HOw many people below the poverty line does it take to make one billionaire in the USA?

Question

Isnt it true that in an economic system that accepts and welcomes the fact that people can take advantage of the system to become billionaires ...that it should be understood that there will be X amount of destitute people..even hard working people who make barely enought to keep from being beggars on the street?

So my question is ....if you embrace capitalism and billionaires should you not embrace all of its results, instead of accepting one whilte trying to pretend the other does not occur or perhaps sweep it under the rug??

its not a perfect zero sum game ..but it is a sort of zero sum game. Logically speaking if you are going to have say 100 billionaires, you are going to have way more than 100 destitute people.....more like at least 10,000 (destitute)for each one that becomes a billionaire (no matter how they became one). Of course most people will not be billionaires or destitute, and will fall into what we call the middle class...but even the middle class is shrinking, and millionaires are rising and so are billionaires....and so are destitute people.. Do you see it now? If you have trend of rising billionaires and millionaires, it also means for each one of those posititive stories there are millions going the other direction. God bless those who become rich as long as they do it ethically and legally....all I am saying is to be honnest about the reality of whats going on, I have even had some conservatives concede to me that its impossible to have a capitalistic society where no one is dirt poor

Answer 1

When Americans finally embrace the worlds Communist ideal.Then and only then will poverty be spread through the whole society except for the ruling class.

Answer 2

Well, I believe that you make a very good point. I think that what you are doing is stating the obvious, or what should be obvious to any honnest debater, which is the fact that even if capitalism is the best economic system, as I believe it is. Even if I am a great fan of free enterprise, I do realize that the underbelly of capitalism is poverty. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot have a few super rich without having many super poor. The fact that I recognize this does not mean I am a commnunist, it means I am honnest. The question then becomes, what kind of society do we want? Do we want a dog eat dog society where everyone literally fends for themselves,and they happen to have no money when they are too old too work, they then become street people picking through the garbage? Is this what we want? I dont think so. This is why while we embrace capitalism and free enterprise, we must also accept some elements of socialism to try to take the edge off of the negative results of capitalism, ie..poverty. A capitalistic society does have the obligation to make sure there is a floor below which no one must fall. How can we be the greatest most wealthy country and have a good chunk of our population living like its the third world? that would be unacceptable. Balance is the key. We are not animals, this is not the jungle, we are human beings and we have something called morality. Some of us even have religion that tells us we should be kind those less fortunate and not be selfish pigs.

Answer 3

Whether you realize it or not, the problem is actually the reverse. Poor people are poor because the marginal product of their labor is low. A person who can only produce one product per hour that sells for $10 earns about $7 per hour. High wage earners are more valuable to the rich than low wage earners. A billionaire would prefer many high wage workers than any low wage workers. The reason is that billionaires earn the marginal product of the capital they contribute. The more productive a worker is, hence higher wages, the more valuable the capital is, hence the rich can become richer.

Given the amount of poverty, it is quite amazing we have as many billionaires as we have.

This might be more visible if you look across American history or across borders.

If you look at the average worker in Bangliadesh, that worker produces 200 times less per hour, on average than the average American worker. Not coincidently, Bangliadeshi wealth is 1/200th of America per capita. America's billionaires are billionaires because our poor are, compared to third world countries, very rich. They are comparatively rich because the capital and wage system permit them to produce more than their third world counter parts.

If you look back into American history, to the beginning, we were pragmatically a third world country. People who didn't produce, starved. Poverty was not like poverty in America today. Poverty then easily meant death.

It is a product of 18th and 19th century thought that sought to blame others for poverty. Poverty is eliminated by free markets, generally and the rich have a profound self interest in ending poverty because they can only become richer by doing so.

In the United States, there is a tight relationship between wealth and income and profits. A 5% permanent increase in the profit margins, say from 10%-10.5% results in a 5% permanent increase in the national per capita income. For people to get pay increases, the rich must become richer. To eliminate poverty we need more Bill Gates, not fewer.

Answer 4

We all know that in the early years of the Industrial Revolution, workers were becoming better off. Prices were falling, incomes rising, health and sanitation improving, diets were more varied, and working conditions were constantly improving. This new wealth was generated by capitalism which dramatically lengthened lives,, and decreased child mortality rates. With the new jobs created people found they could earn more than they could make in agriculture. Housing conditions improved. The new heroes in society came from the middle class as business owners, and industrialists displaced nobility and gentry in the cultural heirarchy.

The economic advances continued through out the period of the rise of socialist ideology. The poor didn't get poorer because the rich were getting richer (a familiar socialist refrain, even today) as the socialists predicted.Instead the underlying reality was that capitalism had created the first societies in history in which living standards were rising in ALL sectors of society..

In a sense, free market capitalism was coming closest to what Marx himself had imagined: "the all around development of individuals" in which "the productive forces will also have increased" and " the springs of social wealth will flow more freely."

This IS history, condemn it, turn your back on it, and you are still bound to repeat it

Edit: Yes, I do believe we need to assist the truly needy, disabled, the elderly and needy children. These are some of the buffers that need to stay in place.

Answer 5

The poverty line for one person in 2006 was 10,210. So that would mean that a single billinaire= about 100,000 people below the poverty line. Since there are 36.5 million Americans below the poverty line this would, this would mean that if 1 billionaire was equivalent to exactly 100,000 people in poverty there should be 365 billionaires in Ameirca.

If this is correct then it would seem that there is a direct coorelation between the number of billionaires and the number of people in poverty. Right?

The actual number of billionaires in America is...wait for it...wait for it...371. It seems like 1 billionaire almost exactly means there is a tradeoff with people in poverty. The numbers work out way too nicely to be something wrong.

Sorry if this isn't an answer directly to your added material in your questions, but it seems like it really does mean that for every billionaire in America there are 100,000 people below the poverty line that result.

EDITED RESPONSE: It might not be exactly zero-sum, but as the numbers above demonstrate, it is darned close. Let me break down the logic explicity.

1. 1 billionare has at least $1 billion.
2. 1 person below the poverty has $10,000 or less.
3. 1 billionaire=100,000 people below the poverty line.
4. There are 36.5 million people below the poverty line.
5. If the relationship is zero sum it should equal 365 billionaires in America.
6. The actual number of billionaires is 371.
7. Result, at least initially it does appear to be pretty close to a zero sum relationship. Anyone disprove this?

Answer 6

To answer your question: It takes many people below the poverty line to make 1 billionaire. Or put another way, it takes googabs of very poor people, even working ones, if there are a few billionaires. I don't think anyone can deny this.

Answer 7

The rich need to stop apologizing for being rich and the poor need to stop being jealous. Everyone needs everyone else in one way or another. The problem arises when greed steps into the equation. How much is enough? If one is rich, can they afford to pay a higher wage to the people who help them maintain their wealth? No, I don't think the wealth should be distributed equally, but the more affluent among us need to realize that without the workers, they would not be rich. Maintaining a living wage for their workers is beneficial to them as well as the workers. Not everyone can be or want to be rich, but they do want to be able to provide for themselves and their loved ones at a reasonable standard of living.
The argument that the poor in our country are rich compared to other nations is irrelevant, since our poor do not live anywhere else, they live here. Comparatively speaking and according to the standards of our country, the poor do not make enough to survive. Which country one is poor in is irrelevant, they are still poor. So, please, stop with the "count your blessings" spiel.

Answer 8

You could house the entire population of the world in a two story building the size of Texas.

The number of top billionaires in the world (25) would fit in my den.

There is no such thing as hard working people who are beggars in the street.

Setting that reality aside, do you really think that the assets of 25 people and or eliminating the opportunity for the possibility of a 26th will eradicate poverty in the world?

Why is it that, all you over educated communists are able to develop such powerful vocabularies but, can not do simple arithmetic?

Answer 9

There is only so much money in the system, if more is printed it is devalued, so you are correct, extremely rich has to have extremely poor.

The only limit to this is how little society is willing declare a minimum for the poor to survive on. In the USA the "winner takes all" mentality reigns supreme, for now.

The poor should unite and revolt, as this appears to be the only situation when the gap between the rich and poor does not widen.
Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, and other South American countries are good examples of this, and so the capitalists will desperately try to discredit them.

Answer 10

How many working middle class does it take to make one billionaire. Everything is relative. The poor in America are actually better off than most middle class in other countries. I embrace capitalism and will fight to the death for it.

Answer 11

No that is exactly not true, but the way many liberals perceive the world...it is not a "zero-sum game" where there is a finite amount of wealth, so one person's "more" equals another person's "less"--Actually a person with "more" CREATES wealth, so a better question is, "How many middle class working families owe their income to each billionaire running successful businesses."

Edit--you don't get it....it is not "sort of true," it's not true AT ALL.