All put together to muddy up the obvious...
There is nothing obvious to muddy up. Its muddy, and you can look at various data and ideas to try to clear it up.
The most likely conclusion is that the rich are growing wealthier faster than the not rich. Which BTW isn't the same as or similar to your idea that they are becoming wealthier at the expense of the poor or the not rich in general. Quite the opposite as much of the income of the wealthy is from productive work or productive investments, the existence of which help the not-rich. Even the poorest of the poor, who don't have jobs received government transfers largely funded by the taxes on the income of the rich.
Well something must motivate you to fall on the side of the rich when its the poor that are getting screwed.
1 - Being in a bad situation doesn't mean getting screwed. If you double your income and I increase mine by 1% you didn't screw me. If I was poor that also wouldn't mean that I was getting screwed. The fact that some people are poor isn't an attack against them.
2 - Being in a good situation doesn't mean you aren't getting screwed. If I was a billionaire, and someone bilked me out of $10mil, I'd still be incredibly wealthy, despite the fact that I was just "screwed". I "fall on the side of the rich" because people, including you are advocating screwing the rich, and also because the screwing would not just fall on the rich, but on the upper middle class, and indirectly on most people.
Absolute poverty would be a far more important concern, as would any great increase in equality cause by a reduced level of income and wealth by those at the bottom (or more generally by the non rich). But absolute poverty isn't getting rich, and the poor are not broadly speaking getting poorer. The change is that the rich are getting richer.
Finish the sentence...."at a much faster rate and the disparity between the two is growing significantly."
The rich aren't getting richer in a way that's causing the poor to not get richer. The disparity between the two is growing a bit, but hacking down the rich, while it might decrease the disparity, won't help the poor, and in fact is likely to hurt them.
If you could cut the wealth that the rich are getting richer, without having any impact positive or negative on anyone else, would you do so? It would decrease the extent that the "disparity is growing", but it would only cause harm, so I would not do it. Your words seem to indicate that you would.
"Not being very upset about the fact that the wealthy are doing very well hardly equates with not caring about poor people, let alone with disliking them."
Well, its certainly very hard to understand given the circumstances of each group.
Your comment doesn't make any sense. Being upset at the wealthy getting wealthier is being upset about something that is happening to the wealthy. The circumstances of the poor don't enter in to it. If the poor are getting poorer or even not getting wealthier, that is something to be upset about, but "the poor not getting richer" isn't the same as or strongly connected to "the rich getting richer. Also its not even true, as the poor are also getting wealthier, even if at a slower rate.
Why are you so concerned about difference in wealth and income rather then the levels of wealth and income, and living standards faced by each group? Being upset if things get worse of the poor, could just be being compassionate. But being upset that the rich are getting richer is envy and/or socialism. I care about how well off the poor are, I care very little about how that compares to the non-poor. If I could instantly and harmlessly make everyone wealthier in real terms, but the poor wouldn't increase their wealth as much as the rich, I would do it. Would you? The disparity would grow, but every single person would be economically better off. I care about the well being of people not the disparity between them. |
