Don’t forget that jobs have also to do with luxury (wealth). So if somemone wants to find a job, this one also needs some things which are usually luxuries and suddenly necessities in order to (get a job to) get more luxury (wealth). So luxuries, although usually not needed, can become necessities, and if they do, then merely in order to get other, thus more luxuries, not in any and every case but in order to reproduce and propagate luxury in general, regardless whether they are for anyone and everyone or not. So luxury can only find its end by disasters, catastrophes, cataclysms. Therefore I said:
MR, are you telling me that an undeveloped country like India has better public transport systems than US? I cannot buy that. Secondly, the same is the opinion of those Indians who visited, lived or living in US.
As far as the fighting for completion and defining survival is concerned, you are looking at it from where you stands. Means, one must have a decent apartment and a car otherwise it is not acceptable. That Is not going to happen ever, no matter how develop and rich US may become.
Those, who are in the survival phase, cannot have the lives of normal persons and have to compromise at many issues.
With love,
Sanjay
Upf, that is not true. You are forgetting the currency rate difference. That is the only reason why India looks cheap to you, otherwise it is not.
Your girlfriend must be getting salary In US $ which is almost 64 times costlier that ₹ (Indian currency). Let me give you an example to understand what I am trying to say.
IPhone 6 16gb is around 600 $ in the US. Means, an US citizen having minimum wages can buy it from his 10 days earnings. Right. But, it costs around 45000 ₹ in India. If you translate it into the terms of minimum wages here, a labourer had to accumulate his earnings for more than 150 days to buy an iphone6. So, which labourer is getting more money or has more purchasing capacity?
My daughter got B. Tech in IT from one of the top 10 colleges amongst India and recruited by Samsung through campus selection one year ago. Her salary is about 50000 ₹ per month, which is considered quite good according to Indian standards (higher middle class). Even, she has to spend her almost one whole month salary to buy an iphone6. Now, compare it with the one month salary of a B. Tech in IT in US. How much iphone6 can be purchased there from one month salary there?
The same is true for most of the purchases. You can compare it yourself.
With love,
Sanjay
Upf, there is some worth in your argument but it is still not perfect.
First of all, need is not relative to what others have. Everyone has different circumstance thus their needs are bound to be different.
Secondly, there is no permanent line between necessities and luxuries. Both definitions are relative and depend on the circumstances. As usual, let me again provide one example to explain my point.
Say, there is blue collar worker. He owns a car and use to go the work using it. Let us assume that car is a necessity for him because it saves some time from him and he can afford its expenses too.
But, given that his job is strictly confined to 10 to 5 without any extra working hours or burden, is having a driver necessity or luxury to him?
At this moment, driver is certainly a luxury because he would not get any extra benefit from not driving on his own. The car will take the same time whether he drives or the driver. Thus, his saved time and effort from non driving would go in vain.
Now, the situation changes, he gets promotion and included in the management. He is also now asked to take some different responsibilities like negotiations with overseas suppliers and buyers.
Now, due to the different time zones, he has to be available all the time on phone and net in order to be in touch, but he cannot do that if he had to drive s car for some hours. Thus, having a driver becomes necessity for him now.
In the same way, if he loses his job or gets demoted, the same car would becomes a luxury for him, because now saved money by using public transport is more valuable than his saved time.
With love,
Sanjay
James,
Living in poverty and living in disgust are not synonymous. I have travelled almost the whole upper half of the India during last 15 years, including very remote areas in Kashmir, and came to know the difference between the two life styles.
I have found that people living in small remote villages are living a far better life than this so called developed metro life, which you and MR trying to suggest.
Secondly, I do not think that poor people are more well placed in US than India in general. Slums are slums, irrespective of where they are. Slums were not a rare thing in the developed world either merely one century ago. It is an essential phase of urbanization.
Thirdly, living a life of survival or poverty does not necessarily means living In the slums.
With love,
Sanjay
Do the poorest people in Indian tend to be fat, or do they tend to be starving to death?
In the US, cheap food is loaded with fat. You’re right about that one Ucc.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNERxbBtT5Q[/youtube]
Oh let the sun beat down upon his face, stars to fill his dream
Sanjay’s a traveler of both time and space, to be where he has been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed
Talk and song from tongues of lilting grace, whose sounds caress his ear
But not a word he heard could he relate, the story was quite clear
Oh, oh.
Oh, Sanjay’s flying… mama, there ain’t no denyin’
He’s been flying, ain’t no denyin’, no denyin’
All he see turns to brown, as the sun burns the ground
And his eyes fill with sand, as he scans this wasted land
Trying to find, trying to find where he’s been.
Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream
Heed the path that led him to that place, yellow desert stream
His Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, he will return again
Sure as the dust that floats high in June, when movin’ through Kashmir.
Oh, father of the four winds, fill his sails, across the sea of years
With no provision but an open face, along the straits of fear
Ohh.
When he’s on, when he’s on his way, yeah
When he sees, when he sees the way, you stay-yeah
Ooh, yeah-yeah, ooh, yeah-yeah, when Sanjay’s down…
Ooh, yeah-yeah, ooh, yeah-yeah, well he’s down, so down
Ooh, my baby, oooh, my baby, let him take you there
Let him take you there. Let him take you there…
Poorest people in India do not tend to be fat but they do not starve to death either, if you exclude very rare exceptions.
Ucci, India may not be a rich and developed country but it is not Uganda or Somalia either.
With love,
Sanjay
Nice piece of writing. That would have looked even better if posted at creative writing section.
By the way, let me tell you that intense travelling was part and parcel of my job, not any pleasure or vacation trips.
With love,
Sanjay
Those are the lyrics to the song. I didn’t write em.
When I read your comment, I immediately pictured you trekking across the desert with a that turtle neck jacket and a turban on.
I put you into the song, Sanjay. Don’t you see? You are this traveler of both time and space!
2op
Really we should stop paying welfare and people can just do what they used to do prior to that i.e. Become career criminals eh! If you want a less civilised society then by all means kill the poor and the old or some such thing.
Otherwise employ socialist philosophies for those who haven’t had the >luck< to attain independence.
E.g. In britain we used to have socialist housing, most of which was built and paid for a long time ago. This means it majoritively has no cost after that, whereas capitalist housing always has cost, and now the welfare bill has to pay that ~ hence costs much more.
Now to costs of healthcare/financial black hole… [which is different to unemployment].
Which is mathematically cheapest; kill a poor person who cant pay for themselves, or kill a rich person who can pay for themselves and many others and share the wealth!
Personally i don’t want their mindless moronic banal jobs, so fuck them all, they can pay or not pay ~ in many ways. If the world falls more into chaos, with death and suffering everywhere, it would result in a less populated and stronger world.
thanks capitalism, for providing the means to your own ends.
_
Hey, you’re the one that said poor people in the U.S. weren’t any better off than those in India, so you invited the comparison. I’m just wondering on what grounds you think they are comparable!
In the U.S. you are considered to be living in poverty if a family of four is taking in less than 23,000 dollars a year.
India literally DEFINED poverty in terms of whether or not people were meeting their nutritional/caloric needs to survive, so for you to say poor people in India aren’t starving when that’s literally how poverty is defined is strange. Since 2005 they’ve switched from a caloric to an economic way of measuring the same thing- are these people earning enough to not die.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in … of_poverty
I think it’s important in deciding how to ‘help the poor’ to have an accurate image of what the poor actually live like.
This is about political will.
The USA is now a richer country than when it was able to secure the economic stability of its poorest folk, whilst maintaining healthy growth in the economy.
What has happened since Reagan, it that a massive wealth polarisation has occurred in line with a take-over of the media to such a degree that CEOs, corporate leaders and the political class are now enjoying untold and unimaginable wealth to a degree that low base demand in the economy which has been responsible for maintaining growth is dying out. The media has promoted the cult of profit whilst traducing the poor as filthy, criminal and feckless, and provided the elites with the power to restrict public spending on education at a time when a more educated populace is the only chance of maintaining a healthy economy.
The growth industries in the USA is the War on Drugs which has incarcerated unprecedented numbers of people (mainly black), providing rich picking by those making money providing those services.
The average joe has swallowed it whole, and voted for their own oppression and impoverishment.
Lev Muishkin
Well said.
I had wondered if too much education was a deficit, ~ from the perspective of the capitalists/benefactors? They want cheap labour and education reduces that?
Imho the war on drugs occurs because because they want fit workers, and i agree, to criminalise the poor. Otherwise it would probably be more profitable to legalise and sell the drugs.
If it were a film you’d be wondering when the hero will come along and gain victory over the baddies.
Bingo. As the great philosopher Tupac said, “Instead of war on poverty, they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.”
Ucci, you have not read my all posts that is why you did not clearly get what I was trying to say.
A person earning 23000 $ per annum may be considered poor in US but I do not think that he is entitled to that. That definition is derived from polital reasons, not actual social concerns.
There are two different stages. One is not being rich and the second one is short of basic necessities. Not being rich is a relative issue and is defined differently in different countries. But, not having basic necessities is more or less the same everywhere.
These are really poor people, not those who are considered poor because they do not have a car, flat, ac or smartphone.
Yes. That is what I was reffering to. The US definition of poor is quite distorted. They have included those people also in the poor who are not rich or not doing well.
With love,
Sanjay
Everyone in the world should have an apartment a car an air conditioner and a smartphone if for no reason other than that it’s just an ugly thing to have to see people going without those things.
Yes, why not.
And, those who do not wear Armani also look ugly. It should also be included in the necessities.
With love,
Sanjay
Wow. There’s a difference between having style and having transportation and the ability to communicate and a place to live. The people in the world who are eating out of trash cans…those are the people we’re looking at when we say, “we want to demonstrate that humanity as a whole can do better”. Too many people see the world as a game that if they win they can starve others indirectly by accumulating too much for themselves. But it’s a kind of brainwashing that’s been going on for too long for some people to realize. Man…there are enough resources in the world for people to live better. It’s not right that the job market is like a lottery that has nothing to do with merit in most cases. So you can’t just look at the guy who didn’t get hired and say, “well, you’re shit out of luck, go and eat from a trash can and sleep huddled up in a drafty tent”. I mean…you can say that technically, but I’m not sure if I would agree with it.