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It's easier to take away than to give and help. So I don't blame them for that mentality, but it would definitely be great if society worked to lift the poor up
by kevmo314 4y ago
It's easier to take away than to give and help. So I don't blame them for that mentality, but it would definitely be great if society worked to lift the poor up more.
- xwdv 4y agoIt’s great to lift up the poor, but up to what extent? Poor will still be poor, so what’s an acceptable amount of poor we should allow where they just have to deal with it?
- sillysaurusx 4y agoLift up as many people as possible. It’s a fallacy to think that there must be poor people. One day, hopefully not too many days away, our descendants will wake up and discover that the last poor person has been lifted from poverty. To get there from here, we have to take it one day at a time, and focus on changing what we can.
- Godel_unicode 4y ago> It’s a fallacy to think that there must be poor people. Is that actually true? I’m very curious if there’s any theoretical evidence that a society where everyone is at minimum “middle class” can exist. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
- parineum 4y agoProbably not technically due to poor being a relative term but we have a lot of discussion these days about housing for the poor which is obviously important but there's a lot less talk about the poor starving (and really, there's more talk about the poor having an unhealthy amount of calories). I think it's important to keep perspective that we are actually making great progress on providing a higher quality of life for the worst off.
- kodah 4y agoIt's true that there will always be a lowest class as long as there's income. Currently, in the US there's a percentage that skip meals, heat/A/C etc or work multiple jobs. OP might be referring to minimizing or eliminating the necessities those people go without.
- mantas 4y agoNo A/C = poor is a damn weird definition. Does it mean everybody was poor 100 years ago?
- jl6 4y agoYes. Standards change over time. The acceptable level of poverty is not something morally objective, but rather dependent on the available technology/energy/capital.
- lucumo 4y agoBut then you're back to the original question: is eradicating all poverty even possible? A tech like AC is not available to everyone all at once. It starts out very expensive and gets cheaper over time. It may end up cheap enough that it can be ubiquitous, but before that point there must be a time that only most people can afford it. If you then include it in the must-have category before the point of ubiquitousness, you will never get rid of poverty. Whereas if you include it after the point it's a pointless exercise, because everyone that wants one already has it.
- kodah 4y agoYes, to some degree we'll always be lifting the bottom line up as the top line rises. That said, we're not doing that now; right now we're still trying to get people fed and supply shelters.
- mantas 4y agoEven for getting people fed, we’re moving the goalposts. A while ago it was to just get enough calories. Now „feeding“ gets more and more complex.
- carapace 4y agoThe Kingdom of Bhutan. It sounds fabulous, but it's a real place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutan
- Godel_unicode 4y agoAccording to the Asia Development Bank 8.2% of the population lives below the poverty line, was your point that this is a low percentage? https://www.adb.org/countries/bhutan/poverty https://www.adb.org/countries/bhutan/poverty
- carapace 4y agoDid you read up on the place before looking for that stat?
- Godel_unicode 4y agoI did, did you? I’ll ask again, if that wasn’t your point then what point were you trying to make?
- carapace 4y agoThere are a few points that could be made. The primary point is that even though they might score low on some metric, the people of Bhutan are pretty much all well-off and happy. The king decreed democracy not long ago. It's a kind of "existence proof" that people can pretty much be alright. Consider a couple of other stats from that site: > the proportion of population with access to electricity in 2020 was 100%. and a 2.5% unemployment rate.
- Godel_unicode 4y agoSure, but that’s the answer to “can poor people more or less be alright “. Which while interesting is orthogonal to the question of “can a society exist with no poor people”.
- Aeolun 4y agoI’m sure some people will find a way to be seen as poor even if they have an adequate supply of money. Poor just means they have less than most other people.
- parineum 4y ago>Lift up as many people as possible. It’s a fallacy to think that there must be poor people. To illustrate this point, in our current era of the mega rich, we also have record low levels of poverty. Wealth isn't a zero sum game. It's possible (but not always the case) for a billionaire to create more than a billion dollars of wealth for other people.
- int_19h 4y agoWealth is not a zero sum game. But it is not possible for one person to create a billion dollars of wealth for other people. What creates wealth is actual productive labor, not some kind of vision.
- parineum 4y agoIf one person creates a new process to make $3 widgets cost $2 and sells a billion of them, while paying his manufacturers $1 per widget, he made $1 billion dollars and each of their 1 billion customers are $1 wealthier.
- int_19h 4y agoWhat happens in practice is that one guy in a lab invents a new process in exchange for his paycheck, and then some very different guy in a suit gets to collect the money off that invention.
- mantas 4y agoDepends on your definition of poor. If bottom 20% is poor as per some definitions, then you’ll always have poor. If it’s enough calories and roof other your head… Then we have very few true poor. Especially if we don’t include those who are there due to choice and/or mental illness.
- auveair 4y ago> If it’s enough calories and roof other your head… Then we have very few true poor. Especially if we don’t include those who are there due to choice and/or mental illness. I mean if we are only using the most convenient definition it's easy to say we have few poor people. If you are eating only rice everyday in your rusting trailer somewhere in the Midwest, you're poor. And yeah, when that happens, your mental health is not going to be great.
- mantas 4y agoThere’s no convenient or not definition. But we have to agree on one before we start discussing if we can fix it. If we define poverty as defining bellow median, we won’t ever get rid of it. Mental health as in mental health issues making people make decisions where they end up on the streets. Many homeless people were living normal lives when their mental health deteriorated.
- yucky 4y ago> It’s a fallacy to think that there must be poor people. If it's a fallacy, then why has it always proven to be true, 100% of the time?
- kodah 4y agoPeople up to middle class generally have money issues. There's probably some level of deeper assessment the court could do to determine impact if people are willing to share financials. At the end of the day, the goal is to create enough incentive for someone to stay and face justice. Anything that furthers that goal without marginalizing people is a good start.
- vincnetas 4y agoUnconditional food and shelter is acceptable level of poor. I don’t mean unlimited.
- z3c0 4y agoThis chain so far is disdainfully reductive. Resource scarcity creates a zero-sum game, so you can't give without taking. People aren't trying to punish rich people so much as force their hand into helping those that they rest so comfortably upon, given the total lack of meaningful initiative. The best we get is this "effective altruism" bullshit, which is just regular billionaire puppetry with a shiny new coat.
- hackerlight 4y ago> Resource scarcity creates a zero-sum game No, things (e.g. transactions in the economy, contracts that get signed, tax & transfer payments, etc) are almost never zero-sum. They are usually positive-sum, and sometimes very negative-sum. Almost never zero-sum. They appear to be zero-sum if you only focus on the raw dollars that change hands in a transaction. But they're not zero-sum in the utility that's created, which is what matters for any meaningful analysis.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- c22 4y agoIt is absolutely not easier to take away than to help. When trying to take away you must fight the will of those you plan to deprive. Whereas while helping you can often expect cooperation.
- Aeolun 4y agoDepends on whether you are giving people what they need, or what they want. If you ‘give’ an addict rehab they may fight you every step of the way, but if you give them heroin they’ll love you.
- quacked 4y ago> Whereas while helping you can often expect cooperation Yes, if the person you're helping has a calibrated moral compass and is mentally sound.