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What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

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Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#181

Post by throwaway_exer »

grecy wrote: post #136
orangecat wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if WalMart et. al. could, they would pay 3 cents an hour Sure. Of course they can't, because most of the time even poor people have other options. Also WalMart has in fact supported raising the minimum wage, which is either a virtuous act of corporate responsibility or an attempt to increase the burden on their competitors. because the government forces the wealthy to distribute their wealth I just finished my taxes.…

> Sure. Of course they can't, because most of the time even poor people have other options. If there were no laws, every company would do this, and there wouldn't be other option. You think people work in factories in China for $0.50/day even though they have an option to make a good wage? > Quite a bit of my wealth is being "distributed" Not nearly as much as if you lived in another developed country, where your mon…

> "Not nearly as much as if you lived in another developed country, where your money would be paying for healthcare for all, higher education for all, etc. etc. "

Really, you're going to trot out American healthcare? There is no place on earth with higher healthcare costs than the USA.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#182

Post by HillRat »

darawk wrote: post #19
darpa_escapee wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Predatory businesses are still exploitation. > Building such a business (and I assume running a 131 unit mobile home park) is absolutely work, the value of which is evident by the paying tenants. Running a sweatshop is still work, the value of which is evident by its customers. Just because someone needs to work or a place to live doesn't make it right or commendable.

What is the alternative? These people aren't forced to live there. If there were a cheaper, better alternative available to them, they'd probably take it. Nobody is 'profiting from poverty' here. These landlords would make much more money if these people were wealthier! I'm sure they'd love to make nicer places and charge higher rents with higher margins, but they can't, because that's all these people can pay.

For some reason I'm reminded of the old joke: a Keynesian and a rat-ex theorist are walking down the street. "Look," says the Keynesian, "A twenty dollar bill!" "Can't be," says the other economist. "If it were there, someone would have picked it up already."

Here's the thing: being a slumlord is profitable. Yes, your tenants don't pay much, but if you don't improve your property, ignore complaints, refuse basic maintenance and throw everyone on the street if they're a day late on the rent, your margins are excellent, far better than you'll make with decent apartments where people demand things like legally-conformant housing and nonabusive contracts.

These are tenants who don't have recourse, or at least not easy recourse, to the legal system, so cold water flats, no A/C or furnaces, black mold, and rats and roaches are part and parcel of the slumlord experience. Of course, all this is illegal, but slumlords tend to have a lot of free cash to throw at local politicians and attorneys, and if they own a large number of single-family dwelling it's hard to track down and deal with every nonconformant property.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#183

Post by thatfrenchguy »

awt wrote: post #45

What 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?

You mean in a country where birth control is not free and where you can have to drive 500 miles to get an abortion if you live in retarded states like Alabama or Texas ? Yeah, sure, blame the poor.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#184

Post by taneq »

ubernostrum wrote: post #149
bardworx wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Communism very similar to your perfect world? All the people were provided for and they worked for everyone and everyone was equal. However, that didn't work out too well. In any system, some folk will always squatter and some will always attempt to gain power/advantage. Your world sounds too much like Atlas Shrugged.

The thing to realize here is that the number of humans who need to do work building/operating/maintaining the machinery that keeps everyone taken care of decreases over time. It's perfectly reasonable to expect a point in the future where most of the time, zero direct human work is required in order to provide for all humans. The issue is getting over the mental hurdle of enabling such a society. The technology is ac…

I think we're already past that point, if we define "provide for all humans" as "provide shelter, food, and clean water." However, "provide for humans" is a moving target which is actually interpreted as "provide a living standards not significantly worse than average." These days that includes providing running hot/cold water, range of healthy food, air conditioning, electricity, TV, internet, some form of motorized transport, health care, clothing, etc. etc."

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#185

Post by ryandrake »

zw123456 wrote: post #59

There 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…

> There 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".

What a silly saying. Of course, if you redistribute all the MONEY to everyone, but leave all the means of production in the hands of a few, it's easy to predict that those few would be the ones rich again in 2 or 3 years.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#186

Post by chillwaves »

Axsuul wrote: post #120
pmiller2 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Ending state lotteries is just another form of prohibition. It's part of human nature and population will still end up participating in alternative get rich quick schemes.

Then make them more fair with better payouts. They don't need to be completely exploitative.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#187

Post by chillwaves »

Axsuul wrote: post #120
pmiller2 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Ending state lotteries is just another form of prohibition. It's part of human nature and population will still end up participating in alternative get rich quick schemes.

Then make them more fair with better payouts. They don't need to be completely exploitative.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#188

Post by tamana »

HillRat wrote: post #182
darawk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative? These people aren't forced to live there. If there were a cheaper, better alternative available to them, they'd probably take it. Nobody is 'profiting from poverty' here. These landlords would make much more money if these people were wealthier! I'm sure they'd love to make nicer places and charge higher rents with higher margins, but they can't, because that's all these people can pay.

For some reason I'm reminded of the old joke: a Keynesian and a rat-ex theorist are walking down the street. "Look," says the Keynesian, "A twenty dollar bill!" "Can't be," says the other economist. "If it were there, someone would have picked it up already." Here's the thing: being a slumlord is profitable. Yes, your tenants don't pay much, but if you don't improve your property, ignore complaints, refuse basic main…

You made a huge leap from "running a trailer park" to "being a slumlord", and you also implied but haven't answered the question of who is to pay for mold remediation etc when the tenants can't afford to make it profitable. Surely landlords can't be compelled into their own poverty , forced to rent units below cost. Such a price has to be paid by society/government overall, or not at all.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#189

Post by tamana »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #112
brightball wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is entirely the point though. If a landlord is about to chose a market that requires less capital outlay it's because there is an unfilled need in that market. Without the lower cost housing the tenants will only have fewer options, potentially more expensive ones at that. If all of the needs are filled and somebody else decides to target the market then they have to find a way to disrupt it, in this case that p…

Except your fantasy of a free real estate market doesn't exist. FED policies, by their own admission, serve to artificially drive up real estate prices, which punish the poorest, who don't own property and are forced to rent. This is a direct subsidy to property owners with the size of the subsidy equal to the amount of property owned. These FED efforts (MBS purchasing, ZIRP, suspension of MTM, QE1-3) to prop up hous…

Fantasy or not, free to not, landlords don't control the Fed.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#190

Post by ultramancool »

aninhumer wrote: post #174
ultramancool wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth inequality is good for all in a lot of ways, so I hate it when people talk about it like it's an inherently bad thing. If someone does something amazing and unique, they should be able to profit from it. Think about a world with perfect wealth equality and you'd have the opposite sort of problems - like it or not, capitalism and yes, wealth inequality have brought more people out of poverty than any other syst…

>Wealth inequality is good for all in a lot of ways, so I hate it when people talk about it like it's an inherently bad thing. It's not the wealth inequality that's good for all, it's the capitalist incentive structures. The wealth inequality itself is a negative side effect of those incentives, because it represents an inefficient allocation of resources in terms of utility created. The question is to what extent th…

Wealth inequality is the intended effect of that incentive structure though, not a negative one. The idea being that those who provide more to society - more unique skills, better creations, etc should be more wealthy. If you put wealth inequality in these terms, I think you'll find most people - especially those who've been exposed to other systems are fairly accepting of it.

> Personally, I think the extent of inequality we permit is far far more than is necessary to incentivise wealth creation. People would still want to be rich even if the alternative didn't suck.

I see where you're coming from but I think there's definitely a fine line to tread here - if you push this too far you could argue that what you're doing is actually just serving to slow down the march of progress in society and make those poorer individuals lives much worse.

Think about it like this - would you rather be upper class, one of the richest people in the world just 200 years ago or middle class today? The medical and technological advances are so enormous. To hamper them in any way would arguably make many lives much worse. And what you're suggesting poses that risk. We could lose out on many such advances.

To use an extreme example: Sure, maybe you don't feel that medical company shouldn't be raking in so much from a unique patented drug - but what if their next creation with that money is a cure for cancer. These are the risks you take when putting such limits on this system.

Now, that's not to say I'm strictly anti-regulation or anything, just that it's a lot more of a delicate balance than many people make it out to be. You need to be careful to keep those top performers extremely motivated to do more. And if you do things like have a 90% tax rate on the uppermost bracket like some places have, well, don't be surprised when you wind up killing off that kind of thing.

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