I know that this thread is serious business:
But I just found that statement to be hilarious for some reason.
Reason: I intended it to be. I have a tolerance for how long I can go without adding some levity to a conversation.
Are you serious? Do you think that if there is a huge gap between rich and poor that businesses will give a **** about the poor? When you are a business, what are you aiming to do? Answer: Make a profit. If target 1% of the population can make you more (off less sales) than targeting the other 99%, what would you do as a business owner?
So, it is easier to operate a store that caters to 1% of the population? So, if you wanted to open a store catering to that group do you understand that you will be fighting to get a share of 1% of the population from every single high end store in the city? How many dress code required $100 a plate restaurants do you see in comparison to fast food places with dollar and value menus? How many exotic car dealers are there in a city compared to dealerships that sell things like Kias, Fords, and GMs? You only have to look around you to see that high end shops catering to the top 1% of the population are very few. The reason is that it only caters to 1% of the market, which makes it a cut throat business.
Just drive around in a city and see how many high end stores there are vs how many other types of everything there are. Are you going to argue that all the chain brands are bad at business because of who they cater to? It is simple observation to see what succeeds by leaps and bounds.
And what makes you such an authoritative figure on the free market and how the economy works? I assume you have some sort of degree in business or economics at the least.
My degree is a bachelors in telecommunications and I am a manager at a media marketing research firm. I have no degree in economics, but I do have a side interest and have taken time to study both Keynesian and Austrian schools of thought, and often find myself reading books by economists like
Robert P Murphy and
Milton Friedman. My interest in economics has become so great that I am considering going back to school to study it. But when and if that happens will be decided by time and monetary constraints after my daughter arrives.
That said, if you have some expertise or something to refute my positions I am more than happy to discuss them. But I doubt you will find any economist from any school or philosophy that says that only selling to 1 person while ignoring 99 others will be more successful in the end, especially if five other guys are trying to sell to that same one person.
Lower income earners won't need to be catered to, they can just be ignored because they simply aren't profitable (e.g. what happens at the moment).
I am pretty sure I explained how this isn't the case at the moment above.
There exists opportunities for certain companies (Wal-Mart) which focus on low margins and high sales, but if people start having lower disposable incomes their margins become even smaller and potentially negative.
Good thing Walmart doesn't focus purely on disposable items. They have huge grocery and clothing sections too, which are cheaper than most other places where you can buy them new.
What is your definition of many? I would argue the vast majority of poor people would tend to stay poor under a regime without access to certain standards of free education and healthcare, which are believe it or not provided by the totally evil government.
By many I mean in comparison to those that try. As I mentioned to Joey, there are localized societal expectations of failure to overcome, but being made fun of for being smart is not something a guy in a different city can control. For those that overcome those things and keep their mind focused on making something of themselves they can. Hey, I was the nerd in the farming community that got punched for speaking with proper grammar. I made it through college on student loans and part-time jobs. Was I in the worst situation? No, but no one in my family had more than two years of college before my brother and I went and our community didn't really cater to college preparation. Judging by the looks of it then, and now, that town is better at making babies than money.
And yes, I went to a public school. But
a recent school Voucher program in Washington DC pointed out to me how much less is spent per student in private institutions. If we feel that the public must pay for every child's education why not allow vouchers, or even the school credits discussed
here? I have more thoughts on it than that article addresses, but it grants more opportunities to everyone than being forced to attend the public school the government tells you to go to if you can't afford a private school.
Remember my comment regarding local societal expectations of failure? If a kid in the ghetto can only be allowed to go to school in the ghetto what benefit are you giving him? Allow those same public funds to be directed toward school choice.
Just as I recognize that a free market and capitalism is not what we have in the US right now, I also recognize that minimum standards of education can be far superior to what we have now. But that requires modeling it more on a private system, in my opinion.
Of course an argument could be made that there is no need for a public system at all, unless you feel like you need to control how a parent can educates their children. And that is more of a philosophical argument in regard to parenting, but I do know that in the US there was a time before public schools.
As for health care: It can be provided, without the government, to people who are screwed from birth.
I am evidence of that. And all the machines they use have big brand names on them, like GE, but not a single US government logo.
I appreciate that people (including me) are greedy, but do you not feel an ounce of social responsibility in your body? A responsibility to give back to the country that has given you so much?
I feel social responsibility. Which is why when I had a friend lose his job I paid him to help me put in a new kitchen floor. I could have done it myself, but would have hated it. I could also have just given him the money, but that doesn't take his mind of his lack of a job, or help him feel like he is doing more than being a leech. I was going to pay him to help paint the nursery, but he found another job. It is why I don't throw out anything I can donate, like clothes. But see, these are all things I chose to do. This is me personally taking on my sense of social responsibility myself. I am not telling government to spend someone else's money to alleviate the guilt I feel when I don't show some social responsibility.
I do not feel so much social responsibility that I will force my fellow countrymen to act on it with me.
Part of it is not caring, but then what's the point of caring?
As long as people think like this, there isn't a point. But then, where would the world be if everyone thought like this?
Ya, there are a lot of good ideas out there but they are just good ideas on paper, they can't actually exist, not after years of doing things different. Right, wrong or indifferent our country has made choices and now we are stuck with them.
Would you say the way we do things now is how we did them from day one, or did we start doing them after years of doing things different? It wasn't called The New Deal for nothing. They had to make an amendment to the Constitution to change how government could tax. I only wish everyone had sounded like you 100 years ago, and I am glad they didn't 234 years ago.
To me that's being a realist, I see how things are and I know they aren't going to change.
My dad said the exact same thing when I was in college and struggling with some grades, because he didn't have any college and did just fine. The Post Office was hiring and that was the good, honest work of a realist.
