OXFAM: "100 richest people could end world poverty"

[DavidW]

there is a direct economic connection between extreme wealth and extreme poverty.

" behind every fortune lies a crime, behind every great fortune lies a great crime"

 

[flowerpower]

I feel so deprived with my flat screen tvs and Internet and house and car. Might as well be an African mining worker.


Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app

There is a quote that says, "he who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it". My point is not that you, I or anyone else who enjoys such luxuries are deprived. What I'm saying is that, if those luxuries are enough to lull us into complacency while you, myself, and yes, those miners in Africa pay for the excesses of the wealthy in the form of more and more debt, then we are unwittingly perpetuating that system.


Sent from my iPad using MonsterAquariaNetwork app

 

[Miguel]

I find that train of thought a bit excessive.

A lot of injustice has been perpetrated based on that. Not all richesse is stolen or derived from evil deeds.

 

[flowerpower]

Miguel, here a short article that I read recently.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/21
This is not groundbreaking in any way, since this information is readily available to any and all who'd care to know. I just think it's concise, well written and easy to fact check (which, I'll admit, I haven't done yet).

This is a systematic extraction of economic resources that could otherwise advance society as a whole. Working hard and being successful is admirable, and people should be rewarded for their hard work, but there is a staggering income inequality between those at the very top and the rest of us.

"By sitting on their growing investments, the richest five Americans made almost $7 billion each in one year. That's $3,500,000.00 per hour. The minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 per hour."

"We have this fantasy that our interests and the interests of the super rich are the same.
Like, somehow the rich will eventually get so full that they'll explode.
And the candy will rain down on the rest of us.
Like there's some kind of pinata of benevolence.
But here's the thing about a pinata.
It doesn't open on its own.
You have to beat it with a stick."
-Bill Marr (not a fan)


Sent from my iPad using MonsterAquariaNetwork app

 

[Curtis Rouse]

I just have 1 question:
Why in the hell should they give any of their hard earned money away? These "poverty stricken" ppl didn't do anything to deserve a handout. Would anyone here give away a quarter of their gross yearly income? Absolutely not! And if you say you would you are a damn liar.

Sent from my mind to my fingers to my phone to the MFK servers to you

 

[mustang93svt]

I could not agree with you more flowerpower. People are convinced they themselves will be the rich one day, so they advocate against their own best interest in favor of the rich. All the while the rich are doing everything they can to keep you out of the club. There is nothing at all wrong with being a rich person, however when you exploit everyone else to get there that's the problem.

 

[flowerpower]

I just have 1 question:
Why in the hell should they give any of their hard earned money away? These "poverty stricken" ppl didn't do anything to deserve a handout. Would anyone here give away a quarter of their gross yearly income? Absolutely not! And if you say you would you are a damn liar.

Sent from my mind to my fingers to my phone to the MFK servers to you

They shouldn't and they won't. They should just follow the same rules that the rest of us do.
Example: the LIBOR scandal (google-fu)
"Banking giant HSBC, whose mission statement urges employees "to act with courageous integrity" in all they do, was described by a U.S. Senate report as having "exposed the U.S. financial system to 'a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing'" in their dealings with Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, which is considered the deadliest drug gang in the world."

HSBC received a fine equivalent to four weeks' profits. The bank's CEO said, "we are profoundly sorry."

Smh.

@mustang93svt: Well said.

Sent from my iPad using MonsterAquariaNetwork app

 

[DavidW]

I just have 1 question:
Why in the hell should they give any of their hard earned money away?

"hard earned"?????
LOL
now I KNOW you're trolling

"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. "
James Madison

gonna argue with one of the 'founding fathers'?

"everything in excess is opposed to nature. "Hippocrates

“The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

so you see, the great philosophers throughout history have been aware, yet still we ( silly humans) never learn from our history

 

[trace]

I feel so deprived with my flat screen tvs and Internet and house and car. Might as well be an African mining worker.


Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app

I know we are all so deprived. The other day it was like -34 outside and the inside of my house was only 70 degrees. What has this world come to. Life would be so much better if there just weren't any rich people. Head slap.


Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app

 

[Miguel]

You guys are absolutely right. There is inequality, a terrible inequality, in the world,and it should be adrressed once and for all.

But several thoughts:

- all of us that post here are among, say, the upper 5% of the worlds population in " level of lfe ", so to compare our needs to those who really are poor is " offensive" for lack of a better world. None of us know what hunger is, what selling our children is, what collection in the garbage dump is, so let us stay objective.

- the rich could help. The rich countries could do more, of course, but they wont end the structutural problem derived from an overpopulated world. AND LET US WAIT UNTILL WATER IS AN ISSUE....

- the main problem lies with human nature, with the urge of the predator to control ever more, and that begins, in poor countries, by the ruling class. I find Mugabe way more responsible for the misery Zimbabve is in ( and this is only one example in hundreds ) than, say, the Rothschild family or HSBC, to name examples already given.

- history has shown all of us that taking from the rich and giving to the poor was no sloution. It just created new classes of both rich and poor.

- and yes, i have seen it, lived it, personnaly, in my country, with a marxist revolution in the 1970's. Pratcical result? None but taking us 30 years back, at the time.

-