Quick question for the republicans who believe in trickle down economics, or in general believe the current capitalist system is working perfectly.
How much more do you deserve than other working people?
I ask this because it's something I hear repeatedly from the right: "I have worked hard", "I have always know what to do to stay on top." I do not question that you have or do,
I'm asking how much more than the people who earn barely enough - or less - than they can live on right now working full time, is your contribution to society worth.
Double? Ten times more? A hundred times more? Why?
I really want to understand the equation behind this.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.I think you should either read or listen to Steven Pinker's book "Enlightenment Now" then go to WalMart to give you a sense of perspective.
You say working people are earning barely enough to live on, but if you go to WalMart, you will find the following:
Milk for $1.28 per gallon
Eggs for $0.66 per dozen
Spaghetti for $0.84 per pound
Spaghetti sauce for $1 per quart.
So you could have a breakfast of 1 cup of milk and 2 eggs for 8 + 11 = 19 cents.
You could have a dinner of 1/4 pound of spaghetti and 4 oz of sauce for 21 + 13 = 34 cents
Next go to the electronics section:
You can get a laptop computer for $250 that is better than any laptop available to anybody in the world 20 years ago.
You can get a 4K TV for $200 that is better than any TV that was available to anybody in the world 20 years ago.
All of those things, the cheap milk, eggs, spaghetti, spaghetti sauce, laptop computers, and televisions were made possible by capitalism.
Poor people in the USA and in almost every other country in the world are much much better off than they were 20 years ago. The sole exceptions are those unfortunate people in collectivist countries like Cuba and Venezuela.
What you may be upset about is that someone like Jeff Bezos could be worth $100,000,000,000 dollars while many people are struggling to pay their utility bills. That's really an issue of globalization rather than capitalism. In 1989, after the iron and bamboo curtains fell, capitalists got access to 5 times more unskilled labor that was once behind the iron and bamboo curtains, so a lot of manufacturing jobs and service jobs went overseas, driving the demand down for workers in the USA. That's what happened when we "Won" the cold war. We can't go back to the Cold War days, but people at the low-end of the USA's income distribution have made very little progress financially. The people who have benefited a great deal from capitalism are a billion plus poor workers in formerly Communist countries.
I think the best solution for how to handle guys like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Jeff Bezos are to eliminate all the loopholes in the inheritance taxes and set a limit of $1,000,000 per year for the amount of tax deductions that you can take for charitable gifts. All three of those guys are worth close to $100 Billion, and almost none of their income or wealth will ever be taxed.
BD66
Level 8
Feb 16, 2019
0
@Mortal It's a copy paste from some right wing blog, the guy has never been to Wally World.
BD66:
@Mortal That's what I bought them for at the WalMart in Normal, IL a week ago. I bought a gallon of milk for $1.28 earlier today.
BD66:
@Mortal Here's the spaghetti. 8 pounds for $7.53
BD66:
@Mortal Laptop Computer $108
BD66:
@Mortal 43" 4K TV $199.99
The reason why it is bad for people in Venezuela and Cuba is because the US has an economic embargo on those countries but of course you would not see it that way. You probably sitting there and just waiting for the US to bomb Venezuela and steal their resources. Seems like not everybody is agreeing with you on how much stuff costs, also you never mention anything about rent either. And why don't you answer the question that has been posed, instead of telling people how cheep things are.
BD66:
>>The reason why it is bad for people in Venezuela and Cuba is because the US has an economic embargo on those countries but of course you would not see it that way.
Is there anything that went wrong with Communism/Socialism/Collectivism that is not the fault of the United States?
- The 1920's starvation in the Ukraine where intervention by the USA saved millions of lives?
- The Great Leap Forward that cost millions of lives?
- The Cultural Revolution that cost millions of lives?
- The USA makes up less then 5% of the Earth's population, and 24% of the Earth's GDP. How can a USA embargo destroy a country when that country still has the ability to trade with the other 95% of the Earth's population and the other 76% of the Earth's economic output?
>>You probably sitting there and just waiting for the US to bomb Venezuela and steal their resources.
- I don't think bombing Venezuela would be a good idea, but it would be wonderful to get the collectivists out of power so Venezuela could start pumping their oil and exporting it so their people would no longer be starving.
>>Seems like not everybody is agreeing with you on how much stuff costs, also you never mention anything about rent either.
- They questioned the prices at WalMart I provided links to prove that those are indeed the prices at WalMart, and they fled the argument/debate Did you click the links? It's the same thing that would happen if someone was talking about Noah's ark, and I provided them with mountains and mountains of evidence that Noah's ark and the global flood never happened. That religious person would just flee the argument/debate. Mortal and Merlinzap are being equally cowardly and irrational.
>>And why don't you answer the question that has been posed, instead of telling people how cheep things are.
Here is the question that was posed: "I'm asking how much more than the people who earn barely enough - or less - than they can live on right now working full time, is your contribution to society worth." And here is the answer.
I don't know anything about MLinoge from his profile, but Mortal and Merlinzap provided enough information about themselves to show that Mortal, Merlinzap and I have all probably made between $1 Million and $5Million in salary/wages/compensation in our lifetimes. That's not bad, but Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos have each made about $150Billion in salary/wages/compensation, so they have been compensated somewhere between 30,000 and 150,000 times more than we have. But look at what they have accomplished. Bill Gates has literally changed and improved the way every computer in the world operates and how every user of the computer interacts with it. Jeff Bezos has changed the way billions of people shop. The ease at which I was able to prove my prices to Mortal and Merlinzap by cutting and pasting links from walmart.com into this window was made possible by the companies founded by Gates and Bezos.
The problem with leftists is that they are constantly bitching about people like Gates, Bezos, and Sam Walton, but they are also constantly and deliberately ignoring how much better the companies founded by Gates, Bezos, and Sam Walton have made their lives. That's why I focused my arguments on how cheap products are to the average American.
@BD66 Oh, you misguided one. Did you not see that one of the people here wondered where do you get egg in the US so cheaply? I guess just because you live in a nice house and earn enough of money you think everybody does too. Try to live in somebody else shoes who did not have that kind of opportunity like you did, but of course I have already told you that.
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