What is Wealth? What is Poverty?

Alright, Ksolem votes to define wealth as having more money than others have.

Wealth can only exist in contrast to poverty. Without poverty, there is no definition of wealth. The wealthy need to propagate poverty and do.

I guess you vote that money measures wealth also.

Alright, Ksolem votes to define wealth as having more money than others have.

Actually, madbolter1, the government gives paper dollars value, because it requires that we pay taxes in dollars, and makes dollars legal tender for all debts.

Money also has an inherent value as a medioum of exchange, since it is convenient to carry, etc. This makes exchange cheaper, since we don't need to carry the goods we would otherwise need for direct barter.

Instead, packages of tuna served as the medium. I never figured out why.

Even Saddam Hussein, who had plenty of money and the 4th largest army, didn't stand a chance.

A man's true wealth is the good he does in the world.

Hugging strangers probably doesn't work so well

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other

One vote for John Berger.

Do you think a person like Bill Gates or other very successful people are rich at the expense of others?

Do you think a person like Bill Gates or other very successful people are rich at the expense of others?

Are many poor? Sure. Does their life probably suck? Sure.

It's the filthy rich who don't do much work.

Microsoft agreed to pay $97 million yesterday to settle an eight-year-old class-action lawsuit in which thousands of temporary employees accused the company of improperly denying them benefits.

Microsoft reached this settlement, one of the largest ever received by a group of temporary employees, after the workers had sued the company, maintaining that they were actually permanent employees, not temporaries, and therefore deserved the same benefits as regular workers.

Powerful people have been doing it since the beginning of time. Their wealth is not all righteous and immune from criticism, nor is the current economic system immune from improvement.

boring people can debate it endlessly because no opinions about economics can have a rational basis.

If you want to take (power) from the rich and give it to the poor (powerless); this is how you do it without firing a shot.

Exactly! You got it! I won't debate economics with you! My opinion and your opinion are both equally empty and worthless.

Was your intention here to have just a big, warm, sloppy group hug about how "wealthy" we all are because we have life, health, a nice family, enough to eat, and so on?

I'd love to hear the economic principles employed to justify "wealth redistribution."

People create wealth through work

People create wealth through work, and it is redistributed to the capitalist.

Work is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the creation of wealth.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Which republican president said that (supposedly)?

Let the proletariat start thinking of ideas to ADD VALUE, rather than how "downtrodden" they are, and their wages will reflect that added value in the vast majority of companies. Most companies WANT to reward and keep loyal their valued employees! But that means that they recognize as valuable something that logically precedes mere labor.

What world do you live in?

I live in a world where I can't get a burrito bent to order.

I live in a world where the checker THROWS bananas into a bag on top of the tomatoes that were THROWN into a bag on top of containers of yogurt.

I live in a world where the customer service droid reads me a script that literally ignores what I called in about and that then forces me to step through the script with them point by point until finally the script is exhausted and the droid is reduced to: "I can't help you with this problem. I'll have to get a supervisor."

On and on.

Top 25 hedge fund managers take pay cut, now average $400 million each

"What is Wealth? What is Poverty?"

You get what you pay for, my friend. Or rather, what the Waltons pay for.

When somebody has a job, works steady, yet till qualifies for foodstamps and Section 8 housing, while the corporate owner rolls in taxpayer subsidized billions, yeah, that might give somebody a screwed up attitude.

The real problem is that there is no respect for the work ethic in this country.

We believe only paper shufflers and Wall Street con-men deserve to be enriched for what they do. Somebody who does an honest days work can go pound sand.

Turn to petty crime to try to feed your kid, you're going to jail for a long time.

Steal the life savings of a widow and you're heralded in the Wall Street Journal as a visionary.

The idea that unskilled, uneducated workers should (now) expect to raise a family is what is ridiculous!

And because of my terrible whiteness, I couldn't qualify for ANY of the help and greased skids that people of color COULD qualify for. So, I didn't even get the "helping hand" that SO many others COULD have gotten and just couldn't be bothered to get.

The HUGE irony here is that I'm sure you are all about getting Hillary elected, and that is irony indeed as you talk about big corporate corruption.

Yeah, things have always been tough for white boys in this country, one raw deal after another.

You couldn't be any more wrong.

The POOR have always had it tough, regardless of time or country or race.

But I can attest that there IS a way out of poverty.

GLAD to hear it! So I can count on one less vote for Billary, then?

Yes, it's people organizing and standing in solidarity against the Robber Barons. It worked before, it will work again.

The CORE issue with most of the chronically "poor" is character.

Having recently returned from Nepal

That's one of the most insulting things I've ever read.

Oh well. Often the truth often feels insulting.

Poverty is lack of empathy for those less fortunate than yourself.

Some say that empathy is fundamental to humanity.

Some say that empathy is fundamental to humanity.

I remember years and years ago a conspiracy theorist telling me the world was ruled by blood-drinking, baby-sacrificing lizards. These psychologists were essentially saying the same thing. Basically, when you get them talking, these people [ie. psychopaths] are different than human beings. They lack the things that make you human: empathy, remorse, loving kindness.

So at first I thought this might just be psychologists feeling full of themselves with their big ideological notions. But then I met Al Dunlap. [That would be “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap, former CEO of Sunbeam and notorious downsizer.] He effortlessly turns the psychopath checklist into “Who Moved My Cheese?” Many items on the checklist he redefines into a manual of how to do well in capitalism.

There was his reputation that he was a man who seemed to enjoy firing people, not to mention the stories from his first marriage — telling his first wife he wanted to know what human flesh tastes like, not going to his parents’ funerals. Then you realize that because of this dysfunctional capitalistic society we live in those things were positives. He was hailed and given high-powered jobs, and the more ruthlessly his administration behaved, the more his share price shot up.

It is our choice how we think about ourselves.

Any one of us is poor and wealthy at the same time, depending on what you are comparing yourself to, right?

To me, though, the key is contentment, and that doesn't depend on what others have that I lack.

Are you looking at my balls?

In the face of decades of liberalism

Even a new wave Democrat like Obama has moved so far away from classical American liberalism that he makes an old school progressive conservative like Eisenhower look like a true blue Socialist.

Seriously?

Seriously?

...the leaders of the left...

And you come back to me with Obamacare?

...the biggest expansion of federal socialism in our lifetimes...

Lining the pockets of capitalists is socialism. I see now.

It was sold as benefiting everybody in flagrantly socialistic fashion, it benefited only the insurance companies, and it totally screwed the middle class.

It's ironic that NOW guys like you call it "capitalism," when in the thread about Obumblecare last year, guys like you were arguing socialistically and claiming that it was a "good" sort of socialism.

Donini has a wealth of world class experience at the highest levels of alpinism and cutting edge rockclimbing. He's rather poor in his grasp of the rights to self determinism that propelled him to such heights.

He's rather poor in his grasp of the rights to self determinism that propelled him to such heights.

Your factoids about Eisenhower are largely not even "left"

Obumblecare ... (is) akin to the creation of Social Security, which has taken decades to be recognized as the pyramid scheme it always was.

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs ...they are stupid

decades of liberalism

Yes, capitalism is working ... for the Forbes Global Billionaires whose ranks swelled from 322 in 2000 to 1,826 in 2015. Billionaires control the vast majority of the world’s wealth, 67 billionaires already own half the world’s assets; by 2100 we’ll have 11 trillionaires, while American worker income has stagnated for a generation.

But for the vast majority of the world, capitalism is a failure. Over a billion live on less than two dollars a day. In his “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” economist Thomas Piketty warns the inequality gap is toxic, dangerous. As global population explodes from 7 billion to 10 billion by 2050, food production will deteriorate. Pope Francis adds, “Inequality is the root of social ills,” fueling more hunger, revolutions, wars.

This is their justification for the libertarian meme, the Good Christians pray for help and are saved by God, so they don't need the Gov's help.
The bad people that God does not favor will suffer, but deservedly so, so us good Christians can write them off as not worthy of help.

If you are rich, that proves God favors you, if you are poor and suffering, you are a bad person, so you can just rot in hell.

If you believe that people are inherently good, then you will no doubt want liberal doses of freedom so that people can fully actualize themselves and unleash the good. If you think that the nature of men and women are brutish, then you will tend to be conservative, cautious, oriented to protection, a strong rule of law, to protect the good.
Mike L.

You know nothing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MEH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

EDIT: JOHN M pulled his post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a kook!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the root difference between liberals and conservatives
The inherent view of others as good or bad/untrustworthy... and it's
been also divided as Government being good vs. Corporations as being good.

inherent view of others

debate it you have anything, otherwise you are just a bunch of trolling bullies

Philosophers in the 16th and 17th centuries (Hobbes, Hume, and Smith for example) promoted avarice as an innocuous alternative to unending war and civil strife of their times (even though they thought that avarice was uncouth, bourgeois, and ignoble). Odd to think today that Capitalism back then was a message of salvation

You don't have to answer if you find the question too provocative and "threatening" to your "sensibilities." I wouldn't want to "offend" in the slightest.

Can any of you debate or discuss without getting hysterical?????

Madbolter1: Odder still to see that you equate "capitalism" with "avarice".

Capitalism means to be an elegant theory; but life is not theoretical; nor are people’s behaviors or their preferences.

If you’re talking about practice in economic systems, then you’ll have to open up your mind. You surely aren’t listening to many people.

I think it was Kaplan who said that economics has its place—just not the whole place, please.

Maybe why he likes baiting you..?

i was trying to insult you

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Miracles, Faith, and Unanswered Prayer (ISBN: 9780828020152) -- In this book, I discuss the nature of genuine Christian faith, distinguishing it from the many sentiments falsely claimed to be faith. I consider the role of miracles and prayer in Christian experience, and I conclude that God is prepared to provide far more power and striking answers to prayer than Christians generally realize. This book contains deep, careful thinking about some of the thorniest questions in Christianity, as well as providing practical responses to real-life situations.

Seminars -- I have delivered numerous philosophical seminars, including: A Critique of Evolutionary Arguments, Kantian Metaphysics, Introductory Logic, Introductory Philosophical Methods and Thinking, and Political Philosophy, among others. These seminars are typically ten sessions of about three hours each; they provide the uninitiated lay person with an introduction to the topic issues and then an increasing depth of understanding and exposure to the literature on the subject.

Divine Command Ethics: An Argument in Favor of the Command Over the Will Formulation (Ph.D. Dissertation) -- the title links to a downloadable PDF that is 920K in size. I provide a background into Metaethics, particularly how so called "Divine Command Theories" attempt to resolve certain ethical problems. I then distinguish between two strands of Divine Command Theories: Command and Will formulations. Finally, I argue that the Command formulation is superior to the Will formulation, and in so doing I address and resolve a number of classical ethical puzzles (such as the Euthyphro dilemma).

sabbath-day.com -- This is a website devoted to discussion about the seventh-day Sabbath. Here I address the relations between the law and grace, the two covenants, the role of the law in salvation, the nature of authority to command, Pauline theology, and early church history, among many other related topics. This site has been called by many readers, "The most comprehensive and yet accessible website about the Sabbath available."

I do want to ask you about my expertise, evolution.

It is the only plausible explanation.

Thanks for the hysterical slew of insults Mad
Hope you got it out of your system

I won't say anything until I see every question above answered.

Dr Failed -- "... every cultist has all the answers"

What is Wealth? What is Poverty?

This is on topic if you, like I, think that a Survival of the fittest principle applied to markets can often result in better results that any alternative that's been tried on a grand scale.

The market is not the cure for everything.

Having just been in Canada
with the rels I sure heard some less than glowing accounts of their system, as in really bad.

EdwardT, capitalism does not work in the long run. The world is run on capitalist principles and the world lives in abject poverty.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/capitalism-is-killing-americas-morals-our-future-2015-05-22?page=1

Ksolem: . . . a Survival of the fittest principle applied to markets can often result in better results that any alternative that's been tried on a grand scale.

The Capitalist system works great for China

stop giving money to corrupt governments, it does nothing for the people but entrenches their oppressors.

In the cases of Africa, central and south America I'd say start by getting the Catholic church the hell out of there and stop giving money to corrupt governments, it does nothing for the people but entrenches their oppressors.

...or in front of a firing squad.

Execute CEOs?

Teaching that using condoms in places wracked by aids and overpopulation is a sin against God is bizarre.

I do wonder, however, when the commandment not to covet became a mere suggestion that could be ignored.

Get aligned.