3 ms·

I think that "disease" is a misleading term, because it makes it sound like an act of god or nature. I'd say it's more like a moral evil. Because there are peop

I think that "disease" is a misleading term, because it makes it sound like an act of god or nature. I'd say it's more like a moral evil. Because there are people in power who have the ability to eradicate this, simply by paying their workers more, or allocating government money to public services rather than to tax cuts for the rich, but they don't. They push austerity, they exploit greedily, and those are deliberate human acts of selfish evil. I'd say that the global implicit and explicit ideology of "greed is good" and "might makes right", as well as the tendency of our systems towards nearly boundless concentration of resources and power in the hands of few, is the real disease.

refurb 6y ago
You think it's possible to "eradicate" poverty? Poverty is relative, not absolute. Even if you gave everyone in the country $50,000 in UBI, you'd still have poverty, because you'd have people at the bottom of the income range who can't afford what others can. The only way to possibly eradicate it is if you made everyone equal - same take home pay, no inheritance, no monetary gifts, etc. Everyone has the same net income at the end of the day.
- jacobush 6y ago
  Sort of true but there are so many problems with food insecurity and other things, the relative poverty dwarfs.
- aabeshou 6y ago
  > Poverty is relative, not absolute That's.... just not true, and I feel like you don't really know what poverty is if you say that. Poverty is not just definitionally being in some lower percentile. Poverty is misery because you don't have financial power to meet your basic needs, or have to sacrifice all your time and comfort to do so. There's nothing relative about going hungry, living in bad housing with heat that doesn't work, working 2 jobs and sleeping 4 hours a night, etc.
  - refurb 6y ago
    That's not how the government measures it. They either assume some percentile of income is poverty, or they put together a bundle of things (home, food, etc) to see if income covers it. However, that bundle always gets updated to include more and more.
    - aabeshou 6y ago
      do you understand the difference between a government definition and a human experience? I'm talking about making it so everyone has the basic needs of their life met - food, shelter, water, medicine, clean environment, leisure time, sleep time. your argument is so pedantic that it is insulting. it reminds me of Ben Shapiro's classic tweet [0] "Renewable energy: dumbest phrase since climate change. See the first law of thermodynamics, dumbass." You're like Ben Shapiro saying "eradicating poverty?? that's literally impossible... since poverty is defined as the lowest 5% of income and there will always be someone there. Learn percentiles, dumbass" [0] https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/30089090699366400 https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/30089090699366400

refurb 6y ago

You think it's possible to "eradicate" poverty? Poverty is relative, not absolute. Even if you gave everyone in the country $50,000 in UBI, you'd still have poverty, because you'd have people at the bottom of the income range who can't afford what others can. The only way to possibly eradicate it is if you made everyone equal - same take home pay, no inheritance, no monetary gifts, etc. Everyone has the same net income at the end of the day.

jacobush 6y ago
Sort of true but there are so many problems with food insecurity and other things, the relative poverty dwarfs.
aabeshou 6y ago
> Poverty is relative, not absolute That's.... just not true, and I feel like you don't really know what poverty is if you say that. Poverty is not just definitionally being in some lower percentile. Poverty is misery because you don't have financial power to meet your basic needs, or have to sacrifice all your time and comfort to do so. There's nothing relative about going hungry, living in bad housing with heat that doesn't work, working 2 jobs and sleeping 4 hours a night, etc.
- refurb 6y ago
  That's not how the government measures it. They either assume some percentile of income is poverty, or they put together a bundle of things (home, food, etc) to see if income covers it. However, that bundle always gets updated to include more and more.
  - aabeshou 6y ago
    do you understand the difference between a government definition and a human experience? I'm talking about making it so everyone has the basic needs of their life met - food, shelter, water, medicine, clean environment, leisure time, sleep time. your argument is so pedantic that it is insulting. it reminds me of Ben Shapiro's classic tweet [0] "Renewable energy: dumbest phrase since climate change. See the first law of thermodynamics, dumbass." You're like Ben Shapiro saying "eradicating poverty?? that's literally impossible... since poverty is defined as the lowest 5% of income and there will always be someone there. Learn percentiles, dumbass" [0] https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/30089090699366400 https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/30089090699366400