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

[John Cuthber]

This issue was addressed some time ago.

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

[Strange]

The UN's Millennium Development Goals went a long way to reducing some of these problems. The number of people living in extreme poverty was reduced by about 130 million, infant mortality was reduced etc.

 

The replacement Sustainable Development Goals aim to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030, reduce child mortality to the same levels as in advanced countries, and so on.

http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/mdgoverview.html

 

Even if it doesn't achieve all of these things, the fact that the agreements and goals exist should prompt improvements.

[Ten oz]

Reading through this thread I am reminded on the Founder/CEO of the company Gravity that decided to give all of his employees a minimum of $70,000 and slash his own pay to that same level. Employees which were already making more kept their salaries but did not receive a raise. In response a few of the company's senior staff left. Their paid had not be decreased but rather they felt that their efforts were devalued by paying everyone else an amount closer to their own.

http://www.today.com/series/2015-voices/gravity-payments-ceo-dan-price-reflects-70k-minimum-salary-experiment-t64401

 

Money is not simply a means of managing resources; it is the way many internalize self worth and hierarchy within our self identified groups. How comfortable someone is financially is often more a matter of peer comparison than practicality. I personally deal with this struggle on a regular basis. I changed careers at 30yrs old. Today, several years later, I make triple what I had prior to the change. I honestly make more than I would have imagined when I entered my career yet because I entered at 30yrs old I am a few yrs older than the people at my same level. As a result I often catch myself feeling annoyed that I am even further along. When a peer who is younger than myself purchases a house, gets a promotion, or accomplishes things it took me longer in life to accomplish it momentarily bothers me. It is so ridiculous.

 

This preoccupation with what others get compare to oneself drive many behaviors in society. It convolutes what the true value of money is. Depending on where one is in their life money represents different things. Money is ego and pride when your young, control and influence when mild age, and safety when your old. To eliminate poverty we would first need to change our psychology. Everyone must be superior to someone else personally and even on a group level one country must be greater than another. It creates an endless string of winners and losers. Make everyone equal and their will always be a band of sociopaths in the group who feels slighted and works passionately to undermine the equality. Burn it to the ground and lord over the ashes for some people is preferable to by equal/average. It is the alpha male animalistic bit of us.

[Electrophysicist]

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

That does seem like a good idea. However, even if it were to be executed, there is the matter of every person in the world being different. Some are savers, some are spenders, and there are countless other ways of classifying people, but they are all different. After executing such a thing, the distribution of wealth would once again fall out of balance.

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.

Money is not the answer to everything. Sickness is not cured by money, it is cured by doctors and medicine. Of course you won't find a rich person who's poor, unless you're speaking metaphorically. And the last part is not provable at all. In any way.

Edited January 19, 2016 by Electrophysicist

[Phi for All]

You never found a rich dude who was sick, poor, or sad.

 

Oooops.

 

1. David Bowie, Alan Rickman...

2. Michael Jackson, Sammy Davis Jr, Judy Garland...

3. Robin Williams, Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain...