When do you consider someone "wealthy" or "rich"?

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by Seattle, Aug 8, 2019.

  1. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    You have a fairly negative view or anyone who disagrees with you it seems.

    Haha..typo..."serf".

    What system (example) works better than capitalism. Being poor was more or less the norm before capitalism wasn't it?

    What makes you think I or anyone else, does care about people?

    Are you "Debi Downer" in real life?
     
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  3. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    We should work on making everything better. We should also put everything in perspective and also realize the inter connectivity of it all.

    I'd like a world where we could live off watermelon but there are other considerations involved.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Maybe the 1,999,980 people living in that city who have to deal with the abandoned buildings and polluted landscape and unemployed homeless and defunded school system and robbed pension funds and so forth that the 20 Chinese hedge fund investors left behind when they moved the company to Brazil on three weeks notice?
    Americans are suffering because of Reaganomics, not "capitalism".
    Oh bullshit.
    We don't have to put up with getting abused and ripped off like that as if it were the weather - a bunch of goods laws and regulations and taxation policies were removed, and bad ones installed, by the US Republican Party, for the short term benefit of the rich. They don't work. We should adopt better laws and regulations.
    Tell that to the slaves in the Confederacy, or the inmates of the US prison system, or the refugees from South and Central America, or the citizens of Haiti.

    There's no excuse for bad government. Capitalism works when well governed, and not otherwise.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    And after capitalism.
    In the early years of global trade in manufactured goods - the onset of capitalism - the tallest known humans on the planet - the best single criterion we have for historical prosperity is height - were the the Northern Cheyenne horse riders. They did not have money, or pastoral herds, or privately owned land.

    In the early years of capitalism in the British Isles the Irish and Scots were reduced to starvation - literally.

    In the early years of capitalism in the colonial empires the laboring population was enslaved.
     
  8. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    You know... its remarks like that which coud harsh a rich persons mellow

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  9. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Only if they're apologists for high crimes and misdemeanours in the name of 'prosperity'.

    Its successor, if and when we survive capitalism. Of course, there is no need for any system to be implemented in its most grotesque extreme form.
    You have repeatedly affirmed this, without citing a definition of poverty or standard of measurement. Or pinpointing the start-date of capitalism.

    I don't take it for granted; I do sometimes see it in practice.

    Are you a shark in real life?

    Nice of you to say, but I don't count on it.
     
  10. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447
    having come to the conclusion this is an alt-right troll thread i have decided to stop engaging in it.

    what middle class american voters need to know is that they are really doing ok and they need not change the government

    you think you have it bad now... wait til the dirty commies get in...

    am i right ?



     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2019
  11. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    No one is arguing for bad government. No one is disputing the fact that good government is better than bad government.

    Every subject doesn't lead to "Reaganomics". Walmart existed before Reagan became President.

    In your example of investors moving a company to Brazil, the point of mine that you were supposedly addressing is what difference does it make if 20 people or 2 million people own a company that is moved to Brazil" It doesn't matter how many shareholders the company has.

    You are arguing apples and oranges. No one is arguing for undue corporate influence or for the regulated being in charge of the regulators and all of the other corporate malfeasance. You seem to just like hysterics.
     
  12. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    I see cherry picking is your thing. You would like the lifestyle of the Northern Cheyenne horse riders? I think that would be an easy goal to reach.
     
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  13. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    Who is apologizing for high crimes and misdemeanors?

    I'm not going to spend vast amounts of time finding data for you. You can't even acknowledge that there is something better than capitalism and have to stoop to the line that the best way to organize economically is whatever comes after capitalism.

    I'm also all for something better. I'm all for whatever comes after fossil fuels, but in the meantime...

    I am not a shark in real life. I was lucky enough to get to dive with Sixgill Sharks for a period of several years when they were at depths locally accessible by scuba. I like them and acquired a bit of data and experience with them.
     
  14. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    Eh? There are no "other choices" available at present.
    Any stable, equitable economic arrangement would be better. I won't attempt to describe such a system: everyone here is perfectly capable of imagining their own version, none of which have a snowball's chance in hell as long as capitalists own the world. Once their system collapses, the survivors will cope as best they can with what's left. Whether it's better, worse or more of the same, I cannot predict.

    as long as it doesn't entail changing - or even objecting to - what is bad: just accept the side-effects of catastrophic disparity
    as long as it doesn't entail curtailing the use of fossil fuel; meantime, just accept the collateral damage - which means waiting for fossil fuel to run out and the remaining species to die out - then see what happens.
    Makes sense.
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2019
  15. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Agreed! Even if some people accuse you of complaining.
     
  16. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, if you are making things better don't worry about those accusing you of complaining.

    If, on the other hand, all you are doing if attacking every comment with the same replies and aren't balanced in your approach then comments are likely to follow.
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    You are. You wanted to bring back Reagan.
    ? Continual dodging around with these misleading questions you seem to think are telling insults.
    You guys know no other way of posting. I'm not sure you realize that - that you're trapped in that reflex.
    - - - -
    (To address your scummy little attempt at avoiding the post: I would definitely prefer it to the lifestyles most likely under any of the capitalist economies, at the time.
    So would any sane human being. The Northern Cheyenne lived longer lives in better health and greater prosperity than the people living in any of the capitalist societies of the time.)
    - - -
    Your notion that capitalism sort of automatically brings greater prosperity wherever it goes is bizarre. Seriously: why would anyone make that assertion?
    Because you are incapable, intellectually, of handling subtlety such as "illustrative examples"?
    Or because accusing someone of illustrating with examples is not an insult, and your goal (as seen in your posting) is insult?
    Or is it too close to admitting they have provided evidence for their argument - evidence that the government, not the capitalism, is key to prosperity under capitalism?
    Pah
    Add "cherry picking" to the list of wingnut illiteracies: they essentially never use the term correctly.
    Only billionaires could afford that "lifestyle" now. Not easy at all.
    That's kind of - how does one put this - obvious. It's not very - - alert - - - to post that carelessly.
    Horselaugh of the week.
     
  18. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Well, you said 'work on making things better.' Not every attempt succeeds 100%. But a lot of partial successes adds up to a better life for everyone. BTW:
    There is certainly something better than pure capitalism - regulated capitalism. Regulation prevents the worst of the abuses inherent to a greed based economy.

    Right now we have a problem with a large and growing gap between rich and poor. We are rapidly heading into a two-class society - a class of permanently poor who cannot escape poverty, and a class of permanently wealthy whose capital makes them immune to hardship. That's a big problem. Progressive taxation on income can help with that, by taking the money that government needs to run from the people who can most easily afford it. But we will need more than that. I am not a fan of wealth taxation, because there are a lot of undesirable side effects that that would result in - but it is likely we will need something like that.
     
  19. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I agree.
     
  20. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Do you have a good life or not?
     
  21. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Kind of a cheap shot, given how much you can assume about someone who has a computer, access to the internet, the education, ability, inclination and unstructured time to indulge in forum argument. Petty much everyone here can be presumed to have a good life. Most of these same people can be presumed to live in English-speaking/western industrial societies, which are all ruled by capitalists and/or their lackeys.
    What you cannot take for granted is that we are all equally ignorant/oblivious of, or indifferent/insensitive to what this prosperity has cost the majority of the world's population, nor to condone/support further extension of that ideology, no matter what the future cost, simply because it's convenient for us at the moment.
     
  22. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    What has this cost the majority of the world's population?
     
  23. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Their land, their forests, their water, their political independence, their livelihood, their homes, their lives, their resources, their countries, and at the moment, a lot of their children.
     

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