Quote from: Immanuel Go on September 12, 2011, 10:34:20 PM

Quote from: JeffK on September 12, 2011, 10:29:09 PM

Quote from: Immanuel Go on September 12, 2011, 10:23:06 PM

Quote from: JeffK on September 12, 2011, 10:13:01 PM

Quote from: Immanuel Go on September 12, 2011, 10:04:28 PM

Quote from: JeffK on September 12, 2011, 10:00:01 PM

Quote from: Immanuel Go on September 12, 2011, 09:54:28 PM

Quote from: JeffK on September 12, 2011, 09:51:17 PM

Quote from: Immanuel Go

So, no, my thinking is not flawed. The poor do carry money. Why they are considered poor and live in conditions one would consider poverty is another thread for another time.

I want you to write this thread on poverty and how it does/doesn't align with your whole "fairness of the free market" ideals so badly.

I'll give it to you simply: My lineage from my parents upward is poor farmers, military veterans, construction workers and inevitably slaves of the Spanish Empire. After meeting my great-grandmother who raised 16 children out of a tin shack, I can say from a first-hand perspective that a good majority of the world's impoverished are the happiest people on the planet.

I meant something along the lines of why you believe poverty exists, not whether you believe they are already happy with their lot (or lack thereof?) in life.

That's the thing: I don't believe it truly exists. I believe there are times when a society is held hostage or when a culture is destroyed by dependency ( I guess you could consider this true poverty) and other means but otherwise I see poverty (as it is called) as the default human condition. We are all born with nothing but our hands and feet to sustain. It's only a matter of who stops us from sustaining when it comes down to surviving.

I was born with only my hands and feet to sustain me, but I was also born to relatively well-off parents who could feed me and provide me with more than adequate shelter and luxuries (toys, television, computer access) up until and even past when I got my first job at 13, where I definitely didn't make enough money to support myself. So, is my default just different?

When I speak of poverty, I speak of the lack of resources for survival (food, shelter, clean water). Are you saying that everyone is born without these resources, and by their own labor gets them?

I believe a parent provides to a child by the child's own inherent value. It's unfortunate to say that some have a child while not being prepared to care for them and return the value they are worth.

However, I believe there is little reason not to be able sustain yourself once you are of age even if you were raised in poverty. You may not be able to support yourself on your wage if building codes are restrictive of lower-end homes and if your local economy is heavily restricted but otherwise we are all able to put food and water in our mouthes and a roof over our heads. My parents worked their way up to upper-middle class jobs with little issue from their trailer park homes and low-income families. It was harder but c'est la vie.

Anyways, your default was better than a lot of others but isn't very relevant in the end. We all experience life's journeys differently.

So a parent who does not, or rather cannot, provide for a child does so because the child has less of an inherent value? My parents, too, worked their way up (though in my earlier days we were by no means "poor", at least not to the point of food/clothes/housing being unavailable), but they will in no way deny there was a bit of nepotism in their journey. Does this mean that the poor deserve their poverty, seeing as they did not have the same advantages my family and your family did?

No, it's more like because the parents weren't prepared or chose not to properly pay for what their child was worth.

That's not a question. It's not a matter of what you deserve. It's a matter of fate. It's something that cannot be controlled nor does it determine an individuals happiness in the long run.

In the end, every individual can choose to contribute as much value as he wishes and receive as much as he wants in return. In a free society, nobody is limited to their current economic position.

Some have it easier than others but to complain about it is a matter jealously.

You may not want to admit it, but your accomplishments in life are heavily tied to what you were given by your parents. To deny someone the opportunities to go to school and become a skilled worker simply because they were born and lived too poor not only is unfair to them, but has a net negative effect on society since, had they been given the education/food/etc we were they could be producing great things, maybe even better than we ever could.

Allowing poverty to stratify society helps no one in the long run. In a "free society" (I'll assume you mean free market/regulation-less society where the state plays a minimal role), there is no safety net for individuals who are poor, so instead of giving them a platform to stand on so they may lift themselves up out of, they are actually limited to their current economic position, since your economic standing at birth is, in the majority of cases, the best indicator at what your economic class will be all your life.