• Pat_Riot@lemmy.today
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    10 months ago

    The existence of a trillionaire nearly guarantees that poverty is never going anywhere

    • Skeezix@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      That’s what people don’t seem to get: you can’t have extreme rich without having extreme poor. That’s a baked-in side effect of our current strain of capitalism.

        • pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe
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          10 months ago

          No it isn’t. There’s nothing stopping us from, for example, growing our own crops and trading them to each other. And we can do that whether or not it’s legal.

          Point in fact, triggering them into outlawing something so harmless would kind of be the point. Then it would force a confrontation they would lose because so many people would be negatively affected – especially the right wing which already does this in their rural communities.

          🤔 Come to think of it, it might be one of the better ways to solve the problem than any other idea anyone has come up with…

            • dick_stitches@lemm.ee
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              10 months ago

              You don’t have to grow your own crops. You could buy vegetables from a neighbor with a garden, or offer a service. The point is more about subverting the multinational conglomerate machines that drive our current economy

        • pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe
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          10 months ago

          It’s the only way we’d be able to organize and fight a revolution to get them off of our backs though.

          Plus it can be decentralized so that they can’t take it down by force.

  • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Poverty will never be eradicated, what kind of nonsense is that? The poverty is a feature of capitalism, not a bug.

  • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    If a dollar was deposited into you account every SECOND, it would take approximately 32 years to get to just one billion dollars.

    Elon Musk has 180! And he’s the SECOND richest guy on Earth. The richest being Bernard Arnault at 211!!!

    It’s absolutely grotesque to be this filthy rich.

    Also, inb4 “It’S pApEr VaLuE, nOt ReAl MoNeY iN tHe BaNk”. Who cares? You could sell it all and become an international hero by ending all famine, bringing healthcare to everyone and giving shelter to everyone who needs it.

      • Meltrax@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Even better - it’s a debt. It lowers their income to below 0. It’s a tax break.

    • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      I just had to do the math. If Jesus rose from the dead but then continued living as an immortal zombie, and he managed to squirrel away $250,000 a day, every day without spending a dime, he would just about have as much money as Elon Musk by now.

    • ExLisper@linux.community
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      10 months ago

      Scientist: poverty will be eradicated in 230 years

      Internet: Actually, it’s 229 years you libtard

  • JCreazy@midwest.social
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    10 months ago

    Speaking hypothetically here, what if millions of people just decided that they weren’t to go going to give money to rich people and then those people decided to go to that rich person’s house. Could the problem be fixed quickly this way?

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      If even 10-20% of the workforce just refused to go to work until {list of demands} were met, most businesses and politicians would cave within days/weeks.

      This is why it’s important for capitalism to perpetuate poverty. If the majority had ample savings and were able to survive for months without a paycheque, they would be able to enact change comparatively easily and painlessly, they would be able to refuse and quit shit jobs, they would have time to invest in grass roots movements, campaigns, and protests.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Poverty will never be eradicated. At no point in human civilization have we managed to eliminate poverty, and as long as there are rich people needing to extract maximum profits from fellow humans there will always be poor people.

    • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip
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      10 months ago

      Poverty is needed for the rich to be rich. That’s the basic foundation of the system. That was really a dumb report. Except the trillionaire-thing. We will witness that

  • ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    Sweet, I could be a trillonaire by the time poverty will be eradicated. All I have to do is save $498,500 every single hour until then.

          • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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            10 months ago

            That’s ok. Just keep working hard at pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and I’m sure you’ll get there eventually. Since you’re so close, you should probably start voting against taxes on the rich now. That way you won’t have to worry about the damn greedy welfare queens taking your hard earned money once you’ve made it.

  • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    We have far greater productivity than at any other point in human history and we still have tons of poverty, even in places like the EU and US. I believe we have the capability but not the willingness. Who’s to say we’ll ever have the willingness.

    • Powerpoint@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      As long as capitalism is the main system and governments fail to act on the abuse by the wealthy you are correct

      • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Even in other systems… poverty serves to keep the underclass in line. It’s hard to revolt when you don’t have enough to eat.

  • honey_im_meat_grinding@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    10 months ago

    The kicker is this:

    We use World Bank data27 to calculate the time needed to reduce (to below 1%) poverty at $6.85 a day. This is the higher of the three global poverty lines used by the World Bank; it is used because we believe it gives the most accurate picture of the numbers of people globally living in poverty.

    I sure as hell could not survive on $6 a day - and we can talk about purchasing power, but resources have international trade prices and you’re priced out of those resources if you’re poor because of pecuniary externalities. At the current rate of wealth inequality growth, it will probably take so many years it might as well be “forever” to eradicate actual poverty and not the “at least you’re not a slave” poverty definition they’re using.

    (note: I skimmed through it, so I could have missed something crucial)

  • thefartographer@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    That 229 figure is bullshit. Either all the impoverished will perish, be killed, or move underground into a less opulent/more satisfying culture where rat burgers reign supreme well before then or the real number is “fuck off you poor piece of trash.”