I Wish This Was A Joke

[Mister Agenda]

Real wealth is stuff not numbers in a ledger. If you killed every millionaire and took their stuff and divided it up among the rest. Peoples lives would not change by very much. Rich people just don't have enough stuff.

Bullshit! Less than 1/3 of the annual earnings of the world's richest 100 people would be enough to end extreme poverty everywhere. For less than $70B everyone on the planet could have clean water to drink, food to eat, a roof over their head and basic medical services. In 2012 the world's richest 100 people earned an additional $240B. If those 100 people gave 30% of their earnings for one year everybody on the planet could have basic necessities and the rich would still be filthy fucking rich.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/billionaire...ll/5318471

http://topics.bloomberg.com/bloomberg-bi...res-index/

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/researc...chandy.pdf

Cheaper than a war. In many ways.

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Bullshit! Less than 1/3 of the annual earnings of the world's richest 100 people would be enough to end extreme poverty everywhere. For less than $70B everyone on the planet could have clean water to drink, food to eat, a roof over their head and basic medical services. In 2012 the world's richest 100 people earned an additional $240B. If those 100 people gave 30% of their earnings for one year everybody on the planet could have basic necessities and the rich would still be filthy fucking rich.

Money and numbers in a ledger do not make people better off....real stuff does. Here is a thought experiment. Imagine Gilligans Island. Mr and Mrs Howell have suit cases full of money. Lets say they have 99% of all the money on the island(by your thinking they have 99% of the wealth). Now suppose those suitcases of money are opened up and the money is all divided equally among the 7 castaways. Are the castaways now going to be better off? Nope.

Suppose a pallet containing food, generators, tools, furniture, medicine, ky jelly, etc washed up on shore. Now would the castaways be much better off? Yes they would because real wealth is stuff....not money or 0s in a ledger.

If you want to improve the lives of poor people. You need to produce more stuff.

Now, I am all for re-distributing money. I advocated more than most here I think. I'm just not stupid enough to fall for the claim that the richest people own most of the wealth when they do not.

We don't live on Gilligan's island. We live in a world where Mr. and Mrs. Howell can use that money to get all the stuff they want. And a lot of power, too.

I agree that it's more complex than just moving money around. For some reason, we seem to be averse to testing social schemes on a small scale before trying them out on everyone over whom we have power, but I think it would be smarter to try different ideas in different places and compare results before settling on one plan to rule them all. You'd think the USA's state structure would be more conducive to this kind of experimentation than it is.

Still, it does occur. For example, Utah has made great progress towards reducing homelessness by providing them housing, and saved money in the process. Other states shouldn't need a federal mandate to seriously consider imitating Utah in this regard.