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Does Capitalism force a percentage of the population to live in poverty?

Does capitalism force a percentage of a countries population into poverty?>

  • Yes

    Votes: 13 52.0%

  • No

    Votes: 11 44.0%

  • Not Sure

    Votes: 1 4.0%
  • Total voters
    25
Winston Smith said:
Slavery is a form of theft, the theft of labor.
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The truth is the labor in China is being paid with American money. It isn't slavery that is only a figure of speech to be honest. They are America's working poor.
 
creativedreams said:
Is there a way to ensure no poverty and a way to somehow get everyone in a society to connect....and not want to rob out of jealousy???
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No.

Socialism attempts to correct this issue - but it also fails.
So do other more extreme forms of economy control and crafting.

The lesson learned: you cannot keep everyone from being poor, from having to do the mundane crappy jobs and from living a sub-standard life.

Why? Because people have free-will. Some are smarter than others. Some have no ethics and no morals and will lie and thieve to get what they want. Others just don't want to be rich, well off, middle class - and so forth.

You can't fix something that is just part of human nature.
 
reefedjib said:
You are kidding right? You don't see that the real wages earned by our poor has grown over the past 200 years? I wish I had the data to demonstrate it. Ok, I found a graph. The bottom 20th percentile has doubled it's income over the past 60 years.

500px-United_States_Income_Distribution_1947-2007.svg.png
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In the last 200 years, sure. But when you look at the last decade or so, the trend is different. See for example:

The study suggests that absolute mobility -- the rate at which an entire generation's lot improves relative to previous generations -- has declined. But within a particular generation, individuals can still get ahead if relative mobility, the rate at which the rich and poor trade places, remains high. Poor fathers may have rich sons, and vice versa.

The report also found that between 1947 and 1974, productivity, or output per hour, and median family income, adjusted for inflation, both roughly doubled. Between 1974 and 2000, productivity rose 56% while income rose 29%. Between 2000 and 2005, productivity rose 16% while median income fell 2%, challenging "the notion that a rising tide will lift all boats," the report says.
Not Your Father's Pay: Why Wages Today Are Weaker - WSJ.com
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Aunt Spiker said:
No.

Socialism attempts to correct this issue - but it also fails.
So do other more extreme forms of economy control and crafting.

The lesson learned: you cannot keep everyone from being poor, from having to do the mundane crappy jobs and from living a sub-standard life.

Why? Because people have free-will. Some are smarter than others. Some have no ethics and no morals and will lie and thieve to get what they want. Others just don't want to be rich, well off, middle class - and so forth.

You can't fix something that is just part of human nature.
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There are other reasons why people become more well to do then others .. for example inheritance, best friends.. dumb luck.. etc. It isn't all necessarily a moral hierarchy to attain wealth. Millions and millions of people work hard all their life and never become rich and the capitalist system reinforces the gap.
 
megaprogman said:
It dishonestly shows all groups raising at the same rate because of compounding increases on the scale. If we were to look at the data as it actually it is, we would be looking at steeper slopes for higher percentiles. I didn't weigh in on this specific debate (as I was going on about poverty, not stratification of income, which seems that was something you were chatting with Winston Smith about).

I believe poverty is something best measured relative to the rest of society and not absolutely though since that is how people generally seem to measure themselves.
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It does not show all groups raising at the same rate. Look at the 95% between 1970 and now versus the 20%.

So you are in poverty if you don't grow at the same rate as the wealthy? Ridiculous.
 
Gabriel said:
The truth is the labor in China is being paid with American money. It isn't slavery that is only a figure of speech to be honest. They are America's working poor.
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Yes, but they have no recourse to American law or American standards of fairness in wages or anything else. They provide cheap labor largely because of conditions established by their own government. Neither our corporations nor the critics of capitalism can legitimately claim that such people are stakeholders in our "capitalist" system.
 
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Winston Smith said:
In the last 200 years, sure. But when you look at the last decade or so, the trend is different. See for example:
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That's like saying the weather equals the climate. Short term fluctuations don't predict long term outcomes.
 
Winston Smith said:
Yes, but they have no recourse to American law or American standards of fairness in wages or anything else. They provide cheap labor largely because of conditions established by their own government. Neither our corporations nor the critics of capitalism can legitamately claim that such people are stakeholders in our "capitalist" system.
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What's this? Your talking about rights and unions etc? Corporations see these as troublesome things the government does .. intervention. It isn't capitalism that causes fair wages.
 
reefedjib said:
That's like saying the weather equals the climate. Short term fluctuations don't predict long term outcomes.
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I never said they did. I said there's no guarantee of a good outcome for the poor. I agree that capitalism--real capitalism--lifts all boats. But the more we move to a crony system, the less of that we're seeing.
 
Gabriel said:
What's this? Your talking about rights and unions etc? Corporations see these as troublesome things the government does .. intervention. It isn't capitalism that causes fair wages.
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Capitalism has never been defined solely by the interests of corporations. The interests of the workers have their place, too. It's only the Marxist idea of capitalism (which unfortunately has been adopted by many conservatives) that holds otherwise.
 
Winston Smith said:
Capitalism has never been defined solely by the interests of corporations. The interests of the workers have their place, too. It's only the Marxist idea of capitalism (which unfortunately has been adopted by many conservatives) that holds otherwise.
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Again Capitalism is not the cause for fair or good wages. It constantly favors lower wages.
 
We have had a failure of gatekeepers relied on to make sure that corporations would be operated with honesty, integrity, and in the interests of their owners. Independent auditors became business partners of management. Government regulations were relaxed, and elected officials aid and abet the malfeasance. The elected representatives of the owners, Boards of Director look on with benign neglect.

David A. Love: Capitalism Is Killing Us
~snip
In the U.S., workers die on exploding oil rigs and in deathtrap coalmines because their regulation-hating employers want to maximize profits. And besides, they say, regulations are dumb. Consumers die from unsafe food because food companies want to cut corners. Just like the Great Depression days when people lacked a safety net, the unemployed, foreclosed and student debtor-prisoners of today are turning to suicide at an alarming rate, with an increase of calls to suicide prevention hotlines.

The jobless take their own lives at a rate two to three times higher than the general population. That could be a scary proposition in a nation that sanctions the corporate-sponsored proliferation of firearms. Meanwhile, all of this happens in a country where the chronically unemployed number as many as they ever did, yet the jobless are characterized by conservatives as lazy drug abusers that would rather have a welfare check than go to work. Let them work at McDonald's, as Glenn Beck would say.

In the face of predatory capitalism, totalitarian and other repressive regimes do not have to justify their oppressive policies to their public, and all dissidents face the barrel of a gun. But in the U.S.--which touts itself as the land of opportunity, yet ranks at the bottom of advanced nations in upward economic mobility--years of corporation-friendly policies have gutted the American middle class. The economy was transformed into a casino with no holds barred, and compulsive gamblers threw away the lives of hardworking Americans.
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*Bolded mine
 
Gabriel said:
Again Capitalism is not the cause for fair or good wages. It constantly favors lower wages.
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Not necessarily. The minimum wage, which I support, actually applies to only a small percentage of workers. This suggests that capitalism is basically a fair system with some injustice at the margins. It's becoming less fair as it becomes less capitalistic and more like the pre-capitalist, law-of-the-jungle arrangements apparently favored by today's corporations.
 
Winston Smith said:
Not necessarily. The minimum wage, which I support, actually applies to only a small percentage of workers. This suggests that capitalism is basically a fair system with some injustice at the margins. It's becoming less fair as it becomes less capitalistic and more like the pre-capitalist, law-of-the-jungle arrangements apparently favored by the today's corporations.
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Yes nessesarily it does look to pay as little as possible in wages. Libertarians and free market wackos want to get rid of the min wage.
 
Gabriel said:
Yes nessesarily it does look to pay as little as possible in wages. Libertarians and free market wackos want to get rid of the min wage.
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Yeah thats a weird stance. I guess some people seem to think we need to have a greater resemblance to a third world ****hole.
 
Gabriel said:
Yes nessesarily it does look to pay as little as possible in wages. Libertarians and free market wackos want to get rid of the min wage.
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You seem to be confusing "capitalism" with "the employer." The employer, of course, seeks to pay as little as possible. The employee on the other hand seeks to be paid as much as possible. Both are part of a larger system, which seeks a rational wage based on supply and demand.
 
Further if you think that capitalism has increased your wealth you should watch this.. and pay close attention. Particularly about household incomes and personal debt.
 
Winston Smith said:
You seem to be confusing "capitalism" with "the employer." The employer, of course, seeks to pay as little as possible. The employee on the other hand seeks to be paid as much as possible. Both are part of a larger system, which seeks a rational wage based on supply and demand.
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The supply and demand aspect is most certainly the drive behind a lower min wage or no min wage. What is the cardinal rule of the market/capitalism? Supply and demand. Now I don't know how much more simple that can be put without it becoming insulting.
 
Gabriel said:
The supply and demand aspect is most certainly the drive behind a lower min wage or no min wage. What is the cardinal rule of the market/capitalism? Supply and demand. Now I don't know how much more simple that can be put without it becoming insulting.
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It's too simple already. You're overlooking whole other aspects of the capitalist economy, like innovation and increased productivity, that tend to move wages upward.
 
Hatuey said:
And yet that has nothing to do with what is being discussed. Please step out of your capitalist cheer leading clothes for ONE SECOND and realize what is being asked. Does free trade force a percentage of the population to live in poverty? Being paid $20 a month does not mean you get out of poverty. It means you get just enough to feed yourself. Nothing else. And that is by 'conservative' standards of what you'd need to feed yourself in impoverished countries. Which is about $1 a day but lets say he makes $30 instead of $20. Now what does working just so you can feed yourself mean to you? It means you are stuck in a cycle of trying to accumulate just enough wealth to survive. Thus my argument that capitalism does force some people to stay poor. Obviously if you only make enough money through the day to eat, you're not going to want to go to school or get a higher certification because you simply don't have the time. That is what is being argued here.



That is so ridiculous it's not even funny. The formula is very simple: higher level of education gives one more opportunities and thus more money.

428_wage_by_education_chart.jpg


educationPays.jpg


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Now, you're welcome to bring up every single exception you believe disproves this rule but would you say that on average a person with a bachelors degree is very likely to have less money than some high school drop out? I highly doubt that. I think the guy with a bachelors is going to have more money 9 times out of 10.
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The even stronger correlation is the level of mathematical literacy. The majority of graduate study revolves around higher mathematics.
 
Winston Smith said:
It's too simple already. You're overlooking whole other aspects of the capitalist economy, like innovation and increased productivity, that tend to move wages upward.
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Innovation = productivity.. however the labour market in the US has changed dramatically. Clearly manufacturing is being wiped out and replaced with low paying service industry work that is labour intensive. These businesses have huge issues with innovation and have low productivity. It is the largest growth sector because the banks are bankrolling it. Efficiency has limits which stifles wage increases and makes cost static.
 
Gabriel said:
Innovation = productivity.. however the labour market in the US has changed dramatically. Clearly manufacturing is being wiped out and replaced with low paying service industry work that is labour intensive. These businesses have huge issues with innovation and have low productivity. It is the largest growth sector because the banks are bankrolling it. Efficiency has limits which stifles wage increases and makes cost static.
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Because we're relying on slave labor for our manufacturing, as we discussed earlier.
 
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