Herman Cain: It is your fault you are not rich...

[binary solo]

HappySqurriel said:

binary solo said:
Let's not forget that a capitalist system depends for its success on 2 things: maintaining a steady unemployment rate of 4-5%. Keeping factory floor wages as low as possible. In those conditions you cannot say in any sort of absolute terms that not being rich is the fault of the individual. Because the economic system itself requires that there be materially poor people.

If the lowest paid worker in the country was paid $100/hr inflation would soon see that $100 devalue to the point that a person on $100/hr can't live on their income.

You simply cannot have a country where everyone is rich (by some fairly broad definition of rich). Ergo it cannot be the case that it is all the individual's fault that they are poor.

Sure Herman Cain was raised by parent who taught him to be in control of his own life. But he was also blesed with great intelligence, which was none of his doing. You are deluding yourself if you think that every poor person out there has the inherent intellect to get a masters in mathematics if they only got off their lazy arses and tried.

There are people of natural (genetic) high potential, medium potential and low potential. And like just about every natrual variation it follows a bell curve distribution. Telling people in the lower quartile it's their fault that they are not rich is as ignorant as telling a blind person it's their fault they can't see.

Now given I'm in the upper quartile of intelligence (probably in the top 15%) then the fact I'm not super rich certainly is my fault and I accept that entirely, and I don't care because I don't want to have to do what it takes to be mega rich (which ALWAYs involves shitting on other people either directly or indirectly). I don't blame Wall street for my not being wealthy (though relative to the world's population I'd be in the top 10% so by some definitions I am rich, though I don't feel rich), but i do blame Wall Street greed (and govt regulation, or lack thereof) for the macroeconomic situation that perpetuates grinding poverty as bad as almost any 3rd world country in the richest nation in the world.

First off, on not everyone can be "rich" is generally true because rich and poor are relative measures of wealth and there will always be some disparity but I don't think that tells the whole story ...

The standard of living that can be obtained by every individual within a society is only bounded by the productivity of people within that society. The fact that we’ve improved productivity so dramatically over the last century is also the reason why the poorest people today have a better standard of living than the vast majority of people a century ago.

Hypothetically speaking, if we had a society where the vast majority of people were working in productive fields and were as productive as is (realistically) possible at this point in time the standard of living of people would be far higher today; and probably higher than most people in the middle class today. The fact that we have far too many people going far into debt for useless educations, an entire class of people who take part in rent-seeking fields rather than productive fields, and organizations (typically unions and special interest groups) who oppose productive technology in order to protect "jobs" is what is really holding people down ...

 

 

Now, with that said, why does wealth have to come from screwing people over?

"The fact that we’ve improved productivity so dramatically over the last century is also the reason why the poorest people today have a better standard of living than the vast majority of people a century ago." Are you sure about that? I would say the lot of the poorest today has not improved over what it was to be poor a century ago (1911). At least it hasn't improved in the same proportion as the fortunes of the ultra rich. Have you seen the impocverished conditions of the poorest of society? Even the poorest of American society? I haven't visited those neighbourhoods in America, but I've seen them in India and Thailand.

"Now, with that said, why does wealth have to come from screwing people over?"

It doesn't have to, it shouldn't have to, it just does. It's how the world works at the moment. But it doesn't have to keep working that way.

"If I discovered an inexpensive cure for cancer tomorrow, charged people a fair rate for the treatment, and made billions of dollars as a result how would I have screwed anyone over?"

You wouldn't make billions. You'd be a research scientist either in a university or at pharmaceutical company and you might get a salary bonus for the year, and a mug saying "I found the cure for cancer" but the billions would go to the company, i.e. you'd be the one who got screwed over. If you happened to be a start-up and you got lucky, you'd soon be bought out (for a tidy sum of money meaning you wouldn't have to work another day in your life if you didn't want to), but again the billions would go to the pharmaceutical company who bought you out. And likelihood is you'd find this cure in some plant extract from a tropical rainforest. Guess who'd get screwed over then?

I have huge respect for Warren Buffett. He seems like a really honourable bloke and he's mega rich. But I don't for a minute believe that he didn't invest in some companies that used oppressive employment practices or environmentally damaging business activities to ge those profits and shareholder values up. I think it's doubtful he ever screwed anyone over directly, but in some of his investments the returns he got and the wealth he accumulated resulted from people being screwed over.