Should people come before profit?Or is severe poverty acceptable as long as the stock market is doing great?

Question

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16760690.htm
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty.asp

Thanks for the great answers.This is really too difficult to choose myself so let's put it to a vote

Answer 1

It is best when there is a balance between people and profit. Happy people are more productive and this results in more profit for more people. People will do hard dangerous things as long as there is some reward for them.

Answer 2

In a perfect world, no, profit would not come before people. But this is far from a perfect world, and if there's one thing I've learned so far in my life, it's money always comes first with people.

If there's enough money involved, people will do *anything* to get it.

The stock market isn't a great indicator of our economy. We're actually in an economical lull right now. Any time something necessary for everyday life becomes more expensive (read: gas), consumer spending and consumer confidence drops.

And lastly, I can't speak for everywhere else, but in America our wealth gap gets bigger by the day. The rich make more money, and the poor stay hopelessly poor. If things don't change soon, there won't be a middle class for too much longer. Not to mention how many people in America live under the poverty line, and in a country as well off as the US, that is unacceptable.

I hope the next President, whoever that may be, addresses problems in our own country before spending hundreds of billions of dollars on other countries.

We need an educational overhaul badly.

Answer 3

Great question. As an American, our country finally started to address it's poverty back when FDR was president with the passing of Social Security for our senior citizens. It was a great program and still is considering that it has been raided for the last 25 years starting with Reagan who had a loathing for the poor. Consideration for poverty was also continued under Johnson with the passage of the civil rights bills. During that time there was starvation in our country and you could see it in the bloated bellies of children in our Urban and rural communities throughout the country. With welfare and food stamps, it pretty much wiped out starvation. However, since Reagan, it has been more and more neglect with the poor as the distribution of wealth goes to the top 3% of the wealthiest in this country. They now pay the least taxes per individual per capita in the country while the middle class pays the most per capita. Now with rising healthcare costs, gas costs, food costs, rent costs, housing costs and rising inflation and rising costs of this war we are going to see alot more poor. My mother in-law works with the poor and the working poor to help them get out of homelessness. She has seen a dramatic rise in homeless families due to all the things I mentioned above. Many of them work 2 jobs per person and still can't save enough to get a down on an apartment or house to rent. She runs a shelter where these families live temperarily (3 to 6 months) so that they can save money to find their own place. While they are there, they have to take classes on personal finance as well.
The point is that homelessness is rising and so is poverty. Many poor work more than one full time job, so it is not out of lazyness as some people with their head in the sand would like to think. The article you sent is a great example of people falling through the cracks, especially our senior citizens who are poor and have no education in the first place.
Bush is creating more problems for them by cutting medicare, welfare and food stamps. At the same time he is giving the richest 3% of the people in this country huge tax cuts and subsidies. He gives the oil industry 250 billion dollars a year in tax subsidies on top of the already billions in profits they make from the consumer a years. Who is going to pay for this war? It's obvious that none of it is being paid by those who are benefitting from it the most: the corporations who put Bush into office in the first place.
Poverty is just going to go up and up in the U.S. And, you will still get idiots who believe that it is the victim's fault that they are poor.

Answer 4

No severe poverty is not acceptable. Not even mild poverty. I don't care if some people are living a life of luxury just as long as everybody can live a comfortable lifestyle. If someone is living in a mansion and driving the best cars, I don't care as long as I have decent food to eat, shelter, and good medical treatment when I need it.
What really pisses me off is when someone as gotten really rich by taking advantage of people that are struggling to survive. An economy should be set up for the good of the people. Not just a few people. Those that can work, should work. Those that truly can't work should be taken care of.

Answer 5

This is an excellent question, and the articles are excellent. We need many more questions like this. There is no excuse for allowing any level of poverty, from the mildest, to the most severe. People should always come first, before profits.....always!!!

http://conversationswithgod.org

Answer 6

Depends on what industry we are talking about here. If we are talking about health care then if you live in the United States profit ALWAYS comes first. Canada the people come first. If we are talking the unemployment office then people come first there. . . . .why do we continue to build a fence across Mexico when they do the jobs that lazy Americans will not do? Things to ponder

Answer 7

you have a ton of answers amigo.

The answer can be seen as profit first.
In the Bible Jesus says that "the poor will always be with us"
The only reason there is any attempt to help the poor is because animal farm is required reading for our leadership and they realize if you trample on them too long they will revolt.

Answer 8

well, being that i have been homeless, i think we should take care of the people first. unfortunately, the current system isn't set up very well to take care of those less fortunate, mostly b/c those people "in charge" love their money and want more of it. they have no concept of what it's like to go to bed hungry or not to have a bed at all. most of our politicians have always been affluent...one of the main reasons i think campaign funds should be received through public money and not fund raising or personal bank accounts. that way, more people have a chance of putting their ideas on the table and having more people hear them. the perfect world i don't think can or will ever exist. although i like what i see in europe. aren't they basically socialists? and yet they make it work. americans fear this b/c it goes against what we came over here for, you know, the "american dream". they think they can't have their cake and eat it too. i don't even like cake. corporations are the epitome of the "dream", run by fatcats only looking to scratch their own backs. charities are often corrupt, and can not dole out as widely as the gov't. i don't want "big brother" but i do think something more can be done and it's terribly sad that so few live well while so many go without (often through no fault of their own)

Answer 9

Thank you for this question.
I humbly request that you actually ask several more questions, based on the articles/links you've posted, and add some "cut and paste" in the "additional comments" section, since THEY will not open your link.

I most definitely agree that the CEO salaries have become preposterous, unrealistic, obscene. Especially since those outlandish salaries are possible because it is a reward for cutting salaries, pay raises, and benefits.

I found one part of the article to be particularly poignant, the part about the man suffering from many physical ailments, based on a life of hard manual labor.

I believe companies are going to have to be FORCED to provide fairly for their employees, just like they had to be FORCED to not employ children and FORCED not to have 80-hour work weeks.

And the poverty in this country NEEDS to be addressed.
Job training.
Education.
Community involvement.
Inner-city garden projects.
After school care and day care for working women.

So many, many solutions which are actually within our reach, and so vital for the health of this country.

But it will involve FORCING the filthy rich to spread the benefits of OTHER people's labor as opposed to pocketing it for themselves...., and they will have to be dragged kicking and screaming.

Answer 10

I am going to give you an answer that you likely won't care for. I know you live in Europe, but my answer will be limited to life in the USA.
The first article you linked to addresses poverty in the US. The other, although I only scanned it, seems to focus on global poverty. My comments will remain close to home, as I don't feel Americans have any control over the internal policies of other nations.
Regardless of all the drum beating going on about the poor in the US, poverty is something we, in the USA, have been working on eliminating for over a century. The fact is, we have done a pretty good job. The number of people living in poverty in the USA is about 16%. Compare that to some other countries where the rate is as high as 97%.
We have used public funding to provide education, passed laws to protect laborers, build highway systems into all isolated areas to establish commerce, provided a power grid to every inch of the country, build seaports, airports, bridges, canals, tunnels, water systems, sewerage systems, and every other form of infrastructure required for commerce and industry in every part of the country. In addition, cultural roadblocks to prosperity, such as race and gender, have been removed. Higher education for all people, regardless on financial standing, is available thru government grants and low interest government loans.
The result is that every single America with any ambition can prosper in any location in this country. We have built a land of opportunity for those people who wish to prosper.
So, why does poverty still exist in America?
Before I answer that question, let me tell you a bit about myself. I am 57 years old and have never worked for anyone in my life. I have been self employed since 1971. I have only a high school education. I started my own service company 36 years ago with only pocket change, just the few hundred dollars I managed to save while in the army. I learned what I needed to know about accounting and business management along the way from old text books I bought at college book stores. From that humble beginning, I am quite well off financially today. I don't think that there are too many countries in the world where a hard working indivivual can build a fortune with just a limited education, some elbow grease, and few dollars. I can provide testimony that it can be done in the USA.
Having said that, I myself have often wondered why poverty even exist in America. Having dealt with many employees thru the years I can give you three solid reasons: 1. bad judgement 2. shortcomings in character 3. addictions.
For a very long time in my life, I felt the need to help others who were less fortunate. I think a certain amount of guilt comes along with success. That feeling fades with time, however, once you realize that the people in the USA who are poor remain in that state because of their own failings.
There are only a few simple rules to follow to go from rags to riches in the USA:
Never create debt unless that debt creates wealth.
Deliver on your promises to all people be they customers, family, or friends.
Remember that it isn't important how you make money. It's what you do with the money you earn that matters.
And, never buy into the notion that you are poor.

In all respect to your opinion, I feel Americans have done everything possible to eliminate poverty in the USA. The only other avenue left is socialism, taking money from achievers and giving it to non-achievers. That will never happen in this country.

edit:
It funny how some people view reality. I have been around for a very long time. I've traveled the country as a child in the 1950s with my dad, who was a truck driver. In the 1950s and 1960s, I went to many urban and rural areas and never seen one bloated belly from starvation, as another poster suggested. My parents raised my older sibs during the Great Depression and there are a lot of photos in the family from that period. Those photos include the travels of my father while on the road. No bloated bellies appear in any of those photos either.
I lived thru the politics of the 1960s and know that the welfare system created during that time was not established to eliminate poverty. The shocking reality is that the welfare system was created as a payoff to stop the rioting, looting, and burning down of the inner cities at that time. It was the same solution the government used for the native American problem some 80 years earlier, a government check as long as they stayed on the reservation. The result has been the same as well, a group of drug addicted people living in the inner city receiving a dole.
There is some validity to a rise in homeless families in the USA at the present time, however. This isn't due to the reasons the poster stated. These are people who got caught up in the subprime lending swindle, for lack of a better word.
It surprises me further, that the poster thinks Americans didn't state fighting poverty until socialism appeared during FDRs term. I guess the Clayton Anti-Trust act, public education, and the reams of other reforms that preceded that were meaningless.
I guess some people have a narrow horizon.