Bill Gates Goes Back to School

Re:Bill Gates Goes Back to School by Darmani on Friday November 23, 2007 @11:58AM (#82989)

The standard of living has increased seven-fold in the past century. As a result, the definition of "poverty" is no longer homeless people starving to death, but a family living in a small house who own a car, TV set, and other "luxuries." Yeah, I think capitalism has done a lot to "take care" of people.

And actually, the incentives to "subsidize" the disadvantage have always been there (why do middle-class atheists give to charity?), but that gets into sociobiology.

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Re:Bill Gates Goes Back to School by ajju on Saturday November 24, 2007 @10:58AM (#83198)

That's the definition of poverty in the U.S. For the poor in Asia and Africa poverty still means not getting two square meals a day and sometimes starving to death.

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Re:Bill Gates Goes Back to School by Darmani on Saturday November 24, 2007 @07:16PM (#83261)

Yes, of course.

Uncoincidentally, most of Asia and Africa are not very capitalistic

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Re:Bill Gates Goes Back to School by mynameishere on Friday November 23, 2007 @05:05PM (#83062)

I am defining "take care" as "subsidize". No, capitalism doesn't "take care" of anybody, and if it did, it wouldn't work.

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Re:Bill Gates Goes Back to School by Darmani on Friday November 23, 2007 @05:34PM (#83077)

I'd be very surprised if Bill was using the same definition. It's usually not a good idea to mix different definitions of a word.

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Re:Bill Gates Goes Back to School by mynameishere on Friday November 23, 2007 @07:09PM (#83092)

I know. To quote myself:

Maybe something was lost in the translation from reportee [ie Bill] to reporter

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