Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

[Sean Hayden]

Between living like the other half and death, I'm afraid not -shudder.

[pErvinalia]

There might be some truth in that...

[Forty Two]

[Forty Two]

[pErvinalia]

The great irony here is that freer market capitalism and the working class's disenfranchisement by it is what brought Trump to power. 42 should probably think a bit harder before he posts memes that undermine his arguments elsewhere on the forum.

[Forty Two]

[pErvinalia]

If Brazil is socialist then what is Norway?

[Forty Two]

Nothing has done more to lift humanity out of poverty than the market economy. This claim is true whether we are looking at a time span of decades or of centuries. The number of people worldwide living on less than about two dollars per day today is less than half of what it was in 1990. The biggest gains in the fight against poverty have occurred in countries that have opened up their markets, such as China and India.

If we look over the longer historical period, we can see that the trends today are just the continuation of capitalism’s victories in beating back poverty. For most of human history, we lived in a world of a few haves and lots of have-nots. That slowly began to change with the advent of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. As economic growth took off and spread throughout the population, it created our own world in the West in which there are a whole bunch of haves and a few have-more-and-betters.

For example, the percentage of American households below the poverty line who have basic appliances has grown steadily over the last few decades, with poor families in 2005 being more likely to own things like a clothes dryer, dishwasher, refrigerator, or air conditioner than the average household was in 1971. And consumer items that didn’t even exist back then, such as cell phones, were owned by half of poor households in 2005 and are owned by a substantial majority of them today.

https://fee.org/articles/capitalism-is- ... -the-poor/

The competitive market process has also made education, art, and culture available to more and more people. Even the poorest of Americans, not to mention many of the global poor, have access through the Internet and TV to concerts, books, and works of art that were exclusively the province of the wealthy for centuries.

And in the wealthiest countries, the dynamics of capitalism have begun to change the very nature of work. Where once humans toiled for 14 hours per day at backbreaking outdoor labor, now an increasing number of us work inside in climate-controlled comfort. Our workday and workweek have shrunk thanks to the much higher value of labor that comes from working with productive capital. We spend a much smaller percentage of our lives working for pay, whether we’re rich or poor. And even with economic change, the incomes of the poor are much less variable, as they are not linked to the unpredictable changes in weather that are part and parcel of a predominantly agricultural economy long since disappeared.

Think of it this way: the fabulously wealthy kings of old had servants attending to their every need, but an impacted tooth would likely kill them. The poor in largely capitalist countries have access to a quality of medical care and a variety and quality of food that the ancient kings could only dream of.

Consider, too, that the working poor of London 100 years ago were, at best, able to split a pound of meat per week among all of their children, which were greater in number than the two or three of today. In addition, the whole family ate meat once a week on Sunday, the one day the man of the household was home for dinner. That was meat for a week.

Compare that to today, when we worry that poor Americans are too easily able to afford a meal with a quarter pound of meat in it every single day for less than an hour’s labor.

These changes are not, as some would say, about technology. After all, the Soviets had great scientists but could not channel that knowledge into material comfort for their poor. And it’s not about natural resources, which is obvious today as resource-poor Hong Kong is among the richest countries in the world thanks to capitalism, while Venezuelan socialism has destroyed that resource-rich country.

[JimC]

The 5 richest people in the world own more than the poorest 3.5 billion or so (many of whom are starving) combined. If anyone thinks this is desirable state of affairs, they are a sociopath.

You own more than the poorest few hundred thousand combined. So I guess you'll be giving all your stuff away, then, as I'm sure you wouldn't want to be seen as a hypocrite.

Also, socialism does not alleviate the problem of wealth distribution. By the looks of socialist countries, it exacerbates it.

...but only if you ignore the data.

It depends what 42 means by "socialist countries". If he was thinking of the USSR of the past, I think he was right, to a degree - the Party bosses had vastly more wealth than the mass of the people, whose standard of living was fairly ordinary. If he means current social democracies in Europe, he is clearly wrong.

[JimC]

Hermit wrote:

I hope you realise that functionally speaking the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is more about generating sales and profit for Microsoft than helping the needy. Much of it consists of, say, donating a few million dollars worth of computers to needy school children of some benighted nation on condition that it enters into a long-term contract to run its entire government administration on a Microsoft designed, built, maintained, periodically upgraded, and expanded network. Similar scam applies to funding research to find a cure for some disease or other.

Care to provide evidence for those allegations?

[mistermack]

What kind of poverty are we talking about here?
I wasn't aware that the USA had 'solved' poverty.
In the US, the poor can't afford health cover. Nor can plenty of people who would not describe themselves as poor.

Cuba on the other hand, doesn't have people who can't afford health cover. There's no more fundamental factor in being poor, than having no health cover.

[JimC]

I agree that universal free health cover is one of the major ways that the entrenched disadvantage of being poor can be addressed...

[pErvinalia]

Nothing has done more to lift humanity out of poverty than the market economy. This claim is true whether we are looking at a time span of decades or of centuries. The number of people worldwide living on less than about two dollars per day today is less than half of what it was in 1990. The biggest gains in the fight against poverty have occurred in countries that have opened up their markets, such as China and India.

If we look over the longer historical period, we can see that the trends today are just the continuation of capitalism’s victories in beating back poverty. For most of human history, we lived in a world of a few haves and lots of have-nots. That slowly began to change with the advent of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. As economic growth took off and spread throughout the population, it created our own world in the West in which there are a whole bunch of haves and a few have-more-and-betters.

For example, the percentage of American households below the poverty line who have basic appliances has grown steadily over the last few decades, with poor families in 2005 being more likely to own things like a clothes dryer, dishwasher, refrigerator, or air conditioner than the average household was in 1971. And consumer items that didn’t even exist back then, such as cell phones, were owned by half of poor households in 2005 and are owned by a substantial majority of them today.

https://fee.org/articles/capitalism-is- ... -the-poor/

The competitive market process has also made education, art, and culture available to more and more people. Even the poorest of Americans, not to mention many of the global poor, have access through the Internet and TV to concerts, books, and works of art that were exclusively the province of the wealthy for centuries.

And in the wealthiest countries, the dynamics of capitalism have begun to change the very nature of work. Where once humans toiled for 14 hours per day at backbreaking outdoor labor, now an increasing number of us work inside in climate-controlled comfort. Our workday and workweek have shrunk thanks to the much higher value of labor that comes from working with productive capital. We spend a much smaller percentage of our lives working for pay, whether we’re rich or poor. And even with economic change, the incomes of the poor are much less variable, as they are not linked to the unpredictable changes in weather that are part and parcel of a predominantly agricultural economy long since disappeared.

Think of it this way: the fabulously wealthy kings of old had servants attending to their every need, but an impacted tooth would likely kill them. The poor in largely capitalist countries have access to a quality of medical care and a variety and quality of food that the ancient kings could only dream of.

Consider, too, that the working poor of London 100 years ago were, at best, able to split a pound of meat per week among all of their children, which were greater in number than the two or three of today. In addition, the whole family ate meat once a week on Sunday, the one day the man of the household was home for dinner. That was meat for a week.

Compare that to today, when we worry that poor Americans are too easily able to afford a meal with a quarter pound of meat in it every single day for less than an hour’s labor.

These changes are not, as some would say, about technology. After all, the Soviets had great scientists but could not channel that knowledge into material comfort for their poor. And it’s not about natural resources, which is obvious today as resource-poor Hong Kong is among the richest countries in the world thanks to capitalism, while Venezuelan socialism has destroyed that resource-rich country.

So much bullshit in one post. It's not only the west that has capitalism. When these points are made it's not capitalism vs something else. It's western liberal democracy vs authoritarian and/or corrupt systems of government. It's a different argument altogether.

[Strontium Dog]

Non-sequitur. I said nothing about redistribution.

Really? One is about killing someone, and the other is about progressive taxation. Surely you can see the difference.

So you weren't talking about redistribution, but now you are.

Confusing.

[pErvinalia]

FFS, can't you fucking read? What you quoted there was me summarising what Scot Dutchy wrote. It's got nothing to do with the point I was making to you. Fuck some of you people are a waste of time.