Thread: The Wealth Gap

Hours, you say?!
This is blatant troll thread... That means if it's on topic, it's off topic... Rule 47...

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

And now 17.

Gotta commend you on your marvelous arithmetic skills there precious anty.

Shame it does little to help your debating skills.

You attempted to discuss wealth inequality without considering intelligence, no can do, sweetie.

That's because your IQ is about room temperature, and you're the self appointed leader of the TD dumber than dogshit brigade.

Actually, there is a fairly strong correlation between IQ and average income, but little if any between IQ and average wealth. Inherited wealth, probably? Most wealth in the world today is inherited.

See Here- https://thesocietypages.org/socimage...me-and-wealth/

Also, nations that become more affluent and hence better educated see an increase in their average IQ. So there is certainly a correlation between standard of education, and IQ.

Finally, would you describe Chinese, Vietnamese & Russians as dumb? These countries have very low average incomes.

Communism doesn't work, as we've seen time after time. Which is why they've all gone to some sort of free market capitalism.
The really smart people in communist countries fled or were killed off a long time ago.

Originally Posted by CaptainNemo

straw man...

...

Originally Posted by CaptainNemo

...as is that comment of "What straw man is next"; but we know you're a troll, so what else would we expect?

...but seeing as though you're trying something new, I'll indulge you...

Which of you in this useless spurt of pretentious socialist demagogic love-in sophistry is itching to hand over your fortune to back up your virtue signalling with cold hard action?

Go on, set all those selfish knuckledraggers an example... it's always someone else, some distant monolith, some convenient other, some simplistic bogeyman... It's not /your/ fault is it?


You know full well that every privilege you enjoy is funded by wicked capitalism, the same evil that has brought millions out of extreme poverty around the world.


The luxuries bought by extreme wealth create jobs; as do the investments that prop up pensions; the donations that fund education and health... including yours.

If you must blame someone else for world poverty in the form of sweeping generalisations that deliberately avoid the true complexity of causes for it, blame gangster regimes and local wars and lawlessness for robbing the food from the mouths of innocents.They probably have a sad story about how they became a gangster...

Rantastic!

You really do put the 'jerk' in knee-jerk reactionary don't you.

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

Communism doesn't work, as we've seen time after time. Which is why they've all gone to some sort of free market capitalism.
The really smart people in communist countries fled or were killed off a long time ago.

Agree, rule by fear and intimidation is how the usually end up- humans, by their nature are just too selfish for it to really work out. However, it is not Americas job to stop the 'spread of communism' - they need to back the f- off and stop interfering in the affairs of sovereign nations.

Originally Posted by Norton

Nemo post only one so far makes sense to me.

It does?? I'm still trying to work out what any of it actually has to do with the OP.

I'm particularly interested in how he has managed to conclude that my education and health are in anyway based on the largess of the extremely wealthy or that even if they were how that's possibly a good thing - it's great that Gates et. al. donate a lot to worthy causes but what if they decided not to. Who the fuck wants to live in a society where they're at the whim of the uber wealthy.

Trickle down economics is a bust and proven not to work, extending that as he has done is patently utterly bollocks.

And of course the wealth gap has been around forever. That's not in dispute. The point is that it's increasing at an exponential rate: when 42 people own the same wealth as the poorest half of humanity and are steadily increasing that gap then something's clearly amiss.

All the dribble about redistribution of wealth is just that, dribble. Nobody has even mentioned it in this thread that I've seen. I certainly haven't. All I did was post some of the bullet points from the Oxfam report and next minute the usual right-wing ideologues/reactionaries are going all Chicken Little about some Communist plot to redistribute all the wealth and eat the wealthies babies or something. Nemo just likes to rant about 'lefties' every chance he gets (and when he doesn't get a chance he just makes one up).

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

The point is that it's increasing at an exponential rate

Statistically, appears so over a relatively short history. Wonder what wealth distrbution was during Zhou dynasty or the Ramesses dynasties. Just askin.

Sorry, google failure. No link.

Originally Posted by sabang

...there is a fairly strong correlation between IQ and average income...

Link appreciated.

Originally Posted by sabang

Also, nations that become more affluent and hence better educated...

And to this, please. Particularly in relation to Thailand would be great.

Thanks in advance.

^^ Link provided, see my post. Two scattergrams.

^ Have no figures in relation to Thailand. More generally, GIYF- "Education and IQ correlation"
But are you saying a rich kid here goes to the same sort of school as a rural peasant? Chortle.

The reason why Cyrille pissed off to Middle East education was too advanced for him here.

Originally Posted by sabang

^^ Link provided, see my post. Two scattergrams.

^ Have no figures in relation to Thailand. More generally, GIYF- "Education and IQ correlation"
But are you saying a rich kid here goes to the same sort of school as a rural peasant? Chortle.

Yes, it says that the link between income and IQ is 'somewhat correlated'. I wondered how you got from that to a 'fairly strong correlation'.

Thanks anyway.

And no, obviously your interpretation of my second request for data is a straw man. Your assertion was about a country's standard of education improving with greater wealth, not an individual's. I thought it was a bit of a 'chortle' myself, as you seem quite confused.

It's all well and good saying that education will improve a countries standard of living. However, it is based of the premise that this is what leaders actually want. In many cases they want a poor sector of society that is both trapped by poverty and easy to manipulate. Look at some Central Asian countries such is Turkmenistan. A ghastly and oppressive leader with a demented cult of personality that sadly seems to work very effectively. You don't get this wish by educating them- they might ask questions! Those that want to be a politician are more often than not the worst man or woman for the job; only in it to feather their own nest and bankroll their wealthy mates.

Its quite simple really. It is the fault of the poor and homeless for being poor and homeless. If they werent so lazy and stupid they would get a job, work, buy a house and a car and live like the rest of us that go to work everyday and make a living. Instead they are happy to live in jobless poverty while I have to work and pay taxes so that they can eat. Its unfair to blame wealthy people and expect to use some of there wealth to help others. After all what would happen if I get wealthy one day. I dont see why I should share my wealth with a bunch of lazy no hopers. After all if we shared our hard earned money they would just get lazier and want more. Might help if they cleaned themselves up and wore some decent clothes rather than walking around like tramps. How do they think the'll ever get a job looking like that. Bloody lazy useless bastards. Should cut off all their benefits. I bet they'd get off their arse and get a job then. Nothing like a bit of starvation for incentive.

^i say shoot the lil feckers, what'd they ever do for us?

well, there's the burgers.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/davos-o...ionaires-rise/

It's a boom time for billionaires. As for everyone else, not so much.

More billionaires were minted in 2017 than in any other year in history.

Income inequality is worsening across the globe, which has a corrosive impact on social institutions, the standard of living for the poor and near-poor, and is linked to political unrest, Oxfam said.

"In the last year, there has been a new billionaire created every two days, and of the wealth that got created, the top 1 percent got 82 percent of it, and the poorest half got nothing," said Paul O'Brien, vice president for policy and advocacy at Oxfam America, a nonprofit focused on alleviating poverty.

The facts don't bear out the belief, held by some, that billionaires will create new jobs, O'Brien said.


"We're seeing lots of new billionaires, but we aren't seeing new wealth," he added. "I'm profoundly grateful that people like Jeff Bezos chooses to spend some of his 10 thousand million dollars so I can read my local paper in Washington, and I'm profoundly grateful that Bill Gates chooses to spend some of his wealth to address the health systems of countries in Africa."

But, he added, "We shouldn't rely on a economy where we have to pray that they do so."

^ Inflation?

yep, asset bubble and equity prices shooting through the roof

everyone else being fucked

How did we get here?

Here's a telling chart/graph from the USA(it really should say Reagan, BushI, Clinton, BushII and Obama presidencies):



Actually if you look closely the uptrend for the .01% started back in the Ford/Carter years. I'll bet it's a pretty similar situation for other western nations.

from:

The Pie Is Shrinking So Much The 99% Are Beginning To Starve
How much longer until the pitchforks come out?
https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/...ginning-starve

Apologies if this was posted earlier. If so, still worth repeating :

Last year, the world’s billionaires made over $462 billion combined—enough money to end extreme poverty around the globe seven times over. Billionaires Earned Enough Money in 2017 to End Extreme Poverty Seven Times Over, Report Says

However here is something relevant to the modern degradation of life related to the wealth gap :

Rude, hateful language seems to be creeping back into the relationship between parents and children, perhaps aided by the way it has come into ordinary discourse between adults. After all, the President just referred to a number of countries as "shitholes". Sexual epithets are perfectly normal language now. The satirical bedtime book Go the F--- to Sleep was a cathartic, but still troubling indicator of a demographic at odds with its children.

This has deeper roots than parental exasperation. There is something happening, in the new century, to the way we live, which again is harming our basic humanity. Every economy tends to enslave, and ours is the most effective of all, since the chains are invisible, velvety soft against our wrists and necks. We are induced to work, long hours, all of us, without respite for parenthood, or for anything like a natural rhythm in our days, and rewarded with shiny toys and the ability to cross the globe at will for shallow, glitzy experiences of pseudo-wealth. Then back onto the treadmill.
We trade away our lives, and we don't even question if this has to be so. There are two consequences to this valuing of private success and goals, and those are hurry, and loneliness. The suburban dream turns out to be a nightmare of stress and isolation, and the first to go are the kids.
This is the real problem unacknowledged in the debates about putting babies in daycare, and of "sleep training" for anxious and stressed infants. In the astonishing decline of mental health as even the most affluent and secure kids melt down over homework stress and exam results or perfection of looks or achievement. And in the hyena-like way that young people of all classes fall on the weakest, leading regularly to suicides of boys and girls in their early teens.

This is the real question we need to ask. How has our way of life been so degraded that we are set at odds with those we love the most? That kids and their simple fundamental needs – for time, security, affection – are the enemies of efficient living. Hypercapitalism is killing our families, starting with the youngest, and it might be time to quietly, carefully, walk away.
Steve Biddulph is the author of The New Manhood, and 10 Things Girls Need Most.

We are trading away our lives for the shallow rewards of capitalism - and it's harming our children