The American Dream!
The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper
51–60 of 138 posts
Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper
#52Basically the author is trying to sell books by jumping on a crappy populist view and trying to imply Bill Gates mentioned him.
As per the article yesterday on HN, India's life expectancy has raised by 5 years in the past 10 years. That blows my mind, and a quick google confirms it. http://goo.gl/X7H416
And that's on 1 billion people. And no you can't get average figures like that unless it's the entire population getting some significant benefit.
Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper
#53Poor are not staying poor by their "struggle to prosper". Poor are staying poor by keeping doing things that keeping them poor, like getting further down in debt, not acquiring new skills, not being productive and not expressing their creativity. And of course rich have their habits as well. Give money to poor guy, take all the money from rich guy and see where they are in in 5 years. Chances are they'll be back to t…
Do you have any evidence for your claims? From what I have read and seen, the effects of poverty are often are a reinforcing, positive feedback loop. Here is a small example: financial struggles alone, irrespective of inherent talent or background, actual reduces one's cognitive ability on a day to day level [1]. How's that for being kicked while your down? And I'm sure I don't need to explain how privilege and wealth benefits those who are born into it.
[1] http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S37/75/69M50/inde...
Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having kids is the old-school form of immortality. I imagine many of those other billionaires are thinking about their dynasty.
Their kids will need SENS ~30 years after they do. I get that the typical plan is to have a dynasty via grand kids, great grand kids, etc, but it's dumb to ignore SENS.
Just as an FYI - I believe you're using SENS as in:
"SENS stands for Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, a detailed plan for reversing human aging. It is an engineering approach that seeks to slow and then halt aging processes that are the side effects of our body's metabolic cycles"
source: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-sens.htm
Correct?
Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper
#55So Kay says “... rich countries got rich and why poor countries stay poor” and Gates says that's false.
I think if you actually look at the data numerically then Gates wins eg. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo#t=238
Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their kids will need SENS ~30 years after they do. I get that the typical plan is to have a dynasty via grand kids, great grand kids, etc, but it's dumb to ignore SENS.
Just as an FYI - I believe you're using SENS as in: "SENS stands for Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, a detailed plan for reversing human aging. It is an engineering approach that seeks to slow and then halt aging processes that are the side effects of our body's metabolic cycles" source: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-sens.htm Correct?
Correct.
Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper
#57Inequality whining has already jumped the shark.
Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper
#58I've always been baffled by the investment choices of billionaires. If you accept an empirical view of the universe, no matter what you do, you will eventually die. Your experiences of the world will cease to exist. Therefore, the only rational investment would be in life extension technologies (SENS, advanced prosthesis, etc.). At first, this might sound repulsive. The idea of a group of elites discovering and hoard…
> Therefore, the only rational investment would be in life extension technologies (SENS, advanced prosthesis, etc.).
No, the only rational investment would be in things that give you utility, or in loose terms, make you happy.
Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Perhaps it's an inherent property of capitalism: some things always end up barely within reach of a lower class. I wouldn't say that's true, we just need to figure out ways to produce those things cheaply enough (through automation, other technologies) that everyone can enjoy them. Take a look at agriculture in the US...even the poorest people here have access to (not very healthy) food whereas just under 100 years…
Very true, that's why I say "perhaps... some things". While technology may have worked well for food, I just don't see how this can be applied to housing, education, healthcare, legal expenses and taxes [1]: these tend to expand/shrink based on how much money you have and "pin" the poor to a certain "ceiling" of disposable income leading to the perpetual hand-to-mouth cycle despite encouraging growth of metrics like…
I'd say you're just not thinking creatively enough. Manufactured homes significantly reduced the cost of owning a home, and just the other day I saw an article talking about 3D printing homes with concrete and how it could drive the cost down even further. The same goes for the other things you mentioned....flood the market with doctors and healthcare costs would go down, we just need med schools to accept more people instead of limiting their enrollment to drive up tuition fees because they want their school to be prestigious and 'the best'. The poorest people can and deserve access to the many goods the wealthy enjoy, we just haven't figured out the technology and economics in each of these areas yet to do it :-)
Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper
#60Wrong title. It should say:
The world's rich get richer while the poor struggle to avoid getting poorer.
Money makes money.