What is one problem with the world, and how would you fix it?

A lot of problems would be alleviated if we had universal education based on that of a successful model like Finland’s.

Climate Change: ignore it.

Deforestation is decimating many areas of the world. Clean potable water is another global issue. Bottom line is there are too many people in the world. Too many people not enough resources….just look at what is happening in Argentina. We need a hard hitting global pandemic to thin the herd.

Why should the wealthy have to foot the bill for the poor? I am now poor after being comfortable for decades but I don’t think that those that earn more should be taxed arbitrarily just because they have had a good education and worked hard to earn their wealth. Nothing fair about that, being penalized for success.
The problem I’d fix?

Over population. I would make it legal to perform humane euthanasia for those that desire to be done for whatever reasons and instead of taxing the rich to subsidize the poor I’d penalize the irresponsible poor for reproducing and abusing the system. I would make it illegal to reproduce if one was on the public dime with mandatory abortion or adoption instead of state support. Yep, sounds harsh, but all of our problems now stem from over population, from global warming to violence to the housing and employment crisis.

Terrorists / drug dealers / illegal arm sales : Make it illegal world wide for any bank to send transfer funds to banks that engage in hiding illegal funds. Do that and you can’t have an army or deal in the sales of drug or prostitution or anything that causes more harm. You can’t raise an army or blow crap up if you have no way of funding such actions.
So no Cayman Island banks or Swiss.

Poverty. Solution: massive income and wealth redistribution.

@Coloma: “I am now poor after being comfortable for decades but I don’t think that those that earn more should be taxed arbitrarily just because they have had a good education and worked hard to earn their wealth. Nothing fair about that, being penalized for success.”

The wealthy are wealthy due to no more hard work than the poor. It’s luck and the help and work of others. If the wealthy feel penalized or victimized by paying a larger percentage of their income in taxes, then we could offer them a box of tissues and a chance to give up the burden of being rich.

Countries who have sanctioned beheading, raping of women, and clitorectomy who the United States continues to have diplomatic relations with. That’s one problem with the world.

@DoNotKnowMuch Wrong. That is a biased stereotype. If I worked hard to do well in school, got a good education and then worked just as hard to build my profession or business that has nothing to do with “luck” and “help” and everything to do with my own effort. Reverse discrimination is no better than any type of discrimination and for the wealthy that are wealthy due to their own hard work it is completely unfair to expect them to be slaughtered because of their tax brackets.

Sour grapes if you ask me. @Rarebear above is a physician. Should he be taxed more heavily just because he had the brains and balls to get through a really tough educational process and become a successful doctor? Pffft!

Bullshit!
Not every wealthy person is some sort of Ivy league rich brat that was born with a silver spoon in their mouth and so what if they were, they still had to have what it takes to make the cut. It may be harder now days to be a self made person but it can still happen through hard work and perserverence and to think that those that have worked hard to attain a comfortable lifestyle should pick up the tab for the lazy is totally off base.

relevant

I’m actually okay getting taxed more. But I was born to a poorer household. Both my parents had 2 jobs. We weren’t at poverty level by any means but we weren’t wealthy.

And I worked my way through 8 years of college.

@DoNotKnowMuch I think it is you and those of you that think they should be given a free handout from the wealthy to make their lives more “fair” that need the tissues. Life isn’t fair, never has been, but to really think a wealthy person somehow “owes” others a slice of their hard earned pie is nothing more than a blatant sense of entitlement. Is it “fair” that at the age of 50 something I lost it all in the recession and was forced to file a bankruptcy and now am living on less than ⅓rd of my former income? No, it’s not fair but do I feel entitled that my wealthier friends should care for me, hell no!

Kinda like the the old ant and grasshopper tale isn’t it? The ant toils all summer to store up food for the winter while the grasshopper lounges around and then the grasshopper whines he has nothing to eat. The Little Red Hen too, remember? While all the other animals played the little red hen planted the wheat, threshed the wheat, took it to the millers to be ground into flour, baked the bread and then everyone whined because they didn’t get a slice when they did nothing to help earn it. lol
Should the more fortunate help the less fortunate? Yes, of course. Should they be required to share their wealth with everyone, hell no!

Sorry @DoNotKnowMuch but you truly do not know much at all about the wealthy and not only how hard they work, but the enormous risks they take and all the other problems they have to endure to running their businesses.

I got wealthy because of 29 grueling years of hard work…some years when I was self employed I had $40.00 in my check book at the beginning of the year and I needed to eat and put gas in my car. Then 19 years ago I took a job at an epoxy company because they had good benefits I was not able to afford on my own. For the next 14 years I worked my ass off lived paycheck to paycheck. Saved up some money, invested the money on made on the houses I bought, fixed up myself and sold for decent profits. 8 years ago the owner of this company asked if I had any interest in buying the company. He felt he could trust me to not screw up the business and continue to grow it and make if profitable. To do this I had to liquidate all my stocks, ½ my 401K, put up all the cash I had in the bank, put my house, my cars and my boat as collateral. The day I bought this company I had $1,000 left in the bank…my net worth was minus $14,000,000.00. I essentially signed EVERYTHING I had earned over the last 29 years of my life to take the risk for this decision to buy this business in 2011 during the rock bottom of the worst economy this country has ever seen. People thought I was insane. If that sounds too easy to you….there is more….I have worked 12 hour days and do additional work everyday from home on the weekend, holidays and vacation days.

I have had to endure a partner stealing from the company who I terminated and will be soon terminating my other partner because she knew of some of his pilfering. The stress from this event has caused a heavy negative impact on my stress level and overall health. But to me the hard work was worth it. In five short years I have made the 1% club….to me that was not easy or small feat and I totally resent comments such as yours that are so shortsighted and frankly ignorant. Most of my Fraternity Brothers have traveled similar paths of hard work and great risk.

I had a construction company for 16 years so I know first hand how hard physical work is but it pales in comparison to being at the level I am at now.

Your suggestion to hand us 1% a box of tissue and give up being rich if we don’t want to pay more in taxes is asinine would destroy this country as we pay over 50% of the Federal Income Tax. Perhaps you should get a box of tissue and ask the 49% of this country who pay no income tax as it is to cough up even $10.00 in income tax. That would raise a cool $1.5 Billion dollars per year. The price of one fast food meal per non tax paying American could go a long way to solving our debt crisis.

^^I agree.

@Cruiser Standing ovation, baby take a bow!

@Cruiser – I think I follow you. Let me make sure….

You chose your parents, country and place of birth, year and conditions of world, and genes. Great start! Then, you chose how you were raised. You made sure that your genes and environment were in perfect sync so that you were primed to be able to make the most money possible. Awesome! While you were at it, you made sure that you were spared abuse and accidents, and guaranteed that your brain developed precisely the way it did.

While attending your K-12 schools, which you chose and were certainly not underfunded violence-infested shit holes, you chose which things you had an aptitude in, and never got into trouble. Your foresight in choosing parents who had no issue in providing food for you was brilliant. This all must have been great in allowing yourself to design the correct temperament that allowed you to flourish with just the right amount of elbow grease.

I particularly liked how you were forward-thinking and didn’t allow yourself to be born at a time when purchasing a house didn’t really mean an investment, but a life-destroying loss. Nice going!

I am also impressed how insistent you were that your body stay without major disability. Strong! Imagine those poor fools who decide to have a major health problem divert them from their goals. Fools.

If you had been foolish and allowed yourself to be born in a shack in another country, that would have been stupid! Imagine then having to risk your life getting to the U.S. only to work 12-hr days and weekends to live like an chump. Instead, you chose your 12-hr days to pay off. Great!

Overall, excellent work!

Also, for the record – I made $112k last year ($158,940 combined, with my wife’s income). I’m well aware that my income is higher than many others. And I’m all in favor of paying significantly more in taxes than someone making $30k.

And I understand that success stories work better as a narrative of hard work = success to those who have made it. But there is very little truth to that. Besides the very real issues of free will, etc. there is no correlation between hard work and financial success. This formula is a self-soothing mechanism, and nothing more.

@DoNotKnowMuch You’re my hero.

Once again you assume you know me @DoNotKnowMuch but you have no fucking clue.

I grew up in Chicago…lived on mac and cheese and hand me downs my entire childhood. My parents scraped every penny they could to send me to Catholic School where I was only abused by the nuns. Second grade they yanked me out of that insane asylum and put me in Chicago Public Schools. Meanwhile I survived a near fatal kidney infection and complications of tonsillectomy both which almost killed me. Moved out of the city to the suburbs where I spent the next five years of Jr High and High School being teased, taunted and bullied by the Jews there who every day called me a Nazi. Fights were not a problem as I kicked asses of all that dared to fuck with me. I flunked out of business school in college…changed degrees and graduated. Out of school I had zero direction and just took odd jobs. Fate would have it I stumbled upon a firesale of a waterproofing product. Spent all the money I had and started a distributorship at 23. FYI I don’t even own a silver spoon and would not know one it you hit me over the head with it. Stop being such a douchebag and have some appreciation for the real hard work it takes to be rich. Nothing is easier than being lazy and suck off the teat of the government.

As far as your income I do think you are smart enough to know you are paying significantly higher income tax than someone who earns 30K and pays none at all. For the record I paid 3 times what you made this year in income in taxes. You worked the whole year and earned 112k I worked the same year and paid 360K in Federal Income tax alone. At least we have some common ground I am damn glad I can pay that much in taxes knowing I took a risk and busted my ass to make that kind of money.

@Cruiser – I’m sure you feel that your life is special and that there is a “you” that has manufactured your own destiny. The fact is, that there is very little evidence that such a thing is even possible, even excluding the fact that we are just single “organisms” in a larger culture that benefit from the work of others.

There are plenty of people who work just as hard (or harder) than you and do not make out like you have. I’m not sure why you would be opposed to acknowledging luck other than to create a unique story that helps glue together a concept of “self” that is indefensible.

@DoNotKnowMuch Adapt or die. The challenge of every living organism on this planet. Is it ‘fair” that one lion is born into a prosperous habitat full of gazelles and Zebras and another on an arid plain with little prey? No, not fair, but nature is not always fair for the human animal either.

As I said, I absolutely feel that the more fortunate should lend a helping hand but arbitrarily deciding that the wealthier and fortunate that have worked hard to attain their station in life are somehow obligated to give up a large portion of their wealth is absurd. This is life, we can no more choose our birth place, race, family of origin, blessings or hard knocks than can a cat or dog choose theirs. Some are born with more privilege, some work their way up from nothing, some are lazy and choose to do the bare minimum to get by and want handouts just because they feel entitled. We can’t save the world, it’s a job beyond human capacity and always has been.

Help yes, compassion yes, but to consider the more fortunate among us to be obligated to fork over their assets just because they have more due to their own efforts is just wrong. Corporations yes, individuals that all have come into their financial stations in a myriad of different ways from hard work, family fortune visionary entreprenurism, no. You want wealth distribution go for the jugular, government spending and corporate greed not someone like @Cruiser .

The world’s greatest problem is the people that claim that people themselves are the world’s greatest problem.

@DoNotKnowMuch So, were you just “lucky” to land your 112k a year job? Did it just fall in your lap with no education behind it, no skill set?
Did the good job fairy just sprinkle you with high salary fairy dust?
Do you claim you do not work hard to earn your salary and that anyone could do what you do and are you willing to give up your well paying job because, after all, you really feel ashamed that you are earning enough to live a decent life?

“High salary fairy dust.” Best line I’ve seen all day.

@Coloma: ”@DoNotKnowMuch So, were you just “lucky” to land your 112k a year job? Did it just fall in your lap with no education behind it, no skill set?.”

I don’t think you’re following.

I am just a result of an endless series of prior causes.

@Coloma: “Do you claim you do not work hard to earn your salary and that anyone could do what you do and are you willing to give up your well paying job because, after all, you really feel ashamed that you are earning enough to live a decent life?”

I’m not even sure what you are saying here, to be honest. What I can say is that I work as hard as I can. But if you could measure hard work by a scale, and my # was 90 out of 100, there are so many people who work at least a 90 yet make way less than I do.

I am not “ashamed” (not sure where that came from) of my income. But I am not going to pretend that I have worked harder than people who struggle to feed their family.

I am lucky. Many people are luckier than I am, and many more people are not as lucky. While I love that there are people who feel the urge to contribute and give money voluntarily, I don’t think this is sufficient. The fact that there are people struggling to eat, do not have health insurance, etc in a country of extreme wealth means that our system is immoral. It’s not about @Cruiser or me or individuals. We must work towards systems that distribute, rather than leave it to individuals.

My “success” (shit, I am poor in my current community – I’m not kidding), is not due to some special combination of my grit and determination. I could spin a tale that includes the very real story of me being raised by my mother on food stamps, or my wife having grown up on welfare – with no father and a mother that never even cooked her a meal. And I could say, “look at me! I became the first person in my family to graduate college and make a decent living.” I did it! And if that were the whole story, I would still feel morally obligated to work towards a very progressive taxation so that I pay a much higher rate than my mother did at her minimum wage jobs.

I’m not sure exactly where you’re coming from here. Why are you opposed to progressive taxation?

Simple numbers for example:

- Let’s say person A makes $30k and pays 2% in taxes. He has $29,400 to spend.
– Person B makes $100k and pay 35% in taxes. He has $65k to spend.
– Person C makes $500k and pay 60% in taxes. He has $200k to spend.

Person A, B, and C all work the same amount of hours and put in the same amount of effort.
I get the impression that we should be feeling sorry for person C because of the higher tax rate. Is this correct? Why is this?

The vast majority of Western industrial economies use some form of taxation to redistribute resources. The US does it, too, but at a lower level than others. We also vilify the recipients of state help, which I have not experienced living in other countries.

I would correct homelessness by not assuming all people living in a tent or on a park bench are poor and giving them everything. Those who can work, I would retrain, with conditions. The homeless will have to put some skin in the game but will get help to escape the streets if they really wanted. After a set number of years if they refuse to enter, or simply get kicked out because they do not want to mind anyone, they will be cut off, no aid of any type and those that help them will be fined. If they are found to turn to criminal activity to get their creature comforts, food etc. after having rejected a sound method to obtain these things on their own if they stuck with the program, there will be enhancements to their sentence for the crimes they create. If they have not learned by the third time they are arrested for failure to accept help, they will be told to choose a nation that will take them, or they can weasel their way into because they will be deported. If the milk is more sour than the carrot, maybe they might start thinking they better take the carrot with its free housing and training (be it for a season) as a better choice.

@DoNotKnowMuch You are a product of not just prior cause but of choices as well. If you did not choose to pursue the field you work in and choose to further your education you would not be experiencing the effect of your cause. A high school drop out is not going to make 112k a year unless they succeed at some sort of entreprenurial venture. Sure, misfortune can befall us through no fault of our own, it was not my fault the economy tanked and wiped out my business but most of the time we are the sum total of our choices, not simply “luck.”

Luck has little to do with anything most of the time, choice does.
Being in the right place at the right time is luck, but what you bring to the table to sell yourself is skill and education even when timing and opportunity knocks.
My reference to feeling ashamed was meant to imply that if you really felt that your earnings were inequitable then why not quit your 112k a year job and go to work at McDonalds. You may not feel you work harder than others but your salary says that you have attained something extra, above and beyond a Burger King existence.

High salaried positions usually require a higher education and degrees and for that effort and subsequent skills earned you are paid more than the high school drop out that aspires to nothing more than merely getting by and playing video games all day. As it should be.
I am against a progressive tax that penalizes person C. yes, who has worked just as hard as person A. and B. but because they have a higher earning potential due to higher education and a more specialized skill set they are taxed at a higher rate. What’s fair about that? Nothing.

I think an across the board, one set tax rate for all is the fairest. That could be 5–10% for everyone, regardless of income and this would still have the wealthier paying more and the poor paying less. Everyone deserves to keep the lions share of their hard earned money regardless of income disparity.
To tax the wealthy more is reverse discrimination and an archaic Robin Hood mentality.

Someone only making $20k a year really needs that 10%, way more than someone making $1M/yr needs even 50% of that. One is the difference between homeless and starving, the other is the difference between the Hamptons house or the Aspen house.

@Seek Yes, not going to disagree the person making 20k really needs that 10% but the person making the million should not have to feel bad because they can afford two houses. Being wealthy is not a crime or anything to be ashamed of. The person making a million is still going to be paying 100k in taxes and that is quite substantial.
Hey, everyone here knows I have fallen into a state of abject poverty these past 3 years, and it sucks, it really, really, really, sucks and I hate it, it’s depressing as hell and has demoralized me and caused me no end of personal suffering, embarrassment, and frustration. Sometimes I don’t think I can go on and might choose not to at some point, but…. I am not going to say that the wealthy should feel ashamed that they can afford the finer things in life. Everyone wants to enjoy some of the finer things in life and if you can afford 2 homes, more power to you, have a blast.

I was never even remotely close to that kind of a lifestyle but I don’t begrudge the wealthy their good fortune. I enjoyed what I had when I had it and I wouldn’t want anyone telling me that I was wrong for enjoying my times of prosperity even if they were modest in comparison to the mega wealthy. The point is there is no shame in free enterprise or wealth.

@seek…I truly appreciate your position but where do you and others return the respect in that if you tax me into submission where is my incentive to continue my entrepreneurial ways?? Take away much of my incentive to bust my ass and guess what….10 families are out of work. That will not be on my conscious but those that felt I could bear a bigger tax burden than I already have. It is not an easy answer backed by passions but a reasoned solution backed by a delicate balance of what is tolerable on both sides of the debate.

You make a somewhat facile and silly argument in your simplistic example that “Persons A, B and C put in the same amount of hours and effort” as if “labor theory of value” hasn’t been well enough discredited by now to earn various multiples of each others’ incomes. That’s doubtful on its face, in the first place.

It’s more than likely that Person C took high risk at some point to be able to pull down those earnings. As in @Cruiser‘s recounting, starting, buying and managing a business over a long term may – may – have eventual reward, but that is by no means certain. And a 60% tax on income is punitive, whether you think so or not. With 60% marginal tax rates, a prospective business owner is more likely than not to look elsewhere in the world than here to start or grow his business. That hurts all of the potential wage earners – Persons A and B in your example – who are more willing to take a less risky road and simply work for a salary. That salary won’t be there if the business owner isn’t.

I can hardly believe that we still need to have this discussion with the example of Venezuela falling apart in real time daily – as a result of exactly such foolish economic policies. Exactly what @DoNotKnowMuch proposes.

In any case, @DoNotKnowMuch, you don’t need a law or a new tax policy. If you think you’re under-taxed there is absolutely no requirement that you must hold onto your wealth. If you don’t like your money, you don’t need to keep your money.

Human overpopulation.

I’d follow the Chinese model of limiting couples to one child (maybe have a carbon-emissions type program where you could buy the option from a couple that didn’t want any kids) until we were back down to, say 2 billion, or just below the sustainable level.
Hopefully by then humans generally would be like the current Chinese and think 1 child is ‘just right’.
There’s no way we’re going to go extinct, but a lot of dwindling would be fantastic.

Clean energy. I don’t want to rape the earth and I don’t want my country dependent on other countries for energy. More solar in our sunny states. At least ⅓ of the US has a lot of sun and very little snow that would cover up a solar panel. What’s the hold up? All new construction should have lots of energy efficient options, and there should be continued research to make it better. I am not in favor of the tax breaks for solar I don’t think. I have a suspicion prices stay high, because the tax breaks are in place. I need to research my suspicion.

Regarding wealth distribution or redistribution, I think poverty is a horrible blight on society in America, and the worst thing about it is often being poor means living unsafely. Growing up and living with a constant feeling of not being safe changes who you are, especially children. In turn this changes greater society, we all are less safe. I prefer higher wages to higher taxes, because when it’s only done on the tax side, you rob the working person of the dignity of being able to work and support themselves and their family. Putting them on food stamps is not the same psychologically as paying them $2 more an hour. I’m not for the $15 an hour minimum wage, but I am in favor of spreading the wealth more, and growing our middle class again.

I do like certain public programs, so I am in favor of paying taxes to cover some of the programs. I also am very interested in countries that do provide housing, medical, education, but still are very capitalistic about other things in the economy. It seems to me if everyone in the system has some basic needs met, then it frees them up to pursue a career they will work hard at. My fantasy is not communism, I don’t believe communism works, and it can be disastrous. My fantasy is just capitalism with some integrity and thought for greater society. Business owners do take on a lot of risk, and they should be rewarded for it. Doctors do spend an incredible amount of time and sacrifice to be one doctors, and they should be rewarded for it. People making $10 an hour also often work very hard, and many of them should be making more money too.

It’s not simple, it’s complicated. Blanket statements and stereotypes about the rich and the poor are bullshit.

Humanity is a pestilence. Eradicate the pest.

@Coloma ” Wrong. That is a biased stereotype. If I worked hard to do well in school, got a good education and then worked just as hard to build my profession or business that has nothing to do with “luck” and “help” and everything to do with my own effort. Reverse discrimination is no better than any type of discrimination and for the wealthy that are wealthy due to their own hard work it is completely unfair to expect them to be slaughtered because of their tax brackets.”

Wrong. There’s actually no such thing as being “self-made”. Practically everything you know, utilise, enjoy, and take advantage of in one way or another is based on the endeavour of countless others and previous generations.

You wouldn’t be learning anything at all in the first place if there were not already an exsiting accumulated body of knowledge for you to tap into. You wouldn’t have been doing anything in school (or even had a school to begin with) if it were not for the teachers, the builders who built the schools, and all the people who contribute to the educational infrastructure and who support you and others in their learning.

The same goes with “building a business” or learning a profession. A privilege based on a particular pre-existing legal framework (established through state violence, by the way) that provides the privilege of owning a business at all, and learning the necessary skills and accumulating the knowledge that others already did before you.

There’s a simple thought experiment to see how far being “self-made” gets you. Imagine a naked person living in the middle of the forest—and how far they’ll get. That’s about the nearest analogue I can think of for someone relying on their own effort.

And progressive taxation is not arbitrary. The problem with capitalism is that it really is not meritocratic. Remuneration has little relationship to effort, skill, or even perceived value—but is rather a facet of blind market forces, many of which are at odds with our intuitions. The result is that a CEO can be paid 300 times more than the median wage of a worker below—and also get millions in bonuses and pay-offs after doing his job badly.

Wealth inequality is at its greatest since the Gilded Age of the 1870s. This isn’t good for social cohersion. It is vastly at odds with what people in general believe inequality is actually at, and what it should be at.

I’m not a social liberal—since I’d rather see capitalism done away with entirely. But redistributive justice is there to save to capitalism from itself and to alleviate the misery and desperation that would otherwise result from an unfettered capitalism without checks on inequality.

Just to answer the OP.

Climate change is currently the biggest problem facing our civilisation. It’s not just an inconvience, but an existential threat.

It leads (and is leading) to other problems—loss of biodiversity, species extinction, spread of diseases, stress on food production and rising food prices, increased threat of conflict, flooding of low-lying coastal regions, mass migration and the political and social instability caused by it—and the resulting anomie, and rise in reactionary attitudes and ideological extremism formented by one or more of these conditions.

The fundamental cause of this problem is capitalism. The sort of economic egoism espoused in capitalism is not a good recipe for rational collective action, regardless of what you might read on the von Mises or Cato Institute web site—or the ramblings of a Sowell, or a Hayek, or a Friedman, or a Rand (most of whom are a rehash of Herbert Spencer).

Climate change is basically the mother of all negative externalities. One that’s been two centuries in the making. As with all negative externalities—someone somewhere has to pay its cost. The someone will be almost everyone from the current and future generations.

How to fix it? I think we’re fucked. We’ve been on the wrong trajectory for too long. There are too many insurmountable issues with how people think and behave within the existing socio-economic framework. I think the resolution will be a very authoritarian society with a lot of people being sacrificed—and the rich will get to live in ecologically-closed, climate controlled luxury arcologies.

Hate.

I propose to fix it by treating children like the rational beings they are, from the get-go.

I would go after education. Maybe if people were properly educated, we might be able to tackle other problems. My particular interest is in mathematics. Lockhart;s Lament is a good article by a mathematician on how awful math education is. I think some of the ideas in the paper can be generalized to other subjects. It really seems at times, with all the memorization and testing, that schools are designed to be as non-educational as possible.

What if we approached the study of history as inquiry based? Formulate a series of questions and use that to guide study. How about tackling poetry by reading poems aloud and asking about rhythm and meaning? Why don’t we teach about biology by taking a walk in the woods with a magnifying glass? Maybe people will take an interest in preserving species once they see some of them close up in their natural habitat.

Here is a TED talk by Ken Robinson that criticizes the current system.

@DoNotKnowMuch I don’t have the time to address all you’ve said, but, the problem is not capitalism the problem is greed. Big difference. Your argument that everything already has to be in place to succeed applies to the poor as well. We haven’t called this country the land of opportunity for nothing. Greed is bad, corruption is bad, but making a profit for your time, services rendered or product is not. America is not based on communism, it is the land of the free with the right to pursue happiness in whatever form one so chooses and if one doesn’t like it one is also free to leave.

^ Oops, meant to address the above to you @Kropotkin
Gotta go, I have to get to work on time. No wealthy person is paying me to do what I need to do. hah.

@LostInParadise Is poetry no longer taught that way?

I loved the Ted Talk. Especially the divergent thinking part and the example of the children.

About the math link, I only skimmed it, but I have said for a long time I hate all this word problem crap they are doing at very young ages. It convolutes math, makes it impossible for kids who lag behind in reading comprehension, and we might be losing the interest of our kids who were previously predisposed to loving math.

@Coloma “the problem is not capitalism the problem is greed. Big difference.”

This is just a shift of attribution to individuals rather than systems and institutions. Greed doesn’t just spring from nowhere. There’s no evidence that we’re innately greedy or genetically programmed to be greedy. And I don’t even share your cynicism—I think very few people are actually greedy or corrupt.

“your argument that everything already has to be in place to succeed applies to the poor as well.”

At least you accept the argument. Of course it applies to everyone. Everyone to some extent takes advantage of the wealth, knowledge, and infrastructure created by previous generations and other people. It’s just that some enjoy vastly more than others. Opportunities are not equal. Most resources and assets really are controlled by very few, and the rest have to compete for what remains. Did I mention that wealth inequality is now at the greatest its been since the Gilded Age? We’re on a planet where just a few dozen people have the wealth of the bottom 50% of the entire world’s population—about 3,500,000,000 people.

“We haven’t called this country the land of opportunity for nothing.”

You call it that because it’s a nice narrative to then fallaciously attribute success or failure onto individuals. The USA has one of the worst measures of social mobility when compared to other developed nations. It’s the exact opposite of a land of opportunity. It’s the land of entrenched wealth, class division, and systemic poverty.

“Greed is bad, corruption is bad, but making a profit for your time, services rendered or product is not.”

Individual capitalists may be providing a wonderful service. Collectively, they do a terrible job at meeting social needs. The problem is is that capitalists sell what others can afford, and only to those who can afford what they sell. Can’t afford it? Tough luck.

But my real gripe is that what the capitalist class does is have workers make things for them, which the capitalist sells back to the very workers who made the things in the first place—the profit is the excess that the capitalist class accumulates.

There’s no real reason for this system, which is one based on a long line of historical injustices—genocide, theft of common land, and coerced distribution of land and resources to a tiny elite. It is those who work in and actively use the means to produce wealth who have more moral right to control their workplaces and products of their labour.

“America is not based on communism”

More’s the pity.

“it is the land of the free with the right to pursue happiness in whatever form one so chooses and if one doesn’t like it one is also free to leave.”

Well, as I’ve argued already—it isn’t the land of the free (highest per capita incarceration rate in the world too—some land of the free), and other countries are better for pursuing happiness. But uprooting and moving wholesale is a costly and difficult thing to do even within a country. It is beyond the scope of many poorer Americans who may well be dissatisfied with their conditions to just up and leave. Canada is objectively better by various metrics, but they are unlikely to let a non-refugee in unless the person has a good education, a skilled profession, or is already rich.

^ Yep, would happily leave if I could afford to. If anyone would like to donate to Seek’s Emigration Cause, I take Paypal.

@Seek I think there is a website for that.

Let’s start @Seek‘s GoFundMe campaign.

I’d like to leave too, but not so much because of capitalism, because I desire a simpler and less complicated life away from the teeming masses.

@Kropotkin I’m too busy and tired, quite frankly. to keep debating, but, in closing, I will say that greed, indeed, is the issue. Here’s a good example of greed based on demand and necessity. I’ve in the Gold Rush zone here in CA. and this is a prime example of greed and corruption. Making a profit is not the problem, it is greed and exploitation hands down, and the human condition is a greedy one, more often than not.

www.michaellamarr.com/grprices.html

In column #1 he coffee that sold for 55 cents a pound in Sacramento sold for $40.00 a pound 40 miles up the hill. However, in the 2nd column from another camp the coffee sold for $5.00 a lb. That would be a fair and reasonable profit for importing said coffee to the camps, all overhead costs considered, the mules and manpower to move supplies 40 miles up the hill warranted a moderate mark up but not 400%. Greed IS the lions share of the problem IMO.

@JLeslie , The time I found out that the meaning of a poem is tied in with its rhyme and meter was in a required one semester English for techies course that I took in college. The teacher did not seemed to be very pleased teaching the course and I think she looked down on us science, math and engineering majors, but her analysis of poetry struck me as spot on. Not that I am any good at analyzing poems, but I can tell when the pieces come together. I would love to sit in on a similar course.

@LostInParadise I learned it in high school. Although, possibly I learned some of it before high school, but what sticks in my mind is the high school lessons. When I entered 10th grade the program then was each semester was a different focus. One was speech writing and presentation. One was writing. One was literature. I don’t remember all of them. I think maybe the poetry was coupled with literature. We learned about Sonnets as well as more typical poems. I just remember identifying iambic pentameter. That and the pythagoream theorem stand out for me. Lol. Two different subjects, but still they both instantly clicked for some reason and I cannot forget the names. I think the English teachers split the different semester courses up so they taught their favorites. It didn’t matter much what order we took them in, so it gave flexibility in our schedule. I actually doubled up in 12th grade the first semester so I could get out of school in December.

@seek Be careful of what you wish for. See @Rarebear‘s answer (7th one down from the top).

@chyna Believe it or not, I know which countries I also don’t want to live in. My choices aren’t the US or Libya.

@Seek I hear there is quite the buyers market in Syria….lots of deals to be had.

@Seek Here you go. https://www.gofundme.com

Overpopulation and there’s no cure to it unless we happen to make bioweapon that inhibit human reproduction.

@JLeslie I just clicked on the link you provided and got this message “This site can’t be reached”

Does this work?

If not you can try to google search go fund me and it should come right up.

Yes, that link works, thanks. My son has a go fund me account