Being from a country where we have suffered populist governments who "defend the poor" by increasing their numbers, I am convinced that this is very true. Instead of creating jobs and improving education, they give handouts to the poor, and their number has dramatically increased. These jobless people depend on the handouts, so their vote is guaranteed to go to the populist party. In my country, this technique has been used effectively since 1946.
What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
91–100 of 462 posts
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#92What if poverty is profitable to the government? What if, through welfare, the government encouraged single motherhood, and thus poverty, and thus dependance on the government? What if single mothers were held responsible for their choice to have children with bad men?
> What if single mothers were held responsible for their choice to have children with bad men?
Then children will suffer.
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what exactly are you proposing then? If no one can own anything then the best available will be little more than tents; think nomadic hunter-gatherer societies.
That's an incredible statement, what's your support for it?
How about you answer one of my questions before you ask me yet another one. What exactly are you proposing if neither people nor government are allowed to own property? I'm not aware of any such scheme in all of modern civilization. The onus is on you to explain.
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#94People in poverty use services and consume goods. Someone provides those goods and services. Would they be better off if every business closed their doors to the impoverished, so as to not "make a buck off the poor"? Of course not! The trailer park owner in the article owns 131 units and "makes" (presumably grosses) $400K a year. Those units are about $250 per month, hardly the stuff of Viking-style pillaging, IMO. T…
Just because an act provides net value to a community does not mean it is ethical.
So are you claiming that the tenants mentioned are somehow worse off than if those trailers weren't available for rent at all?
For something to be unethical, someone has to be harmed by it, yes?
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
The lottos are state-run though. Don't blame the bodega owner, blame the government for financially preying on poor people who are bad at math in the first place. I don't think you can really criticize someone too much for selling something that the government plays ads for on the radio.
> bad at math It's not primarily that people are bad at math. It's that they don't see any other way out. I've seen data that show that people play lotteries "for money" at higher rates the lower their income is. I can't find the exact citation, but here's a CMU article about study that shows something similar: http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2008/July/july24_lottery.sht... We really just need to end state-run lotter…
One interesting argument I've seen is that there is a serious demand for lotteries and gambling, and that making them illegal won't stop them (as it hasn't for drugs or prostitution). Instead, it just creates a black market for gambling, which is even more problematic than a well-regulated state one with a predictable and reasonable house rake. We may be trying to fight the human psyche itself here, for which making things illegal tends not to work.
But at the very least the states shouldn't be advertising the damn things!
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#96The thesis is transparently false. While the deprivations of poverty may be exacerbated by exploitative business practices, they are self-evidently caused by a lack of income. Software developers in San Francisco or lawyers in NYC may complain about high rents, but they are not impoverished by those rents. Someone living on $733/mo of SSI remains poor even if their rent is free. The author mentions a significant root…
This reads to me as "People have no money because they have no money", which is tautological.
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#97There is an old saying that "if you took all the money away from all the rich people, and spread it around evenly to everyone else, within 2 or 3 years, all the formerly rich would be rich again having taken advantage of the poor who don't know how to make and keep money". This adage, although heartless to be sure, has some degree of truth to it in my view. The problem is twofold, 1) a lot of people become rich not b…
Lots of people know how to create value, i.e. combine A and B and wind up with A*B of value.
Take Edison, for example. He made himself a fortune by figuring out how to take a glass bottle and add a bamboo filament, and sell a light bulb.
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#98People in poverty use services and consume goods. Someone provides those goods and services. Would they be better off if every business closed their doors to the impoverished, so as to not "make a buck off the poor"? Of course not! The trailer park owner in the article owns 131 units and "makes" (presumably grosses) $400K a year. Those units are about $250 per month, hardly the stuff of Viking-style pillaging, IMO. T…
And the people that provide goods and services now to the impoverished (especially the actual exploiters, like pay day loans and corner stores, and the manufacturers that supply the junk foods they eat and drink) have a financial incentive to keep people in poverty and grow their demographic. Combine that with an very easily corrupted government like the US has now, and you get corporations dictating policy to preven…
I don't see that: they still have to compete with other providers, so they have no incentive to spend their own money to increase the general demand for their kind of service, since their competitors "free ride" off such efforts.
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#99There's a single problem with Right vs Left debates: they can't understand the other's point.
1) The Right can't recognize there's a problem with contemporary elites ("They Deserved it"). Poverty is all about the government.
2) The Left can't recognize the government plays a role on this . Inequality is all about greedy rich people.
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#100People in poverty use services and consume goods. Someone provides those goods and services. Would they be better off if every business closed their doors to the impoverished, so as to not "make a buck off the poor"? Of course not! The trailer park owner in the article owns 131 units and "makes" (presumably grosses) $400K a year. Those units are about $250 per month, hardly the stuff of Viking-style pillaging, IMO. T…
I'd be inclined to agree, only on the condition that there's plenty of unused land around, available for next to nothing. If that's the case, this trailer park owner is getting a return on her investment.
However, if there isn't marginal land available nearby, a portion of her return is monopolistic-- the renters have no alternative than to pay rent on this land.