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Well, the one thing that everyone here should be able to agree on is that we all all very fortunate to be living in North America.
But why compare ourselves to those living in thirdworld capitalist countries? If a seven foot basketball player says, I'm taller than all the pygmies, we might ask ourselves, So what? There were superrich people in Rome who didn't want to pay their taxes, and look what happened to the place.
What did Adam Smith say about unearned income? Why was unearned income considered a thing to be eliminated from economies for 800 years before the collapse of laissez-faire part II or III beginning in 2008? Why are neoclassico economists, like Alan Greenspan, sometimes heard mumbling to themselves like babbling idiots in the shadows nowadays? How can money possibly create more wealth by bypassing labour? It's a fiction. Neoclassico economics is fiction, and America is bankrupt today as a result. Your country has been in a state of emergency since 9/11, Sven. It's not about Qaeda or inivisble armies of darkness - it's about a lack of sustainable energy policy and financial crises, one after another. UHNW Americans in the one percent will not save the USSA from decline. They are working toward its demise, carefully and methodically. Greed is not good for America. What's good for corporate America is good for corporate America not Americans in general. They loathe their fellow Americans in the 99 percent for trying to ape their lifestyles since the 1950's. Buffet's a hater, too. He's laughing at Americans after suggesting that the rich pay more. He has no intention to pay. They are laughing their heads off maniacally at Main Streeters.
Because if we look at the world generally, it includes billions of people who live in truly poor conditions. I suppose we could limit our view of the world to that which extends no further than the end of our noses, but I don't think that's very useful.
really? you're not really saying we should shut up about the poor in our country and the exploitation of our resources and destruction of the environment by the trillion and billionaires because people in other countries are poorer than our most poor, are you?
who are you to say we are liniting our world view to the end of our noses? do you know all our thoughts and actions?
and do you really think your world view is useful?
i don't.
Good question, Sven, though I suggest that the word "focus" for "fixate" is more appropriate.
For myself, I focus on inequality within Canada (a rich country) because I know that in a more equal Canada, Canadians would act in ways that lead to a more equal world. Equality begets more equality, not only locally, but also globally.
I agree with you but his world view is good for one thing though, turning threads on this site from discussions about alternatives to the inherently unequal and ruthless global dictatorship into discourses on the joys of the mainstream capitalism and the omnipotence of the Invisible Hand.
Of course in Sven's world the effects of imperialism are not in the equation only personal choices matter. The idea that poor people just make bad choices and then blame others and are envious unlike rich people who work harder and deserve it all is not something I consider to be progressive in any sense of the word.
I suppose we are living better than hundreds of millions of desperate humanity in democratic capitalist India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan for sure.
And I also think that they will continue having trouble selling the new capitalism for impoverishing the middle class and extreme concentration of wealth. Cold war propagandists said that middle class capitalism is so much better than
communismSatanism. I think that at some point Americans will take to the streets and rebel against taxation without representation. I think the Occupy movement isn't done yet, and hawks know it. I think the shadow feds are fearing Americans for the first time - they've come to the realization they are way outnumbered. It's said that no nation can survive corruption from within.Viva la revolucion!
Mustn't forget the communal Utopias of Cuba and Venezuela in that list...
There shouldn't be much threat of that happening any time soon when about 50% of Americans with an income pay ZERO federal income taxes.
One-billion chronically hungry people in the world and none in Cuba. No one without the right to see a doctor in socialist Cuba. And Venezuela's new constitution guarantees a right to food for millions.
Unfortunately the above is just not true in India or dozens of third world capitalist countries you will likely never holiday in much less move to permanently. In those countries millions die each and every year like clockwork from severe malnutrition, curable diseases and diarrhea. For anywhere from 4 to 10 million throughout the democratic capitalist third world they are free to die of extreme poverty and in agony in any forgotten corner of the "free market." The terrible irony is that they are only really free when released from this world and suffer no more by a merciless economic ideology.
Fidel Castro said that if the cure for AIDS was a glass of clean drinking water, millions around the democratic capitalist third world would still die.
Americans are working harder and longer to produce more but going into debt to buy it. And since Reagan-Bush tripled US federal debt, the debt has skyrocketed under Bush and Obama to finance tax cuts to the rich and artificially prop-up Wall Street banksters and the USSA's overbloated closed economy, the military-industrial complex. Nearly 10 million more Americans living in poverty from 2007 to 2010.
Co-Founder Of Reaganomics, Paul Craig Roberts: "There Is Probably More Democracy In China Than There Is In The West"
sven i guess you can't answer my questions cause you're talking out of both sides your mouth and realize your words aren't worth the time of day.
I take a somewhat more nuanced view than the one you expressed (i.e., that we should simply "shut up" about the poor in North America).
In my view, taking into consideration the more than one billion people on this earth who survive (and often die) on an income of $1 per day or less should give us some context in which we discuss those who are poor and oppressed. If a couple in North America has a combined income in the upper $60Ks, it's worth keeping in mind that they are in the top 1% of global incomes.
Nuanced view? Context of the world's poor vs poor in North American poor? does that mean unless you're making a dollar a day you should just shut the fuck up and count your blessings as you're really rich?
No, I think the argument is that poverty has to be looked at in a global context. I believe someone above suggested that addressing poverty in the so called First World is a pre-requisite to addressing poverty in other parts of the world. We should oppose inequity everywhere and work for the eradication of poverty. As long as capitalism is in the ascendancy, I fear little more than band-aid solutions are possible.
You got it!
And if you're in the majority making $1 or less per day, you should also shut the fuck up, because you're in good company!
See? All the world's problems can be solved by playing with words.
i think what caissa said is a given in addressing poverty around the world. but i don't think that's what sven meant.
tff unionist
And it's not by accident that the majority of human beings don't have access to health care or education. The gladio gang won the cold war. Remember? It's their world today and not socialism or communism. The left didn't make wild promises for middle class prosperity. The world knows now that was a terrible lie. Today the majority of human beings don't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.
Bringing the focus back to Canada for a moment, according to StatsCan there has been a slow but steady improvement over the period 2001-2010. See:
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/famil19b-eng.htm
and
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/famil19a-eng.htm
People in the low-income after-tax category were 11.2% of the Canadian population in 2001, declining to 9% in 2010. It would obviously be better if the numbers were improving faster.
ummm....don't wanna be picky or anything but that's LOW INCOME data not those under the poverty line. people who make lower than the low income threshhold aren't counted as LI. poverty doesn't = LI
the links dance around with the label low income and inequality sums up the Conservatives. ya never get anywhere.
looked at the raw LI #s. #s were climbing from 2007-2010 but still lower than 2001. who knows what they are now in 2012. i'd say LI earner #s have continued to climb under Conservative and corporate rule.
quizzical, I understand your objection, but StatsCan does not publish a "poverty line" number. The closest we can get to that using their data is low income. And if you pick a longer baseline (last 20 years of data rather then last 10) the trend in the low income percentage is also generally downward over the period taken as a whole, although there's an upward slope over the 1991-1996 period.
no you can't get close at all. LI #s are completely different from poverty #s. people who've no taxable income don't appear in those #s.
the decreasing amounts of LI #s might also signal a reality where the 300k decrease is because they've slipped into no income and now live below the poverty line. you've made up a story not supported by your evidence. not sayin it's not true just not supported by you links.
quizzical, many people use the low-income cutoff as a proxy for the poverty line. See, for example:
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publication...
and look at the first sentence and the footnote to the first sentence.
If you have a link to alternative poverty stats that you think contradicts the low-income cutoff data could you please post it?