My parentsv aren't poor, either. They earn a combined ~$25,000 a month. It's just that all but $1,000 of it goes to support their various properties and investments (just as all but ~$450 of mine goes to investments) - things that give people a place to live and a place to work. You have one again missed my point entirely, which is that rich people that make a lot of money, such as my parents, aren't just sitting on bags of money, and can't just give up half their wealth without doing some serious harm to other people (one of their tenants is on government assisted housing, so hurting them directly hurts the poor, too).
As I said, you're too much of an idiot to recognize these things, even when I spell them out for you: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=247874.msg2802864#msg2802864
As I said, you're too much of an idiot to recognize these things, even when I spell them out for you: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=247874.msg2802864#msg2802864
You're either a troll or you haven't left the basement since early 90s. Your parents, who make 25k, live on 1k a month? 500 bucks ea? Out of that, they pay taxes (assuming they own a house & not living out of cardboard boxen), heat, maintenance, electricity, gasoline & auto insurance (or do they thriftily bus it?), car expenses, cable, phone, medical (or do they sneak in through the emergency room?), toiletries, clothes (or do they rifle through the boxes left for Good Will?), and -gasp- food? Just how wretchedly do you live?
*To bystanders: This is all happening in US of A, folks! These people are living on $16 and change A DAY! I used to spend more than that on smokes
Yep, pretty wretched. This $1,000 is after the thousands they pay in taxes. They don't smoke, they buy cheap food and cook most of it to save money, they live in their investment property, and are putting more into it to increase its sale value. They only use one car, which is over ten years old, mom dropping dad off at a bus station for him to go the rest of the way. They keep the house warm, opening windows, they very rarely buy new clothes and typically shop at thrift stores. They don't have smartphones and only basic cell service. They get health coverage through work, so I didn't include it in the $1,000, but they borrowed a few grand for my grandmother's hospital expenses, and are paying that, too. And yes, they find freebie furniture and other things on Craigslist and when others put them out to the curb. In short, they live very similarly to how other extremely productive millionaires live in the mansions close to their neighborhood. That's how you tell that someone is a millionaire BTW: plain clothes, worn jeans, and shitty old car. Those driving fancy new cars aren't millionaires typically.
By contrast, my poor friends are driving nice cars, have new fancy clothing, dine out at restaurants all the time, have every game system in existence and tons of games and toys, and have almost no money to their name. And THAT is what the difference between rich and poor is in it's entirety.