Ok, this is the last topic I post…PROMISE!!!
Why is this world unfair? Why does the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer? How did the rich become rich? Why is the poor, poor? Can there ever be a time when everyone is wealthy? Do you ever think, that if the poor didn’t exist…then the rich wouldn’t either?
i don’t see a problem with the rich being rich … it’s when they use their wealth to hijack jumbo jets and fly them into buildings that it gets worrying
RANDOM ALERT! >>that was a bit out of the blue, no?
As long as there are rich ppl, there will always be poor ppl. In my view, it’s like the good and evil argument- one can’t exist without the other. Wealth has to be limited (ie. there is a limit to the no. of bank notes in circulation) because then everyone would be “rich”. They wouldn’t be rich tho, because of the wonder that is currency devaluation (ie. money wouldnt be worth much if everyone had loads of it!).
Mo: COMMUNISM was a large-scale failure across the world! and btw, I KNOW that China is still called a communist state- this is because it’s ruled by the Communist Party, who arent even close to being “communist” in the eyes of Marx or Lenin. Free market enterprise rules the world!!!
I think one has to truly start worring when the rich in the world use their power and resources to completely and utterly dominate the world as a whole and to impose their own views and ideology upon everybody else.
You mean as opposed to the poor people using other people’s resources to TRY and impose their own views and ideology upon everyone else?
You can’t pigeonhole rich people into being dominating fascist bastards. Dominance IS NOT A PREDICATE of being rich!!!
I’m with Loz on this one. Laissez-faire capitalism is the way forward and you just have to make sure you are on the rich side and not the poor. Yes, it’s easier said than done but distribution will never work because the human race is too greedy.
However, I think it is important to raise the living standard of poor people up to an acceptable standard. Yes, there will still be rich and poor but the poor will be comfortable and not living on the streets.
thats only because you are rich, nicky. if you were poor, a) you probably wouldn’t have access to the internet, and b) you’d be singing a different tune anyway.
which raises the issue, is the internet a capitalist invention if only those in developed countries or generally the slightly more wealthy than poor have access to it? and is it widening the gap between us and those less fortunate? on the other hand, can we afford ( ho ho ho) to hold back from developing just because some people can’t afford to at a similar speed? answers on a postacard …
the phrase is ‘‘humming a different tune’’, isn’t it? or is is a phrase at all? hmm …
there have actually been quite a lot of schemes to get computers into more developing countries so they can access the internet. but, to be fair, i doubt many of them are really working.
as for the why the rich are rich and the poor are poor. well, in my opinion it’s because developing countries have problems such as bad weather and most of their GDP is made up from agriculture. this basically means that it’s difficult for them to industrialise because they have no money to invest. which is where, in theory, the western, developed world, should step in.
the reason that developed countries are so rich is not because of capitalist multinational companies, it’s actually due to the corruption and unjustness of organisations set up by the western countries such as the IMF or World Bank. Charging incredibly high interest rates and then making the less developed countries buy all our goods is hardly helping bridge the gap of development between countries. So, personally I think the reason people are rich is because they’re expoiting less developed countries under the farce known as the World Bank.
ahem… i’ll get my coat
It’s important to remember that many countries do not have access to the internet because their government bans it. Can’t blame the west for that!
I think you’re right Jane. No point beating round the bush and trying to explain poverty nicely. People are greedy. It just so happened that “the West” got rich first (due to living in the right place at the right time) and therefore everyone else must be poor. If “The West” had not got rich first, there’s no doubt it would now be opressed by the rich. That’s a fault of human nature, not of the West.
Ben…In reply to ur earlier point, its not poor people trying to impose their ideologies, its just poor people trying to be heard in a world which seems to exclusively revolve around the West. Their is a difference.
When a pupil wishes to be heard by a teacher, he raises his hand. He does not pull outa knife and stab the teacher in the arm.
When animal rights activists wish to be heard they get people to sign petitions and chain themselves to trees. They do not hide in the bushes during a fox hunt and knee-cap the hunters.
When religious people wish to be heard they don’t hi-jack planes and crash them into the twin-towers. oh no wait. they do.
By saying “we disagree with your ideology” you are automatically advocating your own in favour of it. Just being heard won’t solve anything.
When a pupil wishes to say something and the teacher does not ask him then eventually he’ll just shout it out.
When animal rights protestors cannot get their point across then they fire bomb certain individuals houses, if not that then they threaten and intimidate in other open fashions.
Evey cause has its fighters, you cannot deny that, in this discussion we seemed to have made an illogical jump from poor people to religious people. U will find ppl who want to hijack their own religions for their own personnal and political agendas, to say that all religious ppl use viloence to get their point across is rubbish and is untrue. Terrorists use violence to get their point across. The atrocities of Sept 11 were caused and carried out BY TERRORISTS. Not all terrorists are religous ppl and not all religious ppl are terrorists, in fact a tiny minority of religious ppl are terrorists.
Maybe the terrorists are taking the same stance as u Ben, if u think that being heard won’t help then alternative action might seem favourable. Its important to realise that being heard IS important and can make a difference.
You should be very careful in ur attack on religious ppl, fair enuff it is pretty clear that u haven’t that much respect for religious ppl BUT ur last post seemed to be solely based upon ignorance.
In response to your earlier point, Ben, these people you call religious are only known religious because they call themselves that.
If someone claimed that he/she is a vegeterian…but then you see them eating meat, would you call them vegeterian…even if they still claimed they were. Likewise…these people are nothing to do with religion. They are angry. However, they carry out their work in the name of religion in order to tell the world that everyone from that religion is angry too and have the same views.
Anyway, that’s a completely different story…shall I open another topic…hehe?? 
You’re right Faz, I got a little bit carried away on the religion thread. However, i do have a lot of respect for religious people (you being one of them). Perhaps my post didn’t show that and I apologise.
Yes it was unfair for me to compare poor people with religious people but you yourself said it was rich people who imposed their ideologies on everyone else. The seems like a rather blatant attack on America and the west. Just as the terrorists (and not the religious people) were the ones who carried out the attacks, it isn’t the “rich people” who impose ideologies on everyone. Like i said, dominance is not a predicate of being rich.
That was the point I was trying to make and I feel I made it badly.
Well, here goes:
I think the main reason for the widening gap between the rich and the poor is the basic human instinct (no, not the film), greed as someone rightly said earlier.
How many times have you actually attempted to stop to think about poor people unless it was thrusted in front of your face? What about giving a beggar a note rather than a 5p coin?
I doubt that any of us is that generous and I also don’t think that the gap will ever be resolved. I don’t take Loz’s point that rich and poor must exist together as you could call being rich just a term for being well-off ie. food in your stomach and shelter over your head, but it seems natural that some people are less fortunate than us.
btang, look … the title of the film is ‘‘basic instinct’’. theres no human involved. sorry if it seems like i’m btang-bashing but really, lets be fair … if you’re going to make a reference to a film, get it right.
I’m gonna go back to the main point of the original post here cos it appears that the argument’s gone in 2 separate directions.
The ‘poor’ countries of the world are not poor because of the World Bank or the IMF. In the West, since the Industrial Revolution we have all acommadated to rising real incomes i.e. we’re all getting richer and our wages are rising faster than inflation so we all expect this therefore we’re all happy. As a result of this we save and therfore we can invest and therefore our economies grow and we get very rich very quick.
In poor countries the majority of poverty is in rural areas where there ARE too many people working and living on the land. It’s not that the climate is too harsh for agriculture. That’s a bollox over-simplification of the problem. Look at Israel 50 years ago and look at it now - agriculture has improved greatly. The trouble is that people in poor countries accomadate to an unchanging income because they are in an inescapable equilibrium of poverty. There are 2 answers really. (i) Encourage people to realise that their incomes can rise. This can either be through trauma (e.g. persecution so that one ain’t popular) or education. (ii) when people refuse to accept the equilibrium of poverty, facilitate their migration either to cities in their country which will cause it to industrialise or to developed countries.
Those who leave benefit, those who are left benefit. Those in the countries they come to benefit.win - win - win situation. Everyone knows that millions left Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for America. This mass immigration in America developed it and Europe. The only problem with this argument is that it imposes Western economic and industrial ideas on the developing world. The IMF and World Bank are not a joke: they do a lot of good work. Immigration policy in the West is a joke - it’s far too strict and it’s holding the global economy back.
Finally in response to the points on Communism - it hasn’t always failed - Cuba ain’t doing too badly for itself!
[This message has been edited by alex (edited 10 December 2001).]
Clarice, your right…
I apologise, I was thinking straight. Its so blatantly obvious that the film is called Basic Instinct, what was I thinking. Shoulda read my own post properly. Sorry 
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btang … sorry for being picky (ahem, you’re not your). i was in a bad mood 
so, alex, you’re telling me that the IMF and World Bank benefit less developed countries and the problems actually arise because of the people in these countries having the wrong attitude towards income? sorry, i just don’t think that’s the case… what’s the point in them working when all their money is taken by the state to pay off large debts they owe to the “western world” ? And why should we force them to buy our goods, when we know they’re overpriced and we don’t need the extra cash anyway?