Right. That's why everyone would rather live in Pakistan and Nigeria than in the United States and Europe.
the united states and europe are very different. virtually all of europe has free universal health care, and it doesn't operate like the DMV either. doctors sill make plenty of money too. people in london and france have more leisure time, get more paid vacation, are generally happier and live longer, and will PROTEST when things start to become unfair. the government there is more scared of the people revolting than it is here, so it serves them far better. in the US, we're taught from a young age to accept many unnatural things as "normal", so we're too chicken s*** to step out of line and question things openly - conditioned half the time to ignore how unbalanced and extreme the line between rich and poor is and say "well, they must deserve it."
That's not to say that capitalism is perfect - it's not. Many of the failures are specifically related to times when governments override capitalism to implement their own objectives, anyway. But it's irrelevant. Capitalism has been shown to be by far the best route to wealth AND elimination of poverty than any of the alternatives. The fact that you're disputing that fact simply means you're arguing from some philosophical point that's not supported by reality.
where the hell do you live? you know that moving to the suburbs doesn't make the poor, the starving, the sick and the homeless people disappear right? there are an estimated 40 million americans living below the "poverty line" which is set at about $10k a year, but even an annual income of $20 and $30k is still pretty god damn poor for an average city, so what are the numbers
really? socialist systems can fail too, i'm not denying that, but it's because the idea has not been executed properly. so.. we have yet to get it just right, should we stop trying?? the US is partially to blame for a great deal of poverty in the rest of the world anyway,
because of our capitalist system -
taking far more than it gives. we have huge corporations where top executives live easy and make
millions of dollars solely because of the HARD WORK done by masses of people in other countries for PENNIES an hour, or even making minimum wage right here in america who can barely afford to feed themselves. that's called
ex-ploi-ta-tion.
LOL. May I suggest that you're on the wrong forums, you know, following a ruthlessly capitalist mega corporation.
yeah, too bad i can't afford their products. i got my g5 with student loan money because i needed it for school, and still haven't been able to pay a single penny towards it. i follow these forums because i like to read about how technology is improving.
Also, may I suggest that you whilst capitalism is not, by any means, a perfect system, it is the one that has proven itself to work best. Communism was a failed experiment. Socialism is great, if you don't mind living under dictatorial regime. Capitalism allows for a stable politics and relatively stable economy. As a side note, it is well documented in studies that countries emerging from ****-hole squalor to embrace capitalism has proven to be the greatest equaliser in income inequality. Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for life.
or
force a man to fish for everyone else right?
we're told in america to believe that communism will never work because other countries have not been successful with implementing it. this is just another example of how america is just as much at fault for its failure as anything else. we never look at the potential of an idea do we? we see things as black or white, good or evil, right or wrong. there is a lot of wisdom to be had from people like marx and lenin, and we even utilize many socialist ideas in america (like taxes). why then are we always so quick to reject all of their teachings? i'll tell you one shortcoming of communism is that it focuses too much on the redistribution wealth and not enough on what should take the place of money altogether. the resources on this planet are limited, and they are what allows us to survive, so obviously they are more valuable than money, yet we still worship and emphasize sheer "purchasing power" (wall street) and don't acknowledge that the earth is a living organism just like each of us are. you can't deprive 80% of the world's population of the essentials like food and shelter indefinitely for the good of the other 20%, because once they're gone or quit, everyone's F*ed. not to mention if we continue to consume like we do much longer regardless of who is working, we'll be screwed as well.
we have a tendency to not implement better technology until scarcity forces us to innovate. the obvious example is energy. we can power the entire world for a year with the energy our sun provides in a day and we HAVE the technology necessary to harness that power and achieve this. so why aren't we investing in building solar panels in the deserts and directing free energy to everyone's homes? we baby step the ENTIRE WAY just to make MONEY. fact: there is now regulation requiring all cars made in the US to have an average fuel efficiency of 35mpg by the year 2016 -- when we have been capable of making cars that get over 100mpg for
decades already!
we are unnecessarily blowing up mountains for coal and fighting wars over oil all for MONEY that will only make the richest people on earth even richer. jesus christ. these are REAL problems.
