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You've just excluded about 6 billion people from your definition of "poor". Given the fact that the US needs a huge part of the resources of the rest of the wo
by rickmb 16y ago
You've just excluded about 6 billion people from your definition of "poor".
Given the fact that the US needs a huge part of the resources of the rest of the world (labor, oil, etc.) in order to be "rich" by whatever definition, it's kind of cheating to exclude the rest of the world's population from your argument on the distribution of wealth.
Marx may have only been wrong about time and scale...
- notahacker 16y agoIt's plausible that a realisation that income inequality _within_ the US has less extreme consequences for people at the bottom end of the scale than income disparity between the US and the rest of the world explains why the US population appears to downplay the level of their own inequality. There are legions of people working 80 hours a week to put a bowl of soup on their own table and televisions on the tables of the American poor.
- rbanffy 16y ago> There are legions of people working 80 hours a week to put a bowl of soup on their own table and televisions on the tables of the American poor. This one is too good. Can I use it?
- mseebach 16y agoNope, he's wrong about this too. On the scale of half a billion people lifted from absolute poverty by making the US "rich". Note, by the way, the rapidly increasing flow of western consumer goods into countries like China and India. They didn't revolt when they were poor, why should they start now? Also, I didn't exclude anyone - the article is very explicitly about wealth distribution in the US.
- hga 16y agoWell, I've read that just after things get better in that sort of way revolutions are a not entirely unknown development. I don't remember the arguments for why this might be so, but the more people who have spare time and energy, "the devil finds work for idle hands" and all that.