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Oh please, I am barely holding back my tears. Is that unreasonable for people to improve their living conditions and be disappointed when those don't even matc

Oh please, I am barely holding back my tears. Is that unreasonable for people to improve their living conditions and be disappointed when those don't even match the ones of their parents? Or should they just accept the extreme poverty threshold as the sole upper bound required to be content about their lives.

hueving 10y ago
Ok, if you go that route, don't complain about rich people wanting more and more. They are just "improving their living conditions".
- AvenueIngres 10y ago
  >don't complain about rich people wanting more and more. I don't. That's the basic human thing to do and harnessing that greed has lifted billions of people out of poverty.
  - hueving 10y ago
    But the comment you were replying to was implying that nobody is going to get sympathy because they are in the top 1% and feel like they must be in the top 0.5%.
- xenobioticants 10y ago
  There's 'sweet, a promotion, I can finally afford that nice car' "greed" and then there's 'lets destroy 6000 people their jobs to make the shareholders happy so I can get a $1.000.000 bonus' greed.
  - gohrt 10y ago
    So, accumulating ever more amounts of personal wealth is fine as long as you aren't the the top 1%, er 0.1%, er 0.01%, er, as long as you have less than someone you know.
    - ryandrake 10y ago
      There has to be a line somewhere. I don't claim to be the person qualified to draw it, but society has to be willing to define it and say "Wealth accumulation on this side of the line is OVERALL healthy for promoting fair and evenly distributed prosperity, and wealth accumulation on the other side is OVERALL destructive and benefits only a small few."
      - chii 10y ago
        And what if that line was drawn and you are on the wrong side?
        ryandrake 10y ago
        That would be a nice problem to have.
empraptor 10y ago
I can't say whether it's unreasonable. Doing better than their parents and is certainly what many people have come to expect. But it seems like an unsustainable expectation at least in the absence of some revolutionary breakthrough in energy and food production. And our parents' lives don't have to serve as a measuring stick for our lives. There is no law of nature that says we deserve to live better than our parents, or in fact live in this world at all.
tudorw 10y ago
why is it reasonable ? what right did your gene line earn to be a permanent recipient of privilege?
ridgeguy 10y ago
I think your rhetorical questions distill down to: "Is it unreasonable that societies expect conditions improve over time and act so as to bring that about"? No, I don't think that's unreasonable at all. I think it's a good value to adopt and a good goal to strive for. No guarantees of success, of course, but it's the road I wish more of us would choose.

hueving 10y ago

Ok, if you go that route, don't complain about rich people wanting more and more. They are just "improving their living conditions".

AvenueIngres 10y ago
>don't complain about rich people wanting more and more. I don't. That's the basic human thing to do and harnessing that greed has lifted billions of people out of poverty.
- hueving 10y ago
  But the comment you were replying to was implying that nobody is going to get sympathy because they are in the top 1% and feel like they must be in the top 0.5%.
xenobioticants 10y ago
There's 'sweet, a promotion, I can finally afford that nice car' "greed" and then there's 'lets destroy 6000 people their jobs to make the shareholders happy so I can get a $1.000.000 bonus' greed.
- gohrt 10y ago
  So, accumulating ever more amounts of personal wealth is fine as long as you aren't the the top 1%, er 0.1%, er 0.01%, er, as long as you have less than someone you know.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    There has to be a line somewhere. I don't claim to be the person qualified to draw it, but society has to be willing to define it and say "Wealth accumulation on this side of the line is OVERALL healthy for promoting fair and evenly distributed prosperity, and wealth accumulation on the other side is OVERALL destructive and benefits only a small few."
    - chii 10y ago
      And what if that line was drawn and you are on the wrong side?
      - ryandrake 10y ago
        That would be a nice problem to have.

empraptor 10y ago

I can't say whether it's unreasonable. Doing better than their parents and is certainly what many people have come to expect. But it seems like an unsustainable expectation at least in the absence of some revolutionary breakthrough in energy and food production. And our parents' lives don't have to serve as a measuring stick for our lives. There is no law of nature that says we deserve to live better than our parents, or in fact live in this world at all.

tudorw 10y ago

why is it reasonable ? what right did your gene line earn to be a permanent recipient of privilege?

ridgeguy 10y ago

I think your rhetorical questions distill down to: "Is it unreasonable that societies expect conditions improve over time and act so as to bring that about"? No, I don't think that's unreasonable at all. I think it's a good value to adopt and a good goal to strive for. No guarantees of success, of course, but it's the road I wish more of us would choose.