The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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ThomasHobbes
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Burning ghost wrote: September 11th, 2018, 6:15 am
ThomasHobbes wrote: September 11th, 2018, 5:42 am

This is an interesting assumption, which if far from clear from the empirical information.
Child mortality down, educational access up, health care up, and nutrition up.

Of course these empirical facts don’t necessarily translate into “better” if you choose to define “better” in subjective terms and refer more to opportunity or sense of a lack of opportunity, “happiness” and such. Generally there is more of a chance for people today than before, but because there are more people - due to above points - there are more people in poverty in terms of head counting.

Then the issue is more about what % is deemed “better” when referring to human lives. It’s hardly something easy to determine in a unanimous way. I think someone pointed out this problem earlier in regards to 1000 in 1000000 compared to 10 in 100. We’re not really evolved with the equipment to deal with such numbers not to mention the added problem of emotional attachment to those nearest and dearest rather than some soul on the other side of the world in horrific conditions.
In many countries there is no change in these statistics.
And it all depends on your time-scale.
Compared to 19thC urban living we are doing much better in the West. But go back before cities and you don't get the diseases at all.
Go and visit newly "civilised" tribes, and the incidence of heart disease and diabetes as a direct result of contact with so-called civilisation is a direct cause of these novel diseases.
Several countries still have life expectancy of 40.
Modern societies have more stress, more pollution, less natural environments.
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Hereandnow
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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BG
Note: 15:00 what Mrs Gates says about teachers and education, and the closing remarks about their ability to fund things governments simply cannot take a risk trying for fear of public backlash.
I read it. But it is philosophically vacuous. Just squabbly BS. Look BG: a thought your post on aesthetics (an underattended theme) a good one, and I responded, but no You. Elsewhere you have good thoughts. Why waste energy of this? I blame myself, really. I did encourage.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Gates is a vacuous moron, giving nothing more than crumbs off his table. A table that lies heavy with the labour of others whom he has not properly rewarded for the last 40 years. And laden with the taxes he ought to have paid but avoided, and evaded.
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Hereandnow
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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ThomasHobbes
A table that lies heavy with the labour of others whom he has not properly rewarded for the last 40 years. And laden with the taxes he ought to have paid but avoided, and evaded.
Yes. Just yes.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Hereandnow wrote: September 11th, 2018, 6:07 pm
ThomasHobbes
A table that lies heavy with the labour of others whom he has not properly rewarded for the last 40 years. And laden with the taxes he ought to have paid but avoided, and evaded.
Yes. Just yes.
Not to mention the overpriced monopoly Microsoft has on failing Software.

For years Excel had an unavoidable division by zero error built into the programme. If you used the helpline they thanked you for pointing out the error , admitted they knew about the fault and then charged you £60 for telling you that they were going to do nothing to help.
They are currently in the habit of charging yearly subscriptions for their "Office" of bloatware, that has not been significantly revised since they were first coded in 1995.
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Sy Borg
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Fair comments but, in Bill Gates's defence, I'd rather tycoons like him, Musk and Branson than the likes of Trump, the Kochs and Murdoch. Given where the situation we have has spiralled into and the power differentials, a billionaire who is not entirely evil and manipulative is something for which we can be thankful!

Further, I must admit to a long term love affair with Excel, despite its annoyances. It was a long and happy relationship broken up by my retirement and the adequacy of free office packages for my home use. From memory I used conditionals to deal with division by zero errors.
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Hereandnow
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Rule of marketing: If all that matters is sales and the law, then it is foolish not to bend, alter, exaggerate, fudge, dissimulate the truth. If you don't, the competition will and they will win because of it. Therefore, ALL business bends, alters, and the rest. I see no way around this at all. I never thought of till Trump gave me the question, why of why does this man incessantly? SImple, because it sells. And it turns out he is right. People bought it.
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Hereandnow
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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...lie incessantly?
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Burning ghost
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

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Hereandnow wrote: September 11th, 2018, 5:54 pm
BG
Note: 15:00 what Mrs Gates says about teachers and education, and the closing remarks about their ability to fund things governments simply cannot take a risk trying for fear of public backlash.
I read it. But it is philosophically vacuous. Just squabbly BS. Look BG: a thought your post on aesthetics (an underattended theme) a good one, and I responded, but no You. Elsewhere you have good thoughts. Why waste energy of this? I blame myself, really. I did encourage.
Nope. You keep this up and I’ll continue. Like I said I can play this game too. I said PM yet you prefer to look stupid in public instead. Your choice.
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LuckyR
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

Post by LuckyR »

Eduk wrote: September 11th, 2018, 3:32 am Hereandnow. Personally I would say countereducational factors, as you mentioned, are very important. Education is far from perfect. But it is used far from perfectly. I dare say education would be vastly improved with model students, far beyond what additional funding through current channels would achieve.
I mean if the rich control the government then simply giving the government more money in taxes isn't going to be good enough by half.
There is so so much wrong with the world beyond wage disparity. Besides to fix wage disparity you have to look at the causes not simply take all money and divvy it out. Communism has been well proven to be much less efficient than capalist democracies.
Also no one answered Steve's earlier point. People, even poor people, are better off than they have ever been.
Finally I honestly do not mean to be harsh with anyone. When I say learn how to learn I mean the process of learning. Where do you look. How do you study. How do you tell good information from bad. How to do you tell good teachers from bad. Etc etc. Take for example critical thinking, this arms you with general logic skills which can be applied to many many areas of study. Oh and personally I have never stopped learning, leaving school was not the end of my education.
In absolute terms, yes. But relative to where the (previously) vibrant middle class would have been without the Reagan trickledown economic failure of the 80's they are much worse off.
"As usual... it depends."
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

Post by Eduk »

Not sure we are relatively worse off either. For example my old boss has a couple of hundred million in the bank, or thereabouts. He drives to work in his Ferrari. I believe he has a wife and kids. He's a young earth creationist. He's frustrated creatively. I assume he lives in a massive house. I guess he holidays well.
I personally, adding everything up, would prefer my life.
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LuckyR
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

Post by LuckyR »

Eduk wrote: September 12th, 2018, 2:56 am Not sure we are relatively worse off either. For example my old boss has a couple of hundred million in the bank, or thereabouts. He drives to work in his Ferrari. I believe he has a wife and kids. He's a young earth creationist. He's frustrated creatively. I assume he lives in a massive house. I guess he holidays well.
I personally, adding everything up, would prefer my life.
You are probably correct, though including non monetary differences things to compensate for wealth inequity in a topic about wealth inequity is a dodge. Or to put it differently, while I agree your comment is accurate, imagine an alternate future where your old boss has half as much in the bank (still over a hundred million) and you have an additional 40,000 in the bank. Better, eh?
"As usual... it depends."
Eduk
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

Post by Eduk »

You are probably correct, though including non monetary differences things to compensate for wealth inequity in a topic about wealth inequity
I guess my point is that money is logarithmic. Makes a huge difference initially and then tails off. In England we have welfare such as free housing, free healthcare etc etc, many of my basic needs are met even if I have literally zero money.
I never said there wasn't wealth inequality. I never said wealth inequality is amazing. I just said it's complex, not black and white, and there are no easy fixes. Well in honesty there is a super easy fix, if everyone would just be better then wealth inequality would be fixed overnight (but that is obviously a fantasy). What we are really talking about is about how to improve people who do not want to improve (or at least that is how I understand the conversation).
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Greta wrote: September 11th, 2018, 8:20 pm Fair comments but, in Bill Gates's defence, I'd rather tycoons like him, Musk and Branson than the likes of Trump, the Kochs and Murdoch. Given where the situation we have has spiralled into and the power differentials, a billionaire who is not entirely evil and manipulative is something for which we can be thankful!

Further, I must admit to a long term love affair with Excel, despite its annoyances. It was a long and happy relationship broken up by my retirement and the adequacy of free office packages for my home use. From memory I used conditionals to deal with division by zero errors.
From my memory this was an "unavoidable" error. Do you realise that Excel contained a hidden flight simulator.
It was such an absurd example of bloatware that the bureaucracy supposedly in control of the code failed to realise that programers had hidden the flight simulator in the program. Excel when out for sale with MS totally unaware of its existence.
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Re: The conception of the wealthy "taking from the impoverished" is a ludicrous belief

Post by Eduk »

I don't really get your point Thomas. We can all agree that excel isn't perfect. Is anyone saying it is?
I assume you believe it can and should be better? What are you actually proposing?
I use various software for my work. None of the software is perfect. All of the software is vastly vastly incomprehensibly superior to what I could achieve alone and unaided. I mean I suspect I'd be more than happy with inventing a pointy stick if left entirely to my own devices.
By the way I prefer Google docs to excel if you are looking for an alternative. One of the strengths, if not the main strength, of capatilism is that businesses can fail.
Personally I think that if anything it is business which isn't allowed to fail that is more of a problem than mega rich.
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