Why is it socially acceptable to hoard wealth while so many go without basic needs?
This question was asked at the Dropping Knowledge event on 9th September by Kent Keller, 49, Milwaukee, USA. To find out more about Dropping Knowledge check out our blog:
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Answers:
Fear of becoming what they fear. Greed. Lack of sympathy and empathy.
The only reason it's "socially acceptable" is because people turn a blind eye to it. What can others do about it anyhow?
Those who have the most are often the cheapest of all when it comes to personal sacrifice. If they donate anything, it's because they will get a tax receipt or publicity, etc, not because it's out of the goodness of their hearts.
What is disgusting is that we glorify that lifestyle and strive to achieve it, whereas we should be doing all we can to help those with less and it's as simply as trying to end the misery that exists in this world.
There is so much corruption in other governments where they take all the money we send to help the poor anyhow, but there is the saying that "Charity starts at home".
When we live in a world of movie stars and Hollywood hype and yet pass by a homeless person without a second thought, there is something majorly wrong.
I supposed there are those who say why bother if the person doesn't want to help themselves. Well that is true too, many mooch off the system too, but we have to try and do something, and I believe it has to start with the children so they don't turn out to be that type of adult who has lost all hope because society didn't care.
who said it was socially acceptable?
greed & corruption in all places & at all levels help to sustain inequality
It's not acceptable in our house.
Perhaps that is a measure of the sickness of our society. Remember that is no measure of ones health to be well adapted to a profoundly sick society.
If an individual is capable of working and applying him / her self then that person should be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their labour.
The alternative is known as communism. A socio / economic / political experiment that has been totally discreditted as a failure. Heard about it?
Incidentally Soviet communist expansion and the related conflicts caused the deaths of more people than did WW2 and the Nazis.
Why is it that the political left can never grasp this?
I think if an individual has earned the right to be wealthy then fair-play to them, the deserve to lord it up over those who are not as successful and rich as them. However when multi-national businesses make billions of pounds in profit every year, I believe that profit would be better shared out amongst the much needy in society.
Banks, Petrol companies, Supermarket chains are notoriously making obscene amounts of money in "profit", HSBC alone made around a £200 million profit last year. It would be nice if all the captains of industry got together to donate a percentage of their vast wealth, to charities, building projects for the homeless, better or improve NHS services, buy much needed equipment for schools and colleges, etc.BUT no it's always down to the "have nots" to support the already filthy rich "haves"
Complex question..Our whole society is based around the moral justification of poverty and greed, but mainly poverty..
If you justify the poor, you don't really have to justify the greedy.
Words like envy, jealousy (pretty base religious terms) are used essentially to moralise at the "essential" non beneficiaries of capitalism (if everyone was wealthy or even comfortable our economy would "go moscow")
So we have a economic system that needs poverty and is poverty dependant. It also needs to morally justify this poverty otherwise it will collapse and people will loose faith in it.
Think of how the non beneficiaries of communism were dealt with,where the individual was blamed instead of the idiology. Our system puts massive blame on the individual, and uses suedo religious ideas to accomplish this (this is why christianity is so important in america and is so important to capitalism as it provides a poverty dependant system - with a "morality").
Again this week, the tories used the sphincter twanging term social responsibility - that basically puts the reponsibilty of peoples plight on the person, not the poverty dependant capitalist economy.
It is a lie. People should blame capitalism , and politicians - not themselves.
But this how it is made socially acceptable to hoard wealth.
Simple it is because we are all cursed with your own greed's,
We have been tort that greed is good and we should all participate.
Lead by capitalism from the US is being drummed in like it was the Gospel.
Try to change it and they will come after you and destroy you.
That is the only reason we have wars in the middle east.
They (middle East) do not want capitalism rammed down upon them.
So Bush as set the troops on the war path.
Because we live in a greedy society. When we first came to this country in hopes of escaping persecution and such, all we could think of was having; freedom, money, land, families, food; in other words wealth. We pushed the natives out of their land and homes so that we could have what we wanted
We have passed that idea on through generations and those who come from other countries and cultures are quickly overwhelmed with the same.
Americans as a general population, beginning with the colonists, don't care what they have to do or who they have to run over to get what they want. Therefore, it is perfectly acceptable to hoard wealth while others suffer.
Yes there are exceptions; people who do care, but unfortunately the majority do not. Its a shame that the LAND OF OPPORTUNITY has turned into a wilderness of greed where no one is ever really secured prosperity!
Technically, it's not socially acceptable.
It's just that the majority of people in countries like Canada and the U.S.A. and England and so on don't exactly see very poor people. Of course, there's the homeless people and the victims of various types of abuse (domestic, ect.). But most people have never seen real suffering from a human being as a result of them not having their basic needs met.
If more people could see this with their own eyes, they would do something about it.
It's not socially acceptable to be cruel.
Out of sight, out of mind. Isn't that how the saying goes?
because people think it is socially acceptable when in fact it isn't.
You cannot exactly say it is socially acceptable to hoard wealth while so many people go without basic need! This needs to be looked at from differernt perspectives, first from the perspective of the rich, they see their wealth as a reward for all their years of hardwork and don't mind if it continues to pile up Some even come from poor backgrounds and they know how it feels to be poor so understandably never want to go through that experience again.
Secondly in countries like the U.k for example they engage a system of progressive taxation (the more you earn, the more you pay in taxes) and also other measure to reduce this gap in wealth between the so called rich and poor. Also certain people for example Richard Branson and Also Bill Gates have also donated a lot of money to alleviate poverty in certain countries of the world escpeccially Africa and there are certainly lots more who have also done this.
From the perspective of the "Poor", they see rich people most of the time as hoarding wealth which is also true escpeccially in my experience in places like Africa where Leaders and Executives control millions of dollars and other valuable currency in the aim to become extremely wealthy, also some rich people also don't care about the plight of the poor because they see them as layabouts and people who did not do anything with their lives when they should have, which is definately not true for the Majority.
In conclusion, i'll say its not socially acceptable to hoard wealth but what some people fail to understand is that wealth sometimes is not hoarded. In economics it is seen that the more wealth a person has, the more Income the person gets as wealth brings in the flow of income hence a further increase in the person's wealth.
This question has very broad ramafications, and is worded with such a connotation as to make wealth appear negative. The fact is that it is irrelevant whether it is socially acceptable or not what is right, is that those who produce are right in disposing of that product as they see fit for it is theirs. Implied in the question, is some sort of economic equalization, that those with wealth should have to relinquish it for those who have less, however when one examines the reality they will quickly find that it is the lack of property rights which has caused this expansive poverty, those who are failing to meet their basic needs are not doing so voluntaryily, they are not lazy or simply unlucky, they live in socialist nations, which come and take the scant produce of the people and redirect it to the leaders whims. If their property rights had been upheld then they would have a seed stock for replanting their irrigation would not be torn apart, their fencing destroyed, livestock stolen and savings pillaged. and any advocatio0n of removing the wealthy's property rights will not alleviate this problem, for that wealth too will be squandered, redirected to some government project or war. Implied in this question is just that, a socialist argument that somehow those who have less for whatever reason are entitled to the wealth of another, this is nonsense, and theivery. If someone has worked hard, scrimped and saved for their whole life, spent countlees hours of education and effort to produce it is in no way right to rob them of that, just as it was not right to rob those who are now impoverished. What should be done is the removal of coercion against them not the implementation of it against more. voluntary charity is the sole right way for wealth redistribution, and remember for wealth to be redistributed for the consumption of another it must first be produced, this is blatent reality one cannot consume that which has not been produced, and for what reason will the producers produce, not to have it stolen, and if this is what they expect then the effort will not be exerted to produce it. Mankind is inherently compassionate, we do not like to see the innocent suffer and hence most do readily give to those charities or people they see fit. But to force them to do so, would simply cause them to become less productive, theft is wrong regardless of the apparent benefits. Society is an abstraction, it is simply a label for a group of individuals, we constitute these groups, to protect us from the coercion exerted by others, we delegate to representatives our right of self defense, but we cannot delegate to them a right which we do not possess, and I have no right to rob you, me and 10 friends have no right to rob you, a right does not depend on numbers be 1, 10, or 300 million. As per the "social acceptability" of wealth hoarding, this too is nonsense, for it is not socially acceptable to hoard wealth we call these people misers, but frankly if they want to be a miser that is their right, they will be frowned upon, they will not be remembered fondly but it is their right to choose what is done with their produce. To aquire wealth is not a bad thing, to produce is not a bad thing, to try to produce as much as you can is not a bad thing, to enter into voluntary trade with another is not a bad thing, for the sole purpose of production is consumption. wealth is not a static quantity divided up and some people are taking more than their "fair share", wealth is simply a term denoting purchasing power, if nothing is produced then all the purchasing power of the globe could not buy it, money is simply representative of product, and it is a variable amount, from year to year one can produce more or less, the more that is produced the cheaper and more affordable things become the less the mor expensive. And to rob from the producers, under the guise of redistribution, is simply going to create less, not more. What needs to happen to end poverty is the unholding of private property right not thew abolition of them, and that is what the question through implication is advocating. Karl Marx defined communism as follows "The abolition of private property", and that is what is implied here, for if it is not up to the one who produces the good to dispose of the good then there are no property rights regardless of how the government attempts to discern ownership. The definition of a slave is "one who produces while another disposes of that product", to propose aggregate slavery upon all, under the guise of trying to help the less fortunate is, horrific. If you wish to help the poor yourself then produce and give it away; do not advocate robbing those who have produced. A good example of this is Bill Gates, who is often demonized for his wealth, yet he is able to and does give more to the poor every year then all these socialists who advocate robbing him, it is solely his ability to produce and exchange, value for value voluntarily, which has put him in such a position as to help so many. If he had been robbed upon achieving his first million would he have ever been able to produce billions, would the initial million have gone to produce those billions, no, they would have been consumed. And in fact it is this perpetual robbery around the globe by coercive government which leads to war, genecide, mass murder and totalitarian slavery. Very costly endeavors, which result in much of the stolen loot to be spent on guns and bombs which produce nothing they destroy the capacity to produce, so the money which would have gone to create more stuff has in fact been rerouted into destroyint the capacity to make stuff, yet this ideology is still advocated. And has now suffused the globe with all countries now operating some sort of "mixed market economy", which is simply a euphemism for Fascism. For if one examines the terms they will find that communism is the abolition of private property, where the means of all production are controlled by the state; Fascism is an economic system where the means of production are under the operational control of private individuals but the state remains supreme over all, and controls that production through a variety af measures such as: taxation, interest rates, quotas, duties, subsidies, tariffs, expropriation, even the controlling of admission and graduation rates of education institutions. the list goes on. Capitalism (which does not exist, though much lipservice is paid to it) is an economic system where the means of production are solely in the hands of the individual, property are a central tenet, and the governmnet does not in any way interfere in the economy. As I said we all now live in fascist nations, and the governments power within them simply grows, always under the guise of being benefitial or necessary, history has shown that these societies implode, but not until after much strife and usually bloodshed, for when you consistently rob the most productive among you, you simply have less to rob the next year.. ad infinitum, each successive year more and more become impoverished and the demand for further expropriation grows, until the society does not produce enough to be sufficietly robbed while still maintaining that power over its generally unknowing, well meaning populace. I am not the first to say this, those in power know this, they realize that we must believe that they are good for us, that we need them to rob us, billions of our own money are spent to delude us into this, we are told how we are free and that they will protect us, yet they are the greatest violators of that freedom and seek to whatever degree they can enslave us. remember a slave is simply one who does not get dispose of that which he (or she ofcourse) has produced, not that they get 0, even the blacks of southern plantations were fed and clothed, but it was not up to them how to spend the fruits of their labor.
Your question is false. It is NOT socially acceptable to hoard wealth while so many go without basic needs. In our country we see many wealthy people act in very Godless ways with their wealth and it is NOT what many of us say we would do if WE had the money. They say money does things to people and that is probably correct; after all, the love of money IS the root of all evil.
Not all wealthy people are so selfish. There are those who share, Bill Gates for example. There is a word for those who share their wealth in this way. They are called philanthropics. Mr. Gates donates about 52% of his fortune to charity. Does that sound to you like anti social behavior.
And then there are those of us who have been blessed and we give what we can, but, we have full knowledge that we must be able to support ourselves in our old age. Me, personally, I have racked up, or as you say hoarded away, enough at fifty one to support myself for almost one year into retirement. And, God willing, I won't loose it to a con man or identity theft. I only have a social security program that has been raped by big conservative government men to sustain me past that. Now THAT should be your question. Why are those who have been entrusted to preserve the sanctity of our nation, defiled it instead?
I have said enough.
Jesus said "the poor would always be us." And I guess the rich will be too. Look at Bill Gates, at least he's giving some of his wealth away.
Who said it was acceptable?
But the law protects everyone, including the rich, so we can't slap them silly, or take from them what they didn't sweat for. If you know how, let me know. lol
Spoken like a true socialist/communist. When are you going to visit Fidel?
Because the oppressors through out history and the ideals of Capitalism with it's fake work ethic has conditioned us to accept such atrosities.
We've been lied to, Darwin's theory was incompleate, it lacked the fact that in nature there exists Mutial Aid and co-operation for survival too. There is also a mathmatical harmony in nature as well, and yet it is not only simple but complex all at the same time.
;-)
So the trick is, to unlearn and relearn, and to decondition our selves so that we can face the world as who we truely are NOT who we've been molded into
;-)
Cya!
::: Peace :::
Can we get any more left-wing comdare?
Even Jesus said there will always be poor. It is for God's reasons and not for man to understand. God is just so there has to be a good reason that we can not understand.
I think it is only acceptable to others who hoard money. To everyone else, its just plain selfish.
No, they would do it too if they were rich
What fault one can find is their own.
What is wrong with "hoarding" wealth?
What is wrong with going without?
Perhaps everything is as it should be.
People who have tons of money and spend it on frivolous things digust me . That is really not acceptable with me. I do however compare it to people who gain a lot of weight. It is a mental sickness. Glutoney. Greed. Possibly trying to fill a void in there lives. Lack of self awareness. It is hard to understand unless you are there yourself.
Because it's the wealthy who decide what's socially acceptable. Of course, they'd make the rules self serving.
Hoarding! That's the key to the question here. What Are we working for? Many of the millionaires have lost sight of the goal! When the pro athletes,for example, were in the thousands of $$ in a paycheck what was the goal ?.to be better as a 'jock' or just to be paid better?! If you said paid.look at how many lost their vocation due to drugs!! Compared to the 'jocks' that improved themselves then gained a million $$ paycheck that now is being shared with compassion to charity organizations. These athletes will be long remembered after the drug addicts are dead! After Enron it certainly makes sense to legislate a ceiling on personal annual income! The poor aren't always lazy but are very ignorant on financial matters; to give them money is bad until they learn the value of purchases in daily living! Where do they learn values? or that decisions have consequences not just awards!?
You can never provide all, or even enough, for people that will not work to provide for themselves. In many many cases, it is families or women who have kid after kid that they cant afford to have, but do anyway. What would giving them someone else hard earned money achieve. Their kids would have kids etc etc. It is a never ending cycle. How much is enough? Do we equalize things communist style, or does each person get $6K a month maybe? What is the cut off in how much wealth a person can have? Who decides? The government? That wonderful body that spends money like we will never have to pay it back? No thanks - I like the way our system works.
Because the wealthy are afraid of giving away money to who need it because they know that their money is the only reason anybody wants anything to do with them. If they lose it, they lose control, and they would be nothing. (WHAT A GREAT REALITY TV IDEA!)
Also they would have to stoop to a level that they continually insult because not everyone grows up in a perfect wealthy family with the funds to go to Harvard, and rich mommys and daddy's who pass their riches on to their spoiled kids who have absolutely no idea what it's like to be poor. Who in turn say that they rightfully earned all of their riches. The ones who have I would assume worked really hard to false advertise, and lie to get money from the poor, and middle class. Us poor and middle class have to work day in and day out slaving over the rich people right? As they smile brightly as the insist that they are the ones that work hard.. HA!
Smile! Isn't life GRAND!
Rich or poor in the end we all recieve what we deserve.
Also who ever said poor people don't know how to work, are ignorant, and lazy. My big question is who ever said that if you work hard you become rich? I can imagine people in very poor countries don't have much to look forward to after a long day of hard work..
To the victor goes the spoils. If a person chooses to work hard enough and smart enough to become successful, why should that person be required to hand over his hard earnings to someone who isn't as motivated?
Your question is the basis of communism, in that it attempts to place all people on an equal financial level, no matter how hard they work. What it eventually accomplishes is everyone working at the lowest acceptable standard, since hard work isn't rewarded.
because it's not acceptable to spend all the money
Capitalism and democracy is a volatile mixture but it works.
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if every discision you make..?
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Answers:
Fear of becoming what they fear. Greed. Lack of sympathy and empathy.
The only reason it's "socially acceptable" is because people turn a blind eye to it. What can others do about it anyhow?
Those who have the most are often the cheapest of all when it comes to personal sacrifice. If they donate anything, it's because they will get a tax receipt or publicity, etc, not because it's out of the goodness of their hearts.
What is disgusting is that we glorify that lifestyle and strive to achieve it, whereas we should be doing all we can to help those with less and it's as simply as trying to end the misery that exists in this world.
There is so much corruption in other governments where they take all the money we send to help the poor anyhow, but there is the saying that "Charity starts at home".
When we live in a world of movie stars and Hollywood hype and yet pass by a homeless person without a second thought, there is something majorly wrong.
I supposed there are those who say why bother if the person doesn't want to help themselves. Well that is true too, many mooch off the system too, but we have to try and do something, and I believe it has to start with the children so they don't turn out to be that type of adult who has lost all hope because society didn't care.
who said it was socially acceptable?
greed & corruption in all places & at all levels help to sustain inequality
It's not acceptable in our house.
Perhaps that is a measure of the sickness of our society. Remember that is no measure of ones health to be well adapted to a profoundly sick society.
If an individual is capable of working and applying him / her self then that person should be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their labour.
The alternative is known as communism. A socio / economic / political experiment that has been totally discreditted as a failure. Heard about it?
Incidentally Soviet communist expansion and the related conflicts caused the deaths of more people than did WW2 and the Nazis.
Why is it that the political left can never grasp this?
I think if an individual has earned the right to be wealthy then fair-play to them, the deserve to lord it up over those who are not as successful and rich as them. However when multi-national businesses make billions of pounds in profit every year, I believe that profit would be better shared out amongst the much needy in society.
Banks, Petrol companies, Supermarket chains are notoriously making obscene amounts of money in "profit", HSBC alone made around a £200 million profit last year. It would be nice if all the captains of industry got together to donate a percentage of their vast wealth, to charities, building projects for the homeless, better or improve NHS services, buy much needed equipment for schools and colleges, etc.BUT no it's always down to the "have nots" to support the already filthy rich "haves"
Complex question..Our whole society is based around the moral justification of poverty and greed, but mainly poverty..
If you justify the poor, you don't really have to justify the greedy.
Words like envy, jealousy (pretty base religious terms) are used essentially to moralise at the "essential" non beneficiaries of capitalism (if everyone was wealthy or even comfortable our economy would "go moscow")
So we have a economic system that needs poverty and is poverty dependant. It also needs to morally justify this poverty otherwise it will collapse and people will loose faith in it.
Think of how the non beneficiaries of communism were dealt with,where the individual was blamed instead of the idiology. Our system puts massive blame on the individual, and uses suedo religious ideas to accomplish this (this is why christianity is so important in america and is so important to capitalism as it provides a poverty dependant system - with a "morality").
Again this week, the tories used the sphincter twanging term social responsibility - that basically puts the reponsibilty of peoples plight on the person, not the poverty dependant capitalist economy.
It is a lie. People should blame capitalism , and politicians - not themselves.
But this how it is made socially acceptable to hoard wealth.
Simple it is because we are all cursed with your own greed's,
We have been tort that greed is good and we should all participate.
Lead by capitalism from the US is being drummed in like it was the Gospel.
Try to change it and they will come after you and destroy you.
That is the only reason we have wars in the middle east.
They (middle East) do not want capitalism rammed down upon them.
So Bush as set the troops on the war path.
Because we live in a greedy society. When we first came to this country in hopes of escaping persecution and such, all we could think of was having; freedom, money, land, families, food; in other words wealth. We pushed the natives out of their land and homes so that we could have what we wanted
We have passed that idea on through generations and those who come from other countries and cultures are quickly overwhelmed with the same.
Americans as a general population, beginning with the colonists, don't care what they have to do or who they have to run over to get what they want. Therefore, it is perfectly acceptable to hoard wealth while others suffer.
Yes there are exceptions; people who do care, but unfortunately the majority do not. Its a shame that the LAND OF OPPORTUNITY has turned into a wilderness of greed where no one is ever really secured prosperity!
Technically, it's not socially acceptable.
It's just that the majority of people in countries like Canada and the U.S.A. and England and so on don't exactly see very poor people. Of course, there's the homeless people and the victims of various types of abuse (domestic, ect.). But most people have never seen real suffering from a human being as a result of them not having their basic needs met.
If more people could see this with their own eyes, they would do something about it.
It's not socially acceptable to be cruel.
Out of sight, out of mind. Isn't that how the saying goes?
because people think it is socially acceptable when in fact it isn't.
You cannot exactly say it is socially acceptable to hoard wealth while so many people go without basic need! This needs to be looked at from differernt perspectives, first from the perspective of the rich, they see their wealth as a reward for all their years of hardwork and don't mind if it continues to pile up Some even come from poor backgrounds and they know how it feels to be poor so understandably never want to go through that experience again.
Secondly in countries like the U.k for example they engage a system of progressive taxation (the more you earn, the more you pay in taxes) and also other measure to reduce this gap in wealth between the so called rich and poor. Also certain people for example Richard Branson and Also Bill Gates have also donated a lot of money to alleviate poverty in certain countries of the world escpeccially Africa and there are certainly lots more who have also done this.
From the perspective of the "Poor", they see rich people most of the time as hoarding wealth which is also true escpeccially in my experience in places like Africa where Leaders and Executives control millions of dollars and other valuable currency in the aim to become extremely wealthy, also some rich people also don't care about the plight of the poor because they see them as layabouts and people who did not do anything with their lives when they should have, which is definately not true for the Majority.
In conclusion, i'll say its not socially acceptable to hoard wealth but what some people fail to understand is that wealth sometimes is not hoarded. In economics it is seen that the more wealth a person has, the more Income the person gets as wealth brings in the flow of income hence a further increase in the person's wealth.
This question has very broad ramafications, and is worded with such a connotation as to make wealth appear negative. The fact is that it is irrelevant whether it is socially acceptable or not what is right, is that those who produce are right in disposing of that product as they see fit for it is theirs. Implied in the question, is some sort of economic equalization, that those with wealth should have to relinquish it for those who have less, however when one examines the reality they will quickly find that it is the lack of property rights which has caused this expansive poverty, those who are failing to meet their basic needs are not doing so voluntaryily, they are not lazy or simply unlucky, they live in socialist nations, which come and take the scant produce of the people and redirect it to the leaders whims. If their property rights had been upheld then they would have a seed stock for replanting their irrigation would not be torn apart, their fencing destroyed, livestock stolen and savings pillaged. and any advocatio0n of removing the wealthy's property rights will not alleviate this problem, for that wealth too will be squandered, redirected to some government project or war. Implied in this question is just that, a socialist argument that somehow those who have less for whatever reason are entitled to the wealth of another, this is nonsense, and theivery. If someone has worked hard, scrimped and saved for their whole life, spent countlees hours of education and effort to produce it is in no way right to rob them of that, just as it was not right to rob those who are now impoverished. What should be done is the removal of coercion against them not the implementation of it against more. voluntary charity is the sole right way for wealth redistribution, and remember for wealth to be redistributed for the consumption of another it must first be produced, this is blatent reality one cannot consume that which has not been produced, and for what reason will the producers produce, not to have it stolen, and if this is what they expect then the effort will not be exerted to produce it. Mankind is inherently compassionate, we do not like to see the innocent suffer and hence most do readily give to those charities or people they see fit. But to force them to do so, would simply cause them to become less productive, theft is wrong regardless of the apparent benefits. Society is an abstraction, it is simply a label for a group of individuals, we constitute these groups, to protect us from the coercion exerted by others, we delegate to representatives our right of self defense, but we cannot delegate to them a right which we do not possess, and I have no right to rob you, me and 10 friends have no right to rob you, a right does not depend on numbers be 1, 10, or 300 million. As per the "social acceptability" of wealth hoarding, this too is nonsense, for it is not socially acceptable to hoard wealth we call these people misers, but frankly if they want to be a miser that is their right, they will be frowned upon, they will not be remembered fondly but it is their right to choose what is done with their produce. To aquire wealth is not a bad thing, to produce is not a bad thing, to try to produce as much as you can is not a bad thing, to enter into voluntary trade with another is not a bad thing, for the sole purpose of production is consumption. wealth is not a static quantity divided up and some people are taking more than their "fair share", wealth is simply a term denoting purchasing power, if nothing is produced then all the purchasing power of the globe could not buy it, money is simply representative of product, and it is a variable amount, from year to year one can produce more or less, the more that is produced the cheaper and more affordable things become the less the mor expensive. And to rob from the producers, under the guise of redistribution, is simply going to create less, not more. What needs to happen to end poverty is the unholding of private property right not thew abolition of them, and that is what the question through implication is advocating. Karl Marx defined communism as follows "The abolition of private property", and that is what is implied here, for if it is not up to the one who produces the good to dispose of the good then there are no property rights regardless of how the government attempts to discern ownership. The definition of a slave is "one who produces while another disposes of that product", to propose aggregate slavery upon all, under the guise of trying to help the less fortunate is, horrific. If you wish to help the poor yourself then produce and give it away; do not advocate robbing those who have produced. A good example of this is Bill Gates, who is often demonized for his wealth, yet he is able to and does give more to the poor every year then all these socialists who advocate robbing him, it is solely his ability to produce and exchange, value for value voluntarily, which has put him in such a position as to help so many. If he had been robbed upon achieving his first million would he have ever been able to produce billions, would the initial million have gone to produce those billions, no, they would have been consumed. And in fact it is this perpetual robbery around the globe by coercive government which leads to war, genecide, mass murder and totalitarian slavery. Very costly endeavors, which result in much of the stolen loot to be spent on guns and bombs which produce nothing they destroy the capacity to produce, so the money which would have gone to create more stuff has in fact been rerouted into destroyint the capacity to make stuff, yet this ideology is still advocated. And has now suffused the globe with all countries now operating some sort of "mixed market economy", which is simply a euphemism for Fascism. For if one examines the terms they will find that communism is the abolition of private property, where the means of all production are controlled by the state; Fascism is an economic system where the means of production are under the operational control of private individuals but the state remains supreme over all, and controls that production through a variety af measures such as: taxation, interest rates, quotas, duties, subsidies, tariffs, expropriation, even the controlling of admission and graduation rates of education institutions. the list goes on. Capitalism (which does not exist, though much lipservice is paid to it) is an economic system where the means of production are solely in the hands of the individual, property are a central tenet, and the governmnet does not in any way interfere in the economy. As I said we all now live in fascist nations, and the governments power within them simply grows, always under the guise of being benefitial or necessary, history has shown that these societies implode, but not until after much strife and usually bloodshed, for when you consistently rob the most productive among you, you simply have less to rob the next year.. ad infinitum, each successive year more and more become impoverished and the demand for further expropriation grows, until the society does not produce enough to be sufficietly robbed while still maintaining that power over its generally unknowing, well meaning populace. I am not the first to say this, those in power know this, they realize that we must believe that they are good for us, that we need them to rob us, billions of our own money are spent to delude us into this, we are told how we are free and that they will protect us, yet they are the greatest violators of that freedom and seek to whatever degree they can enslave us. remember a slave is simply one who does not get dispose of that which he (or she ofcourse) has produced, not that they get 0, even the blacks of southern plantations were fed and clothed, but it was not up to them how to spend the fruits of their labor.
Your question is false. It is NOT socially acceptable to hoard wealth while so many go without basic needs. In our country we see many wealthy people act in very Godless ways with their wealth and it is NOT what many of us say we would do if WE had the money. They say money does things to people and that is probably correct; after all, the love of money IS the root of all evil.
Not all wealthy people are so selfish. There are those who share, Bill Gates for example. There is a word for those who share their wealth in this way. They are called philanthropics. Mr. Gates donates about 52% of his fortune to charity. Does that sound to you like anti social behavior.
And then there are those of us who have been blessed and we give what we can, but, we have full knowledge that we must be able to support ourselves in our old age. Me, personally, I have racked up, or as you say hoarded away, enough at fifty one to support myself for almost one year into retirement. And, God willing, I won't loose it to a con man or identity theft. I only have a social security program that has been raped by big conservative government men to sustain me past that. Now THAT should be your question. Why are those who have been entrusted to preserve the sanctity of our nation, defiled it instead?
I have said enough.
Jesus said "the poor would always be us." And I guess the rich will be too. Look at Bill Gates, at least he's giving some of his wealth away.
Who said it was acceptable?
But the law protects everyone, including the rich, so we can't slap them silly, or take from them what they didn't sweat for. If you know how, let me know. lol
Spoken like a true socialist/communist. When are you going to visit Fidel?
Because the oppressors through out history and the ideals of Capitalism with it's fake work ethic has conditioned us to accept such atrosities.
We've been lied to, Darwin's theory was incompleate, it lacked the fact that in nature there exists Mutial Aid and co-operation for survival too. There is also a mathmatical harmony in nature as well, and yet it is not only simple but complex all at the same time.
;-)
So the trick is, to unlearn and relearn, and to decondition our selves so that we can face the world as who we truely are NOT who we've been molded into
;-)
Cya!
::: Peace :::
Can we get any more left-wing comdare?
Even Jesus said there will always be poor. It is for God's reasons and not for man to understand. God is just so there has to be a good reason that we can not understand.
I think it is only acceptable to others who hoard money. To everyone else, its just plain selfish.
No, they would do it too if they were rich
What fault one can find is their own.
What is wrong with "hoarding" wealth?
What is wrong with going without?
Perhaps everything is as it should be.
People who have tons of money and spend it on frivolous things digust me . That is really not acceptable with me. I do however compare it to people who gain a lot of weight. It is a mental sickness. Glutoney. Greed. Possibly trying to fill a void in there lives. Lack of self awareness. It is hard to understand unless you are there yourself.
Because it's the wealthy who decide what's socially acceptable. Of course, they'd make the rules self serving.
Hoarding! That's the key to the question here. What Are we working for? Many of the millionaires have lost sight of the goal! When the pro athletes,for example, were in the thousands of $$ in a paycheck what was the goal ?.to be better as a 'jock' or just to be paid better?! If you said paid.look at how many lost their vocation due to drugs!! Compared to the 'jocks' that improved themselves then gained a million $$ paycheck that now is being shared with compassion to charity organizations. These athletes will be long remembered after the drug addicts are dead! After Enron it certainly makes sense to legislate a ceiling on personal annual income! The poor aren't always lazy but are very ignorant on financial matters; to give them money is bad until they learn the value of purchases in daily living! Where do they learn values? or that decisions have consequences not just awards!?
You can never provide all, or even enough, for people that will not work to provide for themselves. In many many cases, it is families or women who have kid after kid that they cant afford to have, but do anyway. What would giving them someone else hard earned money achieve. Their kids would have kids etc etc. It is a never ending cycle. How much is enough? Do we equalize things communist style, or does each person get $6K a month maybe? What is the cut off in how much wealth a person can have? Who decides? The government? That wonderful body that spends money like we will never have to pay it back? No thanks - I like the way our system works.
Because the wealthy are afraid of giving away money to who need it because they know that their money is the only reason anybody wants anything to do with them. If they lose it, they lose control, and they would be nothing. (WHAT A GREAT REALITY TV IDEA!)
Also they would have to stoop to a level that they continually insult because not everyone grows up in a perfect wealthy family with the funds to go to Harvard, and rich mommys and daddy's who pass their riches on to their spoiled kids who have absolutely no idea what it's like to be poor. Who in turn say that they rightfully earned all of their riches. The ones who have I would assume worked really hard to false advertise, and lie to get money from the poor, and middle class. Us poor and middle class have to work day in and day out slaving over the rich people right? As they smile brightly as the insist that they are the ones that work hard.. HA!
Smile! Isn't life GRAND!
Rich or poor in the end we all recieve what we deserve.
Also who ever said poor people don't know how to work, are ignorant, and lazy. My big question is who ever said that if you work hard you become rich? I can imagine people in very poor countries don't have much to look forward to after a long day of hard work..
To the victor goes the spoils. If a person chooses to work hard enough and smart enough to become successful, why should that person be required to hand over his hard earnings to someone who isn't as motivated?
Your question is the basis of communism, in that it attempts to place all people on an equal financial level, no matter how hard they work. What it eventually accomplishes is everyone working at the lowest acceptable standard, since hard work isn't rewarded.
because it's not acceptable to spend all the money
Capitalism and democracy is a volatile mixture but it works.
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