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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (273375)	2/27/2006 8:19:02 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573221

Can your reply to my reply? Ted - Capitalism has not been able to cure us of that underclass. Tim - Because the underclass is defined in relative terms. If the economy as a whole had 100 times as much real wealth and the underclass had 20 times, than most individuals, including most individuals in the "underclass" would be financially better off, but official statistics would show a large underclass and a greater disparity in wealth. --- Also "There is no great degree of starvation in the US.", is simply true. There might be people who go hungry every now and than, or get very low quality food but there is no great degree of starvation in the US. Sure the favelas in Brazil or the tin shacks in Mexico are worse then our slums, but not by much. Third world poverty is far worse than the poverty anywhere in the US. And our poor do not live better than doctors in third world countries. If you compare a typical recipient of public assistance (not the homeless living on the street, or some other selection of the poorest of the poor in the US) to a doctor in the poorest countries in the world (Not Brazil or India, but something like Malawi or Sierra Leone), I'll think you'll find that you are wrong. I read a story that interviewed a doctor in one of the poorest countries in Africa, and had a comparison between him and a welfare recipient in the US. The doctor couldn't normally afford to eat meat. His main advantage over the American welfare recipient was status, he was admired and respected, but in terms of financial resources, even adjusted for the lower prices in Africa he wasn't clearly better off than the welfare recipient and in a number of ways was worse off. I read it in a newspaper or magazine, but I can't find the article now. Maybe its not online, or maybe because I don't know what periodical to search for I just can't find it. It is anecdotal evidence only, and it is a doctor in one of the poorest countries in the world, not a typical third world doctor, but it does help illuminate the comparison as does the "Adopt a Doctor program" "How does the Adopt A Doctor model work? We give physicians in Malawi, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Haiti a $100 USD monthly stipend. In Malawi and Sierra Leone, this triples a doctor's salary." adoptadoctor.org If you just mean that the poorest in the US are worse off than a typical third world doctor I agree. --- "Official total global oil reserves have continued to increase. You might not trust those official figures. Maybe you have good reason not to, but than you should develop the argument that resources have already declined rather than just saying that they have when by official figures they have not. Whatever the current reserve situation is, they will go down at some point, but "resources" means far more than just conventional crude oil. Eventually conventional crude oil will probably play a an insignificant role in our energy use. That fact doesn't imply that our total energy use will be lower or that the the value of human production will be lower." Sorry, Tim, your inverted logic goes against everything I have ever learned. What logic is inverted? Maybe you mean the facts I present go against what you have learned? Either way what facts or logic in the statement you quoted do you think are wrong and why? Tim