Posted on Sep 22, 2015
Is Capitalism to blame for the world's poverty?
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http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/the-left-has-its-pope/#8uvpvrzZXEPsq0VX.99
Any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia shows that the species began in poverty. It is not poverty, but prosperity, that needs explaining. Poverty is automatic, but prosperity requires many things – none of which is equally distributed around the world or even within a given society.
Any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia shows that the species began in poverty. It is not poverty, but prosperity, that needs explaining. Poverty is automatic, but prosperity requires many things – none of which is equally distributed around the world or even within a given society.
Politics
Economics
Society
Posted 9 y ago
Responses: 44
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Capitalism is not the great evil of the world, corruption is. Duke Power is one example. They are a very powerful company. They continue to use unlined ponds to 'retain' toxic coal ash, which regularly contaminates ground water, and rivers in North Carolina. They also spend millions of dollars so the toxic leftovers are not labrled that way by the EPA. The easy solution would be to use lined retention ponds to stop spills and leaks. The corruption in the company drives it to spend no money on anything that does not involve profit. Putting profit above doing the right thing alienates a company.
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How the Hell can you benefit from poverty? By definition you have nothing to give or have taken from you. Many come from poverty and become something, I could tell you about a few, including my own background. There was a time when the communities and religious institution took care of the poverty, then the government stepped in and eliminated it by the trillions of dollars spent through programs like the Great Society Programs. You want to see real poverty, read up on the sub-Saharan continent and tell me how capitalism did that.
According to The Heritage Foundation, the federal poverty line also excludes income other than cash income, especially welfare benefits. Thus, if food stamps and public housing were successfully raising the standard of living for poverty stricken individuals, then the poverty line figures would not shift, since they do not consider the income equivalents of such entitlements
According to The Heritage Foundation, the federal poverty line also excludes income other than cash income, especially welfare benefits. Thus, if food stamps and public housing were successfully raising the standard of living for poverty stricken individuals, then the poverty line figures would not shift, since they do not consider the income equivalents of such entitlements
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Name one true capitalist nation that has high poverty. Competitive markets simply create massive wealth when compared to socialist or Government controlled markets. Take a basic history of economics course to see how bad Government ran markets perform.
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CPO Andy Carrillo, MS
Take the US Postal Service, for example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/business/postal-service-cuts-loss-to-1-5-billion.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/business/postal-service-cuts-loss-to-1-5-billion.html
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Oppression causes poverty. Frankly if you look around the world, countries with the most widespread poverty usually had a strong Catholic influence in their past or present.
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Suspended Profile
Sorry meant to respond to original post
CPO Andy Carrillo, MS
Yes, my ancestors came to the Americas seeking gold while incidentally converting the indigenous populations to Catholicism to produce the commodities Spain wanted. A willing and devoted workforce indeed.
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Any form of government can have a positive effect on it's people if the leaders are benevolent and beholding to the people. Most places where there is rampant poverty there are also "governments" that do not seem to care about those that live within their borders.
Where countries run amuck is where rulers are not justly elected and required to answer to the people. If you look at most modern democracies (democratic republics, social democracies, parliamentary democracies etc.) poverty is less of an issue. Why is that? Because the people have a voice in their country and prosperous countries can do more for the poor than less prosperous countries.
The poor will always be among us it is how we treat them as a society that is important. Also how we define poverty in the west is vastly different than it is defined in many/most third world countries.
Where countries run amuck is where rulers are not justly elected and required to answer to the people. If you look at most modern democracies (democratic republics, social democracies, parliamentary democracies etc.) poverty is less of an issue. Why is that? Because the people have a voice in their country and prosperous countries can do more for the poor than less prosperous countries.
The poor will always be among us it is how we treat them as a society that is important. Also how we define poverty in the west is vastly different than it is defined in many/most third world countries.
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Capitalism is responsible for the prosperity in the world; where you see free markets you see the most prosperity possible among the populations.
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SGT James Hastings
Yep, even the communistic countries have had to allow some degree of capitalism to keep their people from starving.
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Capt Seid Waddell
PO2 Mark Saffell, SGT James Hastings, it is interesting to look at the cases of North and South Korea, East and West Germany, Free and Communist China, as well as Hong Kong and China. In each case the same people were divided by war into two systems - free market and command economies, even with families split arbitrarily between them.
In each case the command economy devolved into poverty and repression and the free market economies advanced into prosperity in which even the poorest of the people did better than the bulk of the people under the government-run economies.
This is because the free market harnesses self-interest and turns it to the greater good for the entire population. People can get wealthy by providing superior goods and services to the population at the lowest price possible; if an individual can figure a way to give the people a better deal than they can get from others they will take market share and accumulate wealth. People sit up nights thinking about how to do a better job – out of their own personal self-interests.
Command economies (communism, socialism) OTOH try to harness altruism to run the economy; the people are expected to work for the common good in exchange for having their needs met by the government.
A command economy gives the bulk of the people the same reward whether they work or not; it does not pay the individual to try to improve their condition because the government controls all of that. If they cannot get ahead by hard work people tend to do the least possible to get by - and the economy suffers. Eventually the government must use force to get the people to follow its commands.
Humanity has a far greater supply of self-interest than altruism; it is in man's nature to work to provide comforts for themselves and for their families. They care much less for their neighbors’ welfare than for their own.
The reason socialism/communism never works is that they are based upon a fantasy.
Capitalism is based upon reality and will therefore beat socialism/communism every time.
In each case the command economy devolved into poverty and repression and the free market economies advanced into prosperity in which even the poorest of the people did better than the bulk of the people under the government-run economies.
This is because the free market harnesses self-interest and turns it to the greater good for the entire population. People can get wealthy by providing superior goods and services to the population at the lowest price possible; if an individual can figure a way to give the people a better deal than they can get from others they will take market share and accumulate wealth. People sit up nights thinking about how to do a better job – out of their own personal self-interests.
Command economies (communism, socialism) OTOH try to harness altruism to run the economy; the people are expected to work for the common good in exchange for having their needs met by the government.
A command economy gives the bulk of the people the same reward whether they work or not; it does not pay the individual to try to improve their condition because the government controls all of that. If they cannot get ahead by hard work people tend to do the least possible to get by - and the economy suffers. Eventually the government must use force to get the people to follow its commands.
Humanity has a far greater supply of self-interest than altruism; it is in man's nature to work to provide comforts for themselves and for their families. They care much less for their neighbors’ welfare than for their own.
The reason socialism/communism never works is that they are based upon a fantasy.
Capitalism is based upon reality and will therefore beat socialism/communism every time.
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Capitalism is a very loaded term... as is pretty much any economic label. Much of the capitalism we see and many of the popularized examples of the problems with it stem from very non-free market activities. Take pharmaceuticals for example. Buy the rights to a already developed cheap drug and then gain market protection from the FDA which makes it prohibitively costly for competitors to enter the market. At that point, you are free to raise the price to whatever you want. That isn't free market capitalism, it is a government backed monopoly. I would point out that many of the things we in the U.S. complain of being too expensive are generally heavily government regulated or subsidized... higher education, healthcare, energy.
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CPO Andy Carrillo, MS
Beautifully stated: excise taxes, etc. Perhaps that explains why comparable or superior healthcare can significantly less costly in Singapore, South America (Chile), etc. I have friends who travel to Mexico for dental work at 1/2 the price by US trained dentists.
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Here's an illustration illuminating the difference between the market, and a government managed market...
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Any civilization that employs a monetary system as its driving force, will require scarcity in order to maintain its existence. There has to be a socio-economic hierarchy in order for money to be continuously supplied (because it's all in the form of debt). Without debt and scarcity of resources, money is merely just a piece of paper. Without a lower and middle class, it just doesn't work.
So unfortunatly, poverty is not going away until we evolve as a species. The problem is money itself, not just capitalism. There is plenty of food and resources on our planet and there is great potential for technological advancements - all of which must remain scarce otherwise the whole thing falls apart for the ruling class.
So unfortunatly, poverty is not going away until we evolve as a species. The problem is money itself, not just capitalism. There is plenty of food and resources on our planet and there is great potential for technological advancements - all of which must remain scarce otherwise the whole thing falls apart for the ruling class.
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