Wealth Stratification

#51
#51
BigPapaVol said:
The evidence shows a strong correlation and I agree. If it's claiming causation, it's idiotic (and I'm pretty much addressing obesity and smoking).
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It is causation, and there is a wealth of evidence showing that poverty directly causes impaired neurogenesis, basal hypertension, pathogenic cholesterol, high levels of immunodeficiency, GC and cortisol, and significant effects on reproductive health in men and women, among many other things.
 
#53
#53
milohimself said:
It is causation, and there is a wealth of evidence showing that poverty directly causes impaired neurogenesis, basal hypertension, pathogenic cholesterol, high levels of immunodeficiency, GC and cortisol, and significant effects on reproductive health in men and women, among many other things.
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Stress? Or being poor? Again, why wasn't this a full blown pandemic in the 30s?
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#54
#54
that pesky real world

Zero-percent unemployment Cuba's labor strife - Business - World business - msnbc.com

HAVANA — At a state project to refurbish a decaying building in Old Havana, one worker paints a wall white while two others watch. A fourth sleeps in a wheelbarrow positioned in a sliver of shade nearby and two more smoke and chat on the curb.
President Raul Castro has startled the nation lately by saying about one in five Cuban workers may be redundant. At the work site on Obispo street, those numbers run in reverse.
It's a common sight in communist Cuba. Here, nearly everyone works for the state and official unemployment is minuscule, but pay is so low that Cubans like to joke that "the state pretends to pay us and we pretend to work."
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Oh snap!

The government has moved to embrace some small free-market reforms. It handed some barbershops over to employees, allowing them to set their own prices but making them pay rent and buy their own supplies. Authorities have also approved more licenses for private taxis while getting tough on unlicensed ones.
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#55
#55
BigPapaVol said:
Stress? Or being poor? Again, why wasn't this a full blown pandemic in the 30s?
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The studies made have not been tied to any particular boom or bust period. There was a study done a few years ago, which had some surprising results that showed life expectancy for both genders and all races in the 1930's and causes of death improving during the depression, but had an inverse correlation with rises or drops in per capita GDP; that is, during boom times, people were less healthy and more healthy during bust times. It wasn't carried out to see the long-term effects on any particular group, but there were some hypotheses made as to why that was (though none were substantiated, though they are plausible): booms mean more people at work, higher demand of productivity, higher stress levels at work, etc.

Back to my point, though, which is that where one sits on the social ladder has a very direct effect on their physiological and mental health, and not the other way around.
 
#56
#56
milohimself said:
Back to my point, though, which is that where one sits on the social ladder has a very direct effect on their physiological and mental health, and not the other way around.
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188045_207595085948609_237455_n.jpg


Do any of you need medical attention?
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#58
#58
therealUT said:
The question is: is wealth stratification inherently bad?

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You confused your own question with your attempts at algebra - algebra which made no sense in our historic time. Wealth stratification is the reason in our own historic time 600 million children live on less than $2 / day and over 2 billion people in general. Poverty is greater than at any time in history despite a productive capacity unrivaled in history (thanks again to the Enlightenment). Bourgeois economists have described this process in detail. It is indefensible.

If you are asking the rhetorical question, you are really just asking what Aristotle asked long ago: namely, how should society bestow honors?

How do we get flutes to the best flute players? Footballs to the best footballers? Do we recognize marriage as a social institution? etc.

The best answer, IMHO, was given, believe it or not, in the 20th century. John Rawls constructed what is, to my mind, the most human, the most practical, and the best system of justice yet conceptualized. If we were behind the "veil of ignorance" completely unaware of our racial and economic station, what kind of society would we build once the veil is lifted?

Rawls said we would reject utilitarianism - no one would want the veil to be lifted and find themselves in the minority exploited to increase the happiness of the many.

Instead we would choose a substantive equality. This is not to say perfect equality. We would want Peyton Manning to play football. We would want to honor him, but he must do so for the benefit of the lowest among us. Which is to say, it is fine so long as it is raising everybody to a level of substantive equality.

Rawls has formalized conceptions which, actually (despite BPV's protests), have dominated human cultures and human societies since we first rose up as Homo sapiens.

So, is wealth stratification inherently bad? It depends on the culture. It can be justified when the honors bestowed upon the meritous is used to bring to a level of substantive equality the rest of society.
 
#59
#59
#60
#60
therealUT said:
Gibbs, I am going to break this down for you.

If you had the opportunity to eat two eggs today but just one egg yesterday, were you better off today than yesterday?
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Is this really how you are going to break this down? Really?

I wish I had seen this purile nugget first before my "bestow honors" post.

Let me ask this, and let's put this in the real context of the last 500 years and importantly, a process still playing out all over the world. What if I had a parcel of land that I had to work, but I could meet my family's needs with it and even sell (barter) the excess. My neighbors work the same common land, and we work hard. We are clean and healthy.

Suddenly the land is expropriated. We cannot work the common land anymore. We can't live there anymore. Now I have the "opportunity" to move to the slums outside (insert your favorite city here) to find "real work." They [bourgeois economists] tell me I "choose" this because it is a better option than before, when, in reality, my old life was taken from me.

Let me know who is better off. :hi:
 
#61
#61
This process described above played out in the Capitalist world starting with Henry VIII, and is playing itself out in the rest of the world as we speak now. The numbers of slum dwellers and those living in miserable poverty are legion and testament to this fact.

Interestingly, China is doing this at breakneck speed as we speak. Yet, the Chinese CP seems to have in place something of the Rawlsian view of justice as the process is actually raising a great many boats. This is almost the lone exception - in fact, without the Chinese numbers, the rest of the world has increased poverty as much as the Chinese have lifted people out of poverty.
 
#62
#62
MG1968 said:
bourgeois capitalist propaganda, Cuba is a worker's paradise and continues to set new paradigms in government efficiency. Anyone who says different is part of that superminority who believes the propaganda of the criminals that fled Castro's glorious revolution.

izzat 'bout right, gibbsie?
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Let's ask the Russians what they think about "efficient" unemployment. "Capitalist" Russia is nostalgic for Brezhnev after neoliberalism demodernized the country.

GSM.

I've said many times no one is going to land in Cuba and mistake it for Utopia. However, this is part of the "bourgeois capitalist propaganda" (which is very real) and apologizes for the "reserve labor army" used to drive wages down. Cuba is undergoing yet another transformation as we speak - and transformation, dexterity, and fluidity have characterized the Revolution from the beginning. We all wait to see what will happen - it will be interesting if Cuba can further free the creative free time of the citizenry.
 
#63
#63
I take it your calendar's "economic philosophizer of the week" is this Rawls fellow.

I've noticed how you don't seem to ever quote Krugman, despite the fact that he is a Nobel laureate. Perhaps it's because you know that Krugman is a Keynesian idiot and not even you can spin that level of ignorance.
 
#64
#64
MG1968 said:
I take it your calendar's "economic philosophizer of the week" is this Rawls fellow.

I've noticed how you don't seem to ever quote Krugman, despite the fact that he is a Nobel laureate. Perhaps it's because you know that Krugman is a Keynesian idiot and not even you can spin that level of ignorance.
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I believe I referenced Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen in this very thread, MG, a much bigger Keynesian than Krugman.

:hi:

Rawls just happens to fit nicely into this thread. I am astounded sometimes that Rawls is a 20th century thinker.
 
#66
#66
therealUT said:
Gibbs, a direct answer to the question, please...or shut up.
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Answered in full -- twice. With details, facts from the real world, even citations.

Of course, I've asked you a question now, one you have not endeavored to answer with a single syllable.

Telling.
 
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#67
#67
utgibbs said:
Is this really how you are going to break this down? Really?

I wish I had seen this purile nugget first before my "bestow honors" post.

Let me ask this, and let's put this in the real context of the last 500 years and importantly, a process still playing out all over the world. What if I had a parcel of land that I had to work, but I could meet my family's needs with it and even sell (barter) the excess. My neighbors work the same common land, and we work hard. We are clean and healthy.

Suddenly the land is expropriated. We cannot work the common land anymore. We can't live there anymore. Now I have the "opportunity" to move to the slums outside (insert your favorite city here) to find "real work." They [bourgeois economists] tell me I "choose" this because it is a better option than before, when, in reality, my old life was taken from me.

Let me know who is better off. :hi:
Click to expand...

therealUT said:
Gibbs, a direct answer to the question, please...or shut up.
Click to expand...

Just a reminder, but don't worry, I won't be holding my breath. I'd probably die.

:hi:
 
#68
#68
utgibbs said:
Answered in full -- twice.

Of course, I've asked you a question now, one you have not endeavored to answer with a single syllable.

Telling.
Click to expand...

Do you know what a direct answer to a direct question is? The question was loaded with no presuppositions; therefore, you are obliged to answer before the discussion moves forward. I will ask again:

In a vacuum (since you seem to want to answer a hypothetical question by escaping to the real wordl), if two beings (a and b) must have 1,000 args a day to sustain life, 2,000 to grow (growth is the ultimate good in this vacuum):

Day W:
A consumes 1,000 args
B consumes 1,000 args

Day X:
A consumes 2,000 args
B consumes 3,000 args

Day Y:
A consumes 2,000 args
B consumes 4,000 args

Day Z:
A consumes 3,000 args
B consumes 10,000 args

Has A consumed more args on Day Z than on Day W? Is A better off on Day Z than on Day W?

Yes or No replies to these questions only.
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#69
#69
utgibbs said:
Wealth stratification is the reason in our own historic time 600 million children live on less than $2 / day and over 2 billion people in general. Poverty is greater than at any time in history despite a productive capacity unrivaled in history (thanks again to the Enlightenment). Bourgeois economists have described this process in detail. It is indefensible.

.
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This little tidbit of lunacy is exactly what made the rest of the answer stupid and is why you have no support at any level on anything you ever say.

Nobody in this world is poorer BECAUSE someone else is wealthier. That's pure stupidity. The rich vs poor battle that you like to use at every turn is not a zero sum affair, rendering the basis of your entire argument senseless.

The question was about whether the poor are better off today in America than they were 250 years ago, or 40 years ago or are they better off than they are in places like Cuba and Haiti. Your own argument regarding the 2 billion living in poverty would tell you that the poor under our capitalist system are light years ahead of those everywhere else. Must be the socialism from the rest of the world helping them because there is no way that capitalism has changed things.
 
#70
#70
therealUT said:
Do you know what a direct answer to a direct question is? The question was loaded with no presuppositions; therefore, you are obliged to answer before the discussion moves forward. I will ask again:

In a vacuum (since you seem to want to answer a hypothetical question by escaping to the real wordl), if two beings (a and b) must have 1,000 args a day to sustain life, 2,000 to grow (growth is the ultimate good in this vacuum):

Day W:
A consumes 1,000 args
B consumes 1,000 args

Day X:
A consumes 2,000 args
B consumes 3,000 args

Day Y:
A consumes 2,000 args
B consumes 4,000 args

Day Z:
A consumes 3,000 args
B consumes 10,000 args

Has A consumed more args on Day Z than on Day W? Is A better off on Day Z than on Day W?

Yes or No replies to these questions only.
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are args good for A or bad for A?
 
#71
#71
utgibbs said:
Interestingly, China is doing this at breakneck speed as we speak. Yet, the Chinese CP seems to have in place something of the Rawlsian view of justice as the process is actually raising a great many boats. This is almost the lone exception - in fact, without the Chinese numbers, the rest of the world has increased poverty as much as the Chinese have lifted people out of poverty.
Click to expand...

so you'd suggest if our median household income was $2,500 a year our middle class would be far better off?
 
#72
#72
droski said:
so you'd suggest if our median household income was $2,500 a year our middle class would be far better off?
Click to expand...

wonder if he would even recognize the list of the world's outsourced labor pools if we listed them. Maybe a little case study on Singapore would help the clown understand what's happening in China. I'm shocked to find that he knows absolutely nothing about the life cycle of an economy.
 
#73
#73
utgibbs said:
How do we get flutes to the best flute players? Footballs to the best footballers? Do we recognize marriage as a social institution? etc.

The best answer, IMHO, was given, believe it or not, in the 20th century. John Rawls constructed what is, to my mind, the most human, the most practical, and the best system of justice yet conceptualized. If we were behind the "veil of ignorance" completely unaware of our racial and economic station, what kind of society would we build once the veil is lifted?

Rawls said we would reject utilitarianism - no one would want the veil to be lifted and find themselves in the minority exploited to increase the happiness of the many.

Instead we would choose a substantive equality. This is not to say perfect equality. We would want Peyton Manning to play football. We would want to honor him, but he must do so for the benefit of the lowest among us. Which is to say, it is fine so long as it is raising everybody to a level of substantive equality.

Rawls has formalized conceptions which, actually (despite BPV's protests), have dominated human cultures and human societies since we first rose up as Homo sapiens.

So, is wealth stratification inherently bad? It depends on the culture. It can be justified when the honors bestowed upon the meritous is used to bring to a level of substantive equality the rest of society.
Click to expand...

explain how Peyton playing football would only and could only raise everyone to a level of substantive equality. what's the mechanism? who chooses if Peyton plays football? who measures his contribution and presumably takes corrective action if he is not raising everyone to this level? what are the corrective actions and how are they administered?
 
#74
#74
BigPapaVol said:
wonder if he would even recognize the list of the world's outsourced labor pools if we listed them. Maybe a little case study on Singapore would help the clown understand what's happening in China. I'm shocked to find that he knows absolutely nothing about the life cycle of an economy.
Click to expand...

i love how getting them out of poverty means making less then our people on welfare make.
 
#75
#75
BigPapaVol said:
wonder if he would even recognize the list of the world's outsourced labor pools if we listed them. Maybe a little case study on Singapore would help the clown understand what's happening in China. I'm shocked to find that he knows absolutely nothing about the life cycle of an economy.
Click to expand...



boooooooooooooooooj-waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh
 
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