Why do the rich get richer and poor get poorer?

[The_Truth_Seeker]

The other day I was talking with a friend of mine about how the pandemic has affected people's lives and this topic came up. And since we don't have much knowledge about economy and stuff like that we couldn't dig deeper into the topic through our conversation. 

 

I would specially like to know how it applies the income of people on individual level. 

 

 

[GreenLight]

"For those who have, more shall be given.

For those who do not have, even that will be taken away."

I think Eckhart Tolle Said that. (Sometimes i want to smack him hard in the face.)

[JosephKnecht]

1 hour ago, GreenLight said:

"For those who have, more shall be given.

For those who do not have, even that will be taken away."

I think Eckhart Tolle Said that. (Sometimes i want to smack him hard in the face.)

‘For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. 

- Matthew 25:29 

1 hour ago, The_Truth_Seeker said:

I would specially like to know how it applies the income of people on individual level. 

 

The rich have assets (money, stocks, bonds). These assets give them power. This power allows them to buy influence from politicians that can create laws that increase their power, stocks, and money.

The middle class has skills. Skills are needed to keep the system going. The higher your skills, the higher paychecks you get from the rich. However, skills these days can become outdated in few years, which means that if you want to stay in the middle class, you need to be constantly learning. If you don't learn, you will become poor.

The poor don't have assets nor skills. The best way to get out of poverty is to acquire skills.

[GreenLight]

3 minutes ago, JosephKnecht said:

‘For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. 

- Matthew 25:29 

Yeah, he quoted something like that in one of his books.

So now i have to smack Eckhart and then smack Matthew when i get to Nirvana.

[mandyjw]

4 minutes ago, GreenLight said:

Yeah, he quoted something like that in one of his books.

So now i have to smack Eckhart and then smack Matthew when i get to Nirvana.

  Please don't smack Matthew because he is just quoting Jesus, and Jesus also talked about treasure in heaven, not on earth. Really, the material realm just doesn't matter. Because WE aren't matter, there's no matter that matters. 

 

[Nobody_Here]

3 hours ago, GreenLight said:

"For those who have, more shall be given.

For those who do not have, even that will be taken away."

I think Eckhart Tolle Said that. (Sometimes i want to smack him hard in the face.)

That's actually a quote from the Bible (Matthew 25:29) and is referred to as the Matthew Effect. 

Edited March 27, 2021 by Nobody_Here

[Nobody_Here]

2 hours ago, JosephKnecht said:

The rich have assets (money, stocks, bonds). These assets give them power. This power allows them to buy influence from politicians that can create laws that increase their power, stocks, and money.

The middle class has skills. Skills are needed to keep the system going. The higher your skills, the higher paychecks you get from the rich. However, skills these days can become outdated in few years, which means that if you want to stay in the middle class, you need to be constantly learning. If you don't learn, you will become poor.

The poor don't have assets nor skills. The best way to get out of poverty is to acquire skills.

This isn't entirely true. Rich people read books mostly about self-improvement. I imagine they realize that since they're at the head of the rat race, they still need to keep running so they don't fall behind. 

[JosephKnecht]

10 hours ago, GreenLight said:

Yeah, he quoted something like that in one of his books.

So now i have to smack Eckhart and then smack Matthew when i get to Nirvana.

I think the best way to get to Nirvana is to smack yourself on the head a little.   

7 hours ago, Nobody_Here said:

This isn't entirely true. Rich people read books mostly about self-improvement. I imagine they realize that since they're at the head of the rat race, they still need to keep running so they don't fall behind. 

How do you think people acquire skills? Books, self-improvement. Nobody was born with skills. 

The beauty of the world is that anybody born poor can become rich, and anybody born rich can become poor. 

[GreenLight]

2 hours ago, JosephKnecht said:

I think the best way to get to Nirvana is to smack yourself on the head a little.   

That's what i do on my freetime! Nirvana here we go!

 

 The reason i can assume Matthew is in Nirvana is by this website https://www.matthewbooks.com/.

Matthew here is the reincarnation of the biblical Matthew. He reincarnated a last time to create a telepatic connection with his mother and then left into Nirvana and remained connected with her while she is still on earth. Thus Matthew channels messages from Nirvana to his mother on what he observes earths geopolitical situation from there.

I read his channeling on this blog: https://goldenageofgaia.com/

 

 

 

Edited March 27, 2021 by GreenLight
Not saying it's true but it is interesting what you can find

[vladorion]

For the same reasons that rich are rich and poor are poor.

[Consept]

On a mechanical level its compound interest, as in if you have money and you put it in the right places it will grow. Moreover though I would say its mindset and the skills and knowledge you acquire through that mindset. For example if someone has made a million from scratch through business, if you take that million away and make them start again theyll most likely get to a million even quicker. Whereas someone whos poor may not believe they can do it and therefore wont think in that way, however they can be taught to think that way. Obviously there are situations where there is a significant lack of opportunities or generally just incredibly difficult circumstances, but for the most part you do get opportunities in the western world and there are safety nets so you dont fall to far. 

[intotheblack]

More money makes more money..  If you have money you can keep turning it into more, by having multiple sources of income and assets etc. You need money to start business ventures etc. 
whereas if you have only a minimal amount to get by, its harder to turn it into more.. you need to spend whatever you have and it becomes very difficult to save anything. 
The money that poor people spend on things goes directly to richer people.  So basically people at the bottom are giving their small amount of money to people at the top through consumerism and living expenses.  (Poor getting poorer, rich getting richer) 
During the lockdown people were loosing jobs and livelihoods.
That’s why it’s important to buy from small and local businesses when you can and not give your money to already rich people if you can help it.  
Since the value of money keeps decreasing we will see more people in poverty.  Everything is now getting more expensive.
What you can buy with 50€ now gets you much less than what you would have gotten a few years ago.  I already notice this with food shopping.  I can spend 50€ on food shopping and have little to show for it.  If it’s like that for me who isn’t living in poverty imagine how it will be for someone who is.  What will they do? Buy the cheapest food and then become sick aswell as poor! 

 

[Stovo]

If you zoom out then this is not true. You think it's true because inequality has risen so much the past 40-50 years, but there are also periods where inequality falls for several decades.

In other words, these things run in cycles. Typically inequality gets worse as interest rates get lower and governments print a ton of money, pushing up financial asset prices.

Eventually the government run out of money and taxes have to increase drastically to make up the shortfall. The government cannot tax the poor, because 1) they don't have a lot of money to tax and 2) doing so in a crisis could cause a revolution. Therefore, they are eventually forced to tax the rich very heavily. Just look at tax rates in the 40s, 50s, 60s compared to today.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Stovo

[Mohammad]

On 3/27/2021 at 4:07 AM, JosephKnecht said:

The rich have assets (money, stocks, bonds). These assets give them power. This power allows them to buy influence from politicians that can create laws that increase their power, stocks, and money.

The middle class has skills. Skills are needed to keep the system going. The higher your skills, the higher paychecks you get from the rich. However, skills these days can become outdated in few years, which means that if you want to stay in the middle class, you need to be constantly learning. If you don't learn, you will become poor.

The poor don't have assets nor skills. The best way to get out of poverty is to acquire skills.

My exact opinion.

[Hansu]

The poor are not getting poorer. Nowadays you can see a smartphone in the majority of poor people's hands. You can even see them driving cars. You can see the poor having access to unlimited information, even to some of the information that was held only by the most powerful 1% fifty years ago. The poor AND rich has been getting richer since the beginning of industrial age. This is not a race between rich and poor.

Saying that rich get richer and poor get poorer is the most populistic bullcrap I have ever heard.

[Yog]

Its called pareto distribution.

It applies to everything, size of stars, trees, ant colonies, songs listened on spotify, map voting in video games, who gets to be popular in school, who has most of the money ect. Think of it as an snowball effect where the massive snowball takes all the snow away for itself, so that  other smaller snowballs have no snow to roll on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution

[Wilhelm44]

I think a more helpful question might be: What is true wealth consciousness ?  A lot of "poor" people simply believe they are not worthy of wealth. And a lot of "rich" people also suffer from poverty consciousness because they still don't know happiness.

[DocWatts]

Because the socio-economic strata that a person ends up at is largely due to a compounding series of advantages and disadvantages that begin accumulating from birth.

And because hard work is not enough to better your circumstances without also having access to Social Capitol, which is in large part determined by the circumstances you were born in to.

In a country like the US, only %30 of people born into poverty succeed in making it to the middle class.

[Mohammad]

9 hours ago, Hansu said:

The poor are not getting poorer. Nowadays you can see a smartphone in the majority of poor people's hands. You can even see them driving cars. You can see the poor having access to unlimited information, even to some of the information that was held only by the most powerful 1% fifty years ago. The poor AND rich has been getting richer since the beginning of industrial age. This is not a race between rich and poor.

Saying that rich get richer and poor get poorer is the most populistic bullcrap I have ever heard.

I believe when people say this, they mean that the wealth distribution is not equal, rich people are getting more rich than poor people. But from a historical point of view, you are absolutely right.

[Hansu]

10 hours ago, Mohammad said:

I believe when people say this, they mean that the wealth distribution is not equal, rich people are getting more rich than poor people. But from a historical point of view, you are absolutely right.

People are also -unknowingly or knowingly- disguising the fact that true poverty is going away in western countries. Poverty will never go away if we think of it as percentage of the pie. If we use the term "poverty" in 2150, it will be used to describe poor, people on earth who have to take total recall trip to Mars because they are too poor to afford flying there on a space ship.

I think complaining about the rich is backwards way of problem solving. First you should figure out a problem (Like low funding of public schools in certain area) and then you should figure out an efficient way to raise funding for the school, for example raising the taxes for the rich. If that is the most efficient way that the experts and professors can come up with, then so be it.

Wealth inequality is literally a non issue, in fact its GOOD! It means that the nation is capable of sourcing money from an overprivileged part of society and putting that money into building the nation.