How much money do you need?

[Bobby Cannoli]

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I didn't say that Gates robbed anyone, I'm saying that in a Capitalist economy, in order for one person to have more than the "average median" income or assets, many others MUST have less than the average, thus making them "poor" based on that economy.

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So if you're below average, you're poor? Hardly. You need to learn some facts before you make these wonderful claims. The average income in the US is WAY above the poverty line.

And are you further claiming, that an economy is good only if everyone has the same amount of assets/income? Why is that necessary? I don't begrudge rich people what they have. I'm happy with my lot in life. (tip: average and median are different concepts, you might want to investigate further [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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And let's not get into the "productivity" that Microsoft has delivered, since they continually produce buggy software and have a near stranglehold in the world of Operating Systems and Word Processing applications.

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As a frequent MS basher, you're preaching to the choir here. BUT, you're making a mistake. I agree MS could make MUCH better s/w, hence my dislike of them. However, that doesn't mean that their products haven't delivered much to their customers. Again, if people got no value from a product, they would stop buying it. Period.

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Many "better" products have been put out of business because other "lesser" products just had better marketing or more capital to set themselves up. Beta vs. VHS, Amiga vs. IBM PC's, etc.

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Again, preaching to the choir. I still have my original Amiga 1000 (one of the first 100 made [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] But notice something: you put better in quotes. Who says it's better? Not enough people, that's the problem. "better" is subjective. Why did Beta fail? Sony kept the h/w proprietary, so they could charge more, and not compete with the undercutters. Result: People bought VHS, cause it was cheaper. Was it as good? No. Was it good enough? Yes. And cheaper, too [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] (see MS argument above). Why did the Amiga fail? Because Commodore was too cheap to pay business app vendors to port their apps to the Amiga. Result: NO businesses bought PCs. Just hobbyists and cable TV stations. And there weren't enough of those sales to support the machine.

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Also, it isn't always about performing well, many companies just rip us off. I know it's nit-picking, but here are a few examples:

1. Friendlies Restaurants (Northeast US) used to give you HALF a cherry with your ice cream. What corporate big-wig was sitting in his office going "do you know how many millions we'll save if we give everyone half a cherry?!"

2. Moist Wipes: These used to come in packages of 50, now you get 48, or 42, but you get charged the same, or more.

3. Have you SEEN the prices of razor blades lately? You're paying something like 16 dollars for eight razor blades that probably cost a nickel or less apiece to produce (granted, there are varying advertising and other costs to be considered, but c'mon man, really!)

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In all three examples, you don't have to buy the product. If you get "ripped off" more than once, it's your fault.

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4. Purchase Microsoft XP in the States and you're paying somewhere between $150-$300. You can get it in China for $40 (and I'm not talking an illegal copy, this is a Microsoft approved price)

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Well, if you buy a configured system, you're paying a lot less than $150 for the OS. And if you're buying just the OS, there are ways to pay (sometimes) much less. As far as China goes, I actually admire MS approach to it. They are trying to encourage a society with much less available capital than the US/Canada/Europe to actually buy the product instead of stealing it. Reminds me of the music industry complaint against MP3s/file-sharing. They say they are losing $7B a year in sales. Yeah, right. Like $7B is going to appear out of thin air to buy the CDs. If they could stop file-sharing, they would make very little additional income, consumers would simply consume less. MS is attempting to sell more legitimate copies at a lower price, making the same income they would have anyway, but also starting the process of putting the illegal copiers out of business.

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We live in a society where we are taken advantage of by the minority upper class who control the majority of the money and assets. And we are too apathetic and comfortable to fix the system.

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Well, let's just say that's a completely subjective statement, and I simply don't agree.

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Don't get me wrong, I know that Socialism and Communism have had, and do have, their faults. We haven't found an ideal system yet, hopefully one day we will.

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Here we agree.

[grandgnu]

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So if you're below average, you're poor? Hardly. You need to learn some facts before you make these wonderful claims. The average income in the US is WAY above the poverty line.

And are you further claiming, that an economy is good only if everyone has the same amount of assets/income? Why is that necessary? I don't begrudge rich people what they have. I'm happy with my lot in life. (tip: average and median are different concepts, you might want to investigate further [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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If you're below average, yes, I would consider it poor. Here's why:

1. The government determines what the "poverty" line is, and in my opinion, it's set way too low. Hell, the majority of people making an average income have difficulty affording to purchase a home and live a life free of enormous debt (but some of this is due to our overconsumption and greed, and people just having trouble managing their finances effectively)

2. I believe that a lot of our goods and services are priced based on the average income, so that means that if you make less than average, you are unable to live an "average" life based on inflation, and thus are "poor" because of it. This does not tranlsate into being homeless, or penniless, just a more difficult problem of owning property and being able to make reasonable purchases without resorting to credit (which just pushes you further into poverty)


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In all three examples, you don't have to buy the product. If you get "ripped off" more than once, it's your fault.

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Companies tend to copycat one another. If Company A is reducing their costs by giving you 42 in a box instead of 50, other companies are going to go along and do the same thing. Even with all the choices out there, you're still stuck dealing with it, and not purchasing the product or service from ANYONE isn't going to help the matter unless enough people do this.

[ohgeetee]

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In order for someone to be rich, many others must be poor.

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If you're below average, yes, I would consider it poor.

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What a great argument. The man is keeping all the poor people down, and by poor, we mean the bottom half of all wage earners, regardless of what their actual income is. In your world, the economic crisis would never change, because there will always be below avg, even if everyone were millionaires.

[grandgnu]

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In order for someone to be rich, many others must be poor.

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If you're below average, yes, I would consider it poor.

[/ QUOTE ]

What a great argument. The man is keeping all the poor people down, and by poor, we mean the bottom half of all wage earners, regardless of what their actual income is. In your world, the economic crisis would never change, because there will always be below avg, even if everyone were millionaires.

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If everyone were millionaires, then inflation would kick in to account for it, and they'd still wind up being poor.