Yea that all makes sense. I guess what I was trying to say was that taking the money out of the hands of the ultra wealthy seems less likely to actually happen than the smaller changes which are indeed happening slowly but surely, like greater access to clean water, food, shelter, education, the empowerment of women, etc. Generally speaking, those small changes are happening across the planet and I have hope that those changes will continue. A world with actual wealth equality just seems like a pipe dream, but on the other hand, things like indoor plumbing seem achievable globally.
You kind of lost me at ‘if we house, feed, and educate people than it will be more expensive to go to the movies or have internet’
The only hope we have of leveling the playing field is to focus on the achievable goals I mentioned. I don’t see why it is necessary to take from the rich to achieve these goals.
Don’t get me wrong, if it was at all possible to level the playing field by redistributing the wealth of the rich, that would be my first choice, I just don’t think that’s possible the way things are. I think it would be defeatist to think that that is the only way to lift people out of poverty.
Edit: one other point is that everyone benefits from less poverty, including the wealthy. The incentive is there for these changes to occur. Poor people don’t make very good consumers. Dealing with the effects of poverty is ironically a massive economic burden on society.
For the record, I don’t think focusing solely on taking money away from the richest people is the only way to lift people out of poverty, I think there are many factors that create poverty and that there being billionaires at all is a contributor to it due to the power they wield with it. Mind you, I don’t really include millionaires in the “wealthy” category here, I’m talking about billionaires - those with many orders of magnitude more wealth than somebody you’d just consider “rich”. I’m certainly not against feeding, housing, and educating people and contribute to efforts to do so locally. I was thinking more along the lines of hypothetically long term eradicating poverty, not how to realistically approach treating it today so that’s probably where our wires got crossed.
Yea that all makes sense. I guess what I was trying to say was that taking the money out of the hands of the ultra wealthy seems less likely to actually happen than the smaller changes which are indeed happening slowly but surely, like greater access to clean water, food, shelter, education, the empowerment of women, etc. Generally speaking, those small changes are happening across the planet and I have hope that those changes will continue. A world with actual wealth equality just seems like a pipe dream, but on the other hand, things like indoor plumbing seem achievable globally.
You kind of lost me at ‘if we house, feed, and educate people than it will be more expensive to go to the movies or have internet’
The only hope we have of leveling the playing field is to focus on the achievable goals I mentioned. I don’t see why it is necessary to take from the rich to achieve these goals.
Don’t get me wrong, if it was at all possible to level the playing field by redistributing the wealth of the rich, that would be my first choice, I just don’t think that’s possible the way things are. I think it would be defeatist to think that that is the only way to lift people out of poverty.
Edit: one other point is that everyone benefits from less poverty, including the wealthy. The incentive is there for these changes to occur. Poor people don’t make very good consumers. Dealing with the effects of poverty is ironically a massive economic burden on society.
For the record, I don’t think focusing solely on taking money away from the richest people is the only way to lift people out of poverty, I think there are many factors that create poverty and that there being billionaires at all is a contributor to it due to the power they wield with it. Mind you, I don’t really include millionaires in the “wealthy” category here, I’m talking about billionaires - those with many orders of magnitude more wealth than somebody you’d just consider “rich”. I’m certainly not against feeding, housing, and educating people and contribute to efforts to do so locally. I was thinking more along the lines of hypothetically long term eradicating poverty, not how to realistically approach treating it today so that’s probably where our wires got crossed.