Poverty Is a Threat to Democracy, with Tavis Smiley | Big Think
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- Poverty Is a Threat to Democracy,
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Poverty is the defining issue of our time, says Tavis Smiley. And while we have recognized the problem of income inequality, economic mobility is not yet part of our national conversation.
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TAVIS SMILEY:
Tavis Smiley is a talk show host, author, political commentator, entrepreneur, advocate and philanthropist. He became a radio commentator in 1991, and starting in 1996, he hosted the talk show BET Talk (later renamed BET Tonight) on BET. Smiley then began hosting The Tavis Smiley Show on NPR (2002-04) and currently hosts Tavis Smiley on PBS on the weekdays and "The Tavis Smiley Show" from PRI. From 2010 to 2013, Smiley and Cornel West joined forces to host their own radio talk show, Smiley & West. Smiley is the new host of "Tavis Talks" on BlogTalkRadio's Tavis Smiley Network. He is also the author or co-author of over a dozen books including his latest My Journey with Maya, about his friendship with the late Maya Angelou
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TRANSCRIPT:
Tavis Smiley: I believe that poverty is the defining issue of our time. I believe that poverty is threatening our very democracy and I mean that sincerely. It's threatening our very democracy, the existence of it, the future of it. I believe that poverty is a matter of national security because these numbers are not sustainable. One percent of the people cannot continue to own and control 40 percent of the wealth. The top 400 richest Americans, 400 individuals, have wealth equivalent to the bottom 150 million fellow citizens. That's not a democracy. You can call it an oligarchy, you can call it plutocracy but it's not a democracy. And that's why say that poverty is threatening our very democracy. So there is clearly the issue of poverty, there is the issue of incoming equality, but I think there's a third issue that we don't talk about enough is the issue of economic mobility. So income and equality is the difference, the gap between the rich and the poor. Well let's be frank, to some degree you're always going to have a gap between the rich and the poor. Economic mobility is about how you lift the poor up from the suffering that they have to endure every day. So the conversation is really not so much about income and inequality or wealth and inequality as it is about economic mobility, that's the issue we have to focus on.
1% of the people watching this video left 40% of the comments. This is unsustainable.
The direction of the progressive agenda economy reminds me of the schools. They are more worried about making sure everybody is on the same level than allowing the supreme intelligence and hustle to flourish. That will lead to more mediocrity. People's minds are this country's biggest resource. And I'll tell you half these human resources out here are relatively untapped. You'd be surprised what even the average person is capable of if they're let loose to succeed. And everybody doesn't have to be a winner. Everybody still benefits.
And our goal should be heading toward replacing most of the welfare system with Universal Social Security for all. Universal basic income will fill in the cracks in the economy going forward because things are going to get very disruptive.
*****
what are those degrees doing for people? When exactly is that effect supposed to kick in? Will it be before or after that get that financially crippling student debt paid off?
*****
Who's talking about the UBI? All I hear is bitching about what rich people got and this program for this group and that for that group. UBI wouldn't fly with the liberals because it's too fair.
*****
I bet a republican will bring it in first. You need immigration control to use the UBI. The whole point of it is to eliminate poverty in one swoop.
*****
tell me why so many people with degrees are working at starbucks and shit
I agree that "economic mobility" is a major issue, but I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the impact "income inequality" has as well, because income inequality is the greatest factor on the monopoly effect - the one with the greatest resources is able to influence and control yet more resources and so on...
Plato said this in The Republic. He said a republic would fall if wealth inequality persisted unchallenged.
I think Karl Marx said that too.
And I think claiming that everything that is not pure capitalism as communism is just as retarded as your comment.
+Ben Ny Who said anything about communism?
***** Are you trying to use satire? I have read Das Kapital and the communist manifesto. Have you? You'll find he advocates directly for communism. Marx isn't labeled "the father of communism" for no reason. I didn't judge Das Kapital by the cover, I judged it based on the idiotic, backwards ideas inside.
***** Yes, he does a very good job identifying problems caused by industrial revolutions, but his solutions immediately jump to the most extreme case. Kill middle class people, abolish private property and religion, and establish authoritarian government (because that will never be corrupt, right?)
I'm not criticizing you, but I disagree that Marx is a philosopher. He was a revolutionary, but his theory was terrible and horrifying.
Wow, this should/could have been so much longer...
It does seem rather brief, I was interested to hear more of his reasoning.
+KTSamurai1 For sure; I can't say I always agree with him but Tavis Smiley is almost always thought-provoking and well-spoken; a refreshing change in today's society.
I would go a step further and say economic mobility isn't the problem, but rather lack of education on how to move up in our economic system is. Many people do move up economically in today's society, but there are vast numbers stuck in poverty that don't have the knowledge of what it takes to become successful.
WINNER!!!!!!
Dumbo, education is a big part of economic mobility, you are not going any further with that idea :D The person in the video was mostly talking about the super rich. 99% of educated and successful people don't become super rich because it takes a lot more to do that. And even if you know, you still need luck(or a very wealthy family).
The biggest problem is the super rich keeping the wealth. In a capitalist economic system(which so far almost everyone uses, even most of the "socialist" countries ) wealth concentrates around wealth. How do you stop that without inhibiting economic growth and innovation is the big question. And if you can think of a solution, billions of people would be grateful.
One idea I enjoy is putting a gap on how much a person can inherit. You shouldn't be allowed to get billions of dollars just because you where born in the right family. But already that is very hard to do since the rich can easily hide their wealth in multiple corporations(which they are already doing).
So create employment. Start a business. The internet has opened up infinite possibilities to create wealth, but many don't understand it.
I dont think that this is correct. We have a generation of mass graduates from university. There is not enough well payed jobs for this well educated generation. A university degree today is worth less than 50 years ago. Sorry for my bad english.
RiseUp Why are you telling me this? Is it because you didn't understand anything I said?
My point was exactly that if we start taking the money successful people have made, we will make it less favorable for people to make money. But at one point the wealth is so concentrated that it is harder for other people to make something useful. If your innovative ideas are pushed aside by bigger companies or just bought out, you don't have motivation to really try.
Not to mention it is just ridiculous that people can inherit vast amounts of money and don't have to do anything to gain it. Those people are not successful and in most cases are not motivated to do anything useful.
And the bigger companies become the harder it is for them to be innovative and efficient, since there is no need for it. They just become profit machines for their owners.Where the product is the least important thing.
"economic mobility" is a major issue. You will always have rich and poor. People have to be able to READ, WORK and INVEST even if its small chunks of money at a time. being able to buy a house and have food is most important. people are focusing too much on I don't have the newest car, newest home, newest phone...thats not poverty.
Bernie 2016!
Lol no.
I'll write in, "DEEZ NUTZ," before I vote for Bernie.
Can't be both?
I completely agree lack of social mobility in society, due to multiple factors of stratification and conscious and unconscious bias, causes a very large inequality of wealth and income.
Statistics on economic equality has dramatically changed in the past 5 years. 1% of American citizens own more than 40% of capital. $ isn't wealth. Capital is everything you own, the richest people invest their $ not hold on to it as if they want to pay taxes on it.
Where's the rest of it???
The income gap is completely irrelevant to any problem relating to fairness or happiness in a free world. It is only a problem if you view wealth as a zero-sum game, which it isn't or else most of the world would still be in the stone age. It would also be a problem if you view wealth as a thing society owns, which there is no rational reason to think this ought to be the case.
When you spend $20 on a Harry Potter book, you are expecting to get more than $20 worth of value out of the book, otherwise you wouldn't buy the book. JK Rowling gets the $20 (for all intents and purposes, publisher aside) which she values more than her book. Both you and JK Rowling have benefited from the trade. Repeat this type of transaction 50 million times over the course of the Harry Potter series and JK Rowling is now a billionaire while 50 million people have had a slight increase in value added to their life from buying her book, which justifies Rowling now being a billionaire. In this instance, the income gap has increased, perhaps dramatically, but wealth overall has increased and no one is worse off as a result. The income gap tells nothing about wealth or happiness in a country. Capitalism is the way to go. Cronyism and political inequality must go.
It's fair to say that wealth is not zero-sum, but money and assets are, and when such a small percentage of people holds such a large amount of the money in the economy, it decreases the "velocity" of that money (the rate at which it circulates through the economy). In other words, JK Rowling may have a billion dollars, but that is a billion dollars that will be doing much less to create jobs and grow the economy in her hands than one thousand dollars would do in the hands of one million different people.
Compound this with the fact that many studies on lottery winners show that there are rapidly diminishing returns of happiness when someone's (monetary) wealth increases above a certain thresh hold. In other words, someone making $200,000 per year is a lot happier than someone making $50,000 a year, but someone making $100,000,000 a year is not much happier than the person making $200,000 a year.
Add on top of this the terrible conditions people end up suffering when they have low (monetary) wealth, which is exacerbated by the velocity problem I mentioned above. You may get more than $20 value out of the groceries you spend that $20 on, but that doesn't really matter when you now can't afford to buy any more groceries for the next two weeks.
So I agree that Capitalism can and has done a lot of good for the world, but we also need a robust social safety net, with things like universal health care, universal basic income and/or a high minimum wage, affordable housing, etc, so combat the negative side effects of capitalistic markets. I also think other traditionally Socialist policies like a sharply progressive tax structure would also massively improve things.
There is no economic theory that says that if the income gap is greater then economic productivity diminishes. I challenge you to find such a theory. So long as the money supply matches the growth of GDP then currency accumulation isn't an issue. Also, what happens when a millionaire has a large savings? Does the money sit under a pillow? Of course not, it goes into a bank where it is lent out as capital for productive projects, and then interest is paid to the deposit. Or it is invested in other capital such as stocks. So saving doesn't hurt the economy one bit, in fact it drives the economy. We've been fed these econ 101 theories that consumption is the key to growth in order to justify the expanding role of government (from Friedman to Keynes alike) when the real world evidence for their claims are circumstantial at best. Well, you can't consume what is not produced. Production _is_ the diving force of the economy and has been since before government's role in the economy, and can only occur through saving and investment.
The relation of happiness to money is also moot. It doesn't justify stealing the earnings of those that have more.
When someone needs to buy something they cannot afford, they need to have exhausted several options: savings, credit, assets, friends, family, extended family, community, charity, and possibly poverty insurance (look into mutual aid societies). If you've exhausted all of these then you are either utterly incompetent and perhaps deserve your fate, or you're a jerk who no one wants to help. Take the position of someone virtuous who is in true need. Say you need to pay for an operation and have exhausted all alternatives so you must rely on the good will of others. You have two options: you can either ask your neighbor kindly for financial assistance, in which case they may voluntarily assist you or not. Perhaps they are planning to set aside money for their daughter's education. Or you can use a weapon and demand that they pay for your operation through force. Which is more moral of you to do? The latter option represents the use of government.
Also, a quick aside about health care. If you are in favor of the legalization of drugs (even just marijuana, tobacco, alcohol, etc) then a NHS is financially and morally bankrupt as it relies on the money of those who made good health choices to pay for those who made deliberate poor health choices. If you are not in favor of making free choices about your body with food/drugs, then you are essentially property of the government who thou shalt not maim, vandalize, or otherwise damage.
Nefariousness how is NHS or a comparable system going to go bankrupt paying for cigarette induced cancer when there are massive taxes on cigarettes, alcohol and in Canada, proposed high taxes on legal marijuana? I live in a country with universal health care as well as (obviously) legal cigarettes and alcohol, and our system is not bankrupt. I fail to see why other drugs would change matters if introduced with appropriate taxes.
As for your statements on poverty, that is pretty naive. I like to think of myself as a pretty nice person, I'm rather well liked by all my friends, but none of them are going to lend me thousands of dollars if I fall on hard times. Nor, in most circumstances, can average people afford to lend out major sums of money to friends and family, even if they wanted to, because poor people tend to live near other poor people. Even normal Americans (for a reference point, I have seen similar evidence for other nations) live with very little financial security, if not paycheck-to-paycheck. As for banks and credit, they are not going keep lending you money at 0% interest forever, if you need to take on debt for a extended period of time it becomes very hard to get back out, because your monthly income becomes dedicated to simply paying off the interest.
As for the velocity of money I mentioned, I admit I am not a trained economist, I have picked up this information from scattered sources on the web and a few people I've talked to that work in the industry, so I can't cite exact theories for you.
I have heard this "taxation is theft" argument from libertarians a hundred times and I'm not any more convinced this time than I was the last ninety nine times. Taxation is a necessary part of any even remotely advanced society, such societies need to decide what rate gives the greatest benefit to the society without overly hampering the economy. If that means a high rate to maximize everyone's well being and ability to contribute meaningfully to the economy, then I support that.
I hope you *never* get cancer and realize how ineffective the NHS is when it comes to prolonged and specialized treatment. If all you're getting is a broken bone fixed, some antibiotics, or some minor surgery then the NHS is fine.
My poverty scenario wasn't meant to draw a practical scenario, but a moral one. Is it moral to use force against an otherwise law abiding citizen just because you are in need of assistance? Really pick at that one for a while.
Lastly, some food for thought. A study came out in 2005 that explained how Federal regulations in the US hamper GPD growth by about 2% per year. If the rate of regulations, which have been growing every year in the US since WWII supposedly in our favor, had stayed where they were in about 1949, our GDP (total income) would be over $50 trillion (2005) instead of $15 trillion (2005). The most conservative estimates still give over $30 trillion. Median household income would increase from $53000 to $330000. Poverty in any meaningful sense would be negligible, far and below what charity could easily pick up. (www4.ncsu.edu/~jjseater/regulationandgrowth.pdf). People wouldn't need a single payer healthcare system or basic income. Welfare and regulations have eliminated opportunities for poor people to become entrepreneurs, which is what matters most. Make of that what you will.
Nefariousness GDP does not translate directly into evenly distributed wealth, however, especially in the absence of regulation. Look to the cable companies of today in America or Canada. It takes an absurdly large buy in to get into the industry with remotely competitive coverage, which is why even Google has only been able to cover a few cities. This allows the cable and internet regional monopolies and duopolies that exist in both countries. Similarly the original Bell had to be broken up because of it's monopolistic practices, Microsoft had to be reigned in, the list goes on. Without regulation I find it very hard to imagine that wealth being distributed even as broadly as the GDP is today, it likely would have been much more centralized because companies would have been able to act in a much more monopolistic and consumer hostile fashion.
I again reject the comparison of taxation to use of force. Sure, if it comes down to it taxation would have to be enforced with violence, but that is frankly the cost of living in a society. If taxes and violence and violence is immoral, we would be obligated to cease any and all taxation and nothing resembling the modern state would survive, until tribal gangs started taking mafia-like protection fees from locals, escalating gradually back into a tax-taking state. States are the inevitable conclusion of human communities, and taxes are their cost. Combine this with the services we all benefit from that our taxes pay for (military and police which allow the existence of a free market) and I think you could well argue that taxes are simply payments on a line of credit extended to each of us by society.
As for your comments on the NHS, I may have accidentally mislead you by following up on your previous comments about it, but I don't live in the UK, so I don't have much anecdotal knowledge of the NHS aside from the good things I've heard of it from friends who live there, and the fact that I know it is popular in the UK. The friends and family of mine who have suffered cancer or other serious medical issues have never had a problem with the social health care in my country.
Wealth is not a fixed pie. It's created with innovation and productivity.
I feel like this video cut off right after he introduced the topic he was going to discuss. If you're not going to give him time to unpack his statement then we're just hearing him give his opinion. Really would have liked to hear him back it up.
I agree, I don't care what Tavis Smiley believes. His argument that the rich are destroying democracy because of the amount of money they have and USA will not fit his definition on democracy, really needs more premises.
Is there going to be a longer version of this?
NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR.
this was a very good video, I just would have loved for him to talk more about how we can increase economic mobility and decrease inequality
Income Inequality is a relativistic red herring that fools people into thinking they are entitled to wealthier people's money (whether they need it or not)...and voting for the politicians who give it to them. Most of America's "poor" are really only poor in comparison to America's rich; they are in fact rich in comparison to most other nations' poor. It isn't about who has more; it's about who has enough. As for Economic Mobility, while a poor child is unlikely to become a millionaire, it's not at all unrealistic for a poor child to dream of joining the Middle Class. Economic Mobility happens all the time; it just happens in baby steps rather than leaps and bounds.
More Tavis Smiley!
Whats sad is that I would be happy with 1 acre and a wooden shack out in the woods, no car, home grown food and sustainable energy.
But even THAT costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to do.
It is not a democracy I ben saying this for a while now Yes!!!
"Matter of national security", fuck yeah! So more regulations, laws, taxes and government control over people! That should help!
The US is ultra-good in terms of absolute economic mobility. That is the raw increase PPP that the next generation can achieve. In terms of quintiles it may not be quite as good, but, I would argue that moving through quintiles in the US is a pretty amazing business.
Economic mobility and economic equality is connected. More economic equality is generally tied together with greater economic mobility. The nordic countries, Germany and New Zealand have more economic mobility than the more unequal Italy, USA and UK. Business Insider had a short piece about it called "Inequality and Mobility in the United States". So I don't think you can disconnect the two as Tavis Smiley urges us to do.
Also, economic mobility is not only about poor people moving up, it is also to some degree about more affluent people moving down relatively.
Please read Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
I think both issues are worth tackling. Yes, Economic Mobility is a huge priority, but Economic Inequality is also associated with detrimental social effects such as higher crime rates and drug usage. It's not just about making sure the poor don't stay poor for very long, it's also about helping them with some of their hardship while they are poor.
No war but the class war.
lol.
we've been having class war for thousands of years and the same side keeps winnings
+JewTube Is that suppose to be an argument to give up? And that's not entirely true. The Spanish Revolution happened in case you forgot.
The Vegan An-com Yea, class war. Coz every middle class and rich guy in the world is evil and the proletariah must reign.
+Bruce Slajvic That's a superficial and disingenuous way to put it. Anarchism is based on one of the founding ideas that all hierarchy is immoral and must be abolished because it's exploitative, limits liberty and equality, and is essentially pure despotism.
Well said in such a short time. Now days people seem to think it has to be one way or the other (Everyone equal or everyone very unequal). Both of those don't work. You will always have/should have a gap between the rich and the poor, it's about lifting the poor up and helping them, not just giving them free handouts.
Tavis we don't even have a democracy, we live in a Republic.
The only thing he said was "Economic mobility is the real issue, not so much income inequality. And it threatens democracy." Ok, I agree with you, now explain why.
thw psychology of wealth enequality is an economic problem as the drive to rise above the gap lowers once its perceived marginally unpreportianate as sustainability becomes a greater focus for the opportunist
economic mobility is higher when there is less income inequality. when all of the money is held by the top 1% of 1% than the rest of the 99.9% have to fight over crumbs, and it is virtually impossible to get into that top 1% of 1% if you don't start there.
"NO NO NO! WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T LOOK AT HOW BIG THE GAP IS! Please focus on LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE!"
Ugh.
***** "Please choose between these two terrible options. Ignore the silly man trying to give you a good option."
Income inequality is also an issue, at least at the level it is at now. It's nigh inextricably linked to economic mobility.
That aside, fantastic video.
get a job
How did you know? :D But seriously u missed my point.
hard for poverty to threaten something that ins't supposed to even exist
While I wholeheartedly agree that America's extreme consolidation of wealth is detrimental to a properly functioning democracy, I would also submit that the relativistic misuse of the the word "poor" has misled Americans' collective perception of "poverty".
Income Inequality is NOT the same as Poverty. "400 individuals have wealth equivalent to the bottom 150 Million fellow citizens," does NOT mean those 150 Million citizens are POOR; it just means those 400 are RICH! Poverty is not defined by who has MORE; it is defined by who doesn't have ENOUGH, and of the 150 Million mentioned, the VAST majority of them are doing just fine. As for Economic Mobility, America currently has about 10.1 MILLION households with, at least, $1M in assets, AND half of those households reached that level just in the last twenty years, moving from the Middle Class to the Upper Class...Economic Mobility. While, the chances of a genuinely poor child growing up to be a millionaire are extremely slim, the chances of that same child growing up to be in the Middle Class are totally realistic...Economic Mobility. It isn't about giant leaps; it's about baby steps...the patience for which has been largely obliterated by a society that regularly demands instant gratification.
Fundamentally Economic Mobility is also about HARD WORK, but our Public Education system has taught the last two generations to shun "dirty jobs", spend tens of thousands of dollars on college, and hold out for comfortable office work, even though it often pays LESS. On top of that, our broken Welfare System punishes economic progress by (A) subsidizing WAY beyond the bare essentials, thus motivating "on paper" poverty and (B) utterly cutting off (rather than stepping down) subsidy based on arbitrary income levels, thus causing INCREASED income to result in DECREASED quality of life. It doesn't help that "vote-buying" politicians have now defined "poverty" so broadly that 54% of Americans now qualify for subsidy...whether they NEED it or not.
While poverty, income inequality, and economic immobility CAN be threats to a successful and stable democracy, the greater threat, at this moment in history, is that people have been conditioned to constantly demand MORE, rather than learning to be content with ENOUGH. Meanwhile, most of America's "poor" enjoy a quality of life many people in the world will only ever DREAM of having.
No doubt that poverty sucks...
but why do poor people reproduce and have children?? The first step towards economic freedom (and especially poverty) is not making more mouths to feed when you have no business doing so.
I've always said that and I've always been seen as a dick for saying so. Usually by people who believe god will sort things out for them.
+fatalitydead
It never fails to amaze me just how much common sense that so many poor people either dont have or just dont use... especially since so many of them grew up poor or in economic straights.
At the very least...
you'd think it would teach them what NOT to do or what to avoid.
+samkurz I don't know about that. When I was in college working a low-wage job, I was still able to save money and live comfortably while only needing to support myself. However, there were people with kids at the same job who were struggling and they were only willing to work about half the hours as I was each week (I believe it was something to do with their welfare requiring them to not work X amount of hours, which I thought was odd). Anyways, fatalitydead hit the nail on the head since these people would often say things like, "It was god's will for me to have kids and god does everything for good reason."
+Snakeye808 Thank you!!
Well, firstly the state has had a hand in preventing impoverished people from becoming self sufficient by either criminalizing subsistence, or adding an artificial cost to living that didn't exist previously. Land tax, agriculture taxes, fishing license, hunting license, etc. Essentially, it compels people into the work force due to the fact that the dollar is backed by labor rather than a commodity. This is how the ruling class compels people to work for the businesses they own, by using the law to revoke a people's natural independence for food and shelter. If allowed by law, impoverished people could go to uninhabited land, (of which there is much, around 33% of the surface area of the US is owned by the government.) and build a house by their own hand and grow their own food at no expense to anyone else's, much less to any tax payers. Secondly, the state incentivizes poverty by paying poor people per how many children they have, causing people who were already poor to become professional birthers. The state intentionally manufactures poverty to ensure that the necessary desperation exists to compel people to do labor that no one wants to do. By any other name, that's called slavery. It's about forcing people to produce in order that money can keep it's value, and the ruling class can extract treasure from it's machine any time it likes. Need more poverty? Import immigrants, raise taxes, and compel people to buy unnecessary forms of insurance. It's engineered to perpetuate the wealth of the rich, as well as the poverty of the poor. I have no problem with the wealth of the rich; especially those who built their businesses from the ground up with honest labor. However, I have a serious problem with perpetuating the poverty of the poor. The sense of entitlement belongs to the ruling class, who believe that they are entitled to the labor of other human beings, as well as the prerogative of other human beings. People are not property.
I agree with some of Mr. Smiley's assertions but not sure if income mobility is the cure. I am no expert in this field but wonder
1. Is Income Mobility feasible? My speculation (no basis) is that Income Mobility, in the aggregate or whole population sense, is a zero sum game. For someone to move up, someone (or portion of their wealth) must move down.
2. The "wealth growth rate" (my description), where the rich's ability to grow their wealth is faster / bigger than the poor. This is not inflation where everyone poor or wealthy rise up and down the same (e.g. inflation is similar to velocity), but this is the rate of growth (e.g. similar to acceleration).
IMHO, the long term cure is to decelerate the rate of wealth growth for riches and accelerate for the poor, the short term is to fix the tax avoidance schemes.
Yes, income inequality is definitely the issue. It would literally solve the working poor problem if every job had to pay a decent living wage.
people have ALWAYS been poor. welfare is the problem. its abused.
America is not and has never been a democracy. It's a constitutional, representative republic.
Poverty can't threaten democracy if there isn't one.
How about a solution?
So what type of solutions can be offered in a capitalist pyramid? Trickle down economics certainly isn't the answer
He only just got started...
also, grass is green
cmon ...isnt 1 min 28 secs a bit too short ?
Travis :)
Well ofcourse the income inequality is a HUGE problem. Much bigger than mobility!
1) If you have small amount of very powerfull people. Their interest is for them to stay powerful, so they will subvert any atempts of economic mobility. Therefore, you cant solve the problem of economic mobility if you havent solved the problem of income inequality.
2) If you have solved the problem of income inequality, than there is no poverty you need to solve (unless you are talking about unemployed, which are a small minority and are not hard problem to take care of)
What the talk about economic mobility does, is shift the narative to the useless topic wasting time and energy on it away from the real problem, and thus suporting the status quo.
You need to distinguish between economic power and political power. Economic power simply means you have a lot of capital to expend and isn't a problem for society. When the two conflate, we get the problems we face today, but they can only exist when government takes an active role in economics. When the government takes a role in economics, those with economic power can now gain political power, thus creating cronyism and unfair business practices.
+Nefariousness i disagree.
you cant separate those two. If a person has power he will use that power to get more power.
in curent system, economic power is more dominant, so it is used to gain political power. In other systems, where political power is more dominant, people use political power to gain economical power.
You cant have a democracy without (relative) equality.
Our government is a Republic, not a Democracy. These wealthy people are representing what happens when everyone else decides to not become financially literate. You get a 1%.
so a Billionaire's baby is more financially literate than me or you?
+musicbikesnaturewind Probably, because that baby's mom or dad would likely teach them how to invest in the stock market, buy and sell real estate, and build a business. All of which can be learned by anyone.
this is only a minute and a half...but there's so much left unsaid in the video. WHY does he beleive this?
Wait it's over already?
Bernie is right on this one. We need to be a welfare state. We don't care if there is a wage gap as long as we can feed our families and pay for our children's medical bills. We don't need to be socialist, we don't need to take the rich peoples' money, we just need to be able to support ourselves.
+TankT9 Socialism is when the community distributes resources based on how much work was done, this is not socialism, this is a welfare state.
+TankT9 You can be a welfare state without being socialist, the community doesn't need to own the businesses.
poverty is first and mostly a threat to the poor...
The effects of poverty on a society as a whole are far-reaching and difficult to properly quantify. It is definitely a threat to more than just the poor.
In a consumer driven economy, poverty is a threat to the wealthy people too.
What this didn't say anything at all. Usually I'm in for a thirteen minute brainfuck but today's bigthink left me agape.
Ok and then?
Being poor is a privilege nowadays
You entitled to everything by just being poor
Wtf does that even mean?
lol
Why does it matter how much money another person has?
Precisely! He is trying to sell communism with the democracy card despite them being separate from each other. Week-minded buy these kind of thoughts.
Education has failed you two, both in regards to history as well as economics.
There are a variety of ways it matters. For one if more people make more money than that leads to an increase in economic activities such as purchasing goods/services, business investment, or infrastructure development. On another note if people don't need to work as much to sustain their livelihood than social involvement and activity also increases which of course leads to people having more "spare time" to partake in the Democratic process.
The most major issue is that if you own billions and I dont, we both only have 1 vote but you can use your money to influence the democratic process.
Which is another issue with the income equality as such a small portion of people owning so much of the money subverts the point as it enables the rich to buy the political outcome they want.
I see... Another guy who wants to "high five" with Lenin
Do i win something?
This should have been at least 6 minutes long. I still don't understand what he means by economic mobility :/
I think what he means is if the lower class can successfully improve their income status. If so, then there is high economic mobility, because they can move from lower class to middle class.
He means by economic mobility that climbing the social ladder should be made easier. Today, some would argue as always, it is harder for someone born in a poor family to do well financially and career-wise when they grow up. You have more chance to be middle class or wealthy come adult age if you're born in one of those categories.
It means the ability to earn more spending money, to go from lower to middle class or middle to upper class.
If you live in a bad neighborhood where bikes are stolen all the time, can't afford a car, and the bus system isn't conveniently placed, you probably won't get to work on time without showing up early. If you can't afford even the smallest apartment to bathe and sleep off the streets, you probably won't keep your job as people complain about your smell. Even a cell phone is more than a luxury since it means your boss can call you in for an extra shift, which means overtime pay.
yawn, read Thomas Sowell on wealth inequality. Most Americans will be in the top 5% at some point in their lives, and most people in the bottom 20%/top 1% arent in there for more than one year.
Nice try at weak bait, read some economics though.
Edited to say; Thomas Sowell : Basic Economics is just one book that contains a lengthy chapter on these myths.
Democracy isn't for income to be distributed evenly; communism is for that. Means of living have increased in all income levels due to capitalism and there will be no end. Without the natural driving force of ownership and power, there will be no investments or aspiring economic activity. Go back to school and read economics and psychology.
true, but if someone has vastly more than someone else they can use their money and influence to shape society much more than the poor person can. they both only have 1 vote, but one person has much more of an influence in teh way teh country is run which is undemocratic
Think about this: is it equal that two persons with way different educational backgrounds and merits have equal amount of votes. I think this is where democracy fails. People who don't know a thing about politics are only mass controlled by someone who does. Why should they have a vote in the first place? I think there should be a system where you can earn more votes and influence transparently without lobbing.
Way too long.
I can point out one or two things wrong with this video. wanna know?
The premise of this video is that poverty can´t sustain the future of democracy, which is false. Poor people can still be part of political action thru their right to vote. There is a huge problem with democracy: 51% of the people (majority) decide the future of 100% of the people. With that being said, a majority can decide not to help the poor, but poor people can still vote against such decisions. People should have the ability to shape their own future and that should not depend on other people´s opinions. There is a loss of liberty when other people decide your future. Also, I think Mr Smiley wants to say that there should be affirmative action in order to promote equality. I agree, but when government tries to pursue equality above all, neither equality nor freedom will be achieved.
...if we still had a democracy. But we don't. Studies have shown that citizens have a marginal influence on policy decisions, and that moneyed interests have the most pull. Corporations and lobbyists decide our policies now.
You've made some assumptions about where his argument was going and what his reasoning would be that may not be at all relevant to the points he ultimately meant to serve. I think his overall point is meant to be that we don't have democracy when people don't have a voice, and currently, how much of a voice you get is dependent on how much money you have.
trump train
+d00m92 go Hillary 2016? :)
Build a wall.