> The forcible transfer of wealth is almost entirely
> in the opposite direction.
How amusing the idea that the rich are having their wealth stolen when they exploited virtually everyone below them to steal their wealth from the labour of their workers!
> The top 5% pay half of all taxes, and the bottom 50% pay none.
I'm guessing that is the way in the US, in the UK even the bottom people shell out a good 33% in income tax, then you can add VAT of 17.5% on top of that when they come to spend their money..
> you can buy a small $50,000 home in a rural area, and
> pay for it at minimum wage.
I'm guessing again this is the US, if so your very much more fortunate than us in the UK, where your need $200,000 to buy a single room flat if your lucky.
3 miles from me where I grew up as a kid, you can buy a nice 5 bedroom home for some $5 million, which in my day 30 years ago cost only $4,000 to buy.
> Why the hell am I making minimum wage
A good question, but sadly at least in the UK, the majority of jobs are very low paid.
(A good example comes from someone I know who works in a department with a private company that has a staff of 14, the manager is on a salary of $900,000 whilst those under him who do the actual grunt work are being paid $30,000, seems a little inbalanced to me..)
Locally where I am, people are being paid as little as $2,000 a year. (Granted they are illegal immigrants, but still, you can see how far away they are from the property ladder.)
> results in crappy neighborhoods where nothing is
> maintained and crime is sky-high
I know what you mean, having lived on those myself, they are truely awful, and a result I believe of a lack of enough police/cops on the street and a williness to put/keep people in prison for crimes.
But... nowdays, even the private housing places are becoming as bad..
But I don't think the level of crime is related to the fact that the rents are just lower, its more that the housing estates are full of the unemployed and criminals.
If you gave everyone jobs and stuck the criminals in prison, the place would be just like the high price private rental places
Next we'll be blaming the architecture..
> if a company offers low wages, the
> best workers will go to another employer;
Trouble is, that doesn't work well in practice, everyone offers low wages!
And with high unemployement, there is always someone else to fill your place should you decide your not paid enough..
(Hence my thought that high unemployment is actually welcomed by businesses as it gives them leverage in keeping wages low..)
> if a landlord charges exorbitant rents, renters will
> rent elsewhere and the landlord will lose money
Not if you maintain a monopoly of keeping rents high, and available rented stock low.
I reckon I could rent out places to people at $200 a month and not lose money, yet the cheapest your find anywhere around here is $900 a month.
Even charities aren't renting places cheaper than market prices!
I'd really love to know why landlords aren't..
> Depends on what you mean by the term "Stealing"
Unfairly exploiting, not giving a fair wage for a fair days work, eg. if the manager gets $900k, and the workers get $30k, and the shareholders get a fat slice, it seems the workers are having their wealth stolen..
>, and what you mean by "Rich"
Worth $1 million+ (Most of the rich people I know are worth $20 million+ and have their money invested in property which they rent out for an income, without needing to do any real work themselves.)
>, and "Poor."
Have no savings and live hand to mouth in rented property, though you might also include the lower and middleclass poor who slave all their lives to pay off the mortgage..
> but you discover upon talking with various people that in
> many cases the words mean different things to different people.
Agreed, it can take many too and fro to figure out what someone means by what they are saying. (And I notice the most common reason people argue, not because they disagree, but because they don't understand each other, they can even disagree even though they are saying the same thing!)
> The fact that they choose not
Perhaps that is one of the key differences between the US and UK, in that in the US you can choose (Though whats up with all those defaulted mortgages causing the credit crunch..), in the UK there is a lack of choice.
Eg. Take my position for example, we are on double the minumn wage, live in the cheapest to rent place possible, our savings per year would be around $4,000 (As long as the rent doesn't go up again... its already $11,000 a year for a single room of 116 square feet, it went up 11% last month and due to go up again at the end of the year.) so it would take us more than a lifetime to save up to buy the cheapest property available in the UK!
If you could fit 8 people on minumn wage into a single roomed flat, then you could buy it on a mortage..
> but if other people choose to spend their money foolishly
Its not like they have much of a choice, high rents, mortgage maybe, else its living on the streets. As if the millions of people on low wages could just go out and get a better paid job tomorrow..
> stealing in my mind is when it is compulsory, you know, like
> when the government takes your money whether you like it or not
I think its just as bad, and the same thing under another name/method.
> (sorry about the length. I could go on for hours.)
Same
But someone somewhere might learn something during the exchange. (I'm hopeful to at least learn what I can better in my desire to provide low cost housing for the poor and what problems might be expected in attempting/doing that.)