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Permalink Like (1) Dislike (1) http://blog.ourfuture.org/20130127/to-end-extreme-poverty-lets-try-ending-extreme-wealth
The world’s wealthy gathered in the Alps again last week to discuss how to ‘solve’ the world’s problems. The world’s biggest problem, suggests one top global anti-poverty outfit, may be their fortunes.
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You can't end extreme poverty no more than you can end aging.
Remember the Golden Voice homeless man? In less than a month he went from discovered, admired, investigated, hated, to back to obscurity.
Same with street corner shoeless man.
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Huntington Beach, CA
Just have communism! It worked so well for the soviets that they had to eat as a staple, little cakes made of ground up potato peelings from the leavings of those with better party connections. So instead of a few very poor people, you have most people very poor.
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Until poor people realize they cannot afford children there will always be poverty.
I doubt I can afford kids.
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Mountain View, CA
Poverty as we see today is an urban phenomenon. In agrarian (rural) societies, if they exist now, poverty has to do with the kind of food one eats: the poor section of rural population eat grains; the better-off eat rice. Not a much of difference. Today, technology has solved the food problem: you don't need much labor to produce food.
Technology is egalitarian: it does not distinguish between the poor and the rich; of course, the modern fad of organics is an attempt to create that barrier between those who can afford such organics (the haves) and those who can't (the poor).
The other criticism is about the fast food industry: this can be tackled differently.
When people migrated to urban areas, they can't rely on old ways of living: in rural societies of the past, the kids followed the path travelled by their parents and ancestors: kids of farmers became farmers; kids of blacksmiths became blacksmiths. Minimally, the kids could continue whatever their parents did.
Today, a doctor can't guarantee the same gig for his kid. A lawyer can't hand over his job to his son. A professor can't hand over his job to his kids. As a parent, one tries to guarantee the same quality of level for his posterity. Modern society can't guarantee this: that's why you see this struggle manifested in various forms: skewed housing markets in Cupertino; admission games to HYP, Stanford, MIT; massive tutoring to get a leg up on the competition; financial engineering to screw others so that the big boys can save money for 9 more generations; FIRE sector jobs and its commision structure; NIMBYism; so on.
Major cause of urban poverty is the high cost of living, despite the cost of food being cheap and the availability of clean water and good sewage systems. Some claim that the labor cost in urban areas is driving the cost of living higher and higher. I don't buy this nonsense, since many folks living in urban setting do not need maids to do their day to day tasks, since clean water and sewage system is already provided for.
I think, science and engineering will have to solve the problem of poverty and the problem of unhappiness as well.
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Technology is overrated. I rather have maids, just like in the downtown abbey.
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Oakland, CA
leo707's website
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CaptainShuddup says
Well, if internet fame can't solve all their problems that lead them to extreme poverty then I guess nothing can.
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just transport the poor to hunting theme parks where the rich can fly around and shoot them
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Or you could just build homeless Village, a ghost town, where the homeless sleep on the door stoops.
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Sure you could, but what would be the entertainment value to oligarchs?
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San Jose, CA
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Quigley says
Do you really believe what the Soviets practiced was true communism?
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Boca Raton, FL
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CaptainShuddup says
Out of all the things you have every said on this site, this is the most absurd and unfounded. Of course extreme poverty can be ended. Today's technology alone is enough so that there doesn't have to be extreme poverty. It's a political problem, not a technological one.
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Egg Harbor City, NJ
raindoctor says
This brings up a very good point, some people are just prone to be poor. Even if your transferred considerable wealth to your children, they could squander it away.
There was this guy named John Margotti who worked all his life as an electrician and built up a very successful business in North Jersey. He turned the business over to his son and retired to South Jersey. All his son had to do was manage the business and he be set for life. The business had good employees, equipment, vehicles, a good reputation, it should have been an easy gig. Well the son bankrupted the business within one year. The son's wife would go on shopping sprees with money deposited into the business accounts when they received a down payment for a job. The father had to end up starting a new electrical business in South Jersey because his retirement plans were so screwed up. The son ended up becoming a fly by night contractor that didn't complete jobs.
This can happen to any one's children, no matter how much money, eduction or opportunities given to them when they are starting out in life. The simple fact is not all people are created equal, so are major screw ups, than are destined to be poor. Where it's laziness, they get involved in drugs, drop out of school, what ever, poverty is something that will always be around, no matter how much anyone tried to get rid of it.
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TechGromit says
I can't tell you how many times I've seen that situation happen. The reason is that the kid is babied the whole time and not held responsible. "Daddy" never forced him to "learn" the business and junior just gets "carried" by all the other good employees....
As soon as daddy steps away, the business usually loses it's good employees and the business crashes and burns....
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Wow I make my most poignant post in the history of Patnet and it gets skipped over completely with more Liberal ejaculant in lieu of thought.
CaptainShuddup says
My point is, you could send most of our homeless to a ghost town, where they could have carte blanche on which resident they chose, free and clear with out owing one dime for it. I'm saying that most of those homeless people chose a house based on the doorstoop to sleep on.
For the most part homelessness is a mental ailment.
Though I don't consider ALL people who find them selves on the street homeless. The one's I don't consider homeless, always work their way back off the streets relative quickly.