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[return to "Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not"]
1. brickc+73[view] [source] 2018-09-11 19:40:53
>>tysone+(OP)
Poverty in America is a result of American capitalism, at a very high level. At a very very high level, it is caused by human greed, and a lack of love for our neighbors.

We can talk about wages and employment rates, and race all day long, but those are just details. It's human greed in the end, and our inability to love others like we love ourselves.

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2. whb07+HC[view] [source] 2018-09-12 01:20:05
>>brickc+73
I don't care or need to love you. But I do love my family and myself. So if I need to put on a smile and provide a service or good to you for money to help the people I love I will do it. That's the point of capitalism and free markets.

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages”

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3. paulsu+iF[view] [source] 2018-09-12 01:56:24
>>whb07+HC
Something has really changed. In those days the rewards were fairly linear and available everywhere. But now rewards are nonlinear and highly concentrated. Income inequality (and opportunity inequality) will continue to increase, and we probably need to rethink these pithy little axioms that powered the 1900s.
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4. sonnyb+KF[view] [source] 2018-09-12 02:03:46
>>paulsu+iF
My belief is that the non-linearity is not due the lack of opportunity of some, but rather the hyper-opportunity of others.

The Silicon Valley isn't really an 'American' centre, it's like a 'Global Centre' where for the first time, indiviuals can have massively disproportionate, global impact.

A doctor may earn a big income, but he can only work on so many patients where as some global firms ... the yields are huge.

Coupled with some automation and large scale immigration of unskilled labour in North America which hurts labour, and outsourcing as well ... it creates a schism.

But remember that on a global basis, billions are being lifted out of utter and abject poverty.

It's mostly a good story.

We have to figure out the working class in advanced nations.

I actually do believe that it's mostly about good jobs, decent services, decent community. That's all there really ever was.

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