Question for /sci/

[Anonymous No.7526713]

before i email mythbusters i wanted to get /sci/,s opinion of whether or not the following saying in true:

"When the rich get richer the poor get poorer."

what do you think /sci/?

[Anonymous No.7526715]

>>7526713
If you were talking about the entire world as a whole then yes.

[The Only Good Communist is a D(...) No.7526718]

I'm not going to get into why this is obviously, retardedly false. How the fuck would they test it? And do so in a manner that's entertaining to T.V. audiences?

[Anonymous No.7526719]

>>7526713

What is a zero sum game

[Anonymous No.7526720]

>>7526718
>I'm not going to get into why this is obviously, retardedly false
read: I can't support my strong beliefs

[Anonymous No.7526730]

>>7526719
The economy is not a zero sum game.

[Anonymous No.7526749]

>not science
>not mathematics

SAGE GOES INTO THE OPTIONS FIELD

[Anonymous No.7526767]

>>7526749
economics isn't applied mathematics?

[Anonymous No.7526778]

Money printing means that everybody gets richer

[What is inflation? No.7526802]

>>7526778
>righties actually believe that
>it’s the paper that is important, not the value

[Anonymous No.7526816]

>>7526713
if you are talking about the stock market, it is 100% true.
it's like this:
say a company goes public by selling shares, bunch of people buy all the shares.
now the company has profited and the only way for shareholders to earn money (excluding dividend because that is mostly insignificant) is by trading shares among each other (unless the company buys back it's shares)
we know a company's share price is constantly fluctuating.
assuming a company stops selling more shares, the investors are now playing a zero sum game which means money lost by someone = money gained by someone/some ppl

so at least in the stock market, if someone gets richer, others get poorer. it is not necessary that the rich get richer but the likelihood is higher since they have more opportunity

[Anonymous No.7526821]

>>7526816
The total value of the stock market is not fixed, so it's not a zero sum game.

[Anonymous No.7526877]

>>7526730
in the short term, it is a zero-sum game, Professor Krugman

[Anonymous No.7526880]

>>7526821
>the stock market is not fixed
... but it is rigged, Mister Bernanke

[Anonymous No.7526913]

>>7526880
>rigged
[citation needed]

[Anonymous No.7526916]

>>7526713
Do literally any wealth balance.

Suppose you have a rich engineer that invests into a chemical plant.

The plant turns products of lower worth into products of higher worth.

Rich engineer gets richer. Plant workers get richer.

Myth busted no gtfo.

[Anonymous No.7526917]

>>7526713
>"When the rich get richer the poor get poorer."
Most of the time yes. Depending on how you define rich and poor then it's always true.

However the rich can get "richer" while at the same time having the poor stay the same or get richer as well as the quality of life for everyone goes up.

[Anonymous No.7526918]

>>7526718
>The Only Good Communist is a Dead Communist
Truth.

[Anonymous No.7526928]

>>7526913
Lrn2stock-market, newfriend

[Anonymous No.7526933]

That's not something Mythbusters can test and something for which history strongly suggests otherwise. The only time the rich getting richer makes the poor poorer, historically, is when authoritarian regimes seize assets. For example, the daughter of Hugo Chavez is worth an estimated US$4b because daddy seized massive amounts of wealth and gave it to her. The country is worse off for it. The Castro brothers seized most Cuban assets and participate in drug cartels and the country is worse off for it. Even when an authoritarian regime seizes assets, it doesn't always increase poverty. Russia is more prosperous today than before Putin first gained power despite him siphoning off tens of billions USD equivalent.

[Anonymous No.7526958]

>>7526916
>a rich engineer that invests into a chemical plant.
... in China.
>The plant turns products of lower worth into products of higher worth.
... in China.
>Rich engineer gets richer. Plant workers get richer.
... in China. Workers elsewhere get laid off, therefore poorer.
This is not a difficult concept.

[Anonymous No.7526965]

>>7526958
so its wrong for the rich to make themselves richer and others poorer, but its okay for you to make america richer and china poorer?

[Anonymous No.7526986]

>>7526965
rich becoming richer isn’t morally wrong. standing on mountains of bodies is. usurping the product of labour, awarding the worker for less than 10% of his effort is. using people as a resource, a means to greater wealth with no care of what happens to them is immoral. besides, from a point onward, more money only gives you 2 advantages; more and better opportunities to make even more money (which is circular and therefore trivial, you can’t have the means to be the end) and epeen. exploiting hundreds of human beings just to rise one step on some jet set list is simply bad. life isn’t a videogame. sure, bad and good are perspectives and a socioeconomic darwinist will consider capitalism god’s plan at work, but most people don’t look at it that way.

[Anonymous No.7527056]

Shit's relative op, while there is some subjectivity attach to the statement there is a bit of historical truth to it. A lot of it depends on categories of rich and poor. Looking at near absolutes it goes like this,

Being rich today means owning billions "x" currency that is invested around the world for new technology and medicine, being able to send your kid(s) to institutions that have a yearly cost more than most people make in a year or lifetime, affording the best possible healthcare, being able to fly yourself/ family to any destination at any time and to fund projects such as deep sea expeditions and commercial space travel.

Being rich say a over 500 years ago would be having excess control over the trade particular resources within a region, having a plethora of concubines, funding the creation of new sculptures/ architecture and having some form of consistent sanitary care.

Being poor today means having no working income or an income that doesn't satisfy the bare minimum in affording monthly food and rent for you and your family in the country you live in (this is key) thus needing private or government assistance, no long lasting shelter or a shelter with such poor conditions that it is actually a health concern, only able to send your kid(s) to a local public funded school with low funding (in third world countries you may not be able to afford sending all your kids to school), having "unreliable" sanitary conditions and having to frequently travel in environments that is highly susceptible to criminal activity.

Being poor 500 years ago meant having no consistent work or working in dangerous conditions, unstable eating habits where even eating once a day was seen as a luxury, no shelter or poor shelter, not having the ability to send your kids to any education institution at all and little to no healthcare while living in poor sanitary conditions.

tldr: the statement is true but varies, especially in the case of the poor from nation to nation.

[Anonymous No.7528081]

>>7526928
lrn2cite sources sir