Your premise that capitalism makes the poor poorer is completely off the mark. The rich being more rich while wealth levels across the board go up is not the poor becoming worse off.

How so? For decades the trend has been more and more people going to college. If you are poor the government will give you grants and loans in the thousands to get your education.

And that's the benefit of capitalism. That's why we mix it up to get the benefits from both sides. The US does as well btw. Just a little less.

while this is true, sizable junks of the populations in western societies have indeed experienced losses of purchasing power in recent decades if you account for inflation and rising taxes. someone belonging to the 20% (gross) income quantile of the USA/UK/Germany today is worse off, not just comparatively but also in absolute terms, than 25 or 30 years ago. at best, his nominal wage growth has made up for inflation, leaving his PPP income stagnant. (while productivity has doubled during that timeframe).

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 5 2017 05:16pm

someone in the 20th percentile is vastly better off now than 25-30 years ago, despite a lot of government reasons for suboptimal growth, opportunity and wages.
The things you can actually buy with those wages, and the tech we have available to the poor has improved by leaps and bounds in that time. (as have the benefits as a percentage of compensation)

This post was edited by cambovenzi on Aug 5 2017 05:20pm

Flawed logic by the hag considering her whole answer was built on a strawman. Hughes was implying the policies of a left wing government would have achieved the same or better levels of income per capita in a way that the rich didn't benefit to a much larger extent than the poor. Thatcher played the trickle down game, no surprise that the wealth of the country became so concentrated in the London metropolitan area as a result of her policies that if you stratify income by county you see the huge increase in income in the South East and decreases in most other areas.

TIL directly countering the talking points the other guy brings up is a strawman.

You might personally believe your additional commentary on the effects of their policy to be true, but that is NOT what he brought up.

This post was edited by cambovenzi on Aug 5 2017 05:43pm

Thatcher's deregulation of London's financial sector with the Big Bang reforms let the investment banks gamble with money from high street lenders, inviting a moral hazard that was previously unheard of in banking. The resulting boom in London's financial markets encouraged other countries to follow suit, and was a major factor in the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008. The negative consequences of Thatcher's policies are still being felt to this day.



He said an objective truth that is the rich became richer relative to the poor, and accepted that on average, the income of poor people had risen too. So if he acknowledged that poor people had also got richer, there would be no point making an argument if it didn't involve a critique of how her policies didn't result in an adequate distribution of that extra wealth. Just seems really obvious to me.

This post was edited by dro94 on Aug 5 2017 05:51pm

a butchered narrow understanding of history that is irrelevant to the point.
She could have been the devil incarnate and she would not have been off base.
She does not have to be perfect or without any bad policies for the point to have great relevance to guys like knaapie carrying on about inequality.

How convenient of you to focus on your perception of her role in the recession rather than her widespread gains due to more economic freedom and the overall point that is not specific to her.



he was trying to shame her as having an unjustifiable and bad record because of inequality. His key criticism was relative inequality, and overall gains were barely mentioned and given lip service, because that reality was too striking to ignore. It was an uninterested preface to his criticism, not the point.
She made the point that overall gains are far more important than relative inequality. Who gives a fuck if the rich are richer when everyone is much better off?

The obvious truth is that the leftists are hyper-focused on inequality rather than overall/widespread prosperity and sound economics. She hit the nail on the head.

Its a classic example of leftist jealousy politics. Eat the rich. inequality! redistribute now!
Misidentifying the problem as inequality rather than lack of wealth leads to different proposed solutions that are illsuited to solving the real problem.

The suggestion that those socialists would have had just as much growth and overall wealth increases without the inequality is beyond ridiculous.

This post was edited by cambovenzi on Aug 5 2017 06:28pm