Post #1680 by unquarked on the Macroeconomic Trends and Risks board

Personal Finance Topics / Macroeconomic Trends and Risks ❤

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Wendy: I am quite willing to say that people are poor because they are lazy, stupid or lacking the skills needed to work in a modern society because their culture doesn't promote personal virtues needed by workers.
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Liberals and progressives want to solve social issues with transfer payments. I agree that a wealthy society shouldn't allow people to starve or suffer without essential medical care but several studies show that additional money above the amount needed to provide the basics will not lift people out of poverty if they lack social skills.

This fails to acknowledge the extreme disproportionality of income distribution experienced over the past several decades. The gap between compensation for high level executives and average worker income has gone from absurd to disastrous. Why give multi-millionaires big raises at the expense of the poor, and then complain about ineffectual 'transfer payments'?

Call me a 'progressive liberal' if you will, but rather than denigrating people as 'lazy' and 'stupid' we need to incentivize work performed by those in lower income brackets with compensation that more appropriately reflects increases in productivity. "Trickle-down" has long proven to be a farce.

Tom

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