The fact that there is a gap with causes and effects is obvious to us all and arguing the chicken egg scenario doesnt help us. What came first, the cause or the effect, lol (well, the cause of course, but anyways)
It actually is important that we separate cause and effect when discussing the wealth gap. It is also important that we understand that a gap is not necisarily a sign of failure. When people look at the wealth gap as a sign of failure, or as the cause for poverty, they tend to push for anything that closes the gap. These people fail to understand that closing the gap will not fix the problems we have with poverty. These people tend to support means of wealth redistribution that are destructive, and harmful to the economy.
So the rich poor divide comes from the result of certain people being crappy with resources. The divide is clearly huge. There are people literally witholding resources from those less fortunate. Many cultures have a tradition of helping those less in need. This is age old right? AND its obviously morally right and beneficial to the human race to be altruistic right?
(This one is a doozy!)
Either those who provide goods, services, and resources hold out so that they may make a profit, or they don't provide anything at all. In my last post, I explained that putting a cap on how much money a business can make would only result in the business producing less. Without profit, you have few to no goods or services.
It's a common belief that profit seeking leads to higher prices on goods. After all, a business must profit, or they will go out of business. If they sell their goods at too low a price, they go out of business. This leads to the idea that non-profit organizations can sell goods and services at even LOWER prices. Of course, you can't have a non-profit business, because profit is what keeps businesses alive. This leads many people to ponder, how do we create non-profit organizations? They often come up with the same solution, use government programs to create these non-profit organizations.
The idea is that businesses will go under if they don't make a profit, yet government programs won't go under if they don't make a profit. Therefore, government programs can produce cheaper goods and services, all because they're non-profit.
One of the greatest illusions in human history is that government is truly non-profit. Everything costs money, and everyone who produces goods and services want to be paid. In fact, people who work for the government are very often overpaid and overcompensated. These people are all working for a profit. They are not providing goods and services from the bottoms of their hearts (as many dunderheads would like you to believe). But the goods and services are sold at cheaper prices, right? Let's do some basic math.
Let's say it costs $10.00 to make a watch. This includes the cost of materials, labor, tools, etc. A business that must profit must sell the watch for at least $10.00 to stay in business. The business that produces this $10.00 watch will often sell the watch for more than what it cost to make. They increase the price so that they may profit. The use their profit to increase efficiency. It is true that they will use a portion of the profit to increase their own wealth, but it's allowing people to increase their own wealth that pushes them to use the rest of their profits to increase efficiency when providing goods and services.
*Often, the government spends more money to create inferior goods and provide worse service than private companies. The government would likely create a lower quality watch for $15.00. But for sake of argument, let's assume they create a similar quality watch for $10.00.
The government create a watch for $10.00. For the government to profit, they must sell the watch for at least $10.00. Because the government can't go out of business, they are allowed to go into debt. The government spends $10.00 to create each watch, and they sell each watch for only $5.00. Hoorah! Now everyone saves $5.00 when buying a watch! Everyone is $5.00 richer! Or are they? Remember, it cost $10.00 to create the watch, and the government is only getting $5.00 for each watch, so how does the government afford to sell these watches at such a low price?
The government MUST pay for the resources and labor put into creating the watch. Either the government can tax the people to pay for the watches, or the government can create more IOUs, and borrow money from the Federal Reserve. This creates debt, and it leads to a bunch of other problems. The most notable problem it creates is inflation.
As you can see, the government isn't really non-profit, because they borrow money, or take money from others through taxation, to pay off their debts. Not only do the watches cost $10.00 each to create, but the government, like private businesses, must also use money to do research, expand, and become more "efficient" (oxymoron).
In short, without profit, there is debt. Debt must be paid for, one way or another. Either the debt is paid for through taxes, which would mean the government isn't non-profit at all, or the debt is paid with IOUs, which creates inflation.
So, would it not be better to raise the absolute living standard the world over i.e. EVERYONE gets food, water, clothing, education, communication, accomodation.
Everyone who works should get these things. Everyone who doesn't work should be taken care of by people who are willing to help them. Nobody should be forced to help the needy. I'm all for helping the poor, but we can't force people to provide for them when they don't earn their money. If people want to help the poor without asking for anything in return, they can. Some people are unable to work, but these people often rely on family and friends who love them. When a person doesn't have family and friends who love them, then we should allow kind hearted people to help them.
Ok, idealistic I know. BUT, and this is where my main bone to pick is, it is entirely possible. Completely, regardless of looking at economic models or studying the logic of who gets what.
Sure, technically, it is possible. However, there are reasons the world doesn't work in such a perfect way. We must figure out how we can fix these issues. The means in which we help these people are constantly being debated.
The size of the rich poor divide is the most devistating thing about it.
You're thinking of resource value and availability as being independent from wealth distribution. This way, when you redistribute wealth, the resources that could be bought with said wealth would also be redistributed and available for purchase. However, this is not the case.
In reality, when you take wealth from the rich and give it to the poor, the rich have less money to provide goods and services. Either the rich raise their prices, or they provide less goods and services to the people. When the rich provide less, supply goes down and demand goes up. This increases the prices of these goods and services. In the end, redistribution of wealth would only result in a drastic rise in prices for most goods, as well as less goods and services that can be provided. (The resource are still there, but you took money away from the people who harvest the resources and people who pay for the labor to create goods).
I hope the above made sense, if not, I'll create a cleaner explanation some other time.
I think we have more of a right to be scornful fo those who have vast vast resources and keep them from others, even tho they will NEVER be able to use them. Thats pure greed.
We have the right to be scornful, but that's about it.
As for people keeping goods and resources they will never use, it really depends on what you mean. Many people own goods and resources they never use because they plan on selling these goods and resources. Otherwise, I'm not exactly sure what you mean.
Why do you think I cannot accept arguments that justify the rich being rich, I dont care how much they "earned it" because its simply disgusting that its allowed.
If Bill Gates wasn't allowed to be as wealthy as he is, then most of us would probably be without computers, or our computers wouldn't be nearly as advanced. If Bill Gates hit a "cap", then why in the world would he care to continue providing computers and investing into research? Granted, Bill Gates does give a lot of his money away, but I'm still confident he would be far less motivated if he wasn't allowed to make money.
But as I said before, if you take all the money from the super elite and redistribute it, then you would create a shortage of goods and services, and a huge spike in prices. It would be disastrous.
Our leaders have failed us on so many levels.
Our leaders have failed us because they allow people to become wealthy through corrupt means. In fact, the leaders not only allow said corruption to happen, they're the ones who assist in the corruption.
