Wealth and Relative Morality

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

[Note: I split this discussion from the the thread on anti-Semitism. Ghân, if you want to rename, go ahead. If anyone feels there post should have stayed in the original thread, let me know and I'll see about moving it back - VtF]

If wealth is relative, then one individual's wealth has to be at the expense of another's. The concentration of wealth, by which this definition of success is made, is at the expense of the overwhelming majority of those who do not simply have no wealth, but arguably have no opportunity for wealth. Why should those who are condemned to poverty have to accept the wealth of a tiny elite? Why should excess wealth itself not be demed "sinful"? Should the worth of any human be accepted to be 10, 100, 1,000 times the worth of any other human?
Perhaps if the success of the individual or company was not concentrated selfishly, but shared amongst a greater humanity, the opinions of these groups would be less harsh. It has been argued that more equal societies are more harmonious, and less equal societies are more fractious. Perhaps those enormous groups who form negative opinions about those tiny minorities who enjoy disproportionate wealth are merely conduits for the self evident truth that disparity amongst humans is destructive.

[yovargas]

If wealth is relative, then one individual's wealth has to be at the expense of another's.

That would be true if wealth was a set, finite amount, but it's not. Wealth can grow and has grown. It is entirely possible for one person to become enormously wealthy and everyone else's economic position to also improve.

[RoseMorninStar]

It's inappropriate to make judgments based on ethnicity because there is nothing a person can do to change that. It wasn't their decision.

However, like others have said, the way a person treats others, what they have done (or not done) in gaining wealth, power, control, etc... is something that one should be answerable for.
As they say; To one who is given much, much is expected.


I had a professor a looooong time ago and he had an interesting discussion with us.. he was discussing the Middle ages and the bubonic plague and the huge numbers of people who suffered and died. But people noticed that those who were Jewish had far fewer fall ill from the plague and few fatalities within their families. So the people blamed the plague on 'the evil eye' of the Jewish and blamed them for casting spells against their non-Jewish neighbors. The Jewish became pariahs. Scapegoats. In reality, fewer illnesses & deaths among the Jewish people was due to their dietary & cleanliness laws, and so they had far fewer rats, and therefore fewer fleas, in their homes. The plague has all but left us, but the old superstitions and animosities have not abated.

[axordil]

Oh, that's just the tip of the medieval iceberg as far as antisemitism goes. Jews were accused of actively poisoning the wells of Christians to cause plague. Accusations of Jews being behind mysterious deaths and diseases carry down to the present day in conspiracy theories.

Unfortunately, there's some evidence that militant Jewish settlers in Israel actually have poisoned some Palestinian wells (Wikipedia is a good jumping off point for looking at these charged). That would be a bitterly ironic twist...or an extremely cynical maneuver, since it of course allows the defense of "it's the old well poisoning charge again."

[Inanna]

I had a professor a looooong time ago and he had an interesting discussion with us.. he was discussing the Middle ages and the bubonic plague and the huge numbers of people who suffered and died. But people noticed that those who were Jewish had far fewer fall ill from the plague and few fatalities within their families. So the people blamed the plague on 'the evil eye' of the Jewish and blamed them for casting spells against their non-Jewish neighbors. The Jewish became pariahs. Scapegoats. In reality, fewer illnesses & deaths among the Jewish people was due to their dietary & cleanliness laws, and so they had far fewer rats, and therefore fewer fleas, in their homes.

But in the same way, aren't the rich and the businessmen being judged harshly because they are not suffering from the "ills" of recession, because they have worked hard to earn their money?

hal is right - why is it okay to paint the CEOs in one color. That's just as bigoted as painting all people of one ethnicity in one color. As bigoted as calling people "northeastern liberal elites" and implying, I don't know, nastiness?

[RoseMorninStar]

I didn't paint anybody any color!

[River]

I think part of the resentment directed at Wall Street stems from the perception that 1) their bad behavior brought us to this (and I daresay the evidence for that is much weightier than the "evidence" against the Jews) and 2) they've profited from it. Certainly news of large bonuses being paid out to executives whose companies had to get bailed out and news of the rich getting richer while we're hovering at 10% unemployment and the foreclosure system is completely backlogged doesn't help that perception.

I've also noticed, and this was as true before Sept. 2008 as it is now, that resentment against the rich is directed mostly at those that got rich in the financial sector. People whose companies actually produce a tangible product that people can buy off the shelf, like a piece of software or a gadget, don't get that same vitriol directed at them. I think that's because, and again, this is more about perception than the reality of the jobs, people feel that more work went into this thing that gets bought and held in your hand rather than the numbers jumping at the stock exchange. One is seen as a stroke of genius, a terrific idea someone stuck out their neck to build up and put on the market while the other is perceived as one part smoke and mirrors and the other part paper-pushing. People who cry for the head of Bill Gates aren't doing it because they resent his wealth. They're doing it because Windows, yet again, chose a fantastically bad moment to crash. But the people who cry for the heads of the execs on Wall Street are doing it because those guys are staying rich or getting more rich while everyone else is staying or getting poorer.

This widening gap between rich and poor and the resentment that comes along with it is something that needs to be paid heed to because this, this is how communist parties come into power. If we want to stay capitalist, we need a happy middle class.

[RoseMorninStar]

I am not sure how relevant this is to the topic of the thread, but I recall reading somewhere that in Japan an executive/CEO can only make 17% more than the lowest paid employee (usually the janitor.) That helps ensure that the head of companies don't become wealthy on the backs/at the expense of it's workers.

Here's an interesting article:

Japan's Executive-worker Pay Gap Narrows: Report

LOS ANGELES -- The difference between the pay of an average Japanese executive and that of a Japanese worker narrowed last year, while remaining far less than the same gap in the U.S., according to a survey published Wednesday. The Nikkei business daily reported that executives made 4.8 times more than average workers during the April 2009-March 2010 fiscal year, when all types of compensation are included. The difference marked a decline from a 5.8 factor of difference in the previous year. The report cited Kansai University professor Koji Morioka as saying the disparity was well below that seen in the U.S., where "top executives are believed to make 350 to 500 times the pay of ordinary workers at some firms." But the professor added that in the U.S., "executive compensation and employee salaries are decided on completely different principles."

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

If wealth is relative, then one individual's wealth has to be at the expense of another's.

That would be true if wealth was a set, finite amount, but it's not. Wealth can grow and has grown. It is entirely possible for one person to become enormously wealthy and everyone else's economic position to also improve.

Yet if the one person who becomes enormously wealthy was removed, and their wealth shared amongst every other, would not the wealth of all increase at the expense of just that one? It would seem that, even when the wealth of all increases, if a minority gains enormous wealth, that enormous wealth of the minority is still at the expense of the majority, who gain less than they otherwise would. That is without even considering the relativism of individual wealth; relative poverty may not be as immediately noticeable as absolute poverty, but there is a corrosive effect. As the costs to a society of disparate wealth appear to be tangible, the expense is not simply in strictly monetary terms.

[yovargas]

Yet if the one person who becomes enormously wealthy was removed, and their wealth shared amongst every other, would not the wealth of all increase at the expense of just that one? It would seem that, even when the wealth of all increases, if a minority gains enormous wealth, that enormous wealth of the minority is still at the expense of the majority, who gain less than they otherwise would.

By that definition, every unnecessary thing you or I have ever gotten would count as "at the expense" of someone else as long as there is anyone poorer than us. I disagree.

[vison]

It would seem that, even when the wealth of all increases, if a minority gains enormous wealth, that enormous wealth of the minority is still at the expense of the majority, who gain less than they otherwise would.

I don't think that makes any sense at all. How is "the enormous wealth of the minority" got at the "expense of the majority"? Where would "the majority" have got that wealth?


"Wealth" isn't some finite substance created and assigned by a god, stacked up in storehouses, and then distributed by some power or another. Wealth is created all right - by human endeavor.

A person who becomes wealthy by honestly providing goods and services is not taking anyone's "share".

The issue in this last dreadful economic collapse was that the "wealth" did not exist at all. It was fraudulent and crooks and liars kept moving this false wealth along and fools kept buying it. If you want to see what that meant on an understandable scale, look at Iceland.

The outrage we feel about the schemers "on Wall Street" is perfectly righteous outrage. They weren't all on Wall Street, but it was false wealth in the form of American subprime mortgages that was one of the main causes of the crash. These fraudsters made billions while others lost everything - and those billions WERE stolen, not earned.

The world economic system runs on debt. If a person or a nation can meet their obligations, things will be all right. But at this time, no nation can meet those obligations and we are in an enormous "rob Peter to pay Paul" vortex.

[Túrin Turambar]

Value is relative. If I pay five dollars for a pack of socks at a store, it means that the store values my five dollars more than those socks, and I value the socks more than my five dollars. In the end we're both better off, as we've gained something we value more than what we had before.

So if someone becomes a millionaire by making socks, it doesn't follow at all that everyone else would be wealthier if they hadn't. We might have more money in our pockets, but we wouldn't have the socks.

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

It would seem that, even when the wealth of all increases, if a minority gains enormous wealth, that enormous wealth of the minority is still at the expense of the majority, who gain less than they otherwise would.

I don't think that makes any sense at all.

I checked my syntax, and it seems in order.

The concept that it requires an individuual to become fabulously wealthy in order for wealth to be generated is simply not a given. There is no reason that wealth creation cannot be syndicalised, rather than individualised. Wealth can also be measured in terms independent of monetary value, and as societies with smaller income disparity are more contented societies, with less intrinsic conflict (in short, they are happier societies), the argument for reduction of excessive minority fiscal wealth appears sustainable.

[vison]

It would seem that, even when the wealth of all increases, if a minority gains enormous wealth, that enormous wealth of the minority is still at the expense of the majority, who gain less than they otherwise would.

I don't think that makes any sense at all.

I checked my syntax, and it seems in order.

The concept that it requires an individuual to become fabulously wealthy in order for wealth to be generated is simply not a given. There is no reason that wealth creation cannot be syndicalised, rather than individualised. Wealth can also be measured in terms independent of monetary value, and as societies with smaller income disparity are more contented societies, with less intrinsic conflict (in short, they are happier societies), the argument for reduction of excessive minority fiscal wealth appears sustainable.

I don't think money is the only, or even the most important, sort of "wealth". But my remarks were to do with money. And when it comes to "reduction of excessive minority fiscal wealth" that always means guns and brick walls and hardfaced guys who know it's their turn when the capitalists are all dead.

If a man gets rich by thievery and fraud, then put him in prison. If a man gets rich honestly, he's a benefit to the rest of us.

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

If a man gets rich by thievery and fraud, then put him in prison. If a man gets rich honestly, he's a benefit to the rest of us.

But who decides what is thievery and fraud, and who decides what is honest? There are families whose wealth originates through the slave trade, an honest occupation. Once.

[vison]

If a man gets rich by thievery and fraud, then put him in prison. If a man gets rich honestly, he's a benefit to the rest of us.

But who decides what is thievery and fraud, and who decides what is honest? There are families whose wealth originates through the slave trade, an honest occupation. Once.

Sure. What would you do? Take the money from those whose fortune was created 200 years ago by the slave trade? You wanna go back to Cain killing Abel, you go right ahead.

As for who decides what is thievery and fraud, in the current mess it's pretty easy to spot - but it's being ignored and even rewarded. Which is a whole other thing.

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

If a man gets rich by thievery and fraud, then put him in prison. If a man gets rich honestly, he's a benefit to the rest of us.

But who decides what is thievery and fraud, and who decides what is honest? There are families whose wealth originates through the slave trade, an honest occupation. Once.

Sure. What would you do? Take the money from those whose fortune was created 200 years ago by the slave trade? You wanna go back to Cain killing Abel, you go right ahead.

As for who decides what is thievery and fraud, in the current mess it's pretty easy to spot - but it's being ignored and even rewarded. Which is a whole other thing.

I don't believe I've recommended any reparations founded on historical precedence, so I feel there you are engaged in a dialogue with yourself.
As for identifying thievery and fraud, I would argue that it is far less easy to spot simply because the stupendous excesses provide a smoke-screen for the smaller, habitual frauds and thieveries. I feel there was a collective sigh of relief from the shucksters and hucksters who have forever ripped off the little man, thanks to this the focus on the banks.

[RoseMorninStar]

But who decides what is thievery and fraud, and who decides what is honest? There are families whose wealth originates through the slave trade, an honest occupation. Once.

I don't believe I've recommended any reparations founded on historical precedence, so I feel there you are engaged in a dialogue with yourself.

I don't see how you can claim vison is having a dialog with herself ...you may not have recommended reparations.. but you walked into vison's comment by bringing up a money making situation of the past, people who made money when slavery was legal (not that it was ever 'right' IMO) implying that there should be some retroactive accountability.

[Inanna]

I didn't paint anybody any color!

I didn't mean you, specifically, Rose, am sorry! I just thought of my post as I read yours to make a specific point.

[RoseMorninStar]

I didn't paint anybody any color!

I didn't mean you, specifically, Rose, am sorry! I just thought of my post as I read yours to make a specific point.

Ah.. no worries..