Thread: Do the wealthy have too much power in the United States?

Originally Posted by Dovkan

The wealthy have more money, money is used to acquire power and controls the political scene, organizational skills play a tiny part in it.

re : lobbying. they win at that. the non-wealthy mostly walk around stunned in their routines. when it gets bad enough, they wake up. then they have the numbers.

we're better off with some kind of balance in between. right now, i'd argue that the balance is tipped to those with money, but not unstably so. a big part of the reason is readily available food, entertainment, and access to health care for the very poor.

Originally Posted by Helix

re : lobbying. they win at that. the non-wealthy mostly walk around stunned in their routines. when it gets bad enough, they wake up. then they have the numbers.

we're better off with some kind of balance in between. right now, i'd argue that the balance is tipped to those with money, but not unstably so. a big part of the reason is readily available food, entertainment, and access to health care for the very poor.

Wait, you're telling me to keep a balance, we need to help the poor and make sure people have food, healthcare? Socialist. (Seriously though, this makes sense, I've never thought of it like this) But unfortunately, money is linked to power, corporations control the most watched media by the voters, money controls advertisements run.. I wouldn't call it balanced.

Great vid on this, if you have time to watch.

Originally Posted by TurtleDude

I respect anyone who does his job well, no matter what his job is

You've said that the "grunt workers" are less skilled then someone who works on wall street, unless I'm wrong. I don't judge skill in such a way, everyone is skilled at what they do, no one is more "skilled" then the other, in my view.

Originally Posted by Dovkan

That's the problem with capitalism, it relies on exploitation of what one's labor is worth for profit. That's all there is to it. People literally agree to acquire a source of monetary income without much of a say, or have no source of income to buy food, shelter.. all controlled by capitalism.

That's a condition of life, not just of capitalism. When you have resources to sell then you sell those resources, but all you have is your labor then you have to sell your labor.

Originally Posted by Henrin

That's a condition of life, not just of capitalism. When you have resources to sell then you sell those resources, but all you have is your labor then you have to sell your labor.

It's a condition of life under capitalism and where a system like we have regarding money exists.

Originally Posted by Dovkan

It's a condition of life under capitalism and where a system like we have regarding money exists.

No, it's pretty much a condition of life unless you go around stealing everything or you're all alone.

Originally Posted by Dovkan

...

I'm sympathetic to your view, but what's the practical alternative?

Capitalism succeeds because it maps very closely to humanity's rapacious nature.

The systems that attempt to ignore or change that nature are doomed to devolve into capitalism.