Opinions?
I demand a potato option!
Those 2 seem wrong, there can be rich ppl who worked hard or didnt do shit. And there can be poor ppl who work hard or dont do shit.
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I think a potato option would actually be the best option for once. Do away with normal currencies and swap them with potatoes! Whole potatoes in place of dollars (or your country's equivalent, of course), and potato chips in place of coins. You can grow your money, trade your money, eat your money, or even throw your money at annoying neighbors. It's flawless!
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Any ideas on the Kūmara > King Edward exchange rate?
Goodbye Woodchuck Farm. Hello Beverly Hills!
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I don't think that the rich always work hard for there wealth, sometimes it's just luck or opportunity. but the rich "deserve" that money as much as the poor, stealing from people who can afford it does not make the world better.
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The lottery is luck. But I don't think that they should be robbed of their winning. My friend thinks otherwise O_O
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I think modern lotteries would be much better if instead of having 1 person getting hyper rich, there were 10 or 100 people who got a very significant amount of wealth. If you are filthy rich without having worked for it then you are likely to waste what you won. If you get a great wealth boost, you'll still need to manage it properly.
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No one gets filthy rich "through the sweat of their brow". They get filthy rich only by exploiting other people's hard work, seizing whatever they produced and handing them only a fraction of what they deserved in the form of wages. Profits = robbery.
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It's not a robbery, it's a payment for taking risks and providing resources necessary for production, as well as providing customers. If someone is willing to pay a load of money for some crap made 10 times cheaper than its market price, where is robbery in this?
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How is it a payment if it's involuntary? These profits go to shareholders who usually don't do anything except invest money to get more money (ie. engage in market speculation which causes the so-called financial bubbles). And shouldn't the people who actually do useful things mentioned in your post (not from their own pockets, as you imply, though) have slightly better salaries compared to, say, an assembly-line worker in the same hypothetical factory? Maybe 2:1? Hell, even 10:1 would be a vast improvement in the field of bridging the inequality gap. Instead, managers, shareholders and CEO's get millions whilst workers get barely enough to survive and call themselves lucky to even have a job. How is that a fair exchange?
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What? Production? Ha ha ha. If that was the case, it would be tolerable. No, what ultra-rich do is speculation, aggressive seizures, market rigging, capturing of legislature and other similarly sweet deals. Example from last month:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/23fa681c-fe73-11e4-be9f-00144feabdc0.html
6.5$ billion fine for criminal wrongdoing and the owners are ecstatic it was so low...
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You sir are beyond repair
"A person deserves to be fairly rewarded for how productive they are. This will make some have more and some less, but it wont make things better if you just get wealth that doesn't reflect you contribution to society. Everyone deserves equality in opportunities (such as education), and equality with the law.
Why steal? If you steal from those who are wealthy, they will move somewhere else, leaving the poor in you country even more poor...
And does a person who doesn't do * deserve $$$ just because?"
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How about if you read my post and actually reply to my arguments instead of copy-pasting yourself from a previous discussion?
I never said wages should be exactly the same for everybody. I simply stated the fact that the income inequality gap is way higher than it should be. No one deserves to be THAT rich, because the distribution of wealth originates from the same place - the production process. From that process comes out a certain commodity which has an exchange value. This exchange value is then divided into wages for the workers and profits for the capitalists. The capitalists control the entire production process so they seize the commodity and decide how the exchange value will be distributed. The workers have no say in all this. They only get whatever their overlords choose to throw back at them, to keep them from rebelling. You see, the workers get robbed all the time, as a standard practice. That's why the concept of "stealing from the rich" makes no sense. What we need to do is gain control over the production process, not steal some scraps from the master's table.
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The lottery isn't rigged, lottery winners don't make sure no one else can win after them, don't steal tickets of other people, close lottery booths in certain cities so no one there can win, and most importantly, don't house abnormally high number of psychopaths:
http://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/184152/psychopathic-enough-work-banking/
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/23fa681c-fe73-11e4-be9f-00144feabdc0.html
Frankly, lottery winners are epitomes of honesty, integrity and hard work compared to 80% of ultra-rich. I have zero respect to people who made money on suffering of others.
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you sir seem really honest when it comes to leveling up your Steamgifts account. Seriously, WHAT A JOKE
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Who decides who's rich? The junkie who robs an old lady to get his daily fix?
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if the rich are corrupt made black money then totally i am in
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Poor people deserve to be poor in most cases I've seen.
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It really depends if the rich person is a good person then leave them but if it's some asshole(by this I mean a genuine reason not just the bumped you when you were walking, like if he humps cats or some shit I unno) or rich criminal then rob that mother fucka BLIND!!!!!! btw I like popcorn got any?
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So a rude CEO who earned his money the correct way should be robbed?
Like Jobs?
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no I already said a real reason rudeness is not a real reason I even gave an example like humpin a cat which would be a good reason since the cat can't say get the fuck off me or defend itself. I shoulda been more clear but I thought I was getting to long on the post.
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That's not too long. And if you catch someone humping a car you should be robbed too. You would probably have to be stalking the person ;)
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yeah stalking him to rob him for humping a cat =p (but in general theft is wrong neways)
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The same Jobs who, on his return to Apple, killed all charity programs and granted himself exorbitant wage for deciding iPhone corners will be now rounded?
You know, tell me, what Jobs exactly did to deserve all this money and why he would be worse off having "just" 500 mln $ instead of 9 billion $? It would be still more than he could ever spend, and 8.5 bln $ would do awful lot of good elsewhere.
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He didn't make it in a corupt way.
Robbing him is just unjust. Would robbing the manager of a restaurant be within the law just because he has a manager salary plus tips?
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You mean besides help create the personal PC market, revolutionize the music industry with the iPod/iTunes, and then create the smart phone industry with the iPhone. How many people have solid jobs working in any one of the industries today because of Steve Jobs? So Jobs should have created Mac made his money and gone off into the sunset because "hey he's made enough money, it's somebody else's turn"? Who decides what is the max someone is allowed to have? Or what the minimum is before you're considered "rich".
Do I think every CEO is worth what they get paid? No, but that's for the owner's of their businesses to decide.
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Your poll answers seem biased or one sided, I know poor people that works 12 hours a day for a miserable payment, I know rich people that never worked, and I know lazy poor people also, and of course rich people that work a almost all day.
As I understand your poll answers, its like you are implying that every poor people deserve/ask for free things and maybe you are picture them as beggars.
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What do you think of the idea of stealing? Period. It's disgusting parasite behavior, nothing justifies theft.
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Agreed. Although 52% of people don't from another website
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How about the threat of starvation, and if the rich person was causing your starvation? Let's say he's a dictator in your country, opressing you and living in luxury. himself.
I'd have no problem with it then.
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If one needs something they should ask or try to earn it. I'm not talking about life and death situations, I don't think that's what the op intended.
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that's exactly what Lenin, Stalin and Mao did, yet many people idolize them, their policies, their achievements and their ideas
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There are good reasons to steal. For example if someone close to you is sick, you can't afford the money and you save their life. This is an example where the consequences are ridiculous considering what the reason for the stealing was. Another example where the stealing is not "disgusting" would be if a teen steals money from their parents for candy. That's just worth a scolding but I don't think the parents should call their child a disgusting parasite. I'm sure there's plenty of other good reasons, and stating "stealing is disgusting behavior and nothing justifies is" is similar black and white thinking like "lying is disgusting behavior and nothing justifies it".
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Stealing because your friend is sick? Not justifiable.
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So, you'd let them die instead? That's justifiable?
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I'm pretty sure most people are not capable of caring for the well-being of a stranger more than caring for the life of a loved one. Would have to be a cruel bastard.
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In a crisis, if there are other means to obtain something, stealing should be the last resort. If someone close to you is sick would you steal or try to work more, sell possessions or even ask for donations first? It appears the easiest thing to do, but you would harm somebody else in the process.
I'm not as rigid in thinking as you suggest, my wording was wrong. Instead of "nothing justifies" should have said theft should be the last resort. To me there are no good reasons, just desperate situations. And those are not the common crimes that I had in mind.
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I guess you are right somewhat. The officials might still condemn you although will probably feel sympathy and let you off easy. But that doesn't mean that its right.
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Yeah but I meant if the person is gonna die first before I can work more. Obviously it's a very theoretical situation though. And hurting someone > someone dying.
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The real rich ones are so incredibly rich they'd never notice even if their accountants decided to start feeding a small country. They could have many families living in their houses and never even meet them.
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A person deserves to be fairly rewarded for how productive they are. This will make some have more and some less, but it wont make things better if you just get wealth that doesn't reflect you contribution to society. Everyone deserves equality in opportunities (such as education), and equality with the law.
Why steal? If you steal from those who are wealthy, they will move somewhere else, leaving the poor in you country even more poor...
And does a person who doesn't do * deserve $$$ just because?
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As others have said, the poll is poor. The winning options is the obvious answer though.
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Poor can become rich and rich can become poor, depending on a variety of factors. This is 21st century, there are no kings and queens whom mortals can't reach. Spoilt brats can easily lose inherited wealth if they are stupid, and common folk can become millionaires with some brain, skills and luck. Life is survival of the fittest, after all.
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There's plenty of situations where it's not quite so simple. For example when you are mentally ill.
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If you are mentally ill, you should be helped by your family and your country as in hospitals, medicine and things like that. I don't get how does that make any difference for the general population classified as rich or poor. There are many rich people willing to help financially such people, and unfortunately poor people can only offer moral support in such cases, even though both types of help are important, as long as people are willing to help. Yes, there are rich people who are bad and wouldn't help even if they could, but there are also poor people who are bad people, and being good or bad does not generally guarantee you will become rich or poor; it is completely unrelated and a result of different traits in your personality.
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Yes but if you're retired, you won't be getting any help from hospitals anymore. If your family is also poor they cannot help you. In this situation there is simply no way to get rich, except by luck ofc. Other examples are many physical conditions. You don't really even need to be ill, it would simply be too much to ask for a random person from Congo to do anything that would suddenly make them rich. It can simply be too overwhelming and they would require inhuman willpower and skills.
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Sure, third world countries are generally much harder to live in and to prosper, even though I am convinced with certain will to do something, you can do it, and there are many examples for that. For one, there are many great athletes coming from poor African countries who can become worldwide stars if they have trained harder than anyone else. Of course, there are many other problems in Africa, from severe famine and borderline medical help to political instability which can stop you from achieving anything in your life. Yet again, there are organizations supposedly helping these people in these regions, and even though I have always been skeptical about charity, it is supposedly something positive done by rich people to help the poor ones (conspiracy theories aside).
Still, it has always baffled me how much food is thrown away in the developed countries and how little people in the really poor regions of the world have to eat. Yet again, we come back to survival of the fittest - throughout recent history, Europe has proven to be the fastest developing civilization, which is now spread throughout the world. Capitalism, democracy and (on paper) freedom of choice and speech and moderate climate are the keys to 21st century prosperity. After all, food in Europe was also a problem several centuries ago throughout the Middle Ages, but they managed to figure it out and practically conquer the world in a few centuries. Even though that created problems overall, led to slavery issues, slaughters and things I do not find right, and 21st century development doesn't see as right, it was caused by the staggering difference in the development of these countries. Many tribes in Africa live nowadays as they lived a millennium ago, and they do not want and do not like the prospect of changing to something foreign; they are 'rich', as long as they have something to eat (prey) and kids to take care of.
Overall, wealth is not an easy subject to discuss, true, but I still think as long as it's a matter of a personal achievement (of a healthy individual - even though modern history knows handicapped people who have become famous, iconic and inspirational - Stephen Hawking, for example), it's always been a matter of how much you want to achieve it, and how much you work your way through that. After all, if you are born in the middle of NYC, there is no guarantee you will become a millionaire - you might end up a junkie, killed on the street, homeless, a gangster, etc; just as if you are born in the desert, you might still strive to become something in your life and achieve it.
Tl;dr - No one became rich from writing or reading in a forum (afaik, yet), so if any of you are wondering why we still haven't conquered the world, we probably aren't doing what we could have been doing if we actually tried to achieve that.
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Rich people also work for their children to not have to work.
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I don't measure "being rich" in having more money than I need for living.
I prefer being rich in friends, knowledge and experience.
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The real question is: "What do you think of social inequality?"
My answer would be that it's rampant due to how capitalism works. Privatized ownership of the means of production (so, not personal ownership of ordinary things like a place to live, a vehicle or a small shop or plot of land which you yourself can cultivate) - factories, conglomerates, vast stretches of land - serves primarily to improve private interests, in pursuit of maximized profits. This leads to a whole array of problems for us, the public. First, we get mass unemployment rates. Second, we, the workers and the unemployed (aka the reserve army of labor), get robbed during the default operating procedure of any production process because the exchange value of any commodity is split between the worker's wages (variable capital) and the capitalist's gains (surplus value or profits). The latter can only rise at the expense of the former and that share has constantly been increasing for the last 30-40 years. This state of affair is not dictated by economic necessity (*). It's a political decision. Some (a tiny few, the so-called 1%) have a vested interest to keep the things as they are. However, the rest of us should realize that capitalism is dragging the human race inevitably closer to extinction.
*Well, in a way it is, because in capitalism there's an inherent falling tendency of profit-rates which cyclically causes major economic upheavals. Some predict this will be the mechanism of its own downfall because it's proving to be unsustainable in the long run.
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I think all poor deserve certain amount of money. And very rich don't deserve all the money they have...
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so you believe that a portion of the money that you personally have should be removed from you, and given to people who sit on their ass all day because they are too lazy to get a job?
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i dont believe that, thats how the british tax system works and apart from increasing the amount the rich pay im broadly happy with it, i make a million a year id be happy to pay half in taxes
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Problem is that there really isn't work in west for everyone. Other option is that poor acquire these resources in natural way by killing and stealing from those who have them.
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1 - How rich?
2 - How poor?
3 - Is the reason you're rich/poor (family, gambling, etc.) matters?
4 - Who would distribute and how? Publicly or privately?
5 - If a person who was a rich becomes poor or vice versa, are they eligible for their part?
6 - Why not do this action for books & study opportunities? Many poor people live their life without reading one. If you want to change something, you should know that money only solves recent problems and act accordingly.
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Honestly doing that is just wrong, what makes you entitled to their money whether they earned it honestly or dishonestly. What does it matter? Now whether the "poor, aka anyone not in the 1% so almost like everyone" think it's unfair that they have lots of money is not their problem. Their families worked hard to get where they are whether it was doing it like a good person and making a great business or being a shady ass hole exploiting ppl to get rich it does not matter. Thing is they worked for it and you didn't. Would you be willing to share your home that you worked for so hard with a homeless person who could be homeless because he's in a rough patch atm or unfortunately like some who are druggies and/or drunks and are in that position because they are irresponsible or lazy. I mean you worked for your home why should you give it to ppl who had nothing to do with helping you get in that spot. Yes some ppl are very giving and might give them a room, good for them. Most ppl like their privacy or just plain selfish and don't like to share. All in all they deserve what they earned, should they probably donate to more causes to get the lower class to stabilise and have better lives? Yes but they do not have to and it's totally up to them.
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Rich and poor are concepts that may mislead. How much money is poor? How much money is rich? Does owning a car constitutes that you are rich? In my country owning a motorcycle or owning a television set is constituted as "not poor", this standard may be different from one country to other country, from one culture to other culture.
Robbing from the rich is an awful concept. It may look great in Robin Hood movies where the story easily generalizes that "all rich people are bad", while in fact, the world is not working that way. Some of the rich people got rich using the easy way, such as doing illegal activities or just get lucky, but some of them do work hard to earn their wealth. Some of the poor people stays poor because of their bad luck, or their bad financial planning, or just bad economic situation. For instance, in my country a lot of "poor people" who like to take to the streets to demand higher wages actually have high-grade motorcycles, which a lot of blue collar workers don't even have.
And we must also be reminded that nations are bought by the taxes of the rich. The rich are the one that pays a lot of taxes, the one that take risks to open companies that provides lots of working opportunities (thus opening a way for lots of people, also provides more taxes to the government), also allows introduction of technologies and new stuffs. Imagine United States of America without tech corporations such as Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, eBay, etc. Or America without Boeing, Lockheed, Cisco, IBM, etc.
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Agree, but tax evasion is not only done by rich corporations, but also done by individuals. It is human nature anyway, to pay less for the maximal gain. Too much taxes and the firm will just shift their business elsewhere, so the government is content to "balance" between taxes and no-taxes at all.
Even if the companies do tax evade, there do still pay taxes, albeit way smaller than if they pay it honestly. But let's get straight, who wants to be honest anyway?
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Tax evasion done by rich corporations, which have entire teams of highly skilled lawyers at their disposal, carries a lot more weight and significance than individual tax evasion attempts, which aren't very frequent to start with, because of high risk involved for amateurs without expert legal support (which is costly).
Some companies also receive government grants and bailouts which far exceed anything they ever pay in taxes. If they pay taxes at all:
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steal from game developers!
give everything back to the gamers!
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