k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Topic Author's Original Post - Feb 9, 2010 - 07:14am PT
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Our weekly rag runs a column, The Question Man, where (as you may guess), the man asks a question.
Last week had an interesting question, and one I've been pondering:
Should the wealthy be obligated to help the poor?
This sprouted some spirited answers and letters to the weekly, and I found it an interesting thing to mull...
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paganmonkeyboy
climber
mars...it's near nevada...
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yes. people don't get it - it's not just a pyramid, it's a pyramid with this tiny spike that shoots a mile up into the stratosphere where the uber-rich are driving...we have a ruling class...
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Dingus Milktoast
Gym climber
Why'djya leave the ketchup on the table?
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Yes they ARE obligated.
DMT
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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I agree, DMT. And it is not just a moral query. If they do not help the poor and help the civilization we all live in, we chop their heads off on a bridge in Paris. You can with all sorts of power deny your moral imperatives but eventually the people have always been known to come and get you---- the ivory towers all gleam on borrowed time. Yah Pagan, everybody thinks there is a smooth gradient between the very poor and the very rich while in fact there is the wild and crazy fact is that a tiny number of people actually control the lion's share of the world's wealth. Oh, and excellent, there Rotting! v. fun.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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K-man....what an absurd question....! The rich should not be obligated....they should be left to their own free will to help the poor....Social security , medicare , unemployment are big drains on the economy and if eliminated , would free up money for the rich who would undoubtably redistribute this wealth in a fair and generous manner....the poor choose to be poor and if were not so lazy , would most likely own a second home in aspen or sun valley....i honestly believe that if we got big government out of the charity game and let the churches take over , world poverty would be a thing of the past...rj
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Reilly
Mountain climber
Monrovia, CA
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the people have always been known to come and get you---- the ivory towers all gleam on borrowed time.
That may be true but not everyone will live to see the day.
The proletariat is still waiting in Russia and many other places.
And how many times has one form of tyranny only been replaced by another?
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dktem
Trad climber
Temecula
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Ayn Rand would say no.
And she proved it by writing books about fantasy worlds with comic book characters.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 9, 2010 - 08:16am PT
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Some fodder (stolen from a letter to the ed):
"Regarding your recent "Local Talk" question about whether the wealthy have an obligation to help the poor, I'm almost amazed that anyone living in the "Free-World" would ask such a question, although I suppose now-a-days the term "Free-World" doesn't exist anymore. I'm not so young that I don't remember a time when the very mention of a question like this one would quickly illicit a response loaded with expletives like commie, pink-o, and not necessarily in that order.
Let's talk taxes for a few minutes shall we? Taxes--something we all pay, one of those necessary evils to keep the economic wheel of our country turning. If you doubt this then I suggest you look to the tens of billions in tax payer dollars given to the banking industry. The IRS shows that the richest 1 percent of Americans pays 39 percent of the country's total income tax bill, and the top 10 percent of filers pay approximately 71 percent of the tab. Hold on a sec I'm not done yet. The bottom 50 percent of earners now make up 13 percent of the country's total income yet pay less than 3 percent of the income taxes. This means this, people in the top 50 percent of pay in this country pay 97 percent of the country's total income tax bill. I think it would be safe to say that the rich do at least one thing for the poor. I know, I know, some of you are probably saying, 'Good! They should pay the bill. They have all the money!'
Requiring one person to help another person for no other reason than one of the two people has more money than the other is ludicrous if not borderline criminal. This concept is no different than a person with a median income owning a house, two cars, and a boat being told to give the poorer person some of their possessions because they can't afford things of their own. It seems to me that the guiding principal of freedom that our founding fathers rallied behind during the creation of our nation has been lost somewhere through the years. Forcing or obligating the rich to help the poor goes against the very notion of freedom.
More and more I keep hearing the Communists--sorry I mean the Progressives--of the world demanding that everyone deserves the same sized piece of the proverbial pie. Whether it be the rich helping the poor or everyone should have free healthcare. There is a certain sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when you accomplish a self imposed goal that you will never have if someone just hands it to you. However the Progressive movement going on in the country seems to dictate that the foundations that our country was built on is an old way of thinking and that we need to evolve with an ever changing world. But my argument to this rhetoric is and will continue to be that every time you strip away someone's rights gifted to us by our constitution (even the rights of the awful rich people), you destroy the adage that used to be taught to us in school, that the United States of America is the land of the free and the home of the brave.
By the way I only make about $40,000."
Well now...
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Dingus Milktoast
Gym climber
Why'djya leave the ketchup on the table?
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Requiring one person to help another person for no other reason than one of the two people has more money than the other is ludicrous if not borderline criminal.
This person is RIGHT. Henceforth this person shall fight her own wars, build and maintain her own highways, and when she is ill she can bloody well tend to herself too.
DMT
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pc
climber
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And "it" should be for a higher purpose than just charity for charity's sake. The rich helping the poor should be for the betterment of society in general. With a strong emphasis on education and general development programs the money is not wasted. It's an investment.
Look at what happend with the $10 billion investment from the original GI Bill. It arguably produced trillions in return and surely lead to the massive economy that bloomed in the US post WWII decades.
I don't know about you all but I want to live in a country with healthier and better educated folk. And I'm willing to invest to get there.
$.02 + tax,
pc
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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It is idle conjecture to imagine that the super rich don’t have to eventually participate in the general human plight----that it is voluntary or merely a nice thing to do.
When societies are so out of proportion that human misery is in extremis while wealth is also, you eventually get revolution. Yak all you want to, but the world eventually tries to rebalance, even if it takes hundreds of years. There will be blood.
Further, the notion that money is God's report card and those that have tremendous wealth are somehow "due" these wildly out-of-scale monies and that the distribution of wealth is not actually random (which is how actually it turns out) but, again, based on merit, mystical or practical, is of course the fundamental tenet of oligarchies and similar authoritarian social constructs.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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If you believe taxes go to help the poor, then the rich in this country are helping the poor big-time.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Requiring one person to help another person for no other reason than one of the two people has more money than the other is ludicrous if not borderline criminal.
When the wealthy control the politics and can put into place laws that protect their major corporations, while limiting competition, then yes, there needs to be a balancing force.
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t*r
Trad climber
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eu3WIXuzmo
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ayn rand is a f*cking moron like the leaders of the fed who didn't take into account how humans actually behave.
of COURSE the rich are obligated to help out the poor, since their fortune is built on the back of oppression.
"and the rich man and his son are home / singin' just leave well enough alone"
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Mr Moosie writes:
"When the wealthy control the politics and can put into place laws that protect their major corporations, while limiting competition..."
A good example of a law like that is the minimum wage.
Why do you think WalMart has lobbyists in Washington advocating for a higher minimum wage? It's because WalMart pays all their employees more than minimum wage, and an increase in minimum wage won't affect them. But WalMart's mom & pop competition isn't so generous, so every hike in minimum wage hits them hard.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Obligated by whom, the Gov't? No.
It's a complex question though. Define 'help'. Define 'poor'.
Define 'rich'.
The simple answer is no. They should want to help the poor, but not be 'obligated' to.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
Monrovia, CA
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I'm all for an equitable society but welfare isn't the way
to achieve it. Case in point: Samoa. I've a good friend who
ran the tuna plant there and a bro-in-law who flew for Air Samoa.
When my bro-in-law got there he noticed blue tarps over lots of roofs.
"Oh, those are from the typhoon two years ago."
"Two years ago?"
"Yeah, after the blow the government cut checks to people to get
their roofs fixed but, of course, they just went out and bought
new Chevy Cavaliers."
Of course, half the Cavaliers were up on blocks by then.
Both guys commented on the disgusting amount of trash lining the roads.
The tuna plant manager made every effort not to hire Samoans. When
possible he hired Western Samoans. Western Samoa is an independent
country not on the US dole. Their people are not fat lazy slobs and
still believed in hard work and don't believe in littering as a sport.
My bro-in-law quit Air Samoa 'cause their mechanics were both lazy and incompetent
to the point of criminal (he's also a licensed mechanic).
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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I've heard the same thing from people who hired Indians ( American ).
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matty
Trad climber
los arbor
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of COURSE the rich are obligated to help out the poor, since their fortune is built on the back of oppression.
While this is true of some rich people, many others have created their wealth and offered something of great value to the rest of society in doing so, without oppressing anyone. People so blind to what can happen when you give the government power to take from one group of people because of another groups need. Someday they could be knocking on your door. Wealthy people have an obligation to follow the law, which should prevent them from buying votes to bend the law, defrauding their partners or other acts of forceful oppression. Otherwise the wealthy should have no legal obligation to the poor, moral obligations are a different question.
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Pate
Trad climber
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There will always be a massive division between poverty and wealth. No matter how many philanthropic Gates and Buffets there are. While many many people try as hard as they can to do good in tiny pockets, that's just what it is, tiny pockets.
Humans breed like rabbits. There are way way way too many people on the planet. Until the population growth gets under control, which it won't, there is no hope for some type of world where equality exists.
Suffering is the human condition.
That being said- yes, people should help each other, not just the rich helping the poor. But there is a reason why people attain and hold onto wealth, and it isn't because they are spending all their time easing the suffering.
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