BS: Why do we need poverty?

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: mg
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 12:43 PM

Poverty isn't necessary, although some people will always be unable to support themselves. That is a given. The guy who started the miniloan program calculated how much money it would take through miniloans to eliminate poverty and it really was doable. What we need to do is just assume that x number of people can not take care of themselves, and y number of people could with some education, push here and there, and make-work programs if necessary, in turning helping those who can not help themselves, such as elderly, etc. There are educational funds that for generations have gone either untouched or misused, and I mean vocational education funds. We should never graduate a student without training in some field, ready and wearing to go to work, and of course I mean high school. Junior high students at least should have basic skills in cleaning, entry level cooking etc. Then we need to hit, and hit hard, the social behaviors that lead directly to poverty, not just for those who engage in them, but they bring down others as well. The two main ones are drug use, aprticularly now meth, and too early and/or irresponsible pregnancy. Cut down on those behaviors and watch the poverty rate drop drop drop. And don't bother to tell me poor people must use meth because it alleviates their pain somehow. It doesn't matter; they still don't get to in my book. (And I am all for alleviating real pain through morphine, marijuana or whatever it takes).

Now, people have to take back some of their own means of production. If they have land, they should be growing some permanent crops, like apples, blueberries, etc. Most of them should know how to sew, cook, treat minor illnesses and wounds. Anyone who can should be acquiring renewable energy sources at home..solar lamps, panels, wind chimes, whatever. A good percentage of our high school students who are now some of them learning "to be useless" as a department chair put it, should be learning to build simple concrete block or other type houses.

Yes, we should have universal medical care, public housing where the residents neither destroy the property nor terrorize other tenants, safe and pleasant homes for the mentally ill, elderly etc. We absolutly have to look at the foster care situation. There are so many abuses. Some of the currently unemployed should be house parents in children's houses or little villages.

We need to find ways to distribute perfectly good items that now end up in our landfills. We need to secure our farmland, both from being turned into other uses, and from terrorism. We need to encourage simple lifestyles, good money management etc. A lot can be done right now, right from here. I give it 10 seconds before someone says I am blaming the victim. I am not. I want to house and feed everyone and put them to work if the economy itself can not. Then I wnt to step back and leave them alone to work it out as they please. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Piers
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 12:19 PM

I think you are right about greed Joe F. But inequality in the 'developed' world is increasing, in income as well as wealth possesion so I don't see how you can suggest that the 'disequilibrium' might disappear. Surely as long as the social relations of capital and labour exist, there is poverty of control over the means of production which results in poverty of income because holders of capital can command assets that yield profit whereas the majority have only their labour to sell.

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 11:17 AM

Greed is neither a sufficient nor a necessary explanation. One thing greedy people do is go into business; and poor people make poor customers. Another thing they do is become robbers; but successful robbers rob where the money is.

The poor as a reservoir of cheap labor were probably important in the early stages of industrialization. But the tendency of capitalism, thru investment in capital, is to lessen the relative importance of labor as a factor in production. Sure, if the Chinese & the Brazilians had the same standard of living as the U.S., clothes & coffee would be somewhat more expensive here, but not overwhelmingly so. Peasants & sweatshop workers are not the foundation on which the economy rests, however that may have been 150 years ago.

For prosperous people, greedy or otherwise, the poor are mainly an expensive nuisance. We haven't gotten rid of them, IMO, because nobody knows how to organize it. Wealth & poverty are a sort of condensation phenomenon, like the segregation of water molecules into liquid & vapor in some ranges of temperature & pressure. Whether that is a disequilibrium that will disappear with the further accumulation of capital, or is an equilibrium that with require a fundamental, noneconomic restructuring of society to sort out, probably depends on details that are hard to sort out. I am suspicious of people who say they know.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: There's no foolishness like old foolishness. :||

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 11:12 AM

poverty is mostly relative. There are 'poor' in this country who would be considered quite comfortable in 3rd world countries. The only way to avoid poverty is to have WAY more resources and land and food and water than the population needs. (some island paradises used to have something like this, before they were shown TV and motorboats and other manufactured goods.)

Reduce the population enough so that there is not struggle for basics and there are jobs for everyone and we can come close to eliminating realpoverty...but relative poverty will always be here as long as some people are too dumb, unlucky, unhealthy, unmotivated to cope with getting their share, while others are smarter, luckier, greedier and motivated to get more than their share...even in the midst of plenty.

You will NOT solve the problem with any known political system, as the only solutions are unthinkable to the short-term mindsets of the politicians.

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 10:38 AM

A capitalist society needs poverty (and a class of poverts) to threaten the working folks-- in at least two forms which are usually alternated as needed:

1. "Comply with [insert latest ripoff or wrongness] or you'll wind up like THEM."

2. "We can always replace you with one of THEM-- they would love to have your job."

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Jeanie
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 05:50 AM

Sorry - it should be "Make Poverty History" - but the link above works, nevertheless !

- jeanie

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Jeanie
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 05:49 AM

Take a look at this website:Make Poverty Hisotry

- jeanie

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Piers
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 04:57 AM

[i]'Much more useful a question than "why do we need money" because it is self-evident that we do need something to fulfill the role that money holds so well.'[/i]

Is it self-evident that we need money [to trade goods and services]? It is certainly evident that as long as the capitalist/market/money system has existed there has been poverty. People have been trying for hundreds of years to eradicate poverty within the capitalist system, it doesn't work. Unfashionable as it is to say so the world is still divided into those who own the means of producing things and those that don't. Those that don't possess the means of living are forced to sell their labour to those that do. This is the basis of poverty. Labour is a commodity, if there is no buyer it goes unsold with disasterous consequences for the seller, or if - because the basis of labour consumption in capitalism is the ability to return a profit - the value of that labour doesn't buy a decent standard of living.

No matter how much fair pay, fairtrade, welfare state and charity we get we are only treating the symptoms of the disease. The cure is for the means of living to be in the possession of all and used in the interests of all through democratic control. Production for use, not production for profit.

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: mooman
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 03:44 AM

Agree with Little Hawk for the most part, except the problem isn't exclusively American. It's due to greed in general by those who already have the most and the underlying political system that supports them.

Peace

moo

(Good on Hesperis for starting an important "BS" thread (and best regards to her too))

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: alanabit
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 03:44 AM

In the Thatcher scheme of things - economic liberalism as it was so charmingly called, there had to be a punishment for "failure". This was made clear in the speeches of Sir Keith Joseph and other acolytes years before she took power. The idea caught on, didn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Bert
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 01:48 AM

wE NEED POVERTY TO KEEP THE bUSH FAMILY IN RICHES

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 12:32 AM

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were asking that very question when they launched a successful revolution in Cuba that threw out the Mafia and a bunch of big American companies that ran everything in Cuba. The CIA eventually killed Che, and they have tried to kill Fidel many times, but not succeeded. Their bosses seem to think we do need poverty...in certain places and for certain people. In Cuba, a rather poor country, all medical care is for free. In the USA, a very rich country, the largest current cause of middle class people being driven into bankruptcy according to a recent article I read, is being utterly unable to pay absolutely necessary medical bills.

Most countries in western Europe provide socialized medical funding to protect their public. Canada does too, but NOT for dental. The USA basically doesn't, period.

Why? Greed on the part of the wealthy at the top of the system. Greed on the part of American voters, who imagine they are getting a "tax break" by privatizing everything. Greed on the part of politicians who make misleading propaganda about tax breaks to get themselves elected, and who suck up to big drug companies and medical associations and military contractors. Add to that sheer ignorance on the part of an American voting public that is told from cradle to grave that they live in "the greatest society on Earth". Ha. What a sad, sad joke it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: number 6
Date: 22 Feb 05 - 12:08 AM

who said we need poverty ??

sIx

Subject: BS: Why do we need poverty?
From: hesperis
Date: 21 Feb 05 - 11:54 PM

Why do we need some people to starve? Why do we need some people to become unable to work? Why do we need huge military budgets and small social assistance budgets? Why do we let children grow up malnourished all the way into incapable adults? Why is it necessary that the playing field be so uneven that some never even have the chance to get on that field?

And why, do we let this happen in the richest countries in the world, those with great natural resources and innovations and wealth?

Much more useful a question than "why do we need money" because it is self-evident that we do need something to fulfill the role that money holds so well. But why do we need poverty? There doesn't seem to be any good in it.