"DESTROY POOR PEOPLE": The rich man's agenda?

[darktheorist]

1% of the world wakes up every morning to rollicking wealth.

The other 99%-5 billion people- die a bit more every day as they struggle on with life.

 

Tow pretty straightforward solutions here:

 

1.carpet Bomb the poor and the unhappy off the face of the earth, send them all to la la land, with the objective of not only finally helping them out of the dreary cycles of their unfruitful lives, but also open up vast new space and resources for the Deserving Remnant one percent.

 

2.Share all around, even up the wealth gap a bit.

 

 

A world full of ONLY RICH PEOPLE- PARADISE?

When you think about it, casting aside all morals for a moment, does that not seem like the ideal answer to ever problem in mankind?

After all, rid the planet of the poor, the hungry and the sick, and you get rid of 99% of humanity's woes altogether. You never found a rich dude who was sick, poor, or sad.

 

So going on to envision a world where EVERYBODY was a multi millionaire, EVERYBODY was happy, etc...isnt that humanities ultimate dream?

We seem indeed to have come to a Great Final Impasse. The Rich vs The poor. The contrast, the gap between the two classes has never been so clear cut, nor floating away from each other as rapidly as this point in history. Is this, then the time to cut the rich boat afloat for good? Sever the line between the two for good, completely closing out the one group from the other?

 

Why not have a world where you are ONLY allowed to live if you are rich, beautiful, and happy?

 

A world of that kind would be a world full of happiness.

 

Your thoughts?

[Strange]

1% of the world wakes up every morning to rollicking wealth.

The other 99%-5 billion people- die a bit more every day as they struggle on with life.

 

While poverty is still a big problem it is worth noting that you only need an income of about $32,000 to be in the top 1%. So not especially rich. Also huge improvements have been made, and hopefully will continue to be made, in tackling poverty, health and education in the rest of the world.

[Bill Angel]

Why not have a world where you are ONLY allowed to live if you are rich, beautiful, and happy?

 

A world of that kind would be a world full of happiness.

 

Your thoughts?

If you wrote a science fiction short story or novella based on this premise, many persons (myself included) would likely read it. But you would have to demonstrate how a world like that would be sustainable. In the past any society which considered that only the lives of an elite mattered had to rely on slave labor to keep functioning. Edited January 1, 2016 by Bill Angel

[fiveworlds]

Rich, beautiful and happy? didn't Hitler try that already??

 

Realistically though our planet will allow for a certain level of automation. Therefore jobs which have a potential of causing harm to people through inhalation of fumes etc should be automated first. As for the 1% why not have a credit system. Whereby people are paid by the government in exchange for work? People start with zero credits and the credits are non transferrable from person to person. Of course a credit system is only recently possible as we didn't have the internet/credit cards.

Edited January 1, 2016 by fiveworlds

[dimreepr]

You have food, water, shelter and an internet connection; maybe you’re richer than you think. It’s OK to want more, it’s not OK to be jealous of those that do. Looking at the negative can only hurt you.

[EdEarl]

 

While poverty is still a big problem it is worth noting that you only need an income of about $32,000 to be in the top 1%. So not especially rich. Also huge improvements have been made, and hopefully will continue to be made, in tackling poverty, health and education in the rest of the world.

 

 

What is the source of your data that 1% earn $32K or more?

[John Cuthber]

 

 

What is the source of your data that 1% earn $32K or more?

I guess it's about right if you are talking about the world population, many of whom are very poor.

I think the broader point is that some people are very rich for reasons that have nothing to do with ability.

 

In my experience the majority of people have the same agenda; get richer.

However; the poor can't and the rich can.

Edited January 1, 2016 by John Cuthber

[Strange]

 

What is the source of your data that 1% earn $32K or more?

 

Here is one: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp

[MigL]

You cannot get rich off inanimate objects as 'rich' is relative.

That top 1% got rich off of the bottom 99%.

Take away the bottom 99% and you eliminate the source of the top's wealth.

( you can't have one without the other )

[Phi for All]

There are those envious of the wealth, but in my opinion, the problem is the mentality amassing great wealth engenders.

 

If we all start out equally wealthy in terms of income, savings and investments, it seems rational and reasonable to pool a certain amount for the greater good. We build infrastructure, we invest in programs that benefit all that can take advantage of them. Really expensive things like swimming pools and airports and hospitals and national highway systems can happen because we all invest in them.

 

Then, some folks start amassing wealth. They start pulling away from the commons gradually, build a pool for some privacy, maybe put their houses on bigger plots of land for some more insulation. Buy a jet so you don't have to fly commercially.

 

It becomes a mindset, I think, where the wealth is an entitlement to cocoon yourself away in a world of upgraded luxuries. You start thinking that the police the public funds pay for aren't adequate. You need private security. You start thinking your money can protect your children better than public funded institutions. You pay to lobby to allow guns in your society because you think you can protect your kids better than the police can protect everybody's kids, which floods your whole society with dangerous weapons, ironically making it almost impossible for anyone to protect their families.

 

For me, it's certainly not envy. I know some very wealthy people who don't spend their wealth on insulating themselves from the masses. They start foundations that benefit the existence of life around the globe, or support those that already do. I also know wealthy people who don't give a rat's ass about allegiance to a country or society, yet wrap themselves in patriotism for profit, because the wealth is all that matters to them.

 

For me, the inequality of wealth is all about the irrationality of giving that much power to people who care less every day about me and those I know.

[Acme]

To be in the top 1% in the US, this source gives an income of $343,927 or more. According to this source, 16% of all people and 20% of all children in the US in 2012 lived below the poverty level of $14,580 per annum.

 

I think a worldwide figure is misleading because it does not take into account the cost of living. All-in-all however, the world's population is healthier and deaths in war lower than at any other time in human history.

5 Reasons Why 2013 Was The Best Year In Human History

 

The rich don't want to destroy the poor, they just want to keep them poor. Without the poor the rich would have no one to do their dirty work.

Edited January 1, 2016 by Acme

[iNow]

We'd be able to focus much less on rich and poor and inequality if we at least ensured no human was deprived the basics of food, shelter, education, and healthcare...Regardless of age, position, religion, or ethnicity. Provide these things and such worries about "keeping up up with the Joneses" largely evaporate, IMO.

[Phi for All]

We'd be able to focus much less on rich and poor and inequality if we at least ensured no human was deprived the basics of food, shelter, education, and healthcare...Regardless of age, position, religion, or ethnicity. Provide these things and such worries about "keeping up up with the Joneses" largely evaporate, IMO.

 

I used to rant about a minimum subsistence standard that nobody was allowed to mess with on the basis of worth, the way many like to treat welfare. I'd amend that now to include all the things you mention here (I was less liberal then). If you're a human on Earth in a big enough town, you shouldn't be homeless, you should have basic clothing and healthy food, access to healthcare, and education at any level through college.

 

We could pay for this with some livable changes. Capitalism has still flourished when the 1% get heavily taxed on income far above the norm. The wealthy have continued to get wealthier under heavier regulations. The kind of wealth we need to get a handle on is the wealth that comes from playing the system.

 

Like some stock and banking investments that have nothing to do with helping the economy grow a new business, and everything to do with squeezing out short term returns that just pillage those who actually work in order to benefit the investors.

 

Like paying lobbyists to work with politicians to make it cheaper for you to do business, also at other's expense. Some of our biggest corporations make their highest margins on lobbying dollars. GE, usually among the top ten most profitable corps on the planet, spent US$84M lobbying Congress from 2008-2010, and during that time received US$4.7B in tax rebates. They were one of 30 big US corps that actually paid more money to lobby than they contributed in taxes during that time. We've allowed regs to become so relaxed, these companies have no allegiance to the capitalistic republic that gave them their corporate charter in the first place.

[iNow]

I don't fault the corporations for finding ways to reduce expense and maximize profit and increase margins, nor do I fault the executives in those corporations for finding ever more efficient and clever ways to do so, but I do fault our government for allowing it to happen, for making it so increasingly easy to do so, and more specifically I fault our elected representatives for failing to adequately protect and...wait for it... represent us all.

 

Of the people, by the people, and FOR the people must be more than just a meaningless chant, slogan, or bumper sticker, but instead a modus operandi... A driving principle... A shared mission carried forth and magnified.

[Phi for All]

I don't fault the corporations for finding ways to reduce expense and maximize profit and increase margins, nor do I fault the executives in those corporations for finding ever more efficient and clever ways to do so, but I do fault our government for allowing it to happen, for making it so increasingly easy to do so, and more specifically I fault our elected representatives for failing to adequately protect and...wait for it... represent us all.

 

Of the people, by the people, and FOR the people must be more than just a meaningless chant, slogan, or bumper sticker, but instead a modus operandi... A driving principle... A shared mission carried forth and magnified.

 

I fault them when they've exhausted ways to reduce and maximize reasonably, and turn their sights on reducing their tax burdens, or increasing subsidies (paid for by everyone) for already profitable companies, or shaving income from productive middle class workers to make executive salaries or stockholder returns look better.

 

There are a lot of decent corporations out there who wouldn't squawk too much if regs were tightened, who only take advantage of sloppy loopholes other corporations have widened in their favors because it's been made legal. I wish one of the big guys would step up and call out these practices that don't invest in our economy so much as bend it over a barrel and sodomize it.

 

I'd love to see a US company set a goal for benefiting US citizens through education. We won't stay at the top unless our workers are better educated. We will keep letting ourselves be manipulated until the majority are better educated. It's hard to pull the rug out from under someone smart enough to see what you're doing.

[Sorcerer]

The problem is that wealth is only accumulated by production.

 

Production requires labour and resources.

 

Killing the poor removes labour.

 

Wealth cannot be accumulated as fast.

 

Everyone is poorer.

 

This doesn't even begin to take into account the synergistic effects of larger economy. It doesnt account for knowledge from education and research which benefit from larger populations and the massive "wealth" that is the service industry which allows leisure time and longevity through health care.

 

I doubt 1% of the world, any 1% would know enough skills to maintain the technology we do right now.

 

Rich people would prefer not to have to work the fields and live like the first agricultural people I think.

[dimreepr]

The richest person isn't who has the most but is content with what they have.

Edited January 2, 2016 by dimreepr

[Acme]

The problem is that wealth is only accumulated by production.

 

...

Except for wealth accumulated by ownership of stocks, real estate, companies and corporations, inheritance, interest, and any-and-all other investments unrelated to production.

[darktheorist]

The problem is that wealth is only accumulated by production.

 

Production requires labour and resources.

 

Killing the poor removes labour.

 

 

What percentage of the population is actually involved in physical labour? less than 0.3%? OKi doki, let THOSE people live, then, AND live as multimillionaires themselves, pocketing a 6 figure package at the end of a hard day's work. Only the middle class-roughly 3-4 billion people- gets wiped out, their jobs being replaced by robots. Most white collar workers' jobs could easily be replaced by articifical intelligence in its varying forms. Still, same thing end of the day- less people, more wealth.

ALSO: has it occured to you that should a scenario like the one I suggest play out, the very goals of corporate business would shift shape? Todays business Ends are geared towards the statistics of the present population: their needs and wants. Which themselves would alter in the case of a mass population decrease. For instance, computers, games, TV shows, etc - Giant Global money makers- wouldnt be required anymore if only a few people were left. In a new world where People-interractivity played a lower role, so would the means of making that happen. That way, the very nature of coprate functioning would also change to fit the demands of the new reduced population.

 

While poverty is still a big problem it is worth noting that you only need an income of about $32,000 to be in the top 1%. So not especially rich. Also huge improvements have been made, and hopefully will continue to be made, in tackling poverty, health and education in the rest of the world.

 

That minimum figure of 32000 could be flung into the rafters of the millions,were the population reduced.

Edited January 3, 2016 by darktheorist

[John Cuthber]

What percentage of the population is actually involved in physical labour? less than 0.3%?

When you put the word "physical" into there, you made it into a strawman.

I also doubt the 0.3% figure, but it hardly matters.

[Strange]

What percentage of the population is actually involved in physical labour? less than 0.3%?

 

Source?

[Bill Angel]

You cannot get rich off inanimate objects as 'rich' is relative.

That top 1% got rich off of the bottom 99%.

Take away the bottom 99% and you eliminate the source of the top's wealth.

( you can't have one without the other )

I agree. And most of the innovators who ended up being part of the top 1 percent and created wealth for the top 1 percent weren't born into that top 1 percent, Steve Jobs being the most prominent recent example.

[John Cuthber]

I agree. And most of the innovators who ended up being part of the top 1 percent and created wealth for the top 1 percent weren't born into that top 1 percent, Steve Jobs being the most prominent recent example.

Really?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

 

The blunt truth is that most rich people had rich parents.

[Sorcerer]

Except for wealth accumulated by ownership of stocks, real estate, companies and corporations, inheritance, interest, and any-and-all other investments unrelated to production.

Mos of this is actually a negative benefit to the economy, a source of inflation. For instance real estates value could only change in a real way by providing a reduction in labour, say if a resource moved closer.

 

Stocks and interest are investment capital in business which is used to generate production, hence the increase in value or decrease when the capital isn't spent wisely. Speculation does lead to manipulation and generate inflatory forces.

 

Inheritance is the surplus reward sum of someone elses production, this surplus should simply be due to their conservation of consumer items, but in reality money isn't actual wealth and they could have been unproportionately compensated.

 

I think your main misconception here is that money is wealth. Money is an artifical means of exchange and can be flawed or manipulated by inflatory market forces. The value of true wealth, resources, labour, produced goods and services isn't as easily manipulated. Luxury production however has a subjective value, but also provide an incentive to produce, where as human needs are fairly objective based on man hours/life expenctancy.

What percentage of the population is actually involved in physical labour? less than 0.3%? OKi doki, let THOSE people live, then, AND live as multimillionaires themselves, pocketing a 6 figure package at the end of a hard day's work. Only the middle class-roughly 3-4 billion people- gets wiped out, their jobs being replaced by robots. Most white collar workers' jobs could easily be replaced by articifical intelligence in its varying forms. Still, same thing end of the day- less people, more wealth.

ALSO: has it occured to you that should a scenario like the one I suggest play out, the very goals of corporate business would shift shape? Todays business Ends are geared towards the statistics of the present population: their needs and wants. Which themselves would alter in the case of a mass population decrease. For instance, computers, games, TV shows, etc - Giant Global money makers- wouldnt be required anymore if only a few people were left. In a new world where People-interractivity played a lower role, so would the means of making that happen. That way, the very nature of coprate functioning would also change to fit the demands of the new reduced population.

 

That minimum figure of 32000 could be flung into the rafters of the millions,were the population reduced.

Even those who only produce require an organising body to distribute the resources and redistribute their production. A farmer may need shoes and a cobbler may need food, it's no good for a farmer to produce less food because his feet are split open, and it's no good for a cobbler to starve eating leather soup. The farmer needs fertiliser, he needs new technology to continue increasing his production, minimal production wouldn't make him richer than he is in a cooperating society. The cobbler needs leather and glues and textiles, there's more to just simply producing and keeping your product, it has far more value because there is a network of demand.

 

Production is also increased by those who seemingly don't produce, organisation and innovation are required for a functioning labour forces production. The incentive to manage these tasks, which is a very challenging and competitive skill is a larger share in the profit of production. The rich SHOULD BE there only because we have set a restricted market system that rewards those who increase its productivity, and thus EVERYONE is richer.

 

People who provide leisure also can increase production, working yourself to the bone creates fatigue and is less productive over lengths of time. Some leisure time recooperates. There is also incentive to produce so that, that production can be traded for pleasurable activities or commodoties, this increases production, slightly balancing the loss of man hours and resources spent on excess consumer items.

 

Unfortunately there are some greed ridden leeches to society which exist on this planet. Those who produce goods which decrease labour, by killing, and burn and blow apart otherwise very useful resources. The irony is that normally the incentive is access to resources and a larger market share to trade. The selfish approach here is counter productive to the wealth of humanity as a whole. This form of capitalism isn't sustainable, the relative gap between rich and poor it creates is actually a void formed from the loss of production due to the war. War mongers, they'd be more productive as pig food.

Just an interesting question to ask yourself: "how do I increase or support production?", it may not be immediately obvious depending on your job, but I couldn't name many jobs where there is a clear correlation.

 

For instance, I'm site traffic management supervisor, I manage risk and provide health and safety for those producing and those transporting and those commuting to produce. I increase production by preventing deaths and damage to property, thus increasing labor (man hours) and preventing waste of already produced items.

Edited January 4, 2016 by Sorcerer

[Ophiolite]

Still, same thing end of the day- less people, more wealth.

If we are going to eliminate a large % of the population then I favour getting rid of those who say less, when fewer is the correct choice. Not only would this remove an irritant from my daily life, but the average IQ of the population would rise significantly. Welcome to my list.