There are ~700 million people living in poverty according to Google.
The total combined wealth of the top 1% is ~43 trillion according to Google.
That comes out to ~61k per person.
So while that would be life changing money for a lot of people it certainly wouldn't magically fix everyone's situation.
As for the food but we have produced more than we needed globally for awhile now. It's really more of an issue of logistics. The places where food is the biggest issue tend to be fairly remote meaning that even with money there isn't always an easy way to get food/water consistently out to them. It's often better to set up those remote communities with local water and farming/hunting if possible.
My Google says 700 million in poverty worldwide but it says this about wealth "In 2023, the world's richest 1% owned 47.5% of the world's wealth, which is roughly $214 trillion." So 214 trillion ÷ 700 million ≈ $305,714.28. "total wealth of the top 1% of American households was $44.6 trillion" perhaps you used this figure instead which is just the US. I'm pretty sure most people in poverty would be able to fix their situation on $300k.
My take on the food as well is, we have planes that fly everywhere all over the world, celebrities using jets to fly an hour to another city, but there's no way we could just take some planes and air drop or land and deliver food? It would be pretty damn easy logistically. Of course they should be self-sustaining, but the western world throws away so much food that doesn't bring a profit, we could absolutely afford to give a lot of it away.
Giving food aid is a terrible idea, except in extreme emergencies (failed harvest/war/pestilence etc.). Food aid makes it more difficult for local farmers to make a subsistence income as they cannot compete against the free food from the west. It’s far better to aid by transferring money directly or by transferring skills (i.e. education).
If we took all of the wealth, it would be insane to just give it to the poor without any kind of support. They've never had that much money, they haven't learned to save and are going to spend it it too quickly before they realize what they did. If you're going to take all the excess wealth, then you have to build infrastructure that will support lives. Homes, grocery stores, farms, mills, mines, schools, colleges, and assign those to educated/trained citizens to support the local communities. Handing money out is a recipe for disaster, it's how the Republicans/democrats are always setting the poor up for failure on support. Instead of making sure food prices support feeding a family, they make sure the helps comes as stimulus and gets gobbled up by inflation or skyrocketing rent. You don't just give money, you build infrastructure that supports lower prices and let the poor pay with their own money. Affordable housing, neighborhood gardens, citizen owned farms that are trained to use sustainable practices, and even local power generation using wind, solar, geothermal, or anything else locally that is consistent enough to always provide power(it likely won't generate enough to replace large energy corps, but it will force them to lower rates as its no longer a monopoly), build things to compete against the free market and prices will drop because the monopoly is broken.
Right… the white man’s burden to educate these poor stupid Africans. Have you considered the fact that they may have superior knowledge about what’s necessary on a local level? I am not saying that there is no potential for targeted aid, but for the most part I would strongly prefer that locals can decide how development aid is spent.
By the way I also strongly disagree with your analysis on aid to the poor in the US. In my opinion the poor should receive cash rather than say food stamps, to allow them to spend funds according to their own needs.
I don’t doubt that you’ve done the math and I’m not really going to do anything practical with it, so let’s work with your numbers.
Imagining that not everyone needs that 60k, I wonder to what extent the aggregate of all those “extra” 60ks would fund away the logistics issue of getting food to the people who need it.
I agree with the first part, but for the 2nd part i think wealth relies on scarcity to be wealth.
I like the sentiment here, but I think this one has much weaker messaging compared to the other posts.
It feels like the take away is "capitalism bad" which might be an understandable sentiment, but it's feels more like a platitude and vent of frustration than anything else. The other posts felt direct and I think challenge folks to really think about what's wrong around them, and what specific actions they they could be taking about it, and I don't really get that feeling from this one
But if you made this, I think the choice of type and colors are excellent!
Yeah, I think it would be better with "greed" instead of capitalism. Even though capitalism is prone to the problem, other economic systems can also be exploited by greedy individuals to some degree.
Folks, the community is called shitprop, and it contains shit-tier agitprop, where is the confusion?
But, we can't get rid of poverty, then everyone will have the same opportunities and money wont mean anything except as a meager exchange for goods and services . . .
. . . oh wait, that makes sense
Capitalism unchecked is the bane of our existence.
Would it be possible to get a sidebar entry for the comm describing what kinds of things are appropriate here specifically? I have an idea or two on things that could be worth posting, but I'm not sure if they're quite the type of post you're looking for
Umm I can try, honestly I don’t really know myself yet. I made this place as people kept saying my posts weren’t memey enough for leftymemes. So it’s more leftist agitprop focused community, with a side of “meme”?
I hadn't heart the term "Agitprop" before, thank you for the explanation that definitely helps me better understand what kinda stuff you intend this comm for!
Hope you have a good one :)
Socialism in the past had the same issues we are seeing with capitalism. You know what the problem is? The 1% families stealing from the rest of us. Socialism might in theory make sure people are in heated homes with clean water, but it made sure even the hardest workers had 0 chance of getting more than a heated cement room with clean water, only knowing someone in the higher ranks ever allowed you to move forward. Same with the c floor always hiring friends and family instead of the dude from the 3rd floor that worked 2 jobs to get a PhD in business, and has all of the requirements in spades... The issue isn't the social structure, unless you want a social structure that doesn't allow for 1% families to exist... And if that's what you want, it ain't socialism, it ain't capitalism, it ain't Maoism, or Catholicism, every system we currently have allows and encourages a small group of elites to hoard the resources and lord it over the rest of us that are barely making ends meet. Don't change the system. Eat the 1%. Then change the system so their poison can't affect the new system.
From what example are you making those statements?
The ussr, china… has always ever been state capitalist! China isn’t even claiming to be communist anymore! Its goal is to vaguely work for socialism now
Thats the problem with so many people who tout communism or socialism as the ultimate solution to capitalism. They tend to just conveniently ignore greed, corruption and bad actors like if it werent for greed, corruption and bad actors capitalism wouldnt be SO much better than it is now.
There will always be some guy somewhere who figures out a graft or hustle to get more than they are entitled to.
