Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:
We create the hole, which vacuums our local talent into obsolescence due to cost. Or, perhaps said another way, you can't bring some up without bringing all down. Locally or globally.
You assume a fixed economy which is clearly not the case. There used to be a few million people on this planet and they were much worse off than we are.
There are now ~6 billion people on the planet and most of them are better off than our predacessors.
This alone blows the zero sum game out of the water.
But why are they better off??? Why? Because of first-world tax dollars driving technology? Because of charity, much (billions) coming out of my tax dolars? Handouts? Wheat? immunizations? technology?
What brought the rest of the world up was our charity and business decisions in chasing a cheaper laborer... from which the lower 95% or so benefit, and the upper 5% or so profit on.
Those who profit do better... those who benefit, just benefit for the widget they bought at that moment. Like I said in another thread... they danced as the titanic sunk.
So my thought is that WE brought the rest of the world up... by our practices and our decisions. At cost to us. Now, meanwhile we were accumulating debt like nobody's business. Debt = cannot afford... So we were allowing the upper 5% to profit, so the lower 95% could "benefit", meanwhile writing checks that they could not cash, in the form of the national debt.
Would SS and medicare last a LOT longer had the money been put away instead of spent? Would half of the issues be so if we hadnt indebted ourselves to the point of no return?
We brought them up, with the sweat of our brows and the taxes from our pockets. Some profited, some "benefitted". Only very few win, even if most seem to maintain the status quo via education and hard work.
Meanwhile our poor decisions errode the ability to sustain.
That is off topic anyway, compared to the article. I feel that there must be "levels" or groups or classes of people, because there is a natural distribution in everything, intelligence, health and drive included. The article in my opinion shows people, frought with idiocy and stupid decisions, stuck poor because they cause it. While as mentioned, there has to be a distribution, and I feel that there is a way for most anybody (but not everybody) to move to roughly the median, I cannot feel sorry for the people in the article, who in my opinion, practice in self-destructive behaviors.
