What does God need with a starship?
::d&r::
And burn it down afterwards?
OK, 007, this is the fourth or fifth time you’ve mentioned all the millions of people suffering. Once you’ve liquidated all Bill Gates’ assets, how do you propose to help them? Walk into Africa and start handing out $10 bills to everyone? Sometimes throwing money at problems doesn’t make them go away, especially when it comes to curing diseases or beating death.
Oh, are they really starting to get on your nerves? Gee, I thought someone should stand up for those who have nothing.
When did I say I would do that? In fact I said quote:
I agree, so it seems that there is a bigger problem at work here. The mere fact that there are those who have billions and those who have nothing is an indicator of that problem.
Well see, it’s not up to you to decide who is “in need” and who isn’t. Demand for a particular job is determined by the combined needs and wants of everyone in the economy. People like Gates, or Dell, or Ford or any number of other entrepreneurs recognize a certain need or want in society - manageing data more efficiently, personal transportation, what have you. Through ingenuity, they are are able to take those needs and wants and build the necessary infrastructure required to meet them. The end result is more jobs, fewer “needy” people and society as a whole is improved. If they happen to get rich in the process, more power to them.
Now since this is your thread, maybe you can explain to us why someone with a billion dollars should be obligated to just hand it over to the various crackheads, bums, bagpeople, drug addicts and assorted other “needy” people who add little or no value to society and offer no skills than anyone is willing to pay for.
Bill Gates (and other billionares) job is not to take care of poor people. That is the job of government, financed by the taxes we all pay (including Gates who pays more in taxes than you or I will make in our lifetime).
Now you’re just affirming the consequent. That’s obnoxious.
The answer to your question is that yes, the jobs that rich investors create do help those most in need. Virtually every time money is exchanged for goods and services, wealth is created in the world. That includes the large amounts of wealth created by billionaires investing in giant corporations, and the small amounts of wealth generated by a janitor buying a Big Mac.
This wealth is not distributed evenly, and that is unfortunate and unfair.
However, no better system exists for the creation of wealth than what we have now. History proves repeatedly that the forced redistribution of wealth inevitably leads to stagnation and eventually a shrinking economy.
Suppose Bill Gates were to liquidate his entire company and give all his money to starving people in, say, Congo.
What would they do with it? Buy food? Where is the food going to come from given the lack of agricultural infrastructure in Congo? Are they going to treat the diseased and injured? Where are the doctors going to come from? They simply don’t exist in sufficient numbers to solve the problem. Economic infrastructure must be built gradually. And the economic infrastructure of the world as a whole has been steadily improving ever since the dawn of human civilization. The poorest people of the world today are a lot better off than the poorest people of the world 1000 years ago. It’s certainly unfortunate that there is still so much suffering, but hey, we’ve managed a fair bit of progress.
Well, this certainly takes the cake for stupidest thing I’ve read all weekend! Let’s follow your logic:
So… when Bill Gates fires all his current employees, sells off Microsoft, goes to Africa, and gives everyone there a subsistence wage, all would be peachy for you. Thus completely ignoring that there would be a ton of people here that have no jobs, and that our economy (and by implication, other economies around the world) would tank, and there’s a smaller pie for everyone else. And all in all, people are worse off than before. A brilliant and innovative solution to the problem, worthy of the finest of thinkers throughout the ages!
Or, on preview, substantially what friedo said.
Losers hate billionaires. That’s who.
I won’t even dignify this with a response.
Did you even read my previous post?!?
Funny how no one chose to discuss this:
I agree with that.
jb, seriously, this is another case of your OP getting blasted up and down, with various points from seemingly all sides. Yet again, you seem to not really take the arguments and give them real consideration. It really does remind me of the baseball thread you started. In that one, however, you finally admitted that the opposing arguments had a lot of validity. I suggest you at least enter into a real dialogue here.
The “difficulty” of people’s work is not what makes the work valuable, at least in the way you seem to mean it. The USSR tried to do this, and equated digging coal with things like doing science research, and it got them NOWHERE. Anyone can be trained to dig coal to some extent, but having vision, people skills, ambition, and business talent is truly rare. A capitalistic society rewards those most who provide services that more people need or want.
By virtue of having become a billionaire, it is obvious that they HAVE helped people. There’s no way to come into that kind of money at all except by giving a service or product to probably hundreds of millions of people. Those people valued that service or product so much that they were willing to pay for it over and over.
You say that the billionaires have not helped those most in need. I wonder if we can ever get this point through to you. Without a job, everyone is that person most in need, pretty much. Even Paul McCartney’s billions are simply re-invested into other companies and products which some blue-collar, “Hard Working” guy was paid to build.
Even IF Paul really did have a billion in cash, and he just put it in the bank, this would have a beneficial effect on his local economy. The bank would have cheap money to make home and business loans with, which would provide jobs for construction guys, and the money would trickle outward as supplies were bought and shipped. Without these kinds of jobs, anyone is close to being the person in need of help to even eat.
Oh, buddy, it could be SO much worse. Imagine if the industrialized nations were not industrialized. No one had ever put together massive infrastructure to manufacture cheap clothing. Cars were unheard of. People spent most of their time making sure they could eat. Go back a few hundred years, and I don’t think even at that stage you’d like the variety of products, or the prices of things like food.
Read this carefully: It is because of the massive investment of companies like John Deere, Haliburton, and other companies, that your loaf of bread costs a dollar. I have a friend who is from a real family farm in Kansas, and it is because of cheap gas, oil, and relatively cheap and effecient tractors and combines that they are able to farm almost a thousand acres with two people and some part-time help. This is why you spend so little of your income for wheat and beef. Seriously.
I honestly don’t know what you mean by this. The reality is, though, that money goes around and around. It isn’t lost because someone “has” it. Unless they literally bury it, it is doing something. All those bank accounts make it so that the banks can afford to install ATMs for you, and give out home loans so people can actually afford to buy.
If you’re really into this whole subject, I suggest heartily that you read “All the Trouble in the World” and especially “Eat the Rich” by P.J. O’Rourke. He travels the world in these books, giving a man-on-the-street view of different economic systems and societies. I’ll admit upfront that he’s a conservative, but he has some excellent points about the way society treats people and money. He’s also a hoot to read.
He makes the point that a society’s ability to provide for its people is dependent on its ability to give the people rule of law, and let them create with the materials at hand.
Why does Mexico’s economy suck, when it has all that oil and farmable land? The government until recently has been famously focused on enriching itself, including the cop on the street. When corruption and theft are givens, people can’t make their businesses thrive, providing products and services, and creating jobs so those hard-working people can actually live on what their work gives them.
Despite all our haggling, jb, I like you, I think because you had such guts in the baseball thread. Almost no one around here would just admit that others were right. Just carry the possibility that you’ve kind of jumped off the edge a bit with this thread, too, and I think you’ll start to see some of others’ points.
Appendix:
http://www.fb.com/news/nr/nr2000/nr0208.html
[This portion is concerning the year 2000] Americans devote only 10.9 percent of their disposable income to pay for food, according to the Agriculture Department. This is the third consecutive year that Food Check-Out Day has fallen on Feb. 9. [Meaning that the average person works until Feb. 9 to earn money to pay for food for the year] (snip)
While Americans have come to rely on affordable food prices, that’s not true for all of the world’s citizens. In the United Kingdom, for example, the income percentage is 11.2. Other percentages include: Sweden, 14.6 percent; France, 14.8 percent; Australia, 14.9 percent; New Zealand, 15.4 percent; Italy 17.2 percent; Germany, 17.3 percent; Japan, 17.6 percent; Spain, 18.2 percent; Israel, 20.5 percent; Mexico, 24.5 percent; and South Africa, 27.5 percent.
The percentage of disposable personal income spent for food in the United States has declined over the last 25 years. In 1970, Food Check-Out Day would have been 11 days later – February 20.
[This is taken from another page on that site, concerning the year 2002] Illinois Farm Bureau is celebrating Feb. 6 as Farm Bureau’s Food Check-Out Day.
http://www.fmi.org/facts_figs/foodprices.pdf
This site has a wonderful graph showing how American spending on food has gone down from from 2o.5% in 1960 to 10% in 2001.
Yes, and I think you misread mine. I was addressing the narrow point that this:
has only slightly more than absolutely no logical support whatsoever.
That is to say, you’re suggesting that because there’s a whole lot of bad stuff in the world, billionaires aren’t helping the people who are having said bad stuff happen to them. That’s no more rational than the suggestion that because the tides aren’t 50’ tall, there are no tides.
As partial explanation, I posited Microsoft moving to Africa, where presumably the money Gates pumps into our economy would be pumped into the economy of, say, Ethiopia instead, thus (one would think) helping those in need, as you want. And you know what? There’s still going to be suffering and poverty: the world is not a perfect place. Feel free to rail against this simple truism if you wish, but it’s not going to accomplish anything if you do.
Wow, originally this post was meant as a light hearted jab at those on the top, who knew it would turn into this.
I do see the others’ points of view and maybe my hatred is irrational, but it’s just the extreme exhibitions of affluence that disturb me, when others are struggling so much.
I know that this really doesn’t have to do with the problem because as it has been stated previously, whatever luxuries they purchase should have the trickle down effect back into society.
Billionaires may not be the problem or worthy of my hatred, but there is a problem, so I will shift my hatred to the messed up system of wealth distribution that we have in place.
And yes, I realize life is not a perfect place, I’ve accepted this. The difference comes when you decide to either do nothing or something to change this. Maybe all of those who try in the end will fail, but someone’s got to try right?
On a personal level I’d to say “Thanks”. Even If I post a 1000 times and a 1000 times I am proved wrong and have to swallow my pride, I’ll be a better person for it.
Maybe one of these days I’ll win one. 
I’m glad. How about addressing the other points in my post? (And Cardinal’s, also.)
Doh! Nevermind, jb_007clone, I didn’t see your last post when I wrote that. I take it I’ve managed to convince you, at least a little bit, of the merits of cold-hearted capitalism?
slightly
Thanks again everybody.
While it’s true that hating billionaires may not be the solution here, the notion that “There’s still going to be suffering and poverty: the world is not a perfect place.” is not in itself logical and in fact is demonstrably false."
The fact that suffering and poverty have not yet been licked does not mean they cannoty be licked or that they will not be licked – in fact, I feel pretty safe in saying they will be, someday.
In the past many diseases were just assumed to be God’s will, or the way of the world … there was nothign to be done about them, you just survived them or you didn’t.
We fixed that. We haven’t beaten all diseases, but we’ve beaten a LOT of them, and trounced the fairly seriously.
Saying that billionaires in particular are in no position to help alleviate suffering and poverty is also ridiculous. They have a LOT more powerful than the rest of us to deal with that sort of thing – that’s part of what being a billionaire is all about.
Is Bill Gates worth a billion? I don’t think so. Is Martha Stewart worth a billion? I don’t think so. There are obviously some VERY SERIOUS problems with the way capitalism distributes wealth. There are a lot of people who say that it’s INCONCEIVABLE that we should be able to improve on it. I think we WILL improve on it, very greatly.
Don’t let 'em fool ya, there’s a LOT of room for improvement in our system – millions who starve and suffer really is an indictment of the world. The folks who’ll make those changes are the ones who care, not the ones who accept the status quo for what it is. You’ll hear a million excuses for the status quo, but don’t take 'em because that’s all they are, excuses.
Demonstrate it, then. Show me how the world is a perfect place. Please, I’d love to be proven wrong.
I’m not saying that we can’t beat suffering and poverty some day. In fact, we are beating poverty and suffering; witness the very things you’ve cited earlier, such as eradication of so many diseases. But the notion that there’s some magic bullet, that I can wave my hands and sing Kumbaya and suddenly, all will be right with the world, and no one will ever go hungry, or get sick, or have any other unpleasant thing happen to them, is laughable.
I’m not saying that billionaires aren’t in a position to help alleviate suffering and poverty. In fact, if you’d been paying a shred of attention, you’d realize that most anyone here has said that billionaires do help alleviate suffering and poverty. And I can say with a great deal of confidence that they do a much better job of it than you or I do.
I’m not saying that our current system is the best possible. I am saying, rather like Winston Churchill said of democracy, that the others which have been tried are worse.
Now, perhaps you can provide concrete suggestions for how to make things better. This would be of inestimable use, assuming your suggestions actually work. On the other hand, merely saying “it could be better” is of no more use than saying “it couldn’t be better.” Which is to say, it’s of no use whatsoever. I don’t mean to be a jerk, but criticism without offering helpful suggestions should be beneath us.
You just did. Now perhaps you would like to respond with an answer to the question?
All accepted forms of valuing assets would disagree with you. These are people who CREATED billions of dollars of wealth for a lot of people. How much would you say they are worth?
I’ll discuss this. The fact that there are people with nothing in this country is a problem. It is not a problem caused by the existance of billionares. It is a problem caused by a system where it is very dificult to acquire the skills needed to compete in the job market if you fall below a particluar income level. Distributing the wealth of a few billionares will not change that. Fact is, if you gave everyone in the USA $100,000, some will turn it into a billion, more will use it as a downpayment on a house or invest it in education or a 401k, others will waste it on drugs, cars and booze.
There is definitely room for improvement in the system. Understanding how market forces work is not an excuse to throw up your hands and say “can’t do anything - free market”. You can’t stop an approaching storm either, but you can take steps to prepare for it.
Oh, I quite agree with you here. My ambitions with money don’t include fast cars and diamond tennis bracelets for my honey. They include a small house and adopting some kids who need it. I’m sure there are billionaires who are doing only a half-hearted job of donating to charity. Then again, like Gates, there are some who are putting their backs into it.
My church building was sold to us at a very nice price by the Ahmandsons, who used to own a very big part of Home Savings, which has since been rolled into Washington Mutual. Roberta Ahmandson’s full time job, IIRC, is to run their philanthropic ventures. They’re involved in stuff all over. When the church couldn’t make payments for a while, they told us to pay what we could, and it would be principal!
I will take back something I said, a little. It’s true that when the rich buy expensive stuff, the money trickles down to those who did the labor, but I wish that money were put to better use. I would rather be paying blue-collar people to truck food to refugees in Bosnia than building me a yacht. I would rather start a company making rugs in the Congo than have my own Olympic-sized pool. This is assuming that the corruption there isn’t so bad that it’s just pointless to even try. Remember what I said about governments needing to provide societal structure, and then get out of the way of the people?
Bono has made the point that if Coca-Cola can get sugar water into deepest Africa, then properly-funded charities should be able to get something actually useful there. That’s the kind of thing I would like to fund if I were truly rich.
The other thing I’d like to point out is that, as jb has insinuated, most of us are comparative billionaires, if the poorest people in the world are used as yardsticks. There IS something you can do, that is within your means.
http://www.feedthechildren.org/
Well, if I say you can wave your hands and sing Kumbaya and make everything all right in the world, you feel free to laugh. I’d be laughing, too. How you got from, “The capitalist system could be considerably improved upon as to how it distributes wealth” to “Kumbaya” is, I’m sure, an interesting process, full of clearly defined, logical steps.
I’m not saying that billionaires aren’t in a position to help alleviate suffering and poverty. … And I can say with a great deal of confidence that they do a much better job of it than you or I do.
We’re pretty much in agreement here, except that I’m less inclined to praise billionaires for their charitable efforts. If your average middle-class person is charitable, that means they’re making a sacrifice, giving away money that cuold be saved up for the kids’ college fund or spent on a nice vacation, or time that has to be snatched from work and family demands. Billionaires have so stinking much money that they can drop millions and it means zip, nada, nothing as far as how their lives are lived. Plus, I’m sure they get tax breaks.
**Now, perhaps you can provide concrete suggestions for how to make things better. This would be of inestimable use, assuming your suggestions actually work. On the other hand, merely saying “it could be better” is of no more use than saying “it couldn’t be better.” Which is to say, it’s of no use whatsoever. I don’t mean to be a jerk, but criticism without offering helpful suggestions should be beneath us. **
Actually, I do. If I had billions, I’d do two things, one not very expensive but very helpful, the other much more expensive, but still helpful, though not as helpful as the first (though a potential moneymaker):
As you probably know, the problem with much of foreign aid is that it gets stolen by the people in power long before it gets used for the purposes for which it’s designed. The problem tends to be ignored by both sides of the political spectrum: conservatives don’t want to help the Third World and liberals are unwilling to admit that most Third World countries are run by a bunch of fucking thieves.
But if you ask me this is the biggest problem as far as helping the starving, etc. in the Third World, so why not deal directly with the real problem? If they came out with a viable solution for some or all Third World nations, I might try implementing it.
I’d fund a group of economists and sociologists to look at captialism and see if it can’t be improved into how it distributes money. The economists would look at the mechanics of the problem, the sociologists would work with them to make sure the mechanics would work in real-world environments.
I’d fund a secret group of sociologists, anthropologists, advertising execs and writers to develop covert means of changing the cultures of other countries and make 'em more humane, democratic, and less prone to kill their citizens and the citizens of other countries. Then I’d set 'em loose on a few deserving Third World dictatorships.
I’d buy up a chain of radio and TV stations that would provide a home for liberal ideas and commentary, much like Rupert Murdoch’s empire and Clear Channel now do for conservatives. I’d also fund a few liberal think tanks (see other suggestions, above) aimed at coming up with some workable proposals for dealing with issues like poverty, drug abuse and homelessness in a humane and civilized manner.
There would probably be a lot of ebb and flow between these groups, as to some extent their missions would be interrelated. But I think they could help the world, a lot.
Beautiful post Cardinal.