: But relative poverty is still as socially divisive as absolute poverty:
1:It means inequality of justice (one law for teh poor, as many laws as money can buy for teh rich 'Some more law sir?' 'No, no thank you, I've got enough right now...'
2:It means inequality of power, them with the most control over societies resources, have the most absolute power.
3:it means inequality of education, health and life enjoyement.In each case a person can perceive this, but the inequality is relative as you have said, and presumably thats what matters. When in an imagenary future the poorest people have the equivalent to the richest now this kind of 'inequality' will still exist, as will the inequality borne in good looks, height etc etc. With that as the driving issue there can never be any rest until the leaders in the field of wealth are stopped, presumable with either the goal of letting other catch up, or more ominously of bringing them down. Such equality I find to be in fantasy land, I prefer to consider peoples position against themselves (ie are you better off now) or against meaningful averages like longevity. Other wise you are forever chasing someones tail, should they for even an instance step out of line and have a little more of something than their neighbour.
: No, teh goal is wealth creation,a nd eqalisation to the accessable wealth. Capitalism cannot infinitely expand growth- the law of no profit no production limits productive gowth to effective wealth (we can't produce more than people can buy).
But we can and do produce 'more wealth per dollar' in the form of technological progress, hence the crisis is constantly out of reach, except for little peeks of it in stagnant industries.
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Exactly, I want everyone to be wealthy 'everyone should live in their own cathedral', what I am against is greed, or people feeling they must have more wealth than their fellows.
There may be no feelings involved. Someone may create more wealth by being better at some things, this does not disadvantage the rest of the population. The opposite infact (as explained above). The more welath is good, applies as a universal. My extra $10 is good, Mr Billionaires extra $100,000 is good. Neither lost.
But we are, we want to make sure that other countries have the means to produce their own wealth, instead of relying on our produce.
Hence sales of machinery and tools to other nations. It might annoy a tractor company to find that other companies have sold the machinery to mine resources and make tractors to a country, but it happens. Observe SE Asia.
But if you make the cake bigger, you only increase the size of the portions, not the relative distribution of the cake- them as have no cake, still have no cake. And them as had big portions before, have even bigger portions. i want more wealth, and I want everyone to share it.
The only issue for me, in the above, is not that I get $10 and that BillionBoy gets $10million, the only concern is that MrPoor gets $0 regardless of cake increases. How to get MrPoor into the cake without curtailing cake growth (and robbing current cakeowners) is a more challenging question. Even though Ive just made it sound like a side comment in a bakery!
