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Title: Obscene wealth
Source:
BBC
URL Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35339475
Published: Jan 17, 2016
Author: paraclete
Post Date: 2016-01-17 23:06:56 by paraclete
Keywords: wealth, money
Views: 10116
Comments: 85
Most of us would not think of our circumstance as more than adequate while some just don't have what they need but 1% have as much as the other 99% and this has to be seen as obscene. Modern economies focus on the success of the individual ignoring opportunity for the many, but something is out of whack when this results in a small group gaining all the resources. Apparently $1 million will put you in the 1% club so we arn't necessarily speaking of the super rich although the actions of some are obscene like alledged billionaire Clive Palmer who had one of his companies make political contributions to his own political party while trying to convince government that his company was bankrupt and needed a handout. I really don't care if Donald Trump spends $2 billion in his election campaign but I do think it is obscene he has that capability. Arn't there more important things he could do with the money? Couldn't he do a Bill Gates?
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#1. To: All (#0)
www.bbc.com/news/business- 35339475
How much do you think you know about Bill Gates and his background? On another suject, I have no objection to people who obtain wealth by building new industries. It benefits all of us. Have you done anything with your life except resent and complain about those who have? What I do object to is people who use political means to consolidate and perpetuate their do-nothing inherited positions.
Yes my life has been very productive. What you fail to realise is that a life built on gaining wealth at the expense of other people is not something to be applauded. I used Gates as an example of someone who obviously realised he needed to share his wealth.
Yes my life has been very productive. What you fail to realise is that a life built on gaining wealth at the expense of other people is not something to be applauded. I used Gates as an example of someone who obviously realised he needed to share his wealth. You didn't answer my questions. All you did was give me a nice sounding answer consisting of evasive moral-sounding generalities that won't hold up under the rigors of scientific examination.
Gates was not really so creative. He managed to take other people's ideas and many innovative companies got eradicated or taken over as a result. He got an almost monopoly hold on the market what allowed to extract immense wealth from the captive customers. IMHO, computer technology would be better without Microsoft
I used Gates as an example of someone using his money in a helpful way, I don't like his business methods or the fact he was able to forge a monopoly. he did a lot of damage to computer development and his products have taken a turn for the seriel. I cannot imagine the workings of the mind they are made for
My position is that it's not my business how much wealth a wealthy person chooses to keep or give away. Most of the wealthy people of the world are job creators who employ the rest of us . That is the best service they provide society . I applaud those who would voluntarily give back . But it's not mine or the government's business to force people to be charitable .
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Always and everywhere, the rich had to employ other people. They could not have splendid gardens without gardeners, banquets without cooks and waiters. Security guards, paid politicians. Etc, etc ... The best Job Creators were Indian maharajas and Egyptian pharaohs as they had thousands of servants.
It is our business. For example, do you approve them giving bribes/donations to the politicians? Or moving industry abroad?
Tax policy has nothing ,or should have to do with extracting charity from the wealthy or forcing redistribution of wealth. Bribes are illegal .Donations have been ruled legal under the 1st amendment . Businesses mostly leave because of policies that are unfavorable to their business. How are you going to compel them to remain ;with more unfriendly business policies ? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
What you don't realize of that you are a victim of the left's meme of economic and financial gains are a zero sum game, i.e. - I can only earn a dollar at the expense of someone losing it. This is pure BS. To be sure there are those that lie, cheat and steal. There are those that bribe politicians to make laws that benefit their pocketbook, usually at the expense of others. But who really is at blame here, the one that bribes or the ones that accept the bribe? Or the ones that continually elect those that accept the bribes? Like Clinton before him, Obama will leave office are very, very rich man. They were not remotely so when they took office. The same is true form most elected officials in DC. You are a sucker for their scam. потому что Бог хочет это тот путь
What is legal and was is not, what is a bribe what is a donation is decided by the legislature. In a country strongly stratified it is the rich who tell the legislature how the laws are written.
True, it is not a zero sum game. When the wealth concentrate and wages stagnate or go down, the economic pie contracts and stagnates. Like in old Egypt or India, or American South, where Job Creators had it all. The sum can be negative.
It is definitely possible for the economic pie to shrink, the USSR for example proved that. But in the U.S. the economy has consistently grown with just about all sharing in some to degree. потому что Бог хочет это тот путь
Meaning the latest Powerball winners should give their winnings to the poor because keeping those millions would be obscene.
Soviet economy was growing until Free Market reforms and country falling apart under Yeltsin. Especially during the Great Depression.
Soviet economy was growing until Free Market reforms and country falling apart under Yeltsin. Not for the average Boris. "But in the U.S. the economy has consistently grown with just about all sharing in some to degree. Especially during the Great Depression. And? Every economy has down cycles. FYI the upper class was hit much more hard than the rest of the country during the Great Depression both in relative and absolute terms. What we are talking about is the economic well being of ALL of a country's citizens. You obviously think that the USSR did very well by all of its people since is inception in the 1920s. Can I have some of what you are smoking? No country in history has developed as robust, broad and deep economically well off middle class than the U.S. Even the bottom rung of the U.S. economy enjoy a standard of living higher than the middle class of most countries in the world, and batter than the upper class of several. потому что Бог хочет это тот путь
Not for the average Boris. BS. You are confusing it with present Wall Street derivative economy, where gains go to the top and trickle down wrong way.
Not for the average Boris. BS. BS to you. The average Boris in the USSR was sucking eggs just about forever. Stop the Soviet BS of trying to rewrite history. The YSSR economy tanked because it was corrupt, both economically and morally, from the git-go. And let's not talk about the concentration of wealth. The USSR has it all over the U.S. потому что Бог хочет это тот путь
What does that have to do with anything? The important thing under leftist critical theory is just to squawk so as to change the center of dialogue away from that important basic reality.
and this justifies what? that you can sit on your duff and say we are the best while doing nothing for anyoneelse and contributing to poverty through exploitation and proxy wars? Anyone who thinks any of this is sustainable is a dill, it benefits only the present generation of the suppossed upper middle class, what ever that might be because it is actually an illusion. You want to pat yourself on the back because someone has it better than most, how cynical and self centred can you get. Don't you reaise that bottom rung lives in poverty, poverty isn't a measure of how much you earn a day but how well you live and how long. If you suffer the same problems as soneone in a third world country even though you have more income how are you better off, you have paved roads, you can't eat asphault, you have plumbing?
Thanks to FDR and New Deal, earlier to some extent to the plentiful land taken from Indians. Now this advantage is evaporating. I am curious, how do you measure standard of living? Discretionary income, freedom from debt, leisure time, happy stable families, number of TVs and cars per family, life expectancy, secure jobs, medical care, equal access to justice, culture like number of books read per year, foreign travel, meat, fish and fruits consumed per year?
You brought the Soviets. Perhaps you should bring Haiti, the comparison will be much more favorable.
That is a good start on the definition. What you do with your life after having been given that is also important. How is your marriage and other interpersonal relationships?. How are your children doing? Do you have integrity and self respect. Do you merit respect from other people. Things such as these count for something. All value in life is not a matter of having a full gut and a big home. If there is absence of the things, you can end up living in a gold plated prison.
Thanks to FDR and New Deal, earlier to some extent to the plentiful land taken from Indians. Absolute BS. Thanks goes to Hitler and ToJo. It was WWII that catapulted the U.S. economy and expanded and deepened the middle. The New Deal did little to improve unemployment in the U.S. thru the 1930s. I am curious, how do you measure standard of living? Discretionary income, freedom from debt, leisure time, happy stable families, number of TVs and cars per family, life expectancy, secure jobs, medical care, equal access to justice, culture like number of books read per year, foreign travel, meat, fish and fruits consumed per year?" Yes. потому что Бог хочет это тот путь
What you said was true. The unemployment rate went from high to about 1% six months after Pearl Harbor. Without WWII we probably would have been in remnants of the depression in 1950. Economists were ignorant of industrialized economics and were trapped in thinking in terms of 1917 and the twenties. In the '20s everybody in the cities was playing the stock market on margin, making fortunes overnight, drinking bootleg booze, and dancing the Charleston. They thought it would go on forever with no consideration of the possibility that it couldn't. When the severely bloated stock market collapsed the entire country collapsed with it. Much of the entire economy would have to be rebuilt from scratch. Fortunately WWII sobered a generation up. In the '60s we returned to a defunct dance craze economy with successive generations of spoiled goofs dancing the twist and frug instead of the Charleston and smoking pot instead of drinking bootleg booze.
You mean GI Bill? That war gave an excuse for this benefit? Housing projects, schools, infrastructure? You needed war and countless deaths to persuade greedy bastards and their sycophants that free or inexpensive college education might be a good thing.
Yes. Yes what? Life expectancy - position 34th. Leisure/vacation time? Divorce rate? Incarceration rate? Indebtedness?
Computer technology would be better if Gates had never lived.
Leisure/vacation time? Divorce rate? Incarceration rate? Indebtedness? when you answer those questions you will see life isn't so great in the capitalist utopia. There is only one answer unfortunately you are not allowed to do it. Stand all the greedy bastards against the wall and start again. No problem because you have plenty of graduates on the shelf waiting for a chance
Another total BS stat. Learn something instead of being a total dupe that buys into all the propaganda BS you are fed. Take the time to adjust the life expectancy data to the real world by putting the data on an equal footing, i.e. - same basis. You need to adjust the data for each country to reflect a common demographic of gender, race, aggressiveness in pursuing difficult pregnancies to term, suicide, accidents, etc. When to do that you get an ENTIRELY different picture of the true comparative state of health care among countries. And guess what, Boris, the U.S. is at the top tier of the list. You are a chump sucker little sheep that doesn't have the balls or intellectual integrity to investigate for your self. потому что Бог хочет это тот путь
You needed war and countless deaths to persuade greedy bastards and their sycophants that free or inexpensive college education might be a good thing. LMAO. Yeah, just like what the USSR did for its population after the war. Boris, you are a stitch. Please, keep the laughs coming. FYI, the GI Bill had nothing to do with the New Deal you keep insisting was the greatest thing on Earth. потому что Бог хочет это тот путь
Show me. Show how you take into account all these factors and how you come on top. I suspect that you assume superiority from the start and adjust facts and interpretations to fit to this fixed "truth". But I am open to the compelling reasoning. I have no stake in accepting that Americans or Swiss or Japanese are on top. I will gladly learn about it.
I am not Boris, but more like a Stanisław.
I suspect that you assume superiority from the start and adjust facts and interpretations to fit to this fixed "truth". But I am open to the compelling reasoning. The information is out there, Boris. Since you will not believe my work do it yourself......if you have the courage and intelligence. Get back to me when you have, which I expect will be never as you do not have the intellectual or moral integrity to do this honest work. The truth is out there, chumo, but you will never find it. потому что Бог хочет это тот путь
I am not Boris, but more like a StanisBaw. More like a Natasha. потому что Бог хочет это тот путь
OK, I will take you at your word. Here's how you would go about this. First understand that most countries do not publish health and demographic data in the detail that you will need to do the adjustments as the U.S. does. The first thing you look for is the life expectancy data for a country by demographics, i.e. - gender, race, etc.. It is a well documented fact that blacks in just about every western European country and most other places have a shorter life expectancy than the white population in that country and usually shorter than latinos in that country. Therefore you cannot compare the raw unadjusted data for say a country with a black 13% population with that of a country with just 2% black population. You must put the two on an equal demographic basis by adjusting the reported life expectancy to reflect the same percentage of blacks. In other words, if you adjust the overall life expectancy of country with 13% blacks down to 2% blacks the life expectancy for that country will rise (conversely of you adjust the country with 2% blacks up to 13% its overall life expectancy will drop). You do the same for the percentage of women in each country (women almost always have a higher life expectancy in developed countries than men), latinos, suicides, accidents, etc. That is the only way that you can get a meaningful comparison. And there is always one huge factor for which there is no data (and therefoer no adjustment can be made) but none-the-less is very real. Any honest physician in the world will tell you that the U.S. medical system is much more aggressive in bringing at risk pregnancies to term than just about any other place on Earth. As a result the reported infant mortality rate in the U.S. is higher by comparison with those countries that do not as aggressively pursue at risk pregnancies. What I just told you are verifiable unbiased facts. Given your level of brain washing and lack of capacity for critical self thinking I do not expect you to accept the truth. You can simply wish reality away as you are want to do but it doesn't change the reality. потому что Бог хочет это тот путь
Life expectancy of American white males is 76.1 www.worldlifeexpectancy.c...ife-expectancy-white-male Several countries are ahead in life expectancy for males, (sort by males): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis...ntries_by_life_expectancy
You mean massage the data until you become number 1. Haven't we had enough of this sort of manipulation of data with climate change? I know, just like you that there are lies, damn lies and statistics but statistics can point to areas where we need to lift our game. The US is not the desirable society you like to think of it. Maybe in the original 12 states life is idilic and perhaps that is how the the US should have remained, a tight little community of white settlers
many countries have black or coloured populations and they do well on the various indecies. my own nation has 4.5% black population who insist on dying early but our survivial rate averages over 80 years. These people fill our prisions just like they do yours but our crime rate is much lower than the US. The important thing is with statistic there are subsets of the data and maybe you can make comparisons which give understanding as to why a particular population behaves the way they do, but we can still say there is a problem here, these people exhibit a high standard of living but much greater social problems and we know the answer because the elephant is in the room, races don't play well together, concentrations of people of a particular race generate their own problems, but more than that there si a certain ethos of discrimination which is yet to be overcome
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#2. To: paraclete (#0)
(Edited)
Arn't there more important things he could do with the money? Couldn't he do a Bill Gates?
#3. To: rlk (#2)
Have you done anything with your life except resent and complain about those who have?
#4. To: paraclete (#3)
Have you done anything with your life except resent and complain about those who have?
#5. To: paraclete, rlk (#3)
a life built on gaining wealth at the expense of other people is not something to be applauded. I used Gates as an example
#6. To: A Pole (#5)
(Edited)
Gates was not really so creative.
#7. To: paraclete (#0)
#8. To: tomder55 (#7)
Most of the wealthy people of the world are job creators who employ the rest of us.
#9. To: tomder55 (#7)
it's not my business how much wealth a wealthy person chooses to keep or give away.
#10. To: A Pole (#9)
It is our business. For example, do you approve them giving bribes/donations to the politicians? Or moving industry abroad?
#11. To: paraclete, All (#3)
What you fail to realize is that a life built on gaining wealth at the expense of other people is not something to be applauded.
#12. To: tomder55 (#10)
Bribes are illegal .Donations have been ruled legal under the 1st amendment .
#13. To: SOSO (#11)
What you don't realize of that you are a victim of the left's meme of economic and financial gains are a zero sum game, i.e. - I can only earn a dollar at the expense of someone losing it. This is pure BS.
#14. To: A Pole (#13)
The sum can be negative.
#15. To: paraclete (#0)
"but 1% have as much as the other 99% and this has to be seen as obscene."
#16. To: SOSO (#14)
(Edited)
It is definitely possible for the economic pie to shrink, the USSR for example proved that
But in the U.S. the economy has consistently grown with just about all sharing in some to degree.
#17. To: A Pole (#16)
It is definitely possible for the economic pie to shrink, the USSR for example proved that
#18. To: SOSO (#17)
"Soviet economy was growing until Free Market reforms and country falling apart under Yeltsin."
#19. To: A Pole (#18)
#20. To: SOSO (#17)
No country in history has developed as robust, broad and deep economically well off middle class than the U.S.
#21. To: SOSO (#17)
(Edited)
Even the bottom rung of the U.S. economy enjoy a standard of living higher than the middle class of most countries in the world, and batter than the upper class of several.
#22. To: SOSO (#17)
No country in history has developed as robust, broad and deep economically well off middle class than the U.S.
Even the bottom rung of the U.S. economy enjoy a standard of living higher than the middle class of most countries in the world,
#23. To: SOSO (#19)
Stop the Soviet BS of trying to rewrite history.
#24. To: A Pole (#22)
(Edited)
I am curious, how do you measure standard of living? Discretionary income, freedom from debt, leisure time, happy stable families, number of TVs and cars per family, life expectancy, secure jobs, medical care, equal access to justice, culture like number of books read per year, foreign travel, meat, fish and fruits consumed per year?
#25. To: A Pole (#22)
No country in history has developed as robust, broad and deep economically well off middle class than the U.S.
#26. To: SOSO (#25)
(Edited)
It was WWII that catapulted the U.S. economy and expanded and deepened the middle. The New Deal did little to improve unemployment in the U.S. thru the 1930s.
#27. To: SOSO (#25)
It was WWII that catapulted the U.S. economy and expanded and deepened the middle.
#28. To: SOSO (#25)
"I am curious, how do you measure standard of living? Discretionary income, freedom from debt, leisure time, happy stable families, number of TVs and cars per family, life expectancy, secure jobs, medical care, equal access to justice, culture like number of books read per year, foreign travel, meat, fish and fruits consumed per year?"
#29. To: A Pole (#5)
IMHO, computer technology would be better without Microsoft
#30. To: A Pole (#28)
Life expectancy - position 34th.
#31. To: A Pole (#28)
Life expectancy - position 34th.
#32. To: A Pole (#27)
You mean GI Bill? That war gave an excuse for this benefit? Housing projects, schools, infrastructure?
#33. To: SOSO (#31)
You need to adjust the data for each country to reflect a common demographic of gender, race, aggressiveness in pursuing difficult pregnancies to term, suicide, accidents, etc. When to do that you get an ENTIRELY different picture of the true comparative state of health care among countries. And guess what, Boris, the U.S. is at the top tier of the list. You are a chump sucker little sheep that doesn't have the balls or intellectual integrity to investigate for your self.
#34. To: SOSO (#32)
(Edited)
Boris, you are a stitch.
#35. To: A Pole (#33)
Show me. Show how you take into account all these factors and how you come on top.
#36. To: A Pole (#34)
Boris, you are a stitch.
#37. To: A Pole (#33)
I suspect that you assume superiority from the start and adjust facts and interpretations to fit to this fixed "truth". But I am open to the compelling reasoning. I have no stake in accepting that Americans or Swiss or Japanese are on top. I will gladly learn about it.
#38. To: SOSO (#37)
herefore you cannot compare the raw unadjusted data for say a country with a black 13% population with that of a country with just 2% black population.
country males
Japan 80
Spain 80
Andorra 79
Australia 80
Switzerland 81
Italy 80
Singapore 81
San Marino 83
Canada 80
Cyprus 80
France 79
[...]
Lebanon 78
[...]
Costa Rica 77
#39. To: SOSO (#31)
(Edited)
Take the time to adjust the life expectancy data t
#40. To: A Pole, Soso (#38)
(Edited)
therefore you cannot compare the raw unadjusted data for say a country with a black 13% population with that of a country with just 2% black population.
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