The chinese and other asians supposedly work 70 or 80 hour work weeks, and spend all their expendable money on sending siblings to school. I think this has been going on for a few decades. So why are they so poor over there? Why haven't they build machines to do work for them, much like we have machines over here in our factories and operated by our service providers?
How is it possible so many hard workers are poor?
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The Gardener
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I think the question should be completely turned around. Frankly, I think our standards as to what constitutes "poor" have changed over the last few decades. In my opinion, I don't see a lot of total poverty here in Los Angeles... I see record numbers of people owning homes and cars (although they may be shabby), and nobody dies of starvation here unless they are either on drugs or mentally ill. In all honesty, I think the REAL question that should be asked is how is it possible that so many people who really don't work all THAT hard have gotten so rich?
antonio666
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well i think the english working class get a raw deal i mean i drive a van for a well known parcel delivery firm and the money that i am no is not much better than miniumum wage and i have had points put on my license as the firm expects you to deliver 100 plus parcels a day in the northwest of england,and anybody who drives along barton bridge knows how long that takes
ali777
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antonio666 said:
If you think you are getting a bad deal, then what about the Chinese workers?
I have to agree that comparatively a van driver is probably not getting a good deal, but there is so much money in the West that we end up getting 10-20 times more money than the hard working Chinese labourers.
I don't believe the money is gonna dry up in the near future. The current crisis might set the economy back by, let's say, 5% but that will still gives us an income more than 10 times the Chinese workers. We think 5% drop in the economy is a disaster, but we are still rich(er). We've never really had it so good.
I've been reading about economics and talking to an academic economist, I still don't understand how numbers are balanced in economics. It feels like, compared to the Chinese workers, we don't deserve what we get or they don't get what they deserve.
PS: Maybe we should be more grateful and humble....
Gardener, I agree with you about lazy poor people in the united states. Let's not get off topic though. I'm talking about poor people in other countries who work more than we do, and unemployment in places like the middle east and africa if it exists, and especially the russian prostitute slave trade in Syberia and other middle eastern nations. Why is all this going on? Do our US leaders care?
cleverusername
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The Gardener said:
What are you talking about? East LA is full of poor people. LA is crawling with homeless people as well. New York isn't any better. The reason there are so many people that don't need to work hard to become rich is because they're born into it. Their parents are rich, send them to private schools and when they graduate there is a job lined up for them.
blueshard
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The reason why there are so many people working 80 hours a week and are still poor is because they are being exploited for their labor. Wages and benefits are driven down in favor of profit. This is able to occur because jobs are threatened by simply getting low cost labor over sea's.
This makes the gap between the rich and poor even greater.
This makes the gap between the rich and poor even greater.
Petchsky
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CCS said:
They don't send it over seas for nothing, China earns billions of dollars exporting there goods to the USA alone. China still has many poor, but it's middle class is swelling all the time. It was a poor country with a massive population, it takes time to modernise.
So many hard workers are poor because there is a surplus of workers that drive the wages down.
blueshard
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The thing to remember is that these phenomenon occur on the basis of greed. If some one can make a lot of money in the process of fucccking up the system, then they will do it. Remember Reagen told us that Greed is Good.
Another thing to think about is how globalization messed everything up. Globalization is making the rich, rich and the poor poorer, and the economic crisis is making this even more apparent, there is going to be a polarization of upper and lower class, even more so than it is now. This is something could be totally planned, although people get angry when you suggest something that isn't a widespread belief.
I really believe what we are seeing is capitalism failing, I do not believe that a hierarchical system of government works for humans, it always causes oppression and collapses. I believe a natural progression to a system where there is less of a difference in the upper and low classes, is on its way. I think that people will begin to realize in very hard economic times filled with suffering, that greed and ultimately ego is not the way to go. Remember this is all EVOLUTION, including evolution of consciousness.
Another thing to think about is how globalization messed everything up. Globalization is making the rich, rich and the poor poorer, and the economic crisis is making this even more apparent, there is going to be a polarization of upper and lower class, even more so than it is now. This is something could be totally planned, although people get angry when you suggest something that isn't a widespread belief.
I really believe what we are seeing is capitalism failing, I do not believe that a hierarchical system of government works for humans, it always causes oppression and collapses. I believe a natural progression to a system where there is less of a difference in the upper and low classes, is on its way. I think that people will begin to realize in very hard economic times filled with suffering, that greed and ultimately ego is not the way to go. Remember this is all EVOLUTION, including evolution of consciousness.
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blueshard said:
In other words, socialism. I think it's long overdue in this country.
blueshard said:
Exactly. I hope these difficult times will help raise peoples' consciousness, and increase the push toward a more mixed economy (more socialistic, in other words).
The Gardener
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You are missing my point. In a global context, just how "poor" are these people? They all have rooves over their heads, they are all getting food every day, their kids are going to school, they all have ready access to potable water at their reach, and they all have working sewage systems. How many people in East LA, or in New York, have died of starvation? How many in LA or NY die of exposure? I'd stand behind the claim that only those who are mentally ill, or are serious drug addicts paint themselves into such a corner. Even the most acutely poor have access to food stamps, and if not that, then there are food kitchens aplenty at least here in the bowels of Los Angeles.cleverusername said:
In a global context, these people are not really "poor"... especially when you consider that two thirds of humanity does not have reliable daily access to potable water, as a point of reference. How many kids around the world get a quality primary education, for free? As much as some might like to complain about the schools in either LA or NY, the education of even those kids in the complete dregs of either city is streets ahead of what an average human gets.
And that is my basic point... I think the definition of "poor" has shifted in much of the Western world. What used to be "normal" as little back as half a century is now considered "poor"... and what used to be "super rich" is now considered "middle class".
I mean, come on... in the 1950s or 1960s even, you never saw advertisements showing cars with big bows on them, saying that a car is an acceptable christmas present.
