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

theguardian.com

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

#331

Post by ctdonath »

ubernostrum wrote: post #236
Fjolsvith wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I don't see that this is perfectly reasonable to expect. TANSTAAFL. Food still has to be produced. Energy still has to be produced. All that stuff has to be paid for somehow or the producers stop producing for the freeloaders. What you think of as a mental hurdle I see as a way of discerning what is mine from what is yours. Show me a developed nation where a person actually doesn't have any personal property…

Food still has to be produced. Energy still has to be produced. All that stuff has to be paid for somehow or the producers stop producing for the freeloaders. The question is: what happens when most or all of the food and energy is being produced not by human labor, but by fully-automated processes? Why would, say, a farming robot care whether someone is "freeloading" off its labor? What you think of as a mental hurd…

"Post scarcity" only exists and continues because of continued efforts which continue only because of reward/profits. No profit => no effort.

The other problem is what constitutes basic necessity. I can build you a "human terrarium" of 100 sq ft, HVAC, clean water, disposal, and 4 bottles Soylent per day - leaving you 18 hours daily to procreate & demand more. What is the limit to your demands? You have ample opportunity & resources to earn your own survival with ease; now you demand I provide your total basic survival needs from my own efforts, taking what I would give my own offspring - ENOUGH! BEGONE!

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

#332

Post by jacobush »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #325
jahnu wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a problem with law enforcement rather than anything else.

true, and goes to show how even the best ideas needs to be declined in the context of the other society issues a region has.

Oh, you said what I meant with my comment above, but with other words. Thanks, missed that.

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

#333

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

forgetsusername wrote: post #316
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> He or she is charging an absolute amount, not a percentage of their payslip. Here's another analogy. I make this beautiful and unique item that you want to buy. I charge - literally - an arm and a leg over it. Like, the actual body parts. You protest: "You're asking for a part of my body??". I reply "I'm asking for an arm and a leg, not a part of your body". Hey, maybe you can pay me with someone else's arm-and-a-…

> I make probably 70 times more than the people who are forced to live there I can only assume you're using all your excess income to build and subsidize homes for the poor?

OK, the "70 times more" is overdoing it.

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

#334

Post by jacobush »

brianwawok wrote: post #327
anexprogrammer wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile using housing as much as an investment vehicle as housing (see London, SF, and numerous other cities) promotes the creation of shortages to drive up rents and capital gain. You can't seriously be saying that the housing market is working as intended in places where pushing 70-80% of the wages cannot rent a basic apartment there. The cost of those artificially inflated housing prices are paid for someewhere…

Well a sane person should cap housing expenses at 25% of income at most. If you can't afford a place, time to move. If you can't afford anyplace, minimum wage has a problem.

Yes, housing by income strata is the best and ultimate city planning there is. Keep the proles where we can't see them. I agree with you 100 %.

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

#335

Post by jacobush »

gradstudent wrote: post #293
gozur88 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, okay. If you live in a place with a "failure of government", do you wait for the government to get fixed? Until then let them eat cake?

> Until then let them eat cake? Of course not. But neither is it all or nothing; slum or safety net. My point is the root cause needs to be explicitly identified before it can be rectified. The root cause in this case is America's fetishism for small government and smaller taxes.

Sort of. Also that for some reason, the government can print money to bail out banks, but when it comes to fixing housing and actually help people, it has to come from taxes. I don't quite understand this.

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

#336

Post by cmdrfred »

brbsix wrote: post #87
grecy wrote: post #27

Of course it profitable, which is why we have things like minimum wage - if WalMart et. al. could, they would pay 3 cents an hour, or even better consume peoples living and eating and entire lives like factories in China. At some point the governments in developed countries have stepped in to set some kind of limit on what's "reasonable". IMHO, they're not doing enough in America right now, the enormous social divide…

Don't you want to get the highest salary for a particular job? Don't you want to pay the lowest price for a particular product? Employers are just doing the same. So what if WalMart wants to hire someone for 3 cents an hour? Maybe I'd like to pay my doctor $1/hr. Either way, it's probably not going to happen. People will not accept $0.03/hr for a job unless it is of benefit to them. Also I find it incredibly condesce…

While not 3 cents an hour currently Walmart pays wages below the cost of living. How do they achieve this you ask? The government steps in and raises these wages with a number of social programs (food stamps, housing subsidies, tax credits, etc). Cut the social programs and those workers won't be able to afford coming into work. Pretty soon, up goes wages.

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

#337

Post by megan42 »

I think this problem is much bigger than people realize in the US because homeless women and children are rarely visible. Couch surfing, going from shelter to shelter. When I was three my mom lost her job (she was assaulted at work and pushed the man back). We lived in a tent in friends' yards, then in a park with a space heater running in out tent. We weren't tripping on the street but transitioning back to employment was harder and harder the longer my mom had no address. That was in the 80s. The 20th Century was about capitalism vs. Communism. How can we feed and protect people in our society? I think the 21st century question, with increasing productivity and abundance, is how can we NOT? I don't think small business owners are the problem, in real estate or elsewhere. We need a living wage, welfare. We have to be smart enough to make it work.

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

#338

Post by RyanZAG »

gradstudent wrote: post #293
gozur88 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, okay. If you live in a place with a "failure of government", do you wait for the government to get fixed? Until then let them eat cake?

> Until then let them eat cake? Of course not. But neither is it all or nothing; slum or safety net. My point is the root cause needs to be explicitly identified before it can be rectified. The root cause in this case is America's fetishism for small government and smaller taxes.

Woah, I'm not from America, but that seems really wrong. More taxes and bigger government does not create any sort of extra benefit for the poor - the extra taxes will simply go to creating more levels of indirection and inflated prices in existing government.

Why do you think anything with a government stamp is automatically 10x the price? It's not because of people wanting smaller government. Smaller government is about localizing procurement down to the smallest workable level.

Making a huge tender to build these environmentally safe houses for everyone would mean only the biggest and most expensive companies could compete in the 10 year long bidding process. Making a tender for 10 houses for the local poor in your village would be free in comparison, and those 10 houses would be ready before the poor die of old age.

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

#339

Post by jahaja »

sokoloff wrote: post #285
jpetso wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the question we should ask ourselves is not how to eliminate inequality, but what baseline level of services and opportunities we want to give people at any stage in their life, regardless of their competitiveness and productivity, including when they're otherwise poor and a net drain on society. In other words, is stable housing a basic right or is it a luxury? If it's a basic right (and/or a net positive if…

If the top end is short of "billionaire", I think you get a world without Tesla, Space-X, Blue Origin, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and several other things that I believe are valuable and worthwhile. You may argue that the cost is too high and that we'd be better off without those things.

Maybe in a more equal world were people would not be whipped, I mean "incentivized", into working all the time, a larger portion of the population would be able to contribute their passions to society than just the elites of today? Hence maybe surpassing the results of the current aristocratic version of this.

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

#340

Post by crdoconnor »

pliny wrote: post #291
crdoconnor wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If every time you took an ambulance you were forced to sign over 80% of your wealth or be left to die in the streets in a 'voluntary exchange', that would be exploitation. The difference between that and slumlords is simply a matter of degree. Desperation is the route to profit in both cases. Truly voluntary exchanges without gaping chasms of systemic inequality do not provide opportunities for sustained profit.

>If every time you took an ambulance you were forced to sign over 80% of your wealth or be left to die in the streets in a 'voluntary exchange', that would be exploitation. What is wrong with this scenario? If there were no ambulance service I automatically choose "Die" (which is, apart from matters of inheritance, always the wrong choice), but if there is the ambulance service I can buy my life for the relatively me…

I presume you're familiar with the term "false dilemma" and how it applies to your post?
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