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Do you think it's fair? If only the 22 richest individuals in the world had more money than the 3.8 billion people who are currently in business? Well about 22 people have more money saved abroad (https://www.taxjustice.net/2020/09/20/tax-justice-at-un75/) than the total population of China, United States and India (https://populationmatters.org/population-numbers?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIovCLtYnV8wIVEpFmAh3_AAm8EAAYASAAEgLfwfD_BwE) combined?

Let's take a look at Elon Musk, Jeff Bejoz, Bernard Arnold and Family, Bill gates (https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#57b829293d78) etc. Their income within 1 or 2 weeks is equivalent to the income needed by the United Nations Organization to provide humanitarian aid in Yemen, Ethiopia, South Sudan  (https://fews.net/)etc, all of which are experiencing a hunger crisis. with 0.00000005% of their wealth, it will provide a decent life for 1 family who can eat 3 times a day for the next 100 years.

Do you think this kind of reality is fair? As it should be, economic disparities can actually be resolved, because look at the economic disparities in the world which have greatly exceeded the tolerance limit.
What can we as democratic citizens do to demand global governments stop giving excessive tax breaks to multinational corporations from the world's richest people? Or can we just watch this reality from day to day? When we don't have any influence reviewing the chest is something I often do.
Look at them just laughing:
Share your thoughts here  :)

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Reading sources and things I use as a reference for reading and drawing conclusions (I use a translation because it's not my native language):
https://longreads.tni.org/paying-for-just-transition##_proposals
https://sdgs.un.org/goals
https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#57b829293d78
https://longreads.tni.org/paying-for-just-transition#_edn30
https://www.oxfam.org/en/5-shocking-facts-about-extreme-global-inequality-and-how-even-it

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Note: If there's a referral source I'm missing, please let me know.

What seems to me is that the story you tell is the same communist garbage that comes from Marx's time, of fallaciously considering that if the rich are richer, the poor must be poorer. And not only is it not so, but such thinking shows that you don't understand how the world works.

In 1800 there were 1 billion people living on earth and today there are almost 8 billion, and this has not happened because the rich, who are getting richer, have starved the poor. On the contrary, more and more people live on earth because, among other things, with the market economy, there are people who have earned a lot of money by mass producing cheap food and selling it. And today's poor in general (there are exceptions, obviously) have access to many more goods and services than the poor of 1800, so they are richer.

I could write you an encyclopedia on this, but since I see that your previous mentality is that of the falsehood that wealth is like a pie, rather than a dynamic process, I will not try any harder.

This is a complicated case study tbh.
First thing all the rich peeps in the world, they are not earning money out of thin air. They have multiple incomes sources with factories, industries and services running 24*7 to earn the money.

When you say they have XYZ income which they should distribute to fulfil the hunger of needy then note that they are already feeding millions of families who work for them. We call it as Job, salaried personnel etc.

Why not count that one?
They are already doing more than enough by paying millions of dollars in tax form. They need to contribute to charities, infra developments, and many other projects layout by government or made by themselves.

It’s completely true that there is one part of the world which is very poor but that’s due to local government failing to make it better world Or may be being the corrupted one.

So the fact is why the richest should take overburden if they are already having one in place !

If so, how do you think that the ideal world works and can harmonize the economy so that it can provide prosperity for all who have the right to live a decent life? if in the end only our indifference masks empathy.


I will definitely accept the encyclopedia you provide and read it, of course it will be very interesting. As for the mentality of lying which one are you referring to? can it be measured according to rational parameters?


Have you forgotten how today's social classifications show differences in economic terms? there is a middle to upper social strata, or lower middle class.
If measuring on the quality of individuals who have a salary just for working in a company then how do we measure the people out there who need more attention from rich people like you.

Why should the rich bear the burden of the poor? Isn't that the concept, we as humans have empathy, don't we? (if you realize it) because if you don't, then after all it will not correlate at all to solving poverty. Basically we have no influence, but we have a role as human beings who can still stand tall and make ends meet, isn't there a right to 2.5% of what we have is theirs for us to give. As a form of concern, but unfortunately our concern is not aware of what people are suffering out there.

We only sleep soundly on expensive mattresses, but before closing our eyes, try to reflect on our thoughts whether there are neighbors who are starving because they can't find a mouthful of rice to face the rigors of tomorrow's life.

Equality is a strange thing.

Those who don't want to work. Who take no risks, make little effort to educate themselves or develop specialized skillsets. Feel they deserve to enjoy the wealth and prosperity which comes from working hard, taking risks and becoming wealthy as a result. They wish to create a society where there are no winners or losers in society. Everyone receives a participation trophy. No matter if they worked hard. Or didn't work at all. No matter if they made good decisions or bad decisions.

One narrative behind abolishing meritocracy. Punishing winners and billionaires. Is to create a society where laziness, ignorance, immorality and bad decision making are rewarded. It could represent a regressive trend.

Certainly the world has never been perfect. Wealth and wage inequality are at all time negative trends. I think what most fail to realize is, there is an underlying blueprint and design to it all. Wealth and wage equality have been systematically targeted and destroyed. In the way a silent war has been waged against the middle class in an effort to erect something vaguely resembling the beginnings of a caste system.

It could take people years to recognize and acknowledge even the most basic and fundamental aspects of current events. The learning curve is against us and against progress in general.

yawn.   this argument...   Again?   

try this https://www.humanprogress.org/paul-ehrlich-ignores-abundance-again/

https://www.humanprogress.org/pickup-prosperity/

and this and im not a fan of the chinese gov https://www.humanprogress.org/how-much-more-prosperous-would-the-world-be-without-chinas-one-child-policy/

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58810551  << bill gates did that and im not a fan

And heres your marxism 50 years on  https://www.humanprogress.org/castros-cuba-unfree-unequal-and-underperforming/

so please grow up. 

It's obvious that you understand how the world works, but this doesn't mean that it works in the right/fair way. Please remember that WE (as human race) are not different from other species in Earth & i think you can watch how all the species lives in a wonderful harmony with nature while the intelligent human creates civilisations by destroying the natural system without even make a fair system by which everybody can find what to eat daily and have access to all the life options he was restricted from.
I think OP is trying to discuss all those facts and didn't ask to change the world. If you see it a logic result that we spend all the natural ressources on Earth and still failing to establish a better environment for al of us. BTW, i am not a communist and don't really like the marxism as a political doctrine, but we can't deny that The analysis made by Marx & Engles are so great to resume the history and estimate a better future.

It makes me lough how you compared between the situation of a poor in the 1800 with another from 21 century. Poorness is poorness whenever it exists and it's so logic that their situations isn't the same just like the rich people in the 1800 who can possess large grounds and properties without even working, and by time goes by, many factors have been changed and we can see the rich power becomes more limited.
I wished to read your response to first op question : Do you think it's fair? If only the 22 richest individuals in the world had more money than the 3.8 billion people who are currently in business?

Just like with Bitcoin.
Add the numbers the biggest whales have and you're going to see it's quite the same, the Winklevoss twins have around 100k coins, Barry Silbert has at least 50k, Draper bought 30k, and there are many more. Yet I don't see anyone concerned about this  ;D


No they can't be!
Every single fucking time in human history when somebody has tried this it has ended in tragedies.
Oh, and before you come with an example from the Scandinavian countries, just a small reminder both Noway Sweden has more billionaires per inhabitant than a lot of other countries, including the USA.


Please answer honestly, have you actually read Das Kapital? All of it?

I'm asking this because I don't know why you're focusing on the way we're exploiting resources since this had nothing to do with Marx's doctrine, remember (if you actually read it) that Marx never referred to capital as money but as the means of production. Nor did he ever mention anything else about production other than keeping the profits for the ones that are doing the work, so, nope, nothing about saving the planet, reducing pollution, or distributing all the means of production to everyone, but only to the ones taking part in the production! Same for welfare, the original view on welfare is quite different from what people think it was, no airdrop after airdrop of money to everyone!

I think fairness has no value on its own. It's better to have an unequal society where poor people have some decent living than to have an equal society where everyone is barely surviving. The global standard of living keeps getting better and better, things like child mortality or hunger have plummeted compared to 50-100 years ago.

No, and plenty of others don't, either, including, encouragingly, many of those who benefit from the inequality. Here for example are two groups of millionaires who think it's unfair:
Millionaires Against Pitchforks (https://www.millionairesagainstpitchforks.com/)
Patriotic Millionaires (https://patrioticmillionaires.org/about/)



You're being both defensive and needlessly aggressive, which suggests that Sterbens may have hit a nerve.
Your argument boils down to: any level of inequality is absolutely fine, because we used to live in caves.
And of course wealth is a pie. And is also dynamic... the two aren't mutually exclusive. The pie may be expanding over time, but it is still finite. We don't live in some post-scarcity sci-fi utopia.

And hello, again. :)

Rich gets richer and poor gets poorer even though it is not fair that is the actual reality, Ofcourse if the rich people start spending their earned money today they still can't able to spend all of them in their remaining life even by living the extremely luxury life style.

Most of the rich people are helping the poor people in someway but don't expect them to bring equality in this world which is never going to happen.

Did anyone read it all? Das Kapital is an academic book and not a simple book that can be understood by anybody. Me myself i am not an economist netheir a politician, but i read other books written by Marx or Engles or both of them like "The comunist Manifesto" with few books of Lenine. Honestly, i think i can resume the whole theory from a non-ideologic view point.
I refered to Marx doctrine in my reply because he was the famous thinker who described the capitalist society as Proletareat and Bourgeoisie and how the gap between them will get bigger as time goes by.
And within the same op context, i also thought about natural ressurces who are only exploited to make the rich richer and the poor poorer in a global economy by which we should all have to natural ressources in a fair way.
Marx proposed the communism as a solution for the capitalism dilemma. Me myself i think that wisely controlling the natural ressources can limit that gap between poor and rich. I remember few years ago there were two projects in this field ut i don't know if they stopped or postponed :
- The Green Project. (https://www.thegreenproject.org/)
- The Zeitgeist Movement (https://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/)

So your answer to all this is global redistribution of wealth, it seems like?

If you look at the net worth of these individuals, most of all of them had their net worths spike during the pandemic - While small businesses were forced to shut down and lay off employees, large corporations were still allowed to operate. The answer to this is not taxing the rich at an absurd rate. Try propelling the lower class, not slowing down the economy and retributing wealth by taxing the rich, who already pay the largest burden of taxes, create the most jobs, and spur the most economic activity.

I don't think it's fair but frankly politicians and regulators in democratic countries have been far too weak in taking action. Large corporate money and the families who have grown up with sizable control of it have been able to pay lobbyists to shape the future to their benefit. Politicians are facing a constant battle to equalize and benefit the average citizen, however money forever consolidates on one size of the equation - funneled into all sorts of causes that aim to strip back laws or find loopholes to exploit. It's a real moral minefield because billionaires can simply shop around for any type of citizenship that benefits them in the age of globalization, but they're only benefiting a very small circle in reality.

It depends on what you consider fair, it seems to me you would like an even distribution of wealth and that is because you think it is unfair the current situation of the world, personally I understand this in terms of whether those economic actors played within the rules of the system in place and then thanks to their ability they got where they are, if this is the case then it is fair they have reached such riches despite the unevenness of the distribution of the wealth this produces, this is capitalism in a nutshell and as imperfect as it is, it is the only system that we have that actually works, as any form of communism and socialism eventually runs out of other’s people money to hand out.

Now, if some of them reached that level of wealth through cheating and not paying their taxes that is another story, and they should pay what they owe with interest and pay a fine as well, however trying to redistribute the wealth forcefully has never worked out as this creates an incentive to not work hard as you cannot keep what is rightfully yours, and then the society just collapses as people are given incentives to be lazy an unproductive.

Awww, extracting the argument and ignoring the usual "you are a communist so you are already wrong, a probably eat children alive".

It seems that for some people in the forum anything that sounds like taxes, equal opportunity and redistribution is "communism". It is not. It is perfectly compatible with solidly democratic systems that work for the many and not for the few. There are several countries in Northern Europe that have clarity on where the market sits, where the state does better and what way of redistribution works without creating parasites.

You say that it is all right that a few are in control of such a level of wealth because that does not make others poorer and because that is how a market economy works.

Firstly, the fact that they control such a fortune does influence the politics and policies and effectively makes a society more unequal, which is the point of the post. You argue, correctly, that wealth is not a zero sum game, but at the end of the day, that influence in policies and the ability to create loopholes on taxes mean that they contribute less to the common expenses.

Secondly, you argue that this is a consequence of the market and is part of creating common wealth. That is not correct. That is just one interpretation of the markets (the  Austrian School, Chicago and the like way of thinking). No, having free market does not mean that wealth has to be more fairly distributed.

Thirdly, redistribution of wealth does not hinder progress at all. On the contrary, more equal opportunity unveils the talent of people who otherwise could have been lost due to lack of opportunity.

In sum, a society that works for just a few is inadequate and particularly prone to create disorder and unhappiness.


That is not true. Again, anything that sound like taxes and redistribution you catalogue as Communism. There is democratic and social way or running a state and it has little to do with Marx, who can only be understood in the context of its time.

Re tragedies, please notice that most wars are created by imperialism and nationalism. Communism tends to do poorly simply because it has never been applied as conceived. In my view it cannot work due to obvious misalignments in the incentive system.


That is the common misconception about what equality means. It is not about everyone having the same, it is about equal opportunities or, even more, giving opportunities for everyone. And yes, some people do not deserve it, but still, it is the mission of a modern society to provide that opportunity.

Please, read carefully, this is not about subsidizing, is about providing means for everyone to grow and contribute eventually to the common good.

To Mr. Poker Player, so98nn, Hydrogen, Nhazwrath, coupable, stompix, hatshepsut93, Cnut237, Obito, jrrsparkles, Gyfts, Fortify, wxa7115, and Mr. paxmao thank you for the thoughts that I can't reply to one by one, because I can't deny such great thoughts.

Overall I really enjoyed and listened to how the diversity of viewpoints from each individual led me to believe that there are still people out there who genuinely care to share great thoughts and ideas. My reasoning is quite simple because I don't care about Marx's ideology, classical theory (Adam Smith), Neoclassical theory (Robert Solow and TW Swan), Neokeynes Harrod's theory or what the Communists say about Marx's doctrine. What happens if in the end greed remains within each of us. Here what I think and express is a fact, and this fact we feel today in any part of the world and in the country where I live.

When the public disclosure of the recent Pandora Papers which later sank again from the surface found that our government where I live is registered by name. It makes me hate how decent economic equality can never be felt by those of us who just survive the hardest way. As someone who is active in certain organizations to fight for human rights, then I express this phenomenon so that at least one of the many human beings can be more concerned when we feel that we live better than others. Because with a little empathy that is in someone means we have given life hope for the survival of mankind.

I can well understand how you thought. Your personal experience was so hard to give you bad sentiments. And at the same time gives you the inspiration to ask about inequality in society.
Yes there does exist solution-attempts for fairness and social equality but still none of them can face the real facts that we (as humans) are building a great history of great civilisalied civilisations by destroying other life forms just to feed the needs for Bourgeoisie, while we can live in harmony with other creatures without anybody get starved. I don't mind if someone gets richer, but i always hope this it's not because of the poorness of someone else .

A lot of poeple did, I know myself others besides me that did.
Don't know their motivation but for me, it's quite the fun, although I dislike socialism as much as humanly possible. But that didn't stop me from reading it just how being on atheist level considering my relative's ideas didn't stop me from reading the Bible or the Quran, or how I read Mein Kamf despite believing Hitler to be an idiot.
No, even if some indeed are referring to it as an academic book, first of all, Marx was not really an economist, he was more a philosopher, so don't expect anything too deep there, second, remember this was written almost two centuries ago by a guy who's education was completed exactly two centuries ago  ;D so a lot of things he said there should be treated with the same seriousness as Noah's ark.


You see, this is why I asked you if you've read it.
Marx was never actually concerned with the natural resources, nor how are they exploited and definitely not the impact, as there was no such thing then as peak oil or global warming. Quite interesting also he completely denied Malthus's theory, probably because unlike Malthus who died before seeing a tractor Marx was quite familiar with the advancement in manufacturing, which of course posed a different problem for him.
So unfortunately none of those concepts you refer to can be found in Marx's theories because simply put, those were not the problems of the 19th century.


Just like the square wheel does poorly because we haven't invented the underground plane yet.  :D

It isn't. And I think I've already grown to a certain age and probably seen enough of how humanity works that I consider anybody raising this issue as naïve. I mean, the issue is legit, of course. It calls for action. We, as individual persons and collectively as human beings, should address it.

Alas, fairness is an abstract word which might prove to be impossible to expect from humans in real life. The intolerable economic chasm within humanity is already the sum-total; it is already the general illustration. It is already the bigger picture of how it is actually impossible for humans to be humans. If we go down to the second-to-second, minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day interactions between one human being to another human being, you will realize that fairness is a helpless concept.

You are correct if this is measured by the reality of life in some developing countries as well as developed countries. There is still an overlap between the two groups of rich and poor people, so that equality of life will never be achieved at any time. It has become a cycle where the rich and poor will need each other. Rich people need poor people to work and complete the work given, then the poor people also need income to survive.

I think it's amazing to read Das Kapital. I did always want to read it but i ignored it because i didn't found a good translation to my native language. And as i didn't read it, i can't discuss it in details, but i have general idea about marxisme and dialictic.
If i can resume my journey with marxism books, and from the bboks i read, i can't tell that Karl Marx had spent his life writing bulshits. Maybe you analyse his thoughts with a mind in 21 century while you should put yourself in his time (back to 1800) and see if this was a revolutionary phylosofy or not.
I respect your point of vue, but i really don't think Marx writings can considered in the same category as Noah's ark (mythology) .

Yes i can undertood how you understood my point. Maybe i didn't succeed to express my ideas in the right way. Sorry i am note a native English and still face few difficulties to practice it .

Definately.

I do remember the time when we had political science in schools and we were introduced to cartoons based on reality. Apparently one made a huge impact on me. The one where there was a rich person with a huge bag full of money and holding it, whereas the poor person was sitting next to a crack in the ground. It was written *the rich keeps getting richer and the poor keeps getting poorer*

What I do think is that the only way this might work out for the people who are poor/ middle class is when the government would finally change their ways, their laws, their laws are centered around rich people and due to corruption they are also made by the rich people as well, therefore at the end of the day I do believe, this needs a lot of evolution for the long term. Plus education should be considered a basic right for everyone.

There's a difference between equality of outcome and equality of opportunity. It's inequality of opportunity that needs to be addressed. I don't think many people would advocate for absolute equality of outcome irrespective of talent, skill, ambition, risk-taking, ingenuity etc. But I believe most people can see that it is unjust that some people are basically guaranteed success from birth, whilst many others are all but guaranteed failure. I mean, most of the political leaders in my country over the last hundred (and more) years went to the same fee-paying school as kids, the self-perpetuating elite, born to rule.

If someone from a poor background breaks through and becomes a success, they're rightly lauded... but the entire reason it is newsworthy is because it's such a rare occurrence.

I think much of the anger in society stems from people feeling cheated, not that they never got a reward, but that they never got much of a chance. Disparities of outcome is a secondary issue.

I agree that it's not fair, and that redistribution is very important. The gap has been widening over decades, and that's not supposed to be happening when society is getting more prosperous. That's why it's important to adjust tax legislation to ensure that the richest people in the world can't get away with paying low or zero taxes. It's also important to change the culture itself, so that it's considered a matter of prestige not to own tons of houses, planes and cars (for instance, due to the environmental impact), and to pour your extra wealth into socially responsible initiatives of your choice (donating to human rights organizations, opening schools and hospitals, setting up scholarships for the least advantaged people). I think more people should read Rawls and consider his approach to justice, where justice (realistically) is when the most advantaged help out the most disadvantaged to balance the system out.

The gap is widening for many reasons; if a lazy man and his family suffers due to poverty then we cannot do anything about that but if a family suffers due to inefficient or corrupted government then I agree redistribution of economy worldwide is more important. In my opinion, all the human across this globe must get same level of opportunities and then they will build their wealth up to their efforts.

But, I am not ready to agree that gap in economic is not exceeding the tolerance limit; because we do have this same kind of situation for years and nothing major happened due to this. At the same time, rich are becoming richer and poor becomes more poorer. So, some initiative we must need right away.

We are not God who can create endless justice. But we are endowed with reason to make a path of justice at least one second for many people to feel. For example, a few months ago in early January I went to a place where a natural disaster was flooding, which was caused by the felling of trees without selective logging by factories protected by the government (damn) resulting in rainwater not being absorbed by the trees and consequently affecting the residential areas of surrounding communities. For almost 1 month distributing aid from donors in the form of food, drinks, clothing and temporary shelter to accommodate victims who lost their homes and all their valuables.

We can't create justice that makes them happy forever, but we have a duty to cheer them up so that they can at least smile for a short time and feel like there's still someone out there who cares. That's when the rich people's economy is tested and should be able to care.

While I am not saying that human beings are necessarily bad and unjust and unfair, the problem with us is that we always want to be pleased. So when we lend a hand, it is almost always to please ourselves more than pleasing others. The direction would always be inward or toward us. There's oftentimes a helping hand, especially in times of disaster, but the primary consideration would always be that it shouldn't be too bothersome. Or if it is, at least there will be a kind of compensation in whatever form. Humans always ask first, "what's in it for me?" We always have motives.

I've been involved in a number of disaster projects in the past, and the common thing when disaster strikes is that, except those who are hapless victims to the tragedy themselves, people are joyous. When disaster strikes, there's money overflowing; there's opportunity for tax discounts plus free promotion; there's a huge demand for goods; and so forth.

This is quite a depressing revelation. I have never been close to a disaster zone, and have no experience of such a situation. Do you think an element of the joy might be poorly-expressed relief from the survivors that they themselves could have been victims, and are thankful for having a narrow escape? Or is it really merely an absence of empathy?

I understand your frustration and fully agree with you, its not fair. There is no real argument why any one person needs more than 1 bn USD. How can you spend such kind of money in a lifetime? I wish we as ordinary humans could do something, unfortunately it's not realistic at the moment. In my opinion society is not ready to make policies on a global level. When it comes to Super rich we can't just change the laws in one country. Let's say in USA, China or Europe we would create a wealth tax of 25% above 10 million net worth, then the rich would just find ways to circumvent the law. First of all rich people like to put their money in trust and not in their personal names. So it becomes hard to proof that one person owns all that money. And we still have plenty of tax havens in the world. As long as small countries compete against each other to attract the most rich people in the world it is not going up work. Also the most trastic way is for the super rich to get out of some form of wealth redistribution would be to return their passport and become a citizen of a different country.

This reality isn't fair,but guess what?It isn't supposed to be fair.
Capitalism isn't fair,but do you think that feudalism was fair?Do you think that the slave-ownership system that was before feudalism was fair?I don't think so.
Communists and socialists were promising a fair world,but their totalitarian regimes weren't fair and they failed miserably.
The human civilization exists in a system that cannot be changed-a rich minority dominates over the poor majority.Any attempt to change that system ruins everything.
Perhaps the people in North Korea are equal,but Kim and the party elite are privileged and control the entire country,so there's no equality even in a communist country.

People in ground zero are expected to be devastated. When I said there's actually joy in disaster, I was referring to majority of the government agencies, politicians, private companies, NGOs, and other organizations and agencies that are responding to it. They may seem to be the good Samaritans, but most of them are actually just exploiting the opportunities provided by disasters.

There's so much money during disasters. Calamity funds are released. Strict procurement laws could be waived. All kinds of grants and aids are coming from all directions. There's also a spike in the demand of certain goods and services. Infrastructure and all kinds of projects abound. Corruption almost always accompanies disaster response efforts.

So whenever the rich helps the poor, it does not necessarily mean the rich means it. It could simply mean that by helping, the rich gains something.

Everything sounds nice, but there are a couple of points:
1. The income and "assets" of the listed people are not money! Imagine ! They don't have a warehouse with wads of money! They have a market value for their tangible and intangible assets.
2. Secondly, they earned them and paid taxes. And they gave jobs to many people. And they built a lot of things - for people.
Now the question is - why should they take, sell all their factories, factories, patents, and give money to those who have been fed with the whole world for decades so that they can eat it again?
And let's add a tax to you and the rest of the citizens - will you just give 25% of your income to feed those people? Or at least 10%? Do you agree? :)

Why do you believe about socialism to be something that is only happening in the bad parts of the world? I mean yeah China, NK, USSR, and the likes all had dictators and communism and it was a bad situation. However if you look at Europe, they have way more socialism than USA and even UK to an extent and they are doing fine? It is not even about countries like Norway or Sweden anymore because they have been miles miles ahead of everyone else in politics, they are literally the best nations when it comes to politics.

However nations like Germany, France, Italy, Spain and many others are still doing it better than USA as well. They have free schools, free healthcare and many other things and they are surviving. Ones like Italy and Greece have national debt and near bankrupt levels, but they are using euro currency and saved, USA has tons of debt, more debt than any other nation AND not have free education or healthcare.

It is clear to me that socialism does work, just in small doses. Does France have McDonalds? starbucks? Sure they do, they are semi-capitalist that way, but they have free education and healthcare as well along with it. Just because you have one doesn't mean you suddenly become USSR.

Op, what do you mean by being fair as no one has restricted any body from becoming rich but it is by individual efforts and plans that one has for his life. The money is still out there for whoever has the initiative to make out of it and can even become more richer than those numbers you mentioned.

But lets' do talk about Norway and Sweden.
First, the interesting fact, they have more billionaires per capita than the US.
Sweden is for example the top 6 country in the world by the numbers of millionaires per capita. Hardly socialist!
Oh wait, they are not even socialist in the first place, do I have to post again the statement from their politics stating clearly they all are capitalist countries with a free market economy?

Also, there is one major important fact!
Unlike Venezuela who was a wealthy country that turn socialist and into ruin, nordic counties which have implemented social welfare (not socialism) to a higher degree than other countries were wealthy before that!
Let's look at other angles, what's the minimum wage in Sweden? Oh wait, they don't have one! Hardly socialist again!

So, bottom line, what makes in your opinion any of the nordic countries socialist?



China has McDonald's, so does Belarus, and guess who...Venezuela!
So I have a feeling you don't have a clue what capitalism really means.
You're messing economic models with forms of goverment.

Nobody says that socialism is bad! It is bad that such antihuman regimes as in China, Russia and the cesspools they created such as DPR / LPR / PMR, Abkhazia, North Korea and the like. But they have nothing in common with socialism - there is quite ordinary, anti-human totalitarianism, with militarism.
For example, the inhabitants of the USSR lied for decades that they live in socialism and communism is ahead :) They lived in poverty, wretchedness and backwardness. Developing habits that a beggarly life is good. A well-fed, well-to-do, thinking citizen is not beneficial to totalitarian regimes. An extremely narrow-minded, stupid population is needed, with one question - how to survive and eat.

Thanks, yes, I understand what you mean now, and agree completely. There are always people who will try to make money out of anything, no matter the situation, there are plenty of people who see human suffering not as a tragedy, but as an opportunity.

You are assuming that everyone has a fair chance in life, which is certainly not the case. Would Trump, for example, have become president if he had been born into a poor family?

I will have to upset you - in the USSR there was neither socialism, nor FREE education and medicine. Moreover, they were not "the best in the world" as we were told. I myself lived during the Soviet era, so I have something to remember and talk about. For "free" everyone paid a price much higher than paid education and paid medicine in the West. Of course, propaganda in the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries worked well ... But the inhabitants of the USSR always wanted "capitalist disadvantages" rather than "Soviet advantages"

this is indeed a bitter irony but indeed things like this will definitely not be eliminated because surely things like this will always exist, especially for countries with very high mobility.
Social inequality like this cannot be avoided and there will always be barriers for the rich and the poor.
although not everyone thinks and thinks this exists, some people still make caste a circle and between the rich and the poor it is very difficult to become a circle.

Yes, you are perfectly correct. There is a huge gulf between Russian communism and European-style democratic socialism (which after all exists in a capitalist framework). This should be perfectly obvious to everyone, and yet it's not. Any new policy idea — particularly in the US — that is even vaguely left-of-centre is immediately decried by those in power and their acolytes as communist. The strategy is simplistic and moronic, but it gets stupid people riled up, which is of course the intention. See for example the hysteria over something as inoffensive as ObamaCare.

https://i.imgur.com/Obpk3ar.jpg

Obamacare seems like something that is already out of the box and natural for most countries. Even the UK, not a major suspect of socialism, has a Social Security system built decades ago (1948 or so) and provides free care.

Let's face it, the health care business is huge in the US and many people consider that each individual should care for him/herself. There is not a culture of a state caring for the citizens, whereas in Europe the culture is opposite. The arguments used by the HC sector are:

- The HC will be shit. Huge queues, poor attention, people not getting treatment...
- The doctors want to keep making huge $$$ (some of them). A free HC means that you will pay less and will probably need to form more doctors.
- The insurance companies are simply scared to death. It is their business to get paid for HC (and deny claims as much as they can). They threaten with rising the premiums.
- In general, there are many people that do not consider that HC is a right, and everyone is to care for their own.

Well, I think you also have to know that all these people you see as rich people also came from nothing to something. they were once poor as well and they had to work really hard for them to reach the level they are at now. So you should read their history and understand more about them. I don’t think it’s right to persecute them just because they’re rich, they came up with ideas and their ideas were good enough to make them money that will last them for their lifetime, and these people are people that invented a lot of things that are helpful to us in one way or the other.

This is not something that really bothers me at all, I think it’s best that everyone focus on themselves and work hard to take care of their family. And if you have more than enough, then it wouldn’t be bad to support people who are poor and doesn’t have.

The truth is, life is never fair. It never was. It never will be. And we just have to accept and get used to that kind of reality.

The multi-billionaires made their way to the top because they have the skills, strategies, and resources that could help them. Despite having the rags-to-riches story, most of them acquire their wealth by using capitalistic mindset. Whenever these people have the opportunity, they make sure to grab into it no matter how it will be viewed from other people's perspective.

It really is unfair knowing that there are these people who are billionaires while other people are suffering on the other parts of the world. They hoard wealth they can't even spend in their lifetime, while others can barely survive each day. However, we can do nothing about it since it is their lives and wealth after all. We cannot dictate them to feed the poor and end the hunger when they don't want to. We have different values, beliefs, and principles. Not everyone has the same empathy, compassion, and consideration that we have  As much as bad as it may seem, they do continuosly generate wealth not just only for themselves but for their future bloodline as well. Inheritance is what's usually passed down that continues the legacy of the ancestors.

Also, it is the government's duty to bring opportunities to the poor so that they could stand on their own. It is their job to eradicate poverty as much as they can. They are being paid by the citizen's taxes to make the country a better place to live in. However, instead of doing their very own job, some government officials tend to prioritize their personal agendas over what the public needs. Hence we cant really blame the rich totally because the problem lies also to the government. Both plays a role.

But all that has happened, even the wealth they get and the poverty they experience is the result of what they do. Indeed, no one is born at the finish line. All also reached the highest point as a result of hard work in a long time.
Maybe it's true if they don't donate their money, or without our knowledge that there is always help flowing without the media knowing.
The problem of inequality that is happening now, I can't say anything because basically the government has been assigned to be the representative of the people and fight for the rights of the people whose welfare is demanded. It's all just a dream, nothing is really holy when everyone gets a lot of money in sight.

But that is the issue, what gives you or anyone else the right to appropriate of 25%, 30% or even a single dollar from another person? Capitalism is based on the principle of private property, if someone else can just come to my house and grab whatever they want just because they need it and they have the protection of the law then I do not have any reason to buy the same item as it is going to be stolen again, this destroys the economy as no one will be interested in producing anything and will instead want to steal as it will be faster than producing something on our own.

This is why private property is protected in any true capitalist system, you give some of your income to a central authority in the form of taxes in order to maintain society, but you can keep most of the products of your labor and build your wealth over the years, if this cannot be done any economy no matter how strong it is thought to be will collapse.

I live in a nation that has free healthcare, as free as it gets, we pay a very small ($2) fee for each visit but that is literally nothing, that is basically just rounding up number for the government and not for profit at all.

I can tell you that you can have both of these situations together, which I know looks silly on paper but works very well. We have both private hospitals where you pay a ton of money, and also government hospitals that are just 2 bucks. Do we have waiting periods? We do, not queue actually, because you just take your date and leave and come back in your date and you are ready to go see the doctor, there is nothing really wrong with that, or if you want to, pay 100 bucks instead of 2 bucks and see a private one and get checked.

My mother in law is sick these days, and she spent nearly 4 thousand dollars total, all private, just like American system. So, we both have that 2 bucks free healthcare system that allows us to get healthcare if we are poor, but we also have those insurance company loving high priced ones at the same time. It really works and it is a good compromise.

If not difficult - a couple of answers to a couple of questions:
1. Where do you live? (If you don’t want to answer this question, ok don’t answer)
2. Is the quality of the described medicine sufficient? Is the range of services provided wide? Can you cure there from a dislocated finger, for example, childbirth, or complex intracavitary operations?
3. How can you explain the presence of paid clinics with excellent free medicine?

I have some doubts, and it seems to me that I can summarize it in three options:

1.-You live in a first world country where the priority is its people, where many times the government wanted to take away jobs and its people did not want to, and they have all the comforts and basic services.

2.-You are stuck in a socialist-communist country (which for me, socialist means communist) where they clearly make you believe that.

3.-The doctors are probably Cuban, because the medical branch demands to have a profit for its professionals.

Excuse me, but as it is written, what you describe is particularly those aspects.

It is difficult to achieve justice in this world if you hope in humans because the best justice belong to God. The world is never fair and when we compare rich and poor there is always a picture that poor people always look weak without much money while rich people can always make their cake grow.

Taxes are a solution to achieve justice for equity where the richer a person is, the higher the expected tax. We can urge government to do so, but I doubt we have the power to influence their greed in the end. I believe that if the tax management is correct, then the level of prosperity of the people will probably reach a better number and poverty and hunger will be lower. This economic disparity only occurs if the government is unfair to its people, and the success rate of its implementation is still very low in any country.

If taxes are really the solution, then today no one is hungry, in fact this economic inequality is due to an interest-bearing economic system to a false government system.  Why do I say false, basically the government is the representative of the people who are elected to solve various problems.  But they are trapped in office and abuse it with corruption, collusion and nepotime.  Isn't that already rooted?  Not to mention the economic system based on interest.  This is the source of the big problem of inequality.  I'm not defending religion and comparing it only as a reference for discussion in this forum.  In Islam, usury is strictly prohibited because of the impact that the OP wrote.  Currently, if usury did not exist, we might not see people who are very poor because the rules are clear.

I don't think it's fair but cannot see it changing any time soon. The sad fact of life is many people are not educated, nor take the time to educate themselves, about how to make their finances work in their favor. Lots of people go through life with the mentality that they must spend every penny that they earn immediately and never save or invest for their future benefit. Others grow a family that they can barely afford, but it does bring them mostly happiness which can be better that money. However if you can find a balance, save up a fair proportion of your wages and invest them properly then it is possible to build some degree of freedom compared to others. Even Warren Buffett, while he did have a privileged childhood was able to build up all his wealth from by learning this from any early age.

Exactly, I think you have a good point here. Taxes are the best way to help countries fight poverty and hunger and can improve people's welfare. In fact, the government and its system are completely unreliable because there are many individual who are leaders in such an unfair way that the implementation and functioning of the tax itself is of little help in this regard. Corruption is one of the thing that hinders prosperity and individuals who do it should not be in the government structure because they will only be the biggest obstacle. In the end we can conclude that don't expect justice from hungry lion because they will only think of their own stomach and lusts.