First World Problems vs. Third World Problems: The Ultimate Showdown

edited 2012-01-15 12:47:01 in General
Once upon a time there was a group of starving kids in africa. They were really smug and self-righteous. They came up to a rich man and began to taunt him. "Your problem is less important than ours, and twitter agrees. People openly feed us, while you have to feed yourself." The african kids began to starve in a very condescending manner as a group of protestants began to feed them and tend to their every whim, at the expense of the poor rich white man.

The rich white man then told them "It does not matter, at the end of the day, although my fridge may not be filled with wine, my faucet may not produce clean water, at least my heart is filled with honesty, and I am true to myself." This comment shocked the smug starving children, and then they rejected the kind rich white man's words, and prompty begged for more food.

The moral of the story is the starving children are assholes, and we shouldn't tax rich white people.
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Comments

  • Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast
    [quote]we shouldn't tax rich white people.[/quote]

    Why not?
  • Not a hybrid rabbit-skink spirit
    Because everyone knows that rich white people need all the money they can get.

    Sold gold toilets don't come cheap, you know.
  • You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    Especially when they keep getting clogged from all the diamond-encrusted toilet paper.
  • Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast
    Oh I see.
  • Touch the cow. Do it now.
    trickle-down economics
  • Not a hybrid rabbit-skink spirit
    The toilet paper is also 100 dollar bills.
  • Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast
    Imi: There is only one thing that trickled down between 1984 and 2012 and it wasn't money.
  • Touch the cow. Do it now.
    I had the same thought.
  • why does nobody think of the second world :(
  • I guess that would be China, now that the USSR's gone.
  • Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast
    Because its full of drug taking commies

    The second world was basically the Soviet Union
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  • READ MY CROSS SHIPPING-FANFICTION, DAMMIT!

    i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
    Yes, but still basically second world.

    It's what I think of when I hear/read "second world" anyways. 
  • Solid gold toialets and diamond encrusted whatever? Aren't you guys strawmanning jsut a tin y bit? Is thi s what you th ink people actually do with all of their left over money?
  • READ MY CROSS SHIPPING-FANFICTION, DAMMIT!

    i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
    No man, those are essentials! 

    People use their left over money to keep their fires burning, have money fights, and light their cigars! 
  • Please tell me you're not hbeing seirous I hone stly doubt that there's anything outside of a small portion of who your railing against who actually fit this strawman.
  • Oh we're being totally serious. This is a very serious forum.
  • Plus everybody ois not  understanding tax cuts. Your thinking it means "shift everything on to the poor and have the rich pay nothing". Thats not the case the point and objective is lower and flatter taxes overall so that everybody pays an equal amount n ot to create targeted Tax cuts and Tax h8kes. As well  part of the ideal would be to eliminate tax breaks in general.. This is the point of the rule of law everybody is equal under hte law regardless of race, class, sex, or lifestyle. You get treated equally without any special treatments favori ng one gorup or ano ther.
  • >people taking this seriously

  • edited 2012-01-15 16:09:43

    ^Yes.
  • Sorry I get that this isen't a serio us thread felt li ke a good excuse ot clear up that common straman though.
  • No-one seriously believes in that strawman though.
  • Trust me they do I've seen that strawman over and over agaion on OTC. a Solid gold mansion seirou sly gold is not even a good material for b uilding a hosue.
  • But that's OTC. It's full of shut-in entitled teenagers with little to no grasp on reality.
  • They also believe every libertarian and capitalist strawman you can imagine.
  • Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast
    [quote]
    But that's OTC. It's full of shut-in entitled teenagers with little to no grasp on reality.[/quote]

    Not cool man :(
  • The sadness will last forever.
    Agreed, Naney.
  • If it does include you whatlae then there's no denying who you are. If it doesn't include you then note the loose language. It's up to you to decide which road to take.
  • READ MY CROSS SHIPPING-FANFICTION, DAMMIT!

    i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
    Peeps not not being talking about tax cuts and breaks in this thread.

    Just those damn dirty richers
  • What people are really trying to say is "tax the celebrities and leave the philantropists alone".

    Because making charity donators give up all of their money for revenge taxes instituted by poor people isn't very nice, when in general they want to backlash at people wasting money on diamond encrusted PS2 controllers.
  • READ MY CROSS SHIPPING-FANFICTION, DAMMIT!

    i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
    Maybe they can't concentrate on finishing their games because they're always aware of how cheap the controller is.
  • edited 2012-01-15 17:54:40
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  • edited 2012-01-15 17:55:04
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  • READ MY CROSS SHIPPING-FANFICTION, DAMMIT!

    i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
    I agree on the college bit.

    Not so much that working the same amount deserves in equal wage. It's pretty much supply in demand for the job market. If there's much more supply than demand for one's job, one is going to have to settle for less pay or find something they can do that has more demand and less supply.

    Part of the issue with skilled jobs paying more is that there are far less people who can do them. The people who can do them have basically earned the right to be paid more through suffering through college.

    NOW, the issue is, is that College (think University if you're a Brit) IS very expensive. Financial aid can help quite a bit, to a point, though admittedly, unless you have some help from your parents, are willing to work a lot while balancing college, or go into crazy amounts of dept, it is something of a limiting factor.

    Definitely bringing down the cost of college would give people more opportunities for better paying jobs, as well as potentially reduce the salary of some of the uber-high paying jobs, given that there will be more qualified people to chose from.
  • edited 2012-01-16 07:09:49

    Yes because it's
    so possible to have a utopia where everything is free if we just get rid of any
    notion that people can make money. Squid you're argument relies on assuming
    knowledge of what that money would be used for. You're saying that treating
    people unequally is justified because people can afford to be treated unequally
    and therefore should. You're also making an argument out of an assumption that
    that money will be spent frivolously rather then contribute to the economy.

     

    This paradox that
    we can tax the entrepreneur far more money and then expect things like cheep
    prices on goods that they produce, high wages for their employees, and
    compliance with every expensive regulation in the books is frankly absurd. So you
    want to tax them more because they can afford more but then you want to create
    price controls and regulations to make their businesses more costly to run and
    still expect them to comply? That's very reasonable. It's genius really.

     

    Listen to
    yourselves. I've never seen this so clearly before. You think that expenses
    don't pile up? You can't predict what people will do with their money not even
    the greatest economist can.

     

    This sort of
    mentality only drives businesses to outsource therefore removing competition at
    home and creating oligopoly and monopoly. Combine that with corporate
    privileges such as personhood, subsidies, and limited liability, and you're
    pretty much creating what you sought to destroy. The first half was driving the
    business sector out of the country and the second was creating the circumstances
    that give the corporate entity power in the first place.

     

    Furthermore you're
    Idea that people shouldn't get paid so much for certain jobs is moot due to the
    subjective theory of value. It's not that persons fault if they get paid that
    much for a given job. It's because the person or persons willing to pay them
    place a high value on that job or the specific person or person’s ability to do
    that job.

     

    There is no way to
    objective way to calculate how much someone "should" be paid for a
    job because everybody places different values on the job. If you don't like that
    they get paid that much for the job, don’t support their trade by seeing movies
    or watching TV or any sporting event.

     Two or more parties agree on a contract and
    that contract is carried out at the agreed upon terms. That is how the market
    works. Create unequal bargaining power through some of the methods I outlined
    above (like limited liability and driving business out of the area and then you
    have the situation of unequal bargaining power.




    Edited for spelling  mistakes and planned editing for semantics and clarity. There, spelling has been dealt with, undesired terminology removed, spacing and paragraphs handled to the best of my ability. Let me know if anything else is wrong.
  • Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast
    Dude, can you please use some paragraphs because walls of text aren't easy to read.
  • Very sorry about that Whale. Like I said still editing it for clarity as I was kind of in a rush of thought when I wrote that. Thank you for your input, it will be taken in to consideraiton.


  • Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast
    [quote] This
    paradox that we can tax the upper classes far more money and then expect
    things like cheep prices on goods that they produce,[/quote]

    Except that happens though, Inflation in my country is coming down despite being a 50% tax on earnings above £150,000


    [quote] high wages for
    their employees, and compliance with every expensive regulation in the
    books is frankly absurd [/quote]

    Its not absurd though because it can happen if the national government has enough teeth.

    .[quote] So you want to tax them more because they can
    afford more but then you want to create price controls and regulations
    to make their businesses more costly to run and still expect them to
    comply? That's very reasonable. It's genius really. Listen to
    yourselves. I've never seen this so clearly before. You think that
    expenses don't pile up? [/quote]

    Why don't you listen to yourself, you have no proof that what you want is good for a society, you've bought into the bullshit of the US Far Right AKA the GOP.


    [quote]You can't predict what people will do with their
    money not even the greatest economist can. This sort of mentality only
    drives businesses to outsource therefore removing competition at home
    and creating oligopoly and monopoly. [/quote]

    So create incentives to stay in a country then.

    [quote] Furthermore you're Idea that people shouldn't get paid so
    much for certain jobs is moot due to the subjective theory of value.
    It's not that persons fault if they get paid that much for a given job.
    It's because the person or persons willing to pay them place a high
    value on that job or the specific person or person’s ability to do that
    job.[/quote]

    Hence why man created something called the trade union which helps out the common man and not get swindled by companies.

    [quote] There is no way to objectively calculate how much someone "should"
    be paid for a job because everybody places different values on the job.[/quote]

    Thats why you have minimum wage laws so people who work aren't starving.

     [quote]Two
    or more parties agree on a contract and that contract is carried out at
    the agreed upon terms. That is how the market works. Create unequal
    bargaining power through some of the methods I outlined above (like
    limited liability and driving business out of the area and then you have
    the situation of unequal bargaining power.[/quote]

    But companies have unequal bargaining power though from the start.
  • edited 2012-01-16 07:35:23

    This is a single issue wonk but did you just accuse me of
    being a Republican? A Right-Winger? Did you accuse me of being in favor of a
    fascist theocracy where homosexuals and people with other views are
    discriminated against by law? Did you accuse me of being some sort of bigot? I
    just don't think doing all of that for the economy is even workable outside of
    a totalitarian state or a very very small country.



    EDIT: Also if you wouldn't mind quoting the revised version of my post that
    would be appreciated.


    EDIT: Fixed some spelling.

  • Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast
    Well, from what I've seen from the GOP. They 100% believe that if left to its own devices, the market is inherently good.

    However, what usually happens is that companies will always good for the cheapest option regardless of the costs to a society or the planet. This is why there needs to be regulation, not to be nasty to companies but to protect society and the planet.
  • edited 2012-01-16 07:57:45
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  • Big corporations. Loaded language there.
  • edited 2012-01-16 08:09:23
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  • edited 2012-01-16 08:17:13
    As far as i'm concerned America isn't capitalist anyway. We're under a very strange hybrid system something with aspects of Marxism and Corporatism. The thing your not getting is that abiding by these regulations you expect them to ab ide by and paying employees good wages is very very costly. Managing to get the money to comply and turn a profit for all involved is incredibly difficult and becomes even moreso when you have more of that money taken from you makingyou unable to spend it on these things.
  • edited 2012-01-16 08:21:46
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  • Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast
    What your missing is that paying an employee a good wage and abiding by regulations can and does happen in other Capitalist countries
  • You're ignoring the factor that I was talking about taking more money from the business impedes there ability to comply with regulations, decent wages, and providing employment the more higher you tax them the more cost cutting will be done.
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