Obscene wealth: World’s 85 richest have same wealth as 3.5 billion poorest – Oxfam
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If you want to donate half of your income to charity, then go ahead! I'm not rich, so I won't be joining you.
We are rich, the average American is in the top 1% of income earners. i'm sure its the same for the average Brit. So go donate your money you rich bastard!
I disagree with the opinion that people are usually poor because of their own fault either through lack of initiative or laziness or destructive habits. That may be true in a minority of cases ... but not for most. By the same token, not all rich people attained their wealth through initiative and hard work.
There have been extraordinarily ambitious and talented people who mapped out strategies for acquiring wealth by getting a good education, working very hard, putting their careers first, relocating, making wise and careful decisions ... only to fail. Why? It could be a health problem, a family problem lika a divorce, a change in the economic climate, unfair competition, nepotism, favoritism, prejudice, victimized by a scam or a crime, taking a calculated risk that went wrong, an unforseen event, etc.
I disagree with the opinion that people are usually poor because of their own fault either through lack of initiative or laziness or destructive habits. That may be true in a minority of cases ... but not for most. By the same token, not all rich people attained their wealth through initiative and hard work.
There have been extraordinarily ambitious and talented people who mapped out strategies for acquiring wealth by getting a good education, working very hard, putting their careers first, relocating, making wise and careful decisions ... only to fail. Why? It could be a health problem, a family problem lika a divorce, a change in the economic climate, unfair competition, nepotism, favoritism, prejudice, victimized by a scam or a crime, taking a calculated risk that went wrong, an unforseen event, etc.
And all industrialized societies provide some sort of safety net to get us over the rough spots, but for every honest victim, there is at least one unmotivated individual who has learned to "work the system". Decentralizing the bureaucracy, so that the hard core could be identified by local authorities, would go a long way toward stopping this, but I can assure you that the bureaucrats would fight it tooth-and-claw. They have no incentive to do so, and would view it as a threat to their no-motivation "job".
In my home town, there is one no-longer-young man that a lot of us have tried to help for years; he's "typical" -- product of an unplanned pregnancy, disowned by his absentee father, "gender-identity" issues due to his mother's preference for girls.
I've seen this individual walk away from vocational training, lecture patrons about smoking while clerking in a C-store, and have to be escorted out of a local factory for simply refusing to function. When a friend of mine allowed him to stay with them, he ran up a phone bill of several hundred dollars in one afternoon.
His usual complaint about any job is "They don't pay enough"; he's familiar with all the workings of Medicaid, has qualified for several pairs of eyeglasses at taxpayer expense, but won't fix his rotten teeth because he's afraid of dentists. Up until now, he's had the sense to reject drugs, but his appearance is changing in ways that suggest that may no longer be the case.
I don't wish this individual any direct harm, but I would have no problem seeing him swept off the street and sent to a little camp out in the woods with barbed wire and guard towers, where he couldn't leave until he either demonstrated a change in attitude, or was completely "broken" psychologically.
There are some like him in every community in this nation -- and the responsible majority have every right to learn their identity, just as they are warned about sex offenders.
I disagree with the opinion that people are usually poor because of their own fault either through lack of initiative or laziness or destructive habits. That may be true in a minority of cases ... but not for most. By the same token, not all rich people attained their wealth through initiative and hard work.
There have been extraordinarily ambitious and talented people who mapped out strategies for acquiring wealth by getting a good education, working very hard, putting their careers first, relocating, making wise and careful decisions ... only to fail. Why? It could be a health problem, a family problem lika a divorce, a change in the economic climate, unfair competition, nepotism, favoritism, prejudice, victimized by a scam or a crime, taking a calculated risk that went wrong, an unforseen event, etc.
These are the kinds of things people say to themselves for consolation. Blame everything and everyone but your own efforts (or the lack thereof). - As if successful people don't have any setbacks or failures in their lives.
Well, whatever helps you get through the day better.
Location: On the "Left Coast", somewhere in "the Land of Fruits & Nuts"
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The Great Depression and the Great Recession are proof that "hard work and up by your own bootstraps" Free Market Capitalism bears little real relationship to financial success. For example, just ask all the 'hard-working' folks who got stiffed by Bernie Madoff and Lehman Brothers!
most people on this thread who dismiss " poor folk " as lazy are viewing the issue through the prism of the west where a welfare state exists
this ignores the fact that the thread is about how half the globe ( not America or Europe ) have less than the top ninety wealthiest individuals , most people in many parts of Africa work very hard , walking ten miles to a well for water in sweltering heat is tougher than selling pensions for JP morgan yet you wont become rich doing it , you just get to live a while longer
So what? IMO what's more obscene is how the poorest keep having babies... in Africa, it's not unusual for families to have over five children. Even in times of famine and civil unrest.
And having these large families is what holds the poor back financially. Stop making so many babies!!!
Oxfam are on shaky ground in terms of pointing the finger.
They were involved in the Haiti sexual explitation scandal, which caused the charity a lt of damage, and now with a Kenyan woman in charge they are moving their Headquarters from Oxford (where it was set up) to Nairobi in Kenya. Oxfam even stands for the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief.
This is despite over half of Oxfams funds coming from the UK.
Whether Oxfam survices in the long term is now questionable and it could even end up being struck off by the British Charities Commission.
Last edited by Brave New World; 02-13-2019 at 02:56 PM..
04-21-2019, 08:33 AM
4,640 posts, read 13,949,956 times
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Extreme forms of capitalism at it's finest unfortunately. Why are native citizens even complaining about past attempts of communism to try to even out the issues? Although, not even aligning correctly in Vietnam, and China ironically. Are the multinational or regional governing systems able to network even further? Only a few handful of independent sovereign republics really completely evade poverty relatively. Although, then the exact problem of hyper competitive standings with increasing cost of living occurs.
Of course people with less annual mountains of cash continue to matter a solid equal amount. They are able to control everything another way. Significant outreaching peaceful version, please! Everything is able to change very quickly at lightning speed. I wonder if that is just the politics.
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