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Elimination of Poverty, the Re-establishment of the Middle Class

How To Eliminate Poverty, Re-establish the Middle-Class? Check all you agree with

  • Government funded higher education just as other industrialized nations do

    Votes: 28 68.3%

  • Cut out tax loopholes for the rich to benefit the lower and middle class

    Votes: 34 82.9%

  • Start disallowing outsourcing to other countries for lower wages

    Votes: 28 68.3%

  • Institute a flat tax

    Votes: 7 17.1%

  • Disallow those in poverty to have children

    Votes: 2 4.9%

  • This is not possible; we will always have poverty and no middle class

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • There should always be poverty

    Votes: 6 14.6%
  • Total voters
    41
Catawba said:
To enable consumers enough disposable income after living expenses, today including the most expensive health care system in the world, to be able to buy their product.

Henry Ford discovered this many years ago. Some are still learning. :sun
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Henry Ford had to pay his employees such high wages because he had only mind-numbing work. Do you know the turnover in those jobs even with the high wages? It was incredibly high.

Besides, if you don't price labor based on its subjective value, someone else will, and that person will provide lower prices for consumers. You are for lower prices, aren't you?
 
phattonez said:
Henry Ford had to pay his employees such high wages because he had only mind-numbing work. Do you know the turnover in those jobs even with the high wages? It was incredibly high.
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Thanks for your personal opinion, I think I will stick with history:

"He is credited with "Fordism": mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace."
Henry Ford - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
:sun
 
MusicAdventurer said:
OK, TD, in all seriousness, you seriously got me laughing out loud on this one :)

I enjoy your usual cynicism

I off course wanted to see how many people want to push toward lower and lower levels of poverty .. I too am not sure if complete elimination is possible

So you picked "there will always be poverty"?

Now that I look at it I realize I should have had that be an option without the added "and no middle class" that's an oops on my part, lol!
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That was not one of the choices

The choise was "There SHOULD always be poverty.

Nobody is going to say they think there should be poverty but it will be there, because it is relevent.

Just for the record, what is your definition of poverty?
 
Kal'Stang said:
I believe that there should be government funded higher education. But then I believe that all knowledge should be freely available anyways. Also there is a correlation between those with higher education commiting less crimes. Always a plus imo.

While I do think that the loopholes that many rich get should be cut I think that that alone is not enough. I think that if we are to lessen the amount of poverty then we should be encouraging companies to hire people. We can do this via tax cuts based solely on the amount of people that a company hires or employ's. Admittedly not sure how to do this as eventually a company must stop hiring people or it cannot be sustained as companies are not able to continueally grow ad infinitum.

I somewhat agree with the option of not allowing companies to outsource to other countries. But I would first perfer to try and lure them back here by giving them some sort of incentive that would outweigh the higher rate of pay here vs other countries. Perhaps one way of doing this would be to not tax them at all (or a very small tax on them..say 1-5%?) on all exports while increasing import taxes.

I agree with a flat tax however that is only because I don't mind paying taxes. However a flat federal tax would NOT help people out of poverty. If anything it would keep them in poverty.

No way in hell would I ever agree to the federal government...or state government for that matter, forcing people to not have children....for any reason.

I do believe that there will always be poverty. That is just the way the natural world works. There always have to be the low man on the totem pole. The level where one is considered to be in poverty may change...but there will always be someone "lower" than someone else financially speaking.
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Again, the choice was not will be should be.

There is a huge difference there.
 
phattonez said:
We would ship out the good with the bad though. Sure, we would get rid of all of the rich people who are only rich because of their relationship with the government, but we would also lose those rich who are innovators and really provide great value to our economy. I would hate to lose that.
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And a lot of actors, musicians, singers, and alot more.

It is kind of shocking the hate for the rich has gotten so far out of hand as to suggest shipping them out of the country. What happens after that?
 
WI Crippler said:
It's worked out so great everywhere its been tried. No poverty in those countries.
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I guess you can't really call it poverty if everybody is in the same boat.
 
Start by changing the Welfare trap that was designed to keep people in poverty while telling them it was to help them.

They made it easier to get if the Dad moved out and penalized people the minute they got the weakest job or income.

So the best thing to do is not listed.
 
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atrasicarius said:
I'm not talking about giving. There are some things I support giving, like education and health care, but you can't eat education and you can't live in health care. What I support is equal opportunity, so that if someone ****s up, the only person they can blame is themselves. When you can legitimately look at anyone in poverty and say, "They deserve to be there," I'll be happy.
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Isn't there equal opportunity now?
 
haymarket said:
Your line about the WAIST was clever. :lol:

as to the charge of ENVY

The whole charge of ENVY has been thoroughly trashed and disposed of. It is intended as a defense mechanism to make the user feel both superior to those it is being wielded against and provide them with an all purpose excuse that defies actual examination or substantiation. It is similar to the girl with hurt feelings claiming that "you hate me because I'm beautiful" in that it is a self given compliment disguised in self pity intended to make the person appear as an injured party and look good at the same time. The implication of this silly ENVY charge is that we only want what the rich have. It falsely pretends that we are simply wallowing in our own unhappiness that we are not rich, we are not wealthy, we do not have all the goodies an toys that the blessed of the earth have.

Nothing could be further from reality and nothing could be further from the truth.

Every argument I read on this site demanding that the rich pay more in taxation has nothing to do with what people personally want for themselves. It has everything to do with what they believe a just and fair governmental system should build in the way of a rational and sustainable tax policy for over a society of over 300 million people. It has everything to do with the concern about the increasingly growing gap between income classes in America.

As yourself this question - if the right can no longer play the ENVY card as a knee jerk reflex defense mechanism what else do they have left?

Answer: they will have to deal with the specific realities of tax proposals and they end up losing on those specifics. They will have to defend thirty years of tax cuts on the wealthy and they will lose on that record. They will have to defend corporate tax rates which appear healthy on paper but in reality are so riddled with holes that many corporations end up paying little or even nothing and that does fly very well with Americans. They will have to defend tax rates which see average workers end up paying their total tax burden almost at the same levels that the wealthy pay when all taxation is considered to all levels of government and that reality ends up making them look bad. They will have to defend statistics that show the rich getting richer by leaps and bounds and the rest of society is either stagnant or actually slipping backwards and losing ground and that is something they do not want to publicize.

And those are losing issues for them.

So instead, we get this all purpose, easy to use, no actual analysis required charge of ENVY applied when all else fails or is simply inadequate in an actual debate or argument.

Each time it is raised, it should be exposed and dealt with it for what it is.

Each time it is raised, we all should join in and trash it, smash it and let it crash to the ground.
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Maybe envy is not the right word, but there is something with this poster when he says that all rich people aquired their wealth unfairly.
 
Catawba said:
To enable consumers enough disposable income after living expenses, today including the most expensive health care system in the world, to be able to buy their product.

Henry Ford discovered this many years ago. Some are still learning. :sun
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That is not the responsibility of the employeer.
 
Mason66 said:
That is not the responsibility of the employeer.
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You tell me how an economy can prosper when consumer's aren't making enough money after living expenses to buy the products made. Ford's great genius was that he understood this. :sun
 
Catawba said:
You tell me how an economy can prosper when consumer's aren't making enough money after living expenses to buy the products made. Ford's great genius was that he understood this. :sun
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OK, let's go with your idea.

An employeer has to pay an employee according to how much money that employee needs to pay his bills and live well.

Now, I believe that an employeer will only hire young people as they don't have many expenses and therefore the employeer will have to pay him less.

Is that the kind of world you want?
 
Mason66 said:
Is that the kind of world you want?
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The kind of world where people do not answer the question presented? No, it is not.

The question was, "tell me how an economy can prosper when consumer's aren't making enough money after living expenses to buy the products made?"
 
phattonez said:
Henry Ford had to pay his employees such high wages because he had only mind-numbing work. Do you know the turnover in those jobs even with the high wages? It was incredibly high.

Besides, if you don't price labor based on its subjective value, someone else will, and that person will provide lower prices for consumers. You are for lower prices, aren't you?
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I suppose a link to this "turnover" is forthcoming?
 
Mason66 said:
OK, let's go with your idea.

An employeer has to pay an employee according to how much money that employee needs to pay his bills and live well.

Now, I believe that an employeer will only hire young people as they don't have many expenses and therefore the employeer will have to pay him less.

Is that the kind of world you want?
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actually, older people have less expenses, if you count children as expenes. they certainly are expensive....
 
Mason66 said:
And a lot of actors, musicians, singers, and alot more.

It is kind of shocking the hate for the rich has gotten so far out of hand as to suggest shipping them out of the country. What happens after that?
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shipping them out? never heard that....got a link? or did you just make it up. truth is, the rich often ship their funds out of the country to avoid paying taxes. They also register thier companies "offshore" to avoid taxes.
 
Mason66 said:
Isn't there equal opportunity now?
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It is harder now than in the mid 60's when I was starting out. The opportunities for education are still there, it is the job market afterward that is hurting us....
 
UtahBill said:
shipping them out? never heard that....got a link? or did you just make it up. truth is, the rich often ship their funds out of the country to avoid paying taxes. They also register thier companies "offshore" to avoid taxes.
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Another poster here said she would like to ship all rich people out of the country so the rest of us could, I don't know, be poor I guess.

She wants to export all evil businessmen, but there are a lot of actors, singers, and others that are rich as well.

If you read through the thread, you will see it.
 
MusicAdventurer said:
This pole was spurred by a thread I read and responded to regarding the birth control and the poor.

This was the OP:
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I doubt that you could eliminate poverty all together. You can make it so our poor are still well off particularly when compared to other nations; but I think there is always going to be poor people. Now a live and healthy middle class means that there is plenty of opprotunity for economic mobility. Those born poor will have ample opprotunity to not be poor anymore (not saying they'll become filthy rich). A middle class is a very good sign of economic mobility. The smaller the middle class, the less economic mobility you'll have. Or rather perhaps it's the less economic mobility you have, the smaller the middle class. So to best serve the most amount of people, you want to arrange your system to best support the middle class.

But we don't like economic mobility. Why? Because poor people being able to become rich means the reverse is possible as well. Rich people can become poor. And that's bad. Rich are rich, they can't trade places. And thus you see the legislation and government force these days used in market to shut down the economic mobility, and we see our dwindling middle class.
 
Catawba said:
Thanks for your personal opinion, I think I will stick with history:

"He is credited with "Fordism": mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace."
Henry Ford - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
:sun
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I forgot why I had you on ignore, and you just reminded me. You totally ignore arguments.
 
TurtleDude said:
I guess you cannot answer the question

should a company keep a job it no longer needs?
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A better question should be should an American consumer buy an American product when they can buy foriegn products?:peace
 
Mason66 said:
Another poster here said she would like to ship all rich people out of the country so the rest of us could, I don't know, be poor I guess.

She wants to export all evil businessmen, but there are a lot of actors, singers, and others that are rich as well.

If you read through the thread, you will see it.
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well that makes no sense....My opinion of wealth is that too much is concentrated in the hands of too few.
Not saying anyone should be GIVEN the wealth of another in cash, but perhaps in a better education and job opportunities. The rich would profit from such an effort....or should be able to profit...
It should be obvious that a thousand millionaires are better for the economy than one billionaire.
Middle class is a vague term anymore....financially, I consider me and the wife rich, others might consider it just middle class.
Certainly a lot of our poor just aren't poor at all, and many more choose to be poor. I don't know the numbers, but I suspect that the number of truly poor, of external circumstance, is a small number relative to what has been claimed.
Certainly 2 of my siblings are poor due to a combination of reasons, but a major part of the cause is their own laziness.
 
ksu_aviator said:
LOL...please. Communism is the only way to wipe out the middle class. It leads to 99% poverty and 1% rich. Guaranteed.
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What's the % amount of the rich in America today and what's the poverty %?:peace
 
presluc said:
What's the % amount of the rich in America today and what's the poverty %?:peace
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Poverty is relative. A poor man here would be comparatively super rich in Africa. We do not use a good definition of poverty in this country as it is subjective, not definitive.
 
phattonez said:
Henry Ford had to pay his employees such high wages because he had only mind-numbing work. Do you know the turnover in those jobs even with the high wages? It was incredibly high.

Besides, if you don't price labor based on its subjective value, someone else will, and that person will provide lower prices for consumers. You are for lower prices, aren't you?
Click to expand...

The consumer is key here., labor creates consumers.

For the record that old "be patriotic buy American" kinda left with American jobs.
Since there are more imports than exports, add a little free trade and the "American consumer" becomes a consumer of the world.:peace
 
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