Being Poor is NOT a virtue!

If we are discussing how wealth is accumulated it's pretty much going to up in the conversation.

If you choke a statistic long enough it will say anything you want it to say. Reality says otherwise. In any case a person can be "classified" as a millionaire, and not be able to show you a single million dollars. Nice spin though.

 

Straight up answer:

Think of how many jobs it would create to design, manufacture, maintain and power all those robots. Improvements to mankind's existence comes at the cost of intellectual thought and labor, albeit usually easier, cleaner and more expensive labor. Progress is change and usually for the better.

 

Libertarian solution: Let the gene pool correct itself.

 

You don't get it; what if, in turn, THOSE jobs (designing, manufacturing, maintaining and powering the robots) were in turn replaced by intelligent robots?

And more importantly, what about people who just aren't that tech-savy? (Which would include most people; most people aren't cut out to be engineers of any kind). Should we just let them all starve?

Why can't automation, rather than replace everyone's jobs, be used to serve the whole human race, rather than solely greedy capitalists?

 

Are you (*)(*)(*)(*)ing serious? Lets take for example someone who works at Tim Hortins from high school till after university. They didnt even make enough to support themselves yet we unethically loan them money for schooling so we can play charades and pretend we give everyone equal opportunity here.

Tell me why would you allow large coperations to abuse labour all over the world and in your own country?

Minimum wage isnt enough to support children, go to school, or support yourself.

If you cant work a job and support yourself then the job should not exist or the wage should be raised.

You raise true reasons why people are unable to support themselves at times but the actual system allows companies (large an small) to employ people for less than the poverty line for 60 hours a week.

 

Surely you jest! If not, read "Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal" and get back to me.

 

According to Jesus it is!! Funny how all the people who pretend to be the most Christian, almost never actually follow the teachings of Christianity.


Blessed are you the poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Jesus

 

Even considering my ideologies of "the common man is of higher priority than the Big Man" among others, I don't agree with that hogwash. Many poor people have mainly themselves to blame and are unethical people in general.

 

This is one of the major failures of the right wing mind!! So often, liberals reference facts and statistics, while right wingers reference anecdotal evidence. This is a fallacy, argument by anecdote. A statistical trend does not say "if you are born poor, you will grow up to be poor 100% of the time." What it says is "people who are born poor, are likely to stay poor throughout their lives. And people who are born rich are likely to stay rich throughout their lives." There are no people saying there are never any exceptions to that trend. There of course are exceptions. However, the reality is almost all societal trends have exceptions, but that does not mean the trend is disproved by the exceptions.

 

You guys really are incredibly boring sometimes!! In your minds there are 300 million leeches in America looking for every handout they can find so that they can work as little as is possible!! That is absolute bull(*)(*)(*)(*). Almost every person I know works hard, takes responsibility for themselves and their families, etc. There are of course exceptions to that, but they are the minority. My father worked my whole life in construction to raise me and my sisters, and now his whole body is ruined because of it. However, he did what he had to do. All my uncles, grandfathers, my brother in law, and most of my friends do the same thing. They work hard to support themselves and their families. This is not some extreme exception. The same is true across the country as well, my experiences are not out of the ordinary. People work hard because they have to. It is that simple.

PS. I don't mean to denigrate it either!! I think my father is a great man, and I think saintmichael is honorable for doing what he does, but he is hardly a minority in taking responsibility for himself!!

 

The failure I'm interested in at the moment is your inability to document your claim.

 

There is nothing wrong with manual labor. But answer me this.... if your father was able to say be an architect (for a higher salary), and use his mind rather than his body, would he have remained in construction?

I have commented on this one before. The salary that a person makes is not determined by how valuable a person thinks they are. Salaries are generally determined by how rare the skill set you have is in the population that you live in.

Maybe one person in a hundred thousand is genetically gifted enough to play a professional sport? That is why they make so much more money than the average person. Same thing for doctors, lawyers, engineers, computer programmers, etc. Teachers, policemen, firemen, and construction workers do not get paid less because they are somehow "less important", they are certainlly VERY important. It is just that the skills that they possess are not very rare in the society that we currently live in. If something strange happened in our society where everyone was suddenly able to become a doctor, then doctors would suddenly not get paid very much any more.

 

My father was well compensated for his work. We were never rich, but when things were going well, he was making over 100k. Now, even with the construction industry in shambles, he still makes about 75k a year. I think that is more than fair for the work he does. It is hard work, that requires a good amount of skill, and therefore a good middle class salary is in order. I don't know where I implied that I felt that my father should have been compensated any more than he was!!

 

Let me take a moment on the topic of automation.

There is a very simple economic law that pervades ALL aspects of life. Resources are scarce.

Until we can print matter in to what we want with no energy cost - there will be scarcity. This is especially true with labor. Labor is scarce. Even with almost 7 billion people in this world - there is a shortage of labor. How can I prove this? Because its not free. The fact that it has a price higher than $0 tells me there is more demand than there is supply as a price is the market's equivalent of rationing.

Ever since 1960's people have been decrying robots/computers as job destroyers. Yet we have 100 million MORE people in the US alone than then and yet as long ago as two years ago, we had an unemployment rate of ~5%.

If technology/automation destroys jobs - then how did we employ 100 million new workers over the past 50 years? The answer is obvious - technology that automates some areas of our lives enables the use of labor in new areas that were up to that point too expensive (in an economic sense) or the sector itself didn't exist.

There are too many examples to list them out but simple logic tells us that we now employ 100 million new workers - while at the same time implementing more and more automation in to our lives. This is a GOOD thing. It means we get to move further away from manual labor (commodity) towards brain power (not a commodity but a uniquely human trait).

Thanks to technology we have better, cheaper, more accessible goods than we have ever had. Technology/Automation has brought 100's of millions of Indians and Chinese out of poverty. Technology/Progress has increased the standard of living for BILLIONS. We have much more free time as a society now - than we did 100 years ago. These are all good things - and I am so very thankful that we are smart enough as a species to take advantage of it.

If we come to a point where labor is no longer needed - it will be utopia because that means we no longer have to work for survival and could spend your time leisurely doing whatever gives you purpose.

 

This is where I was getting. In your hypothetical here, capitalism would not let it become a utopia!

What'd happen is, the people who owned these machines/robots etc. would be prosperous. Everyone else would be at their mercy!!

 

Your point doesn't make a lot of sense to me, could you clarify? How would capitalism prevent anything? Capitalism encourages competition which increases the variety of goods produced. Also - if we lived without scarcity it wouldn't matter what others have because you'd be able to get whatever you wanted at no cost (As I mentioned before - prices in of themselves are evidence of scarcity).

Wealth is created by not consuming more than you produce. Anyone who follows that can become wealthy. It matters not how much more someone else has than you because the economy is not a zero sum game.

I suppose I should point out Utopia is impossible. For example: until we are immortal there will always be at least one item of scarcity - time. For there to be Utopia there must be no wants or needs - and to achieve this you must remove scarcity from the equation - which as I believe is impossible.

Hope that clarifies my points

 

What I'm saying is that even if everything could be done by machines, or technology, without the need for human labor, that would NOT be a "utopia" under strict capitalism because some people would privately own these machines and others wouldn't. The people who didn't privately own these machines would be at the mercy of the ones who did own them, to let them use these machines/technology.

Unless, of course, the people who didn't own any of these machines were to own land and other resources so that they could continue living manual lives. But of course, if all these machines as well as all the land and resources were owned by others, then these people who didn't own anything would be at the total mercy of the ones who did own everything.

And, so would their children. Their children would be born into a life of fear and uncertainty and wishing for mercy of the ones who owned everything.

This is simply another form of tyranny.

 

A free market would never allow your scenario. It makes no sense for someone to produce anything without having buyers.

Automation of production has no purpose if there are no consumers. Consumers cannot exist without incomes to purchase or the product is free.

I assure you, society will not stand by and rot away. It is most likely that in your scenario individuals will own the androids and have them employed in their behalf.

 

My brother, who barely reads at all, just made $28000 in three months driving a forklift on the oilfield. Of course, he had to sacrifice some...the job was in North Dakota (we live in Texas) and he had to stay on site in barracks, the nearest Walmart was over an hour away...the upside was, he didn't have to pay for housing or food.

$28000 clear without a high school diploma for three months work. Not too bad. He's taking a month off and will be going back there in at the end of September.

 

Maat;

　
　
　
And you seem to have a problem discussing the reality of the situation by by bringing asinine accusations into the flurry to derail the conversation. Statistics are created to do the exact same thing, mislead, and direct the conversation away from the reality of the situation, leaning towards a bias conclusion.
　
　
　

　
　
So now you repeat the same argument I used before. Do you hate rich people?? The point I was making is that the word millionaire is outdated and antiquated for today’s standard of economic measurement. Being worth a million dollars, doesn't necessarily mean you can show anybody a million dollars except on paper. The actual value of a "millionaire" who tries to sale those assets is in the majority of cases a much lesser number. A millionaire (having 1 million in assets) is like someone with the worth of a 100,000.00-aire of 30 years ago. The value of a dollar has diminished, so has the status of the usage of the word millionaire. It doesn’t mean what it used too.
　
　

　
　
Right, not cash on hand. Why do you keep repeating what I have already said if you don't agree with me???

 

you can't lose what you don't have....the poor weren't born owning land.

 

Wait, you mean that isn't the upside???