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Why there is poverty
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Serial origamist
Has Achieved Nirvana
Picture of pianojuggler
posted
https://www.theatlantic.com/bo...thew-desmond/673453/

The article will probably slip behind the paywall in a day or two. I recommend reading it while you can.


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pj, citizen-poster, unless specifically noted otherwise.

mod-in-training.

pj@ermosworld∙com

All types of erorrs fixed while you wait.

 
Posts: 30030 | Registered: 27 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Minor Deity
Picture of Amanda
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Excellent article - especially enjoyed the Tolstoy quotes.

IMO one of (if not THE) main falsehoods about why conservatives (~the wealthy ones) think poverty exists is that they believe wealth and privilege are entirely deserved.

That they have earned their high status through meritocracy and (for those who believe in a higher power), that prosperity is a deserved reward.

By extension (majorly), that luck plays only a trivial role in success. I.e., that they owe their top of the pack status entirely to hard work and by being smiled upon by fate (starting with the odds of family qualities. Thinking less of inherited wealth than parental inherited mental health and support. (Health certainly IS wealth too.)


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The most dangerous word in the language is "obvious"

 
Posts: 14392 | Location: PA | Registered: 20 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Has Achieved Nirvana
Picture of QuirtEvans
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by pianojuggler:
https://www.theatlantic.com/bo...thew-desmond/673453/

The article will probably slip behind the paywall in a day or two. I recommend reading it while you can.


It's already there, if you've used your free allotment.
 
Posts: 45725 | Registered: 20 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Has Achieved Nirvana
Picture of wtg
posted Hide Post
It’s available via MSN.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...nsidered/ar-AA18TbhT

And probably via Reader View….


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We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb

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Posts: 37796 | Location: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: 19 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Unrepentant Dork
Gadfly
Picture of dolmansaxlil
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I could just quote the whole article while I nod along but the last paragraph will do…

quote:
What is “maddening,” Desmond writes, is “how utterly easy it is to find enough money to defeat poverty by closing nonsensical tax loopholes,” or by doing 20 or 30 smaller things to curtail just some of the subsidies of affluence. Yet his book makes it all too clear why the loopholes don’t get closed. The real reason the well-off sustain the status quo isn’t that they believe the poor are shiftless. It’s because meaningful change would require giving up their own advantages—or, to put it bluntly, because “we like it,” as Desmond writes. This is, he notes, the “rudest explanation” for our current state of affairs. Getting affluent people to engage in rhetorical hand-wringing over inequality is easy enough. Persuading them to yield some of their entitlements is a lot harder.


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"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst." ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

 
Posts: 4083 | Location: Ontario, Canada | Registered: 29 June 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Serial origamist
Has Achieved Nirvana
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I have heard it said that either Bezos or Musk could single-handedly eliminate hunger and educate every kid in the US and not experience any effect on his standard of living.

I understand that the top income tax bracket in the US used to be close to 50%, but it didn’t seem to stifle entrepreneurship of the growth of viable corporations. Only the really really really high income earners were in that bracket. I’m guessing less than 3%? 1%? Too lazy to google it.

Yes, taxing the rich to support the poor does sound like socialism. Or it sounds like the formula for a healthy and stable society.

From what little I ever learned about politics, what classic “conservatives” want to conserve is The Aristocracy: the principle that a small few were born to rule and the vast majority was born to follow and that how God intended it and it cannot be changed. There is no chance of upward mobility, at least not to advance from the great unwashed into the ruling class.

But that’s the exact opposite of the pablum the right feeds the masses: just work hard and you can pull yourself up by your own bootstraps while at the same time ensuring that such a thing is nearly impossible.

The people who really need to understand this article will never see it. Such socialist ideas never get any airtime on Faux News. So people will keep voting against their own interests. Tucky and friends will make sure of it.


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pj, citizen-poster, unless specifically noted otherwise.

mod-in-training.

pj@ermosworld∙com

All types of erorrs fixed while you wait.

 
Posts: 30030 | Registered: 27 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
(self-titled) semi-posting lurker
Minor Deity
Picture of ShiroKuro
posted Hide Post
quote:
I have heard it said that either Bezos or Musk could single-handedly eliminate hunger and educate every kid in the US and not experience any effect on his standard of living.


I'm sure that's true.

Also, shame on them.


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Posts: 18330 | Location: not in Japan any more | Registered: 20 April 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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