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#1
03-29-2007, 09:22 PM
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Wealth is Relative
Wealth, like other descriptors, is a purely relative measure.
It shares this quality with adjectives like "big," "tall," and "bright," among others. Nothing, for example, is "big" in and of itself. It's only big in reference to something else. If the universe contained only one object, for example, it's not a big or small, regardless of its size. If I'm six foot tall, and the average is 5'10", I'm tall. If everyone else starts taking growth hormones, though, and the average becomes 6'4", I become short. I become short, despite the fact my height has not changed. If there's some social advantage to being tall, I lose that advantage, not because of anything I've done, but because the height of other people has changed. I realize I'm belaboring the obvious, but for whatever reason, some people fail to realize the same condition applies to wealth. If I'm "rich" or "poor," it's not because of what I have, it's because of what other people have. My being rich depends on others being poor, just as poverty depends on others being rich. 
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#3
03-29-2007, 09:29 PM
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Re: Wealth is Relative
ACers are just going to respond that absolute wealth certainly isn't relative and has a variety of quatifiable measures and argue that capitalism steadily increases absolute wealth and the overall standard of living for the entire capitalist society.
If you want to make an argument about wealth, much better to use quantifiable measures of wellbeing and explain how an economic system does or does not increase them for some people by decreasing them for others
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#4
03-29-2007, 09:39 PM
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Re: Wealth is Relative
You used "tall" and "short" as an example. However, they are relative terms for the objective measurement of height. I see how that is similar to "rich" and "poor" as you said yourself, but not to wealth. Just as lfd noted, I think many people have ways to measure certain objective features of wealth.
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#5
03-29-2007, 09:47 PM
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Re: Wealth is Relative
[ QUOTE ]
What's the point? [/ QUOTE ] Well, right-wingers like to make the argument that the concentration of wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people doesn't matter, as long as the poor have at least as much stuff as people did hundreds of years ago. My point is that it's not the absolute amount of stuff you have that determines whether you're poor or not, but the amount of stuff you have in relation to the people around you.
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#6
03-29-2007, 09:48 PM
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Re: Wealth is Relative
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] What's the point? [/ QUOTE ] Well, right-wingers like to make the argument that the concentration of wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people doesn't matter, as long as the poor have at least as much stuff as people did hundreds of years ago. My point is that it's not the absolute amount of stuff you have that determines whether you're poor or not, but the amount of stuff you have in relation to the people around you. [/ QUOTE ] And our point is it doesn't matter... unless you are primarily motivated by envy. Care to explain why it matters?
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#7
03-29-2007, 09:54 PM
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Re: Wealth is Relative
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] What's the point? [/ QUOTE ] Well, right-wingers like to make the argument that the concentration of wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people doesn't matter, as long as the poor have at least as much stuff as people did hundreds of years ago. My point is that it's not the absolute amount of stuff you have that determines whether you're poor or not, but the amount of stuff you have in relation to the people around you. [/ QUOTE ] Define "people around you". People in your neighborhood? Your city? Your state? Your country? The World? I still don't get the point though. Even if I concede that wealth is only based on relativity (which I won't), why does it become necessary to violently force a shortening of the gap?
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#8
03-29-2007, 09:55 PM
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Re: Wealth is Relative
What if I posit that that gap could never appear in the first place in a truly free society?
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#10
03-29-2007, 10:09 PM
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Re: Wealth is Relative
[ QUOTE ]
Care to explain why it matters? [/ QUOTE ] Well, to take one example, economists have found that the wealthy are more likely to save than the poor. As the total amount of wealth has increased, they expected people to save more and more. But that hasn't happened. The explanation is that as the average income increased, the amount of stuff people need to be average increased as well.
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Linear Mode
