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"There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."

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Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."

#51

Post by astine »

sethg wrote: post #49
astine wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one benefits from social security.The average payout is below the input. Members pay so that more senior members may benefit and then hope that newer member will pay enough so that they may benefit as well. It functions like a large, mandatory pyramid scheme and only survives because people who have paid fortunes into it expect to be compensated.

The benefit you get from Social Security is that if you retire before you die, if a spouse or parent who provides your family income retires or dies before you die, or if you become too disabled to work, you don't have to worry about outliving your savings, and you don't have to worry about inflation making your annuity worthless.

Both of the problems could easily be solved by replacing SS with an ordinary savings account. Not to mention that Fed loans to SS aggravates inflation greatly.

Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."

#52

Post by Spyckie »

This is a woefully ignorant article that fails to include any piece of evidence to back up these claims.

Take, for instance, many countries in Africa. What prevents these countries from not rising in the poverty ladder is not the lazy, dumb people of these countries.

First, they can't sell products to other countries because the majority of countries are land-locked, meaning they have no way to ship their goods out at a reasonable price. They don't have any ports in their country and the neighboring countries with ports are hostile or unsafe.

Second, wealth is not a stable commodity in these countries due to coups and constant political restructuring and military action. Even if you were a very hard ambitious worker, there is nothing you can do about external forces (read: rebels invading your home/shop and stealing all the wealth you have built up).

Third, little of Africa is actually arable, and Africa can't even become an agrarian society because there isn't really the resources for them to do so. And the resources that are valuable to the rest of the world that could generate money for African countries - like, oil and diamonds, become hotly contested and a source of conflict and instability, furthering reducing the value of storing wealth.

Take some time to learn about the world if you have a strong opinion on this matter.

Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."

#53

Post by pchristensen »

Hexstream wrote: post #50
cstejerean wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the only way to make money without creating wealth is to steal it from somebody else. Typically when somebody pays you for something you did, it's because they'd rather have your service or product than the cash they paid for it. Typically this means you created something valuable (or that the dollar is depreciating so quickly everyone's eager to get rid of it, but more on this later). The spammer created value…

"About the only way to make money without creating wealth is to steal it from somebody else." Well. Let's say you have a company M that creates X wealth and has a monopoly. And then you have companies A, B, C, D, E and F that create 7x wealth but are driven out of the market by M's monopolistic practices. M indeed creates wealth, but the market is actually getting less than it would without it. It might not be called…

Don't confuse a net loss of wealth with wealth not being created. If everybody got an equal portion of total wealth, then monopolies and spammers would be bad, but since somebody wins (even though there are more losers), wealth is technically created.

A better scenario is the "creative destruction" when one industry is displaced but society overall benefits, i.e. cars over horses, Wikipedia over Encarta over Britannica, etc.

Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."

#54

Post by pchristensen »

Spyckie wrote: post #52

This is a woefully ignorant article that fails to include any piece of evidence to back up these claims. Take, for instance, many countries in Africa. What prevents these countries from not rising in the poverty ladder is not the lazy, dumb people of these countries. First, they can't sell products to other countries because the majority of countries are land-locked, meaning they have no way to ship their goods out a…

You're totally agreeing with the article's premise that poverty is a lack of wealth. Seaports, navigable rivers, stable, friendly neighbors, political stability, and arable land are all forms of wealth. Just because they aren't owned by an individual doesn't mean they aren't wealth. Most people in Africa lack these things and therefore they are poor. If these things existed, then there would be an infrastructure that would let individual, hard working and industrious Africans become wealthier.

If you compare any rich country with any poor country, you can make a similar list of things the poor country is lacking that make it poor. Those things are all forms of wealth. Whether it is natural or man-made doesn't matter.

Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."

#55

Post by Spyckie »

pchristensen wrote: post #54
Spyckie wrote: post #52

This is a woefully ignorant article that fails to include any piece of evidence to back up these claims. Take, for instance, many countries in Africa. What prevents these countries from not rising in the poverty ladder is not the lazy, dumb people of these countries. First, they can't sell products to other countries because the majority of countries are land-locked, meaning they have no way to ship their goods out a…

You're totally agreeing with the article's premise that poverty is a lack of wealth. Seaports, navigable rivers, stable, friendly neighbors, political stability, and arable land are all forms of wealth. Just because they aren't owned by an individual doesn't mean they aren't wealth. Most people in Africa lack these things and therefore they are poor. If these things existed, then there would be an infrastructure that…

My mistake - I read the first two lines and that set the tone for the rest of the article. Those first two lines, though, have no relevance to the rest of the article. You can in no way argue that the lack of wealth (the definition of poverty stated in the article) is caused by a 'rest state of doing nothing' (also a definition of poverty in the article), which is what the first two lines imply.

Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."

#56

Post by Hexstream »

pchristensen wrote: post #53
Hexstream wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"About the only way to make money without creating wealth is to steal it from somebody else." Well. Let's say you have a company M that creates X wealth and has a monopoly. And then you have companies A, B, C, D, E and F that create 7x wealth but are driven out of the market by M's monopolistic practices. M indeed creates wealth, but the market is actually getting less than it would without it. It might not be called…

Don't confuse a net loss of wealth with wealth not being created. If everybody got an equal portion of total wealth, then monopolies and spammers would be bad, but since somebody wins (even though there are more losers), wealth is technically created. A better scenario is the "creative destruction" when one industry is displaced but society overall benefits, i.e. cars over horses, Wikipedia over Encarta over Britanni…

"Don't confuse a net loss of wealth with wealth not being created. If everybody got an equal portion of total wealth, then monopolies and spammers would be bad, but since somebody wins (even though there are more losers), wealth is technically created."

I must have read wrong. You're saying spammers are not quite bad?...

"A better scenario is the "creative destruction" when one industry is displaced but society overall benefits, i.e. cars over horses, Wikipedia over Encarta over Britannica, etc."

The new industry replaces the old one because it creates more value than the old one, no? I think car factories create more value than stables...

Also, in the monopoly case it's a company that hampers global progress to protect its own interests. I like to seek win-win scenarios so that doesn't resonate well with me.

Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."

#57

Post by sethg »

astine wrote: post #51
sethg wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit you get from Social Security is that if you retire before you die, if a spouse or parent who provides your family income retires or dies before you die, or if you become too disabled to work, you don't have to worry about outliving your savings, and you don't have to worry about inflation making your annuity worthless.

Both of the problems could easily be solved by replacing SS with an ordinary savings account. Not to mention that Fed loans to SS aggravates inflation greatly.

An "ordinary savings account" can't give you a stream of income for the rest of your life that adjusts for inflation, even if you have to retire early due to disability, regardless of the state of the stock market or interest rates.

And right now, Social Security loans money to the rest of the government, not vice versa.

Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."

#58

Post by [deleted] »

pchristensen wrote: post #38
phaedrus wrote: post #2

"If you want to experience poverty, just do nothing and it will come." I know lots of people - the working poor - who are doing a hell of a lot more than nothing, and poverty still comes.

I'm surprised that in a group as logical as YCNews, no one called him on this. Just because doing nothing leads to poverty doesn't mean it's the only way to get to poverty, or that doing something will get you out of it. It's just one path that doesn't imply anything about the other paths. All the talk of bricks and Ferrari's are arguments about a point that wasn't made.

[deleted]

Re: "There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state..."

#59

Post by pchristensen »

Hexstream wrote: post #56
pchristensen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't confuse a net loss of wealth with wealth not being created. If everybody got an equal portion of total wealth, then monopolies and spammers would be bad, but since somebody wins (even though there are more losers), wealth is technically created. A better scenario is the "creative destruction" when one industry is displaced but society overall benefits, i.e. cars over horses, Wikipedia over Encarta over Britanni…

"Don't confuse a net loss of wealth with wealth not being created. If everybody got an equal portion of total wealth, then monopolies and spammers would be bad, but since somebody wins (even though there are more losers), wealth is technically created." I must have read wrong. You're saying spammers are not quite bad?... "A better scenario is the "creative destruction" when one industry is displaced but society overa…

I meant bad in the economic sense, where no one is better off. The spammer is certainly better off for his work even if everyone else is worse off.
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