Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

[PsychoSerenity]

Wow.

[Rum]

Talk about spin. The stuff 42 is quoting is hardly objective. It is from the Heritage Foundation who day their mission is 'to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense'.

[Forty Two]

Talk about spin. The stuff 42 is quoting is hardly objective. It is from the Heritage Foundation who day their mission is 'to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense'.

And the OECD Better Life Index...?

The info cited in the Heritage article is objective data. The size and number of homes. The amount of food. The availability of jobs, clothing, shelter, televisions, internet, cars, etc. - these are objective pieces of information. Now, if they're falsified, and it's not true that the average "poor" person in the US does not have a bigger house than the average "person" elsewhere, then that should be easy to rebut. But, pointing to the fact that Heritage is a generally in a conservative organization doesn't refute that. It's important, I admit, to know where a group is coming from. However, I would not automatically discount or poo-poo a group or foundation whose mission is "to formulate and promote leftist public polices based on the principles of socialism, central planing and the regulatory state." I'd look to the stats and see if they're getting it wrong. Naturally, their bias will be towards particular solutions, but their facts wouldn't automatically be wrong.

[Forty Two]

Wow.

What's the problem?

[Hermit]

Except that the guy on the left would have a stack of cookies, not just crumbs. [snip]

Yes, there is an error of scale in that clip; The crumbs are too big. The average worker in the US has to work for more than a month to earn what the average CEO makes in an hour, and then we need to factor in the difference in assets. Truth is, for the past four decades wage increases have not even kept up with inflation. Bill Clinton has to shoulder much of the blame for that, but generally speaking, the trickle-down theory is one gigantic con. Luckily for the rich, most people are too lazy to think and exceedingly gullible.

I snipped most of your post because it's just another demonstration of how to lie with statistics - using true numbers to paint a false picture.

Here is a true representation of the crumbs versus stack of biscuits scale. Enjoy.

[Forty Two]

How to lie with false stats is exactly what the cookie cartoon is. Of course ceo’s Make huge amounts more than the average worker. The average CEO has been working for decades, and has a very exclusive set of skills. I wouldn’t expect a factory employee to make that kind of money. And declaring it unfair that a ceo makes 100 or 1000 Times what someone else makes doesn’t make it so. There is nothing inherently wrong with people making more money than other people.

[Forty Two]

“However, look at it a little more closely in relation to other countries. We’re often told that to be poor in the US is much worse than being poor in the social democracies of Europe. And the bottom 10% in the US are indeed worse off than the bottom 10% in Sweden. But they’re better off than the bottom 10% in Germany or France: places where we are told that there is indeed that social democracy.

Maybe there’s something for this capitalism red in tooth and claw then: given that it does seem to improve the lives of the poor.

Take another look as well: we know that Russia is where bloated plutocrats loot everything from the country: and yet the bottom 10% in the US have, by this measure at least, better lives than the top 10% in Russia. And the top 10% in Portugal (where I live) and Mexico.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes ... anity/amp/

Those numbers and the chart are from The Economist.

[pErvinalia]

How to lie with false stats is exactly what the cookie cartoon is. Of course ceo’s Make huge amounts more than the average worker. The average CEO has been working for decades, and has a very exclusive set of skills. I wouldn’t expect a factory employee to make that kind of money. And declaring it unfair that a ceo makes 100 or 1000 Times what someone else makes doesn’t make it so. There is nothing inherently wrong with people making more money than other people.

It could be argued that people making money based on the sole fact that they already have money (i.e. the rentier class) is pretty wrong.

In any case, high inequality is a handbrake on economic growth. It's also a recipe for people swinging from lampposts.

[pErvinalia]

“However, look at it a little more closely in relation to other countries. We’re often told that to be poor in the US is much worse than being poor in the social democracies of Europe. And the bottom 10% in the US are indeed worse off than the bottom 10% in Sweden. But they’re better off than the bottom 10% in Germany or France: places where we are told that there is indeed that social democracy.

Maybe there’s something for this capitalism red in tooth and claw then: given that it does seem to improve the lives of the poor.

Take another look as well: we know that Russia is where bloated plutocrats loot everything from the country: and yet the bottom 10% in the US have, by this measure at least, better lives than the top 10% in Russia. And the top 10% in Portugal (where I live) and Mexico.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes ... anity/amp/

Those numbers and the chart are from The Economist.

I'm gunna take me a look at this when I've got some more time. I've heard you trot this one out before, and I really struggle to believe that the bottom 10% in a country with a horrible social safety net could be better off than those in countries with really good social safety nets.

[Forty Two]

one thing you are mistaken about is the notion that the US does not have a safety net. We do. A lot of safety nets.

But again, the chart in that article and the numbers were vetted and published in the Economist.

Life in the US is generally good. Poverty is uncommon, and what we call poverty is not poor compared to most of the world.

That’s true too of Oz and the Western European capitalist democracies. They don’t have poverty. Not like most of the world. The eastern bloc countries have poverty. The Asian and South American countries have poverty. Any country that tried to follow Marx had and has poverty. Africa has poverty. But, the US and Western Europe? Oz? Canada? Those of us in the first world have no idea what poverty is.

I’ve travelled enough to have seen some real poverty - it does not really exist in the US and the rest of the first world.

[Forty Two]

How to lie with false stats is exactly what the cookie cartoon is. Of course ceo’s Make huge amounts more than the average worker. The average CEO has been working for decades, and has a very exclusive set of skills. I wouldn’t expect a factory employee to make that kind of money. And declaring it unfair that a ceo makes 100 or 1000 Times what someone else makes doesn’t make it so. There is nothing inherently wrong with people making more money than other people.

It could be argued that people making money based on the sole fact that they already have money (i.e. the rentier class) is pretty wrong.
..

On what basis is it wrong? You have a car or house and want to rent it out, and someone needs a car or a house. Sounds like a good use of property. And it takes risk and effort and money to maintain cars and houses to rent out. What is wrong?

[Forty Two]

How to lie with false stats is exactly what the cookie cartoon is. Of course ceo’s Make huge amounts more than the average worker. The average CEO has been working for decades, and has a very exclusive set of skills. I wouldn’t expect a factory employee to make that kind of money. And declaring it unfair that a ceo makes 100 or 1000 Times what someone else makes doesn’t make it so. There is nothing inherently wrong with people making more money than other people.

In any case, high inequality is a handbrake on economic growth. It's also a recipe for people swinging from lampposts.

If it is, and the us is so bad in that regard, then why is the US GDP so big? And why is the US comparatively stable in terms of lamppost swinging?

Inequality is one consideration, yes. However it is not the only consideration. I would rather live in a country where the poor live relatively well than in one where equality is enforced but the poor are relatively worse off. To me, it’s extreme poverty that breeds revolution. A few billionaires is not injurious.

That’s another point to consider. Almost all billionaires and millionaires are made in America. That’s not a bad thing, given how well the lower income levels live. But the bill gates and warren Buffett crowd skew the numbers.

[Hermit]

How to lie with false stats is exactly what the cookie cartoon is. Of course ceo’s Make huge amounts more than the average worker. The average CEO has been working for decades, and has a very exclusive set of skills. I wouldn’t expect a factory employee to make that kind of money.

The work of the average CEO is not worth 380 times the amount of the average worker. Would you expect a ship's captain to draw 380 times the salary of the cook down below deck?

What's more, CEOs risk nothing. When their "very exclusive set of skills" results in them making disastrous decisions the companies they are in charge of "downsize" or go broke altogether. Unsecured creditors lose all the money they loaned, secured creditors lose at least some of it, shareholders lose some or all of their investment in the company and workers lose their livelihood. The CEO finishes up with a golden parachute, often amounting to millions of dollars. Here is a list of the 20 biggest, courtesy of Bloomberg. There are thousands more where the termination amount bears no relation to the CEOs' achievement that his "very exclusive set of skills" wrought.

I wouldn't mind getting the sack if the termination slip were accompanied by an x million dollar addition to my bank account.

[Forty Two]

On what basis do you say a ceo is not worth her pay? It may not be worth it to you, but you aren’t the one paying them. Nobody forces the bird of directors to hire a given ceo. If they can get the same work/value out of someone else, why wouldn’t they hire the less expensive one?

The people who hire CEOs would make more money if they paid the CEO less for the same work/value. Do they pay more than they have to out of the goodness of their hearts? They are good at paying salespeople and engineers less, but not CEOs one COOs?

[Forty Two]

I wouldn't mind getting the sack if the termination slip were accompanied by an x million dollar addition to my bank account.

Those terms are freely negotiated. Just like when you take a job, you can demand whatever package you want. But if you interviewed for a CEO job, you would not be given a parachute clause unless you offered something that the people writing the check wanted and they couldn’t get the same thing from someone else.

I don’t think any actor is worth $20 million for a movie. But I am wrong about that. I’m wrong because the people who pay the actor wouldn’t pay him or her if they did not expect to make more money with that actor than without. Same goes for CEOs.

Barristas work just as hard as some wealthy actors and executives. But barristas get their low pay because people who pay them can get plenty of barristas for that money and they pay at a rate that will let them make money. There are millions of barrista-skill folks. It’s hard to find capable CEOs for Starbucks.