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21st January 2013, 04:33 PM | #2 |
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These wise and worthy recipients of $240b earned it through honest work and have a moral right to every last penny. They will use this wealth to create jobs which will make everyone better off in the long run. If anybody is still in extreme poverty by this time next year it will be their own fault.
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21st January 2013, 04:38 PM | #3 |
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God blessed them.
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21st January 2013, 04:45 PM | #4 |
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By all means let's mandate they turn it all over to the government.
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21st January 2013, 04:45 PM | #5 |
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It amazes me that these people don't do something like that.
Bill Gates may be one honourable exception. Death has a lot of detractors, but it does an admirable job in bringing don't-care billionaires back to baseline. |
21st January 2013, 04:55 PM | #6 |
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Let's say we take every penny from the world's 100 richest persons ($240b) and distribute it evenly to every person in the world (~7b individuals). That comes to about $34.00 each.
Even if we grant that $34 per capita per annum is enough to eliminate poverty, what would happen in year two? Why, we'd have to beggar the next 100 wealthiest, of course. Repeat until no one has anything. Yeah, good plan. |
21st January 2013, 04:58 PM | #7 |
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I have to disagree.
First, Bill Gates is not the only one. I can think of several others, but -- here is the second, -- they are all first generation billionaires. Very rich people who started out not-rich (or at least not very rich -- Bill Gates' parents were wealthy by most standards) seem to be much more willing to help humanity as a whole. It is the heirs who grew up rich do not seem to give a ****. So, far from bringing them "back to baseline", death actually creates don't-care billionaires. |
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21st January 2013, 05:01 PM | #8 |
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21st January 2013, 05:03 PM | #9 |
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21st January 2013, 05:08 PM | #10 |
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1.1 billion living on less than $1 US per day - or subsistence equivalent - which it the threshold for absolite poverty. $240 billion would allow just those people to be promoted to moderate poverty - defined as $2 US per day - for about 8 months.
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21st January 2013, 05:16 PM | #11 |
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What do we do about it? Well, not a whole lot that can be done, I guess. It's very interesting, that little tidbit of information, but I do not entirely buy into it. $240 billion dollars divided by about a billion people in poverty? That's $240 per person. Less than $1/day per person for a year. And that's assuming every single penny is taken from those 100 wealthy people, resulting in their OWN poverty.
Besides, you certainly can't force people to give money away to charities. The best you could do, is to have the national governments raise taxes on those super-wealthy people, which I entirely support. First response in this thread, resulted in a bit of physical abuse to my forehead...... Strictly speaking, you are correct. But thinking about it, I think each dollar spent on educating the super-poor....teaching them how to farm and raise livestock, and giveing them the resources to do so, would make each dollar spent in those endeavors to go much further than it otherwise would. However, $240b USD still wouldn't go as far as the article states it would, even if we discount the inevitability of war-lords stealing and pillaging, (and yes, this means national governments like Syria attacking and slaughtering their own people.) |
21st January 2013, 05:25 PM | #12 |
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21st January 2013, 05:40 PM | #13 |
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Consider me: Corrected.
But still: What the OP asked, what, if anything, can or should be done about it? Personally, I don't think it is either ethical, nor even less, legal, to force those people to do anything with that money. "Stealing from the rich to give to the poor" is not good ethics. Unless said rich people happened by their wealth in an unethical and/or illegal way themselves. The best that I can see be done, is to appeal to their better nature (assuming they have one,) and campaigning for them to give up a year's-worth of profits for a specific cause. And even then, a lot of those billionairs are Arab oil-barons from the Middle East. Probably not exactly your most kind, generous, and understanding group of people in the world. (Most billionaires aren't, Arab or otherwise.) |
21st January 2013, 05:42 PM | #14 |
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21st January 2013, 05:43 PM | #15 |
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No easy answer from me either. Generally I'd like to see tax structures reflect the issue along with effective measures taken at the governmental levels to address it, but without a world governmental structure that becomes a hell of a difficult thing.
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21st January 2013, 05:51 PM | #16 |
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While I'm on your side of the isle, you and the article did leave "extreme" off that title and it changes things a bit.
Quote:
Quote:
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21st January 2013, 05:53 PM | #17 |
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How do they determine exactly how much money it would take to eliminate poverty?
Presumably they have some kind of plan for worldwide economic planning and job creation to end extreme poverty in the near future (although there's no mention of such a plan in the article), otherwise the claim that this is four times the amount needed to end poverty is complete bullpoop. All I can find on that site is a link to a report that claims that reducing extreme wealth would somehow reduce global poverty to 1990 levels. |
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21st January 2013, 06:00 PM | #18 |
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OxFam suggests the solutions, the hard part is the political barriers,
Quote:
Then there's the tea party that's been influenced since Reagan to believe that private alway trumps public agencies. It's what has our country on the brink of another recession. And all this is fed by a right wing media money making machine, which is probably the biggest stumbling block after the influence of big money in government. The people divided make quite the easy foe for the rich allowing them to keep their political power which should be in the hands of the majority. As long as you divide the majority, you get to keep your influence and the public half that can see what's going on is outnumbered by the public half that has been duped. |
21st January 2013, 06:16 PM | #19 |
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21st January 2013, 06:35 PM | #20 |
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Does this permanently end global poverty? For how long is poverty fixed?
If for one second I knew that this money re-allocated by the gov't would end poverty forever, by all means let's tax them in the billions. But I don't see this happening. |
21st January 2013, 06:39 PM | #21 |
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21st January 2013, 07:10 PM | #22 |
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I bolded 'and them' so you'd know I wasn't blaming you.
It was more a response to the "everyone gets $34" straw man that DallasDad posted than quibbling about the title. A lot of people are missing the point by getting lost in the literal meaning of the statement. OxFam isn't saying take their money and redistribute it and all would be well. They merely used it as an example to illustrate just how bad the inequality has gotten and how it will continue to get worse if nothing is done. |
21st January 2013, 07:15 PM | #23 |
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21st January 2013, 07:31 PM | #24 |
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21st January 2013, 07:33 PM | #25 |
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So, what is this something that can be done, if it's not taking the money and redistributing it? I'm not sure there is a non-literal meaning. If the something can be done does not involve taking the money from rich people, why bring rich people into it? If everyone were rich (but with some super-duper rich), you'd have the same level of inequality in society ... but I don't imagine you'd have the same level of complaint. It's not about inequality at all; it's about poverty. I applaud any/all efforts to reduce or eliminate poverty, but I suggest it's not a straw man argument to say that this article is about redistribution. It's pretty much exclusively about redistribution. And redistribution won't solve the problem, because the rich don't have enough to raise everyone permanently above the poverty level.
Let's say I was wrong in my first post, where I suggested the money be divided up amongst 7 billion equally. Say it's only the bottom 10% that deserves a handout. The problem remains. You can bleed the rich more slowly if you want, but you will take away their earning power eventually. At some point, there will be no more rich people to steal from, and the poor will still be there. This is not a slippery-slope fallacy; it's a first line extrapolation using very simple math. |
21st January 2013, 07:34 PM | #26 |
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Where do you see in the plan anything of the kind? Are people in the thread really that oblivious to the use of an example to illustrate a problem?
Here again are the proposals:
Quote:
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21st January 2013, 07:35 PM | #27 |
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21st January 2013, 07:50 PM | #28 |
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Most of them.
1. Close tax havens: This is money you want to collect from rich people (mostly). And will you be spending it on them? On their country? No, you will redistribute it elsewhere. 2. Reversing regressive taxation: Same thing. You will take more money from the rich. A progessive tax makes sense -- those who can afford to pay more should, as long as the common goods being financed are actually common goods. But if one group pays, and a different group benefits, this is not progessive taxation: It is theft. 3. Global corporate tax: Same thing. You will take money from the rich. Corporations already pay income tax. Shareholders then pay tax again on dividends. Oridinary employees pay tax from their paychecks. A new tax on corporations will simply reduce the amount paid in dividends and salaries. That's redistribution, since you won't be giving the tax money back to those from whom you took it. 4. Boosting wages proportional to capital returns: Not sure what this means, entirely, but wages can't be boosted beyond a certain point. Perhaps this item means reducing the returns on investment that individuals or corporations expect by redistributing the profits to the workers? If so, that's redistribution. 5. Increasing investment in free public services: Investment using what money? And free how, exactly? You mean that the people who use the services don't pay for them. Okay, but you can't make things free simply by delaring them gratis. Someone still has to pay. Guess who? You seem to be proposing a worker's paradise kind of scheme. I really don't understand why you would do that, since history shows it doesn't work very well. |
21st January 2013, 08:25 PM | #29 |
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"The top 100 billionaires added $240 billion to their wealth in 2012- enough to end world poverty four times over"
So this isn't actually income, it's wealth. Nearly all of it from increased value of securities holdings. Just how do you intend to tax that? And I'm guessing Warren Buffet would be opposed. |
21st January 2013, 08:26 PM | #30 |
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Personally, I would have absolutely no ethical problems whatsoever with taxing these people 25% of their total earnings per year and redistributing it to people living in extreme poverty. Rules about who owns what are meant to serve humanity, not the other way around.
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21st January 2013, 08:50 PM | #31 |
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Actually I worked out the worlds GDP on a JREF post awhile ago and it only came out to 9k per person. I supppose if you robbed the top 100 people blind you might make a dent in poverty. I am not sure how you plan to wipe out world poverty with 240B. Thats not even a trillion. I am surprised nobody ever added this up yet. You might get world peace for 240B however.
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21st January 2013, 09:00 PM | #32 |
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So making the tax system more fair to you means stealing from the rich?
Free public services can benefit everyone. Do you pay a fee for your police and fire departments? Or do you pay a tax and the services are covered by the tax, not by additional fees? I for one think the whole society benefits when we as a whole fund education. I don't mind paying taxes that then go to keeping me from seeing begging cripples in the streets and keeping mental health services available when people can't pay. I like the idea of funding public health services. The idea this is all about freeloaders and lazy people who want the rich to share just because, is an unfortunate narrative. |
21st January 2013, 09:03 PM | #33 |
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21st January 2013, 09:27 PM | #34 |
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21st January 2013, 09:33 PM | #35 |
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I think we're not communicating well. Yes, I pay taxes, and yes, I benefit therefrom. Those who cannot pay also benefit, and that's okay with me.
Consider the following: A man works hard, saves diligently, and eventually has enough to take his family out for a nice dinner. When they get to the restaurant and settle at the table, they notice a poor family looking hungrily through the window. We don't know why they're hungry; perhaps they're shiftless freeloaders, perhaps they're just down on their luck. But they're obviously starving. Scene A: The man and his family decide to order, but before the food comes, they usher the poor family in and give them their places at the table. When the bill comes, the man who worked so hard to give this treat to his family is happy to pay it. He's proud of his children, who don't complain. Scene B: The man and his family decide to order, but the waiter delivers only the bill to their table. The waiter delivers the food to the hungry family outside. The man who worked so hard to give this treat to his family is outraged. Do you see why, in Scene B, the man feels he shouldn't have to pay the bill? Do you see why his outrage has very little to do with the hungry family itself? This is not about those who try to cheat the system; such persons will always be around. This is about the arrogant waiter who decides for them when and how they are responsible for others. |
21st January 2013, 09:34 PM | #36 |
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21st January 2013, 09:56 PM | #37 |
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Err, without agreeing, disagreeing, or specifically holding a position on the matter, your math sucks. Why? Blatantly false assumptions.
1) Not everyone in the world is in a state of extreme poverty, which is what the article dealt with. 2) a) There was no proposal. b) You completely misrepresented the observation. c) You drew blatantly baseless conclusions. *Income* for one *year* is not the sum total of their wealth and would be exceedingly unlikely to "beggar" them, regardless. 3) No one will have anything? What? The value will vanish completely into a gaping void of nothingness and no new value will be created to offset it? That's not even touching on the myriad of other issues with that statement. |
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21st January 2013, 10:18 PM | #38 |
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The title of the article claims World’s 100 richest earned enough in 2012 to end global poverty 4 times over. How do they calculate that? The only way they can make the claim is if have a plan to end global poverty that's expected to cost a quarter of the value of the amount earned by the 100 richest people in order to implement. If they have no such plan, then the title of the article is a load of bullspit. While the article does suggest that reducing inequity would reduce poverty, I see nothing in the article itself to justify the title. |
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21st January 2013, 10:34 PM | #39 |
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Yeah, rich people don't even give money to their own kids unless they can screw with their minds and control their lives. I am not sure where this is going. Rich people aren't going to give a penny to the poor unless there is some way they can become more rich by doing so.
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21st January 2013, 10:51 PM | #40 |
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My overall effective tax rate last year was 53%. Of the remaining, I gave away just over 20% to charities (mostly educational). My kids and I give time and money toward local and international needs.
Compared to the people in my neighborhood, I'm poor. Compared to the entire world, I'm rich. Not sure where that leaves me in my own assessment. I have everything that I need, and most of the things that I want, and am neither a skinflint nor a spendthrift. From my point of view, especially considering the environment from which I sprang, I must call myself rich. I do not reap a penny from any of the charity giving I do, and I do not charge the hours spent in the local soup kitchen against anything. How is this making me more rich, except in spirit? |
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