Wealth, Poverty, and Morality

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Well… I am thinking that we would still need the personal initiative to start small and big enterprises.and services. The initiative to say…make water wells where there are none, a grocery… a place where to acquire skills to whatever profession or office where one lives .
At the end of the day,one cannot " eat" or " drink" money.
So in a way,it would go back to the same. Reshuffle,and back to the same.
Perhaps a change of heart in smaller things makes it a longer stride… Perhaps…
I appreciate your thinking of those persons who do not have the basics,though.
What would the next step after reshuffling be for you?
 
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KJW5551 said:
Again, read the article I posted earlier about India. $2.50 per day in a rural village in India buys you a comfortable middle class life. You’re ignoring facts in this debate. You can’t think of what $2.50 buys you in the west, you have to think about what it buys you in the third world countries in question.
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Tell me, what does $2.50 a day buy you in India? How much square footage does it buy you? Does it buy you indoor plumbing? Access to cooking fuel that doesn’t pollute? Does this middle class family have a car? I have friends who live on about $500 a month in the third world. My life is vastly richer than theirs is and I tend to be on the frugal side.
 
KMC said:
Face it: If all professions pay the same, you will not get people into the more difficult professions.
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Hmmm. Does your son want to be a doctor just to get rich? Somehow, I doubt it. I may be naive, but in my experience most people who want to be doctors want that so they can cure people of ills, improve their quality of life, and generally make a positive difference to the world. Good money is nice, but a secondary consideration.
Best wishes, 2RM.
 
My son has a number of passions. He likes playing music more than anything else, but it doesn’t pay so good. So would you rather have my valedictorian, Stanford graduate son be a doctor or be a musician. If they pay the same, then he’ll be a musician.

Here is the choice you would like him to make: Would he rather sacrifice 15 years of his life (high school, college, med school, residency) racking up $200K in debt to make the same amount as a musician (which he could do now)?

What choice do you think most people would make? Would this be good for society?

Also, since I addressed your point, I would ask you address the questions in the last post you ignored:
Do you think your proposal will discourage people from entering difficult professions at the rates needed for a functioning society? Why or why not?
Do you believe all people have equal drive and capabilities? Why or why not?
 
Theo520 said:
I never said ‘equal’, that’s your fantasy.

We offer opportunity, which is why so many want to live here.

It’s just a child’s mind that thinks everything can be made equal.
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My fantasy? I have no such fantasy. But I do have recognition of injustice and aspirations to alleviate some of it. Thank God for the minds of children.
 
Shakuhachi said:
My fantasy? I have no such fantasy. But I do have recognition of injustice and aspirations to alleviate some of it. Thank God for the minds of children.
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Why did you insert the word “equal” when I did not use it?
Were you building your strawman unconsciously?
 
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2ndRateMind said:
Hmmm. dochawk, nowhere do I advocate abandoning the free market. Just the charitable deployment of excesses of wealth. So, being a bear of very little brain, you will need to explain to me why total wealth and income would be reduced by 3/4.
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The size of the pie is a function of the current system and incentives. Very large fractions of the total wealth is of “recent” creation. This production comes from risk-taking based on the current economic system.

If wealth above some level is confiscated, there is no incentive to reach pat that level and take the risks that created it. Just for an example, Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Amazon, and Walmart would not have gotten the investments that let them become what they are.

Even modest tinkering with the tax rate causes changes in behavior. The Wilson, Kennedy, Reagan and Thatcher tax cuts, for example, all saw revenue increase, while the second Bush’s luxury tax increase gutted revenue (and obliterated the US yacht industry).

Note that free markets and capitalism are separate concepts. Facism had capitalism without free markets, while late Yugoslavia had free markets without capitalism, for example They do work best together, and produce the largest amount of wealth of any known system in history. Take them away, and the total amount produced drops. By way of example, the privately farmed land in the USSR was roughly 10 times as productive.

Finally, “excess” wealth is what gets invested and becomes new capital, causing the hiring of new labor. The pie simply can’t be reallocated without changing its size.

Whether the long-term reduction would be my off the cuff estimate of 75%, only 50% (unsupportable given what we’ve seen with socialization; it wouldn’t be that low), or the 90% of Soviet agriculture, the bottom line is a significant drop in production and the failure to replace capital as the existing stock wears out.

hawk
 
Obviously the average person in India is poorer than the average American. Point is, the $2/day figures are misleading and, as previously shown, the OP wasn’t even quoting accurate statistics on them anyway. Extreme poverty has gone down enormously over the last 25 years and continues to.
 
stinkcat_14 said:
One of the problems is that the salaries of physicians are artificially inflated because of occupational licensing restrictions.
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It’s not so much the occupational licensing stages, as the chokehold on the number of medical school slots. We could easily double enrollment with very qualified students that are currently tuned away.

Law, I’ll note, is another issue. The evidence and research shows that each additional lawyer reduces US GDP by a quarter million dollars a year! (and that figure is 20 years old). Society would benefit by throwing any random barrier in the path of becoming a lawyer . . . (perhaps extending a jd to four years).

(and, yes, I am a lawyer as well as an economist).

hawk
 
Theo520 said:
Link please supporting these starvation numbers, I call BS on them.
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Late to the game but here is something for Caritas:
23 million people are currently on the brink of famine in South Sudan and other areas of East Africa and Yemen.
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From http://www.caritas.org.au/learn/emergency-response/africa-aid-appeal

The FAO is always trying to ensure that people around the globe have better access to a diverse range of food (to combat malnutrition), as well as help local markets and farmers find ways to exchange goods.
 
LittleFlower said:
From http://www.caritas.org.au/learn/emergency-response/africa-aid-appeal

The FAO is always trying to ensure that people around the globe have better access to a diverse range of food (to combat malnutrition), as well as help local markets and farmers find ways to exchange goods.
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Your link doesn’t support the assertion I questioned.

Yes, malnutrition is a real problem as is starvation in countries affected by drought and conflict… I think the international community is actively focused on these crisis zones.
 
Actually, doctors don’t make as much money as they used to. A lot of their income goes to overhead and paying their staff and insurance (for OBGYN that can eat up 50% of their income)
Don’t get me wrong, they’re not poor by any means, but it used to that the doctor’s decision on their off hours wasn’t “shall I join the country club”, but “which one is the most prestigious”.
Those days have been gone for many years.

In the Victorian days there were still poor country doctors and frontier medicine, but as med school got more expensive, and lisencing and better drugs and more research and better surgical techniques and expensive equipment (X-rays, MRI, dialysis machines), all the costs went up.
At the same time, nurses and pharmacists and other HCP training became better and more expensive.
All these advances came with better patient outcomes and higher costs
 
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dochawk said:
It’s not so much the occupational licensing stages, as the chokehold on the number of medical school slots. We could easily double enrollment with very qualified students that are currently tuned away.
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Occupational licensing is just one of many barriers that keeps us from a competitive market.

The case of law is rather fascinating. There are many things that lawyers do that you don’t really need a law degree for. On the other hand, lawyers increase transaction costs which makes economic activity more difficult.

I once met an economist with a law degree, he did his coursework for his Ph.D, then went to law school, then wrote his economics dissertation. A glutton for punishment if you ask me.
 
stinkcat_14 said:
I once met an economist with a law degree, he did his coursework for his Ph.D, then went to law school, then wrote his economics dissertation. A glutton for punishment if you ask me.
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I practice law for five years, closed and got my PhD, taught for another six, and ended up practicing law to pay tuition . . .

hawk
 
Theo520 said:
Your link doesn’t support the assertion I questioned.
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You questioned how many people are on the brink of starvation. The Caritas link and quote tells you how much in East Africa are about to or are experiencing famine.

What assertion where you questioning if not that one? 🙂
 
No, I questioned how many are dying of starvation,
something very different than people who have food insecurity
You know the difference
 
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I was not attempting to quote nor even paraphrase you. Simply stating my own view.
 
It is okay if they are merely suffering terribly, as long as they havent reached the threshold of death yet. Then it becomes a moral issue worthy of your concern?
 
Canvas said:
It is okay if they are merely suffering terribly, as long as they havent reached the threshold of death yet. Then it becomes a moral issue worthy of your concern?
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You are projecting, Read my posts again.

why do you defend lying about the real problem?
 
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