The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Burning ghost
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

Post by Burning ghost »

Note: I meant “frugal” not “frivolous” - brain fart :/
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Eduk
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

Post by Eduk »

That does make more sense BG 🙂
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Eduk wrote:This is presumably a very simple thing to do that no government has thought to implement before. I don't mean to be overly harsh, but saying things should be good is easy, actually making things good is crazy hard.
If you, or anyone, thinks a problem is so easily solved then I highly doubt you are in a position to solve it.
Admirable attempts to steer the discussion onto practicable solutions to problems. But, in my experience, the attempt rarely works. There are lots and lots of bar-stool politicians who are happy to tell you the cause of all the problems in the world, from one side of the political spectrum or the other, and some of them even tell you how to fix them. But the proposed solutions rarely involve the actions of real people who have to negotiate the real world in which they find themselves, as individuals. They usually assume godlike powers and involve punishing some supposed evil.
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Hereandnow wrote:I think Bill Gates' money alone (let him keep a billion) could resurrect Detroit if not stupidly spent. In less than a generation, structural poverty and ignorance would disappear.
How would you take this wealth? Presumably a 100% marginal tax rate that kicks in once the level of a person's personal assets tops a billion. How much income do you think you would make from that tax?

If a person has billions of dollars what do you suppose that actually means in terms of their life? What do they do with that money, typically? I think one of the problems with thinking about large levels of wealth is that there's a tendency to think that a person with a billion dollars has, somehow, eaten a billion dollars worth of human effort.
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Hereandnow wrote:Marx was right, and it's happening now: subsistence wages, as defined in a modern economy. Just read that Amazon is worth more than a trillion dollars, yet ten percent of its employees need government assistance. That trillion dollars is THEIR money, taken from them in the name of becoming obscenely wealthy, and stuck into the pockets of the country's elitist economic fascists.
At what level of wealth does this proposed rule kick in? If I want to sell my car and I pay someone a pre-agreed fixed price to wash it, with the result that I sell it for more money, does that extra profit belong to the person who washed it? How do I assess the extra value that was added to my car by washing it?
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Eduk wrote: September 10th, 2018, 1:34 pm I said it wasn't black and white. If you, or anyone, thinks a problem is so easily solved then I highly doubt you are in a position to solve it. By which I mean you are mistaken and your ignorance stops you solving real problems because you get stuck on fake ones.
Why I addressed that particular comment about working-class choice is that I found it typical of a specific argument, which devolves inevitably to "It's their own fault." You didn't say that, but you intimated that everyone could improve their economic situation. That is a common capitalist misconstruction: extrapolating a general rule from a tiny sample of anomalies.

I didn't say it was solved easily. I do say it's simple.

Of course I'm in no position to solve it: you hit the biggest nail right on the center of its noggin there:
The people who are in a position to solve it do not want it solved: they benefit from the disparity; they created the disparity and invest immense resources (mostly other people's, blood, sweat and tears) in maintaining the disparity. A very few of the beneficiaries are conscious of this and make some effort to mitigate the damage - never so much as to change to balance or tilt the field more nearly level.
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Hereandnow
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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BG
The thing is if you give the money to the government to spend they’ll not spend it on education because they have to think about a whole other number of areas to fund. Without billionaires who would actually improve the education system? No one. Sad but true - the only real exception was Finland.

Bill Gates found that punping more money into education did nothing. The issue is having passionate teachers. It doesn’t matter how much money you give someone to do something, if they aren’t interested, they aren’t interested. If teacher wages were to be driven up a little it would make things better I expect - too much and you’re likely to attract the type you dislike (the “only money matters” bunch.)

Throwing money at a problem doesn’t solve it. Frivolous natures make the most of everything and see where the money will be best put to use. Mrs. Gates comments about sex ed and general education - money doesn’t help if its not put in the right place. Taxes go the government, and the amount of politiking there makes it hard to get anything done.
This is right off the campaign trail. Please, no more cliches. If you don't think spending in education (maybe YOU would "throw money at it; I for one, would not) WISELY would do nothing, you need to be hired as a Trump speech writer. They all love cliches, making weak arguments seem strong to the analytically weak.
Half a billion dollars spent across the country will show NO palpable result. You have to start with the premise that people who do well in the world have great educations. This has its exceptions, but it is simply true otherwise. The problem is not about whether this is true, it is about what the money does, and as I said above, the whole educational enterprise would require dramatic changes in the implicit educational environment as well. I said this explicitly and described some of what would have to happen. Then you give me cliches??

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Burning ghost
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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I was repeating exactly what billionaires trying to bolster education have found.

Yes, I read what you wrote. I didn’t see much that was explicit except our contempt for billionaires not doing anything - which, ironically, many do. You want the money to go to the government so that successful people have less room to actaully make an impact on society.

I think you missed my point. Governments don’t spend wisely because they have to pander to what the public finds appealing. People like Gates can try things out and experiment where governments don’t have the luxury of failure.

Cut the nonsesne rhetoric for a change please.
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Steve3007 wrote: September 10th, 2018, 6:33 am
ThomasHobbes wrote:The natural tendency of unfettered capitalism is for money to concentrate ever upwards, and question is good what then?
I perhaps have a tendency to take people's words too literally, but presumably it can't be literally ever upwards. Even in a theoretical completely unfettered capitalist ("free market") system the people with lots of money need loads of other people who provide them with various services in exchange for that money. If they pay them literally nothing then the service providers starve and stop providing the services, which would be annoying for the rich people. So even in such a system, I presume an equilibrium point would be reached, albeit at a point of extreme inequality of wealth.
You've obviously never heard of slavery.
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Hereandnow please share with us all your wise plans to reform education.
Have you ever been educated? I don't mean that in a rude way. Personally I've been educated to masters. I feel like the biggest single thing I would like to explain about education to anyone, which is only really even mentioned at degree level, is that you are responsible for your own teaching. Learn how to learn. I would think someone on a philosophy forum would appreciate that.
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Eduk
'Hereandnow please share with us all your wise plans to reform education.
Have you ever been educated? I don't mean that in a rude way. Personally I've been educated to masters. I feel like the biggest single thing I would like to explain about education to anyone, which is only really even mentioned at degree level, is that you are responsible for your own teaching. Learn how to learn. I would think someone on a philosophy forum would appreciate that.
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Eduk
'Hereandnow please share with us all your wise plans to reform education.
Have you ever been educated? I don't mean that in a rude way. Personally I've been educated to masters. I feel like the biggest single thing I would like to explain about education to anyone, which is only really even mentioned at degree level, is that you are responsible for your own teaching. Learn how to learn. I would think someone on a philosophy forum would appreciate that.
Don't be so hard on me Eduk. I despise the hyperwealthy for a very good reason. If you think I am wrong, then set me straight. It is not about me and my education. Let your Masters degree speak. Look at what I have said, give due analysis and proceed. I can defend my ideas. Learning how to learn?: tell me where I go wrong. What am I not learning?
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Sy Borg
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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BG, what do you make of the wealth disparity, where the eight wealthiest people own as much as the 3.6 BILLION poorest people.

Eight men. Half the world's population. Seems a tad unbalanced, eh?

Still, in nature, the only other groups that routinely assemble in our numbers are colonial insects, and they are similarly organised in a flat pyramidal structure based around the queen and her cohorts. It's as though very large populations develop new properties, becoming less like a group of individuals than a superorganism with a brain/executive function.
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

Post by Hereandnow »

BG

Yes, I read what you wrote. I didn’t see much that was explicit except our contempt for billionaires not doing anything - which, ironically, many do. You want the money to go to the government so that successful people have less room to actually make an impact on society.

Cut the nonsesne rhetoric for a change please.
If you read it, then get on with it: Do you think the hyperwealthy for the most part DO support funding public education? They do not. I don't know what country you live in, but in the US we have Betsy Devos. She supports defunding public education, eventually privatizing it, leaving those who live in the most desperate areas to deal with underfunding and countereducational cultures in the form of gangs, widespread drug use and antisocietal influences. I have taught in schools where one has to compete with drugs sales and use in the back of the classroom, and there is no recourse outside of one's own whits and cleverness; where classroom size is 40, even 50 students. In hallways, there is violence; it is a raucous, display of juvenile assertiveness and nothing more, for there are not enough teachers to manage, no controls over the implicit curriculum at home and in the streets. There is for most little that resembles education once the dust settles. Schools like this are more centers of arbitration, taking parties aside and giving them reason to be calm regarding perceived slights and indignation.
i simply do not understand at all why you and others would rush to the defense of a system that looks at such atrocious learning environments and says, lets make things worse.
It is not rhetoric, you blithering idiot.
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

Post by Hereandnow »

Steve3007
How would you take this wealth? Presumably a 100% marginal tax rate that kicks in once the level of a person's personal assets tops a billion. How much income do you think you would make from that tax?

If a person has billions of dollars what do you suppose that actually means in terms of their life? What do they do with that money, typically? I think one of the problems with thinking about large levels of wealth is that there's a tendency to think that a person with a billion dollars has, somehow, eaten a billion dollars worth of human effort.
That is a good observation. But then, ask yourself, does a billionaire worth a hundred billion have at his or her disposal, if need be, vast amounts of wealth, after liquidating assets, selling off stocks, and so on? Bill Gates has investments across the board in many things and the dramatic statement of his worth is not about the company, it is about him. Of course, his investments are tied to jobs, to creativity, to many laudable enterprises, but this is all beside the point. the real questions is how is it that he got this wealth in the first place. It is because he lives in a country that allows this, nothing more. My suggestion is not to wrest the wealth from his hands. It is to rewrite the tax laws so this kind of thing is not even called taxation: A ceiling on income, supported by an incremental evolution in public sentiment via a concerted effort to teach civic responsibility and philosophical ethics. People have to learn what a shmuck really is. It is a person who looks out at the inhumanity and says to herself: Ah, who cares.
No, that wealth the Gates and other have is not theirs. Period. It is called theirs by a system that maintains its legitimacy by sheer familiarity and pragmatics.
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