Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

[Forty Two]

Whatever your definition of "a lot" of poor people - 73% of the people below the poverty line is "a lot" of poor people. 73% own cars. Almost half own houses. When you're talking about the POOR -- nearly 2/3 and nearly half owning cars and houses is "a lot" of that population. This is what you're arguing about? Jesus, you are a tool. A lot doesn't mean "most", dumbass. It can mean most, but it doesn't mean most. I gave you the fucking data. You don't consider it to be "a lot", fine.

The poor in the US ain't poor by world standards, and that's true, too, of Australia (which does better than the US on many measures regarding poverty, and Canada too). But, the US is not an "outlier" from "the rest of the world." We are comparable to other first world countries, and the main area where we are toward the bottom is on income and wealth inequality, and I've already addressed that.

Again, it doesn't have anything to do with capitalism and poverty -- Oz, for example, is a capitalist country. And, it's capitalism that gives it the ability to have a social safety net. Money doesn't grow on trees. The private sector GDP drives the economy, which provides money to be taxed which can then pay for needed social programs. It's capitalism that lifted the entire first world out of poverty -- 200 years ago, almost everyone was poor. it was capitalism that lifted the bulk of the population out of poverty. Now, we have the wealth of the top 90% to use to take care of the bottom 10%, and even the bottom 10%, in the western, first world, appear from the eyes of the second and third worlds, to be rather well off.

That's the point here. Capitalism is the solution to poverty, not central planning, or socialism, or communism.

[Brian Peacock]

[Animavore]

I just can't let his lying and misrepresentation go unchecked. No one other than Hermit reads his shit properly, so it's basically up to us to point out to the others why a superficially well structured wall of text is in reality a deceitful edifice in front of a giant pile of steaming bullshit.

I think he and Seth did this course.

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses ... ebate.html

Especially lecture 22.

[Brian Peacock]

C'mon guys. Chill out. 42 is nowhere near to being in Seth's league. Seth was in a league of his own. Everyone needs to step back a bit.

Don't make me get the blue pen out.

[PsychoSerenity]

Hmm. Yeah, ok Mr Peacock. I just clicked on Save draft instead, never to be posted.

[Forty Two]

C'mon guys. Chill out. 42 is nowhere near to being in Seth's league. Seth was in a league of his own. Everyone needs to step back a bit.

Don't make me get the blue pen out.

I hardly even agreed with anything Seth ever said. I opposed his views on abortion, guns, drugs, the role of government, and almost every post he made interpreting the US Constitution and the laws of the land. Not sure why I'm being lumped in with him.

And I think the vitriol is rather telling here. This thread is about Capitalism as a solution to poverty. It's fine to disagree with that, but slandering the US is not a rebuttal. No matter how bad the US sucks, capitalism is still a solution to poverty. It's no coincidence that the entire capitalist world has the best living standards in the world, and that it's when command economies liberalize and embrace free market principles that they grow and prosper -- from top to bottom.

Some folks here wanted to make this about the US, and to say that the US sucked. An article was posted about a "feisty Australian" who holds people to account and all that. He had just been to Saudi Arabia, and he had just given a couple of third world countries a good dressing down. Now he had his sights on the US, and he was invited in by the White House under Obama and that invitation was re-done and confirmed under Trump. Come and see. The article that was posted, though, didn't just say that the US should be subject to a review and scrutiny, which it is. However, it presupposed the conclusion before the feisty Australian even made his way to our shores. The US, as we all know, is an "outlier" from "the rest of the world" in its treatment of people below the poverty line - the US, worse than the rest of the world in general. An outlier. This was presented here, on a thread about capitalism and poverty, to show that capitalism does not resolve poverty, but rather it is sucks for the poor, because of the big, bad outlier being so sucky to the poor.

I responded by saying, hey, that's not really an argument against the thesis here. It's not on topic. All the rest of the countries in the first world that are apparently not outliers are also capitalist. But, I also took the bait and argued against the position in the article that the US really was an outlier.

To certain people, that's the main issue. The want to argue that the US is the worst and that the poor are destitute here, receiving little to no help, and as was told to me - the US is brutal and egoistic, among other choice words. That must be, of course, why more people want to come to the US than any other country, and that roughly close to or even over 1,000,000 people become permanent residents each year, 1,000,000 become new citizens every year, and we have 30,000,000 people who would rather live in this brutal and egoistic country illegally than live in the countries of their birth. It's because here, if you're sick you die in the streets and people step over your body laughing.

[Brian Peacock]

As I said, Seth was in a league of his own - which was just exactly where he wanted to be.

[Animavore]

C'mon guys. Chill out. 42 is nowhere near to being in Seth's league. Seth was in a league of his own. Everyone needs to step back a bit.

Don't make me get the blue pen out.

I was only comparing arguing style, not content.

[Forty Two]

What of Bill Gates' life was better for the poor?

Creating and building Microsoft?

Or, running the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?

[Forty Two]

As Dierdrie McCloskey is wont to note, the only thing worse than being oppressed by a capitalist is not being oppressed by a capitalist (although that might originate with Joan Robinson if memory serves):

Many of those that worry about inequality blame capitalism for it. Even Pope Francis has been framing the issue in this way. Now, let’s define capitalism the way Karl Marx did. It is a mode of production where some people own the means of production and others work as wage laborers for them. But if this is the case, capitalism hires 8 out of each 9 workers in the USA, 2 out of 3 in Nuevo Leon, 1 out of 7 in Chiapas and 1 out of 19 in India. Places where more of the labor force works for capitalist firms are richer, because capitalist firms allow for much higher productivity.

Poor places are characterized by the absence of capitalist firms and by self-employment, employment: these are small peasants and farmers or owners of small shop. In these settings, there are no wages, there’s no employment relationship. There are no pensions. There is no unemployment insurance. The trappings of a capitalist labor market do not exist.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstal ... 800f4a5613

[Forty Two]

“Extreme” poverty has almost disappeared in most industrialized countries. Extreme poverty used to be a norm for many people throughout industrialized countries. Currently, however, severe poverty has disappeared in most industrialized countries because of free-market capitalism. Between 1990 and 2010, poverty rates fell by half in developing countries, from 43 percent to 21 percent — a reduction of almost 1 billion people. Compared to the average rate of poverty reduction throughout history, this is an impressive improvement.

Third world countries are moving out of poverty. China and India have made the most progress in the pursuit to alleviate poverty after they began moving toward capitalism. Since the 1980s, these countries have abandoned central government planning, instead expanding and liberalizing trade in global markets, which improved economic conditions. China increased its per capita income 13-fold since the beginning of its economic reforms in 1978. The country pulled 680 million people out of poverty between 1981 and 2010 as well as reduced its extreme poverty rate from 84 percent in 1980 to 10 percent today. In India, income rose three-fold after the country liberalized its markets. Third world nations are experiencing an overall decrease in the rate of poverty as well. Thirty years ago, 50 percent of the people in the poorer nations of the world lived in extreme poverty. In contrast, in 2012, 21 percent of people in the poorer nations of the world lived in extreme poverty.

More aid is able to reach third world countries. Since the beginning of globalization, and with more countries embracing capitalist ways, international and national aid has increased, helping boost development projects such as investments in schools, health clinics, housing and infrastructure, as well as improved access to water. Many more charitable nonprofit organizations have opened up and can now transfer and receive humanitarian aid globally through private companies more easily than ever before.

Standard of living has gone up; more leisure time. Since the agricultural and industrial revolutions, individuals no longer need to spend all day doing manual labor in order to make a living. The standard of living has increased greatly. In the 18th century, being a country with a high standard of living meant having millions in dire conditions. France had the fourth highest standard of living of any country, yet 10 million, almost half the population, relied on some sort of public or private charity to survive, and 3 million citizens were full-time beggars. This poverty no longer exists in developed countries; more than half of the population has the privilege of leisure time, which can be used to further learning.

https://borgenproject.org/alleviate-poverty/

[Forty Two]

[Forty Two]

[Brian Peacock]

I think you've fallen into assuming that someone who is critical of some aspect of capitalism is, by implication, fundamentally anti-capitalist. Perhaps you'd like to look again at the bottom half of my last reply to you 42?

[Hermit]

Note that poverty is defined as 60% of median income.

That's not a measure of poverty, it's a measure of equality. You can be in the top ten percent in Afghanistan, and still be dirt poor. But not by that measure.

Precisely.

WTF? The title of the graph defines the poverty threshold as 60% of median income. I pointed this out precisely to highlight that, to quote from one of the sites you subsequently linked to: "Definitions of poverty vary considerably among nations."

The poor in Germany 16.7% -- the poor in France 14%. United Kingdom 15%

Percentage below the poverty line in Italy - 29.9%

Orly? Let's see your sources. And the criteria used.

https://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=69 (Germany 15, UK 16.2, France 7.9, Italy 29.9) and https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... /2046.html (Germany 16.7, France 14, UK 15, and Italy 29.9) - difference depends on the year.

So, those are the ballparks.

I'll re-address the rest of your post in detail when I get a chance.

Looking forward to that.

The links I posted contained the citation to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's American Household Survey which found that of the people in the US below the poverty line, 73% of them have cars or trucks. 43% owned houses - not rented - owned - nearly 1/2 the poor owned a house, and nearly 3/4 owned a car or truck (at least one, because nearly 1/3 had TWO cars/trucks). 97% had a color television, and more than half had two or more color televisions. The data is from the US government sources. They're in the material I cited, repeatedly. As noted, the typical poor family has enough food, and health care, and has on top of all previously mentioned, internet access, phones, all kitchen appliances like refrigerators, dishwashers, garbage disposals, etc., and entertainment like DVD players and Xboxes or other gaming systems.

Ah, yes. That would be the graph concocted by the Heritage Foundation, right? I already told you what I think of that confection here (which you chose to ignore),

but there is another problem. The Heritage Foundation gives the sources as "US Department of Energy: Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2005" I googled for it and I did find a comprehensive collection of documents the survey generated here, and spent quite some time trying to locate the actual source the HF claimed to have taken its information from. Alas, no luck. Googling some more,all similar claims led back to the Heritage Foundation's page containing that graph. There is a good chance that the relevant data exist. The questionnaire they are based on would certainly enable such correlations to be constructed. Let's see if you can find the actual source it claims to be basing its graph on.

A quick comment about rEvolutionist: When he uses the word "we", he is hardly ever talking on my behalf.



Fake ETA:

I think you've fallen into assuming that someone who is critical of some aspect of capitalism is, by implication, fundamentally anti-capitalist. Perhaps you'd like to look again at the bottom half of my last reply to you 42?

I too have repeatedly expressed my opinions about capitalism in a similar way, most recently just 26 hours ago.