The rich cannot be rich without the poor

Miscellaneous Newbies
1

I hear a lot of variations on this…

“The system of money creates seperational competition in which a large amount of people need to fail in order for a few to succeed.”

“the rich cannot be rich without the poor. ALL WEALTH is obtained through the sweat and sometimes blood of the poor.”

Is this true? Any refutations or clarifications?

Thanks for the help

2

It’s not true. It’s the emotive plea of those who hate everyone who has a penny more than they do.

3

Statistically top 20% highest earners in US work more hours than lowest 20%

4

That’s cuz they’re greedy[8o|]

5

It’s partially true. It’s also true that the poor could not be poor without the rich. They would be quite dead.

A division of labor society is one where everyone’s livelihood depends on everyone else’s.

6

If the poor don’t like the rich, they don’t hafta do business with them, thus cutting them off from their money/labor.

7

I think stranger’s comment is the closest to the truth so far. One can’t make a hard either/or statement in either direction due to the symbiotic or mutually dependant relationships that occur. The fact of the matter is that people are economically interdependant to a significant extent, perhaps barring primitivism (and even in primitivist scenarios, there is an unavoidable degree of interaction; hardly anyone is “purely self-sufficient” as an individual).

8

I remember another “in the free market people compete and in a competition someone has to win”

Friedman once said that life is not a zero sum game (a person wins from the loss of another) instead in a free market both men can benefit achieving their separate interests.

Then I remember reading about how the exchange of goods in a free market increases the value of such goods and therefore enables the creation of wealth trough the consumer’s choice.

9

Wealth is created, not “obtained.”

10

See, my feeling is if there weren’t any women none of us would be here.

11

there will always be a bottom 50%, whether your metric is nominal wealth, intelligence, strength, joke telling ability, family size, number of friends,…ad_infinitum

whatever.

12

Alternative business management will emerge and has emerged throughout history.

The “rich” expropriate the surplus value of the “poor’s” labor.

Define “work”. Statistically, thousands of American workers die each year. How many capitalists have died in work related incidents?

http://www.industryweek.com/articles/workplace_fatalities_in_the_u-s-_by_the_numbers_14994.aspx

13

Please stop using the fallacious Labor Theory of Value before you make me die from laughter.

14

If the rich didn’t expropriate the surplus value of the worker’s labor and the workers were actually rewarded for the product they produced than the owner of the means of production wouldn’t have profit.

15

And the rivers would flow with honey and the unicorns would fly above the rainbows…

Really.

16

Profit cannot be consumed in whole. I suggest you take a listen to Salerno’s lecture on the nature of production before going any further in discussing this.

17

How is that relevant to process in which said profit is collected?

Have a link?

18

I think this is the link. and it’s relevance is that profit isn’t stolen from the workers as they are paid for it via wage in exchange of ownership in said production.

19

Thank you.

I never said that the profit was stolen nor did I say they were not rewarded at all.

20

They are rewarded with the wage.