And how does having retired people at poverty help the wealthy
The fact you don't understand that goes a long way to explaining your political positions unwittingly defending those bad policies.
Let'sd try to give you a simple answer. In the short term, there's a pie of wealth. It's zero-sum.
The 1% most wealthy can have 50% of the pie, and elderly retired people can have 5%.
Or, the most wealthy can have 54% of the pie, and elderly retired people can have 1%.
The larger percent of all wealth own, the greater your relative wealth, the larger share of all wealth you have. Wealthy people generally tend to like to have a larger share.
Hence, look at human history and it's filled with societies with a few people have nearly all the wealth, while there is massive poverty among most.
The US was and is an experiement that adjusts that, creating the artificial power of a "vote", which in theory gives a poor and rich man the same amount of power, one vote.
That's a very 'progressive', 'enlightened', 'liberal' way to say the wealthy can't just have all the welth and power. The very definition of the United States is 'redistributionist'.
And that's led to the US being the envy of most of the world, eventually, with its prospering middle class who FORCED a larger share of wealth into their hands - not into some extreme communist system without rich people but into a country with both wealthy and a thriving middle class.
But since Reagan, that power has shifted back to the top and we've been sliding back. That's why wages are stagnant for 30 years while the rich skyrocket in wealth. It's why when we had an economic disaster that destroyed 40% of the wealth of most Americans, the stock market has more than recovered. doubling in value, but the top 1% have taken 93% of the entire economic recovery.
The wealthy benefit by the elderly being in poverty for the simple reason that it increases the share of wealth the wealthy have.
Now, we could discuss the harm to economic growth and the size of the pie by short-sighted policies that cause extreme concentration of wealth.
But those concerns don't seem to affect policy much or to cause much concern for the wealthy who just pursue more for themselves, so not much point.
People like you want to STEAL wealth and hand it over to people that are unable for multiple reason (majority by choice) to improve themselves.
No, you're an ideologue who buys into dogma leading you to make such false (and offensive) attacks because you think every policy that results in transferring wealth TO the top 1% is good, justified, well earned, while every policy that transfers wealth FROM the top 1% is 'stealing'.
That's an ignorant, warped view coloring your politics.
You have no idea what a good balance of wealth distribution is nor how to have it - you are just blindly fighitng for policies that will result in plutocracy.
So instead of tbe Progressive/liberals showing/helping them how to better themselves, they try to create a reoccurring lower class that is dependent on handouts taken from the wealthy. Of course, reaching into the progressive pocket is taboo :thumbsdiwn,:
The ignorance here is too massive to even make a dent on.
Progressives are the ones who supported massively increasing public education - which increases economic growth. A safety net not only has moral benefits - it is highly economically efficient at keeping people productive instead of having temporary problems devastate them. Any 'culture of dependancy' is more in your dogma than in the facts, and it's not nearly as impacting or expensive as your ideology misleads you to believe.
In fact the policies of the right are the ones that generally shrink the pie - the excessive concentration of wealth leads to *underinvestment*, *fewer* entrepreneurs, all kinds of things that reduce the size of the pie in order to put the protection of the huge slice held by those at the top above the interests of society and the economy.
I don't mean to offend, but you need to think about that more than I do before you throw around words like 'theft' and 'stealing' - and ignorance is not meant to insult, but describe.
One of the common tactics of the people who want to oppose the public good is to attack with perverse claims.
'The Environmental Protection Agency INCREASES pollution'. 'Gun Control INCREASES murder'. 'Anti-poverty programs INCREASE poverty'. 'Seat Belts CAUSE you to get killed in an accident'. And so on.
Now, that last one is so simple and easily debunked, it's good to use as a model, because it's the same type of argument, but illustrates the problem well.
Any of these arguments usually has a grain of truth to them - but it overall false. There are cases where seat belts cause people to be killed, who would't have. There's the guy who is 'thrown free during the accident and is ok, while his friend in the seat belt did not escape and burned'. The thing is, ON AVERAGE, the seat belts save far more lives.
People generally understand that, and the money spent by a special interest to argue the wrong position isn't much, about zero at this point, so not many people buy that one anymore.
But it's the same thing with the others - which are far more well funded.
Now, they have variations. For example, tobacco companies started out with claims that 'the science isn't conclusive' they argued for a long time; followed by 'it's about personal freedom'.
Companies who want to make more money by opposing climate change efforts don't usually argue 'that actually INCREASES the problem', but they do argue the similar claims, 'the science isn't totally conclusive', and 'it'll cost a fortune for programs that won't actually help with the problem'. Just play on people's ignorance and doubts enough to get them to vote the wrong way.
That's one of the variations here - nevermind the actual pros and cons of the policies, it's just people who want to STEAL from the deserving people, distorting just about every part of the issue.
Fact is, we've seen huge, and radical, changes to our policies shifting the costs of our society from the wealthy and corporations to the people, and shifting the riches the other direction.
If there's any 'theft' going on, it's by the people who have shifted so much larger a share to themselves from the rest of society.
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