider his approach to justice, where justice (realistically) is when the most advantaged help out the most disadvantaged to balance the system out.

There's a difference between equality of outcome and equality of opportunity. It's inequality of opportunity that needs to be addressed. I don't think many people would advocate for absolute equality of outcome irrespective of talent, skill, ambition, risk-taking, ingenuity etc. But I believe most people can see that it is unjust that some people are basically guaranteed success from birth, whilst many others are all but guaranteed failure. I mean, most of the political leaders in my country over the last hundred (and more) years went to the same fee-paying school as kids, the self-perpetuating elite, born to rule.

If someone from a poor background breaks through and becomes a success, they're rightly lauded... but the entire reason it is newsworthy is because it's such a rare occurrence.

I think much of the anger in society stems from people feeling cheated, not that they never got a reward, but that they never got much of a chance. Disparities of outcome is a secondary issue.

Definately.

I do remember the time when we had political science in schools and we were introduced to cartoons based on reality. Apparently one made a huge impact on me. The one where there was a rich person with a huge bag full of money and holding it, whereas the poor person was sitting next to a crack in the ground. It was written *the rich keeps getting richer and the poor keeps getting poorer*

What I do think is that the only way this might work out for the people who are poor/ middle class is when the government would finally change their ways, their laws, their laws are centered around rich people and due to corruption they are also made by the rich people as well, therefore at the end of the day I do believe, this needs a lot of evolution for the long term. Plus education should be considered a basic right for everyone.

I think it's amazing to read Das Kapital. I did always want to read it but i ignored it because i didn't found a good translation to my native language. And as i didn't read it, i can't discuss it in details, but i have general idea about marxisme and dialictic.
If i can resume my journey with marxism books, and from the bboks i read, i can't tell that Karl Marx had spent his life writing bulshits. Maybe you analyse his thoughts with a mind in 21 century while you should put yourself in his time (back to 1800) and see if this was a revolutionary phylosofy or not.
I respect your point of vue, but i really don't think Marx writings can considered in the same category as Noah's ark (mythology) .

Yes i can undertood how you understood my point. Maybe i didn't succeed to express my ideas in the right way. Sorry i am note a native English and still face few difficulties to practice it .

You are correct if this is measured by the reality of life in some developing countries as well as developed countries. There is still an overlap between the two groups of rich and poor people, so that equality of life will never be achieved at any time. It has become a cycle where the rich and poor will need each other. Rich people need poor people to work and complete the work given, then the poor people also need income to survive.

It isn't. And I think I've already grown to a certain age and probably seen enough of how humanity works that I consider anybody raising this issue as naïve. I mean, the issue is legit, of course. It calls for action. We, as individual persons and collectively as human beings, should address it.

Alas, fairness is an abstract word which might prove to be impossible to expect from humans in real life. The intolerable economic chasm within humanity is already the sum-total; it is already the general illustration. It is already the bigger picture of how it is actually impossible for humans to be humans. If we go down to the second-to-second, minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day interactions between one human being to another human being, you will realize that fairness is a helpless concept.

A lot of poeple did, I know myself others besides me that did.
Don't know their motivation but for me, it's quite the fun, although I dislike socialism as much as humanly possible. But that didn't stop me from reading it just how being on atheist level considering my relative's ideas didn't stop me from reading the Bible or the Quran, or how I read Mein Kamf despite believing Hitler to be an idiot.
No, even if some indeed are referring to it as an academic book, first of all, Marx was not really an economist, he was more a philosopher, so don't expect anything too deep there, second, remember this was written almost two centuries ago by a guy who's education was completed exactly two centuries ago   so a lot of things he said there should be treated with the same seriousness as Noah's ark.


You see, this is why I asked you if you've read it.
Marx was never actually concerned with the natural resources, nor how are they exploited and definitely not the impact, as there was no such thing then as peak oil or global warming. Quite interesting also he completely denied Malthus's theory, probably because unlike Malthus who died before seeing a tractor Marx was quite familiar with the advancement in manufacturing, which of course posed a different problem for him.
So unfortunately none of those concepts you refer to can be found in Marx's theories because simply put, those were not the problems of the 19th century.


Just like the square wheel does poorly because we haven't invented the underground plane yet.  

I can well understand how you thought. Your personal experience was so hard to give you bad sentiments. And at the same time gives you the inspiration to ask about inequality in society.
Yes there does exist solution-attempts for fairness and social equality but still none of them can face the real facts that we (as humans) are building a great history of great civilisalied civilisations by destroying other life forms just to feed the needs for Bourgeoisie, while we can live in harmony with other creatures without anybody get starved. I don't mind if someone gets richer, but i always hope this it's not because of the poorness of someone else .

To Mr. Poker Player, so98nn, Hydrogen, Nhazwrath, coupable, stompix, hatshepsut93, Cnut237, Obito, jrrsparkles, Gyfts, Fortify, wxa7115, and Mr. paxmao thank you for the thoughts that I can't reply to one by one, because I can't deny such great thoughts.

Overall I really enjoyed and listened to how the diversity of viewpoints from each individual led me to believe that there are still people out there who genuinely care to share great thoughts and ideas. My reasoning is quite simple because I don't care about Marx's ideology, classical theory (Adam Smith), Neoclassical theory (Robert Solow and TW Swan), Neokeynes Harrod's theory or what the Communists say about Marx's doctrine. What happens if in the end greed remains within each of us. Here what I think and express is a fact, and this fact we feel today in any part of the world and in the country where I live.

When the public disclosure of the recent Pandora Papers which later sank again from the surface found that our government where I live is registered by name. It makes me hate how decent economic equality can never be felt by those of us who just survive the hardest way. As someone who is active in certain organizations to fight for human rights, then I express this phenomenon so that at least one of the many human beings can be more concerned when we feel that we live better than others. Because with a little empathy that is in someone means we have given life hope for the survival of mankind.

Awww, extracting the argument and ignoring the usual "you are a communist so you are already wrong, a probably eat children alive".

It seems that for some people in the forum anything that sounds like taxes, equal opportunity and redistribution is "communism". It is not. It is perfectly compatible with solidly democratic systems that work for the many and not for the few. There are several countries in Northern Europe that have clarity on where the market sits, where the state does better and what way of redistribution works without creating parasites.

You say that it is all right that a few are in control of such a level of wealth because that does not make others poorer and because that is how a market economy works.

Firstly, the fact that they control such a fortune does influence the politics and policies and effectively makes a society more unequal, which is the point of the post. You argue, correctly, that wealth is not a zero sum game, but at the end of the day, that influence in policies and the ability to create loopholes on taxes mean that they contribute less to the common expenses.

Secondly, you argue that this is a consequence of the market and is part of creating common wealth. That is not correct. That is just one interpretation of the markets (the  Austrian School, Chicago and the like way of thinking). No, having free market does not mean that wealth has to be more fairly distributed.

Thirdly, redistribution of wealth does not hinder progress at all. On the contrary, more equal opportunity unveils the talent of people who otherwise could have been lost due to lack of opportunity.

In sum, a society that works for just a few is inadequate and particularly prone to create disorder and unhappiness.


That is not true. Again, anything that sound like taxes and redistribution you catalogue as Communism. There is democratic and social way or running a state and it has little to do with Marx, who can only be understood in the context of its time.

Re tragedies, please notice that most wars are created by imperialism and nationalism. Communism tends to do poorly simply because it has never been applied as conceived. In my view it cannot work due to obvious misalignments in the incentive system.


That is the common misconception about what equality means. It is not about everyone having the same, it is about equal opportunities or, even more, giving opportunities for everyone. And yes, some people do not deserve it, but still, it is the mission of a modern society to provide that opportunity.

Please, read carefully, this is not about subsidizing, is about providing means for everyone to grow and contribute eventually to the common good.

It depends on what you consider fair, it seems to me you would like an even distribution of wealth and that is because you think it is unfair the current situation of the world, personally I understand this in terms of whether those economic actors played within the rules of the system in place and then thanks to their ability they got where they are, if this is the case then it is fair they have reached such riches despite the unevenness of the distribution of the wealth this produces, this is capitalism in a nutshell and as imperfect as it is, it is the only system that we have that actually works, as any form of communism and socialism eventually runs out of other’s people money to hand out.

Now, if some of them reached that level of wealth through cheating and not paying their taxes that is another story, and they should pay what they owe with interest and pay a fine as well, however trying to redistribute the wealth forcefully has never worked out as this creates an incentive to not work hard as you cannot keep what is rightfully yours, and then the society just collapses as people are given incentives to be lazy an unproductive.

I don't think it's fair but frankly politicians and regulators in democratic countries have been far too weak in taking action. Large corporate money and the families who have grown up with sizable control of it have been able to pay lobbyists to shape the future to their benefit. Politicians are facing a constant battle to equalize and benefit the average citizen, however money forever consolidates on one size of the equation - funneled into all sorts of causes that aim to strip back laws or find loopholes to exploit. It's a real moral minefield because billionaires can simply shop around for any type of citizenship that benefits them in the age of globalization, but they're only benefiting a very small circle in reality.