Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Woolery's avatar

>The poor should be thanking the rich, not resenting them. The rich are the reason why the poor are getting by at all. Many of the poor are not pulling their own weight, while the wealthy are pulling much more than their weight.

You’re far smarter and no doubt richer than me, so first of all, thank you for that. I’ll try harder, but you know me. Still, I’ll push back.

I think you might rely on flawed economic reasoning and a false comparison of stereotypes to suggest that even the hardest working poor are bad for the rich, while the laziest rich are good for the poor.

I read somewhere the poor manage to be a meaningful part of the consumer base. You assert that eliminating 20% of the poor isn’t a problem since it won’t affect productivity but you never mention their role as consumers. Who’ll buy all the cheap shit produced for the missing poor?

I imagine you could find some righties who’d agree with your rightist characterization and some who wouldn’t. Can you find any lefties who’d agree with your leftist characterization? If you can’t, does that suggest it could be a strawman? As you say there’s an empirical fact about which of the two descriptions better describes economic reality but this fact’s utility depends entirely on the accuracy of both descriptions and you might’ve missed the mark there.

What’s really sad is I’m not even a lefty and apparently they’re the ones lying to themselves to justify my existence.

Expand full comment
Richard Boren's avatar

I'm not surprised that I agree with this, but I hope it's not just confirmation bias. I can't see any factual errors. For an excellent essay on this topic, see economist George Reisman's "How the 1 Percent Provides the Standard of Living for the 99 Percent", available on Amazon for 99 cents.

Expand full comment
12 more comments...

No posts