Steve said:
I think he means nobody below the international poverty like, which isn’t really the same as no poor people because just over the poverty line is still very poor really.
I don’t really see why poor countries can’t develop like China is or S Korea did, with incomes per capita eventually approaching western levels. I don’t think that is impossible. Of course, under capitalism there will be rich people with a great deal of the wealth but I don’t see why there has to be very poor countries for developed countries to exist. Why?
For one thing, once all countries are “rich” you have socialism. Do you see that. There would be no more capitalism when all countries are “rich” countries.
Don’t you understand how capitalism works? The only reason there are rich people is because there are poor people. You need poor people to create rich people. The rich get rich by paying very low wages and prices to poor people and countries and then marking up the finished products to tremendous degrees, resulting in huge profits. The only reason we drive around in BMW’s is because they make $1 a day. Can’t you see or understand that? This is basic Marxist economics and it is 100% true.
Anyway, once every country is “rich” do you realize that no country will be “rich.” Are you aware that everyone can’t get rich? The idea that all countries can be “rich” or all people can be rich is madness. Wealth is relative. Life is like a footrace. The winners are maybe the Top 5 (those are the rich), everyone else loses. How could you have a footrace with 100 runners where everyone wins?
The rich countries are rich and got rich mainly by exploiting the low wages of Third World labor and their own poor and the low prices they pay to the Third World for their raw materials. Furthermore, the rich countries often force the poor countries to destroy all of their import substitution markets that might make them sufficient and then the force these 3rd wold countries to import expensive 1st world products, especially food.
For instance, 3rd World countries are not allowed to grow enough food to feed themselves because we want to export overpriced Western food to them. If they can’t grow their own food, they have to buy it from us (especially canned foods). We force them to grow crops for export only (no crops to feed their own people). This causes mass hunger in their society since they are not growing enough of their own food and the export ag industries in these countries barely pay their workers anything.
In El Salvador, there was typically only work for maybe 6 weeks out of the year. This situation causes huge numbers of landless peasants which is great for capitalists and profits but terrible for the landless people. The capitalists hate it when people grown their own food because now they are self-sufficient without being dependent on the capitalists for survival via wage labor or eating imported overpriced food. If everyone is out growing their own food, there is no surplus supply of labor that is necessary to work in the export ag fields or the factories.
This is why the Commons was fenced off in England – to force the farmers off the land and create a reserve army of poor and starving potential workers for the new factories and shops in the cities. The fencing of the Commons and mass immiseration of vast numbers of formerly self-sufficient Englishmen was often described as necessary for the growth of capitalism in England. The historical literature contains many quotes along these lines.
Similar things are happening in the 3rd World where peasant farmers are always being forced off their lands especially at gunpoint by large landowners often with paramilitary death squads working for them. When all of the peasants’ land has been stolen, all of the peasants now move to cities where they form a huge reserve army of labor.
They no longer grow their own food so now they must buy food from the capitalists. Also they are vulnerable since they have no way of making of living so they must labor for the capitalists in the cities and fields for extremely low wages. The conversion of small farmers into field workers on huge estates and impoverished proletariat in the cities is great for the accumulation of capital. Do you understand why the Commons had to be fenced off in order for the accumulation of capital to proceed?
When everyone is a millionaire, a million bucks will not be worth jack. When everyone is a millionaire, a million bucks and $1,79 will get you a Slurpee and a 7-11. Do you realize this?
