Comments by "Jack Haveman" (@JackHaveman52) on "Thomas Sowell" channel.

People just don't understand this simple truth. Poverty is the default. That's the way humans started out. 35,000 years ago, the richest person would marvel at what a person, who's living in the inner city, has now.
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@eohrefare7346 So what if they inherited it. Envious are we? The green monster will eat your heart out with resentment and anger. Do what's best for you and yours. The size of someone else's pile will only blind you if you stare at it for too long.
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@RaPr-c3z You spend too much time staring with envy at the pile of money that others have. There's a reason why envy is one of the deadly sins. It'll tear you apart. Look at your own pile, figure out how to best grow it. Work hard, make wise decisions with the money you make and be grateful for what you do have and you'll do fine. You'll never be financially better off by obsessing about what others have. And one more thing. Don't expect the government to help to better your life. All they'll do is add more and more taxes and regulate you into a standstill. Like I said....poverty is the default. Humanity started poor. Our ancestors were all poor, living day to day on what they could hunt or gather. Be grateful that's not how we have to live today.
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@mikez4760 You've just demonstrated the very attitude that I talked about in the poor areas of the US. It's the "what's the point" attitude. Everything is about defeat and try to get as much as possible for as little effort as possible. When the citizens of a country demand too much for minimal effort, they will self destruct. That's what happens if the people don't work hard because there's no reward over the long haul and it's the people, responding to the promises of government, that is the cause of it. Sweden doesn't even have minimum wage laws and there's a reason for that. Minimum wage means a new level of poverty. When I was young, I was poor making $1.30 an hour. Now I'm poor making $15 an hour. That poverty level will eventually catch up to you. Keep government small and taxes down and you'll thrive. Create a huge and expensive bureaucracy and that bureaucracy will suck more and more taxes out of you until you can no longer function. Then you ask the government for more help so they up your taxes so they can give it back to you to supplement your heavily taxed income. It becomes a vicious cycle that spirals downward into an abyss.
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@RaPr-c3z Who said that I agree with "carried interest". I never said that. If something is wrong, fix it. No problem with that. The first thing that you did was attack the rich, ostensibly for being rich. Had you said that there are problems, I wouldn't have even bothered to respond but you didn't. Your comment was an attack on the rich and that's it. Hong Kong has the most billionaires per capita in the world. They also have the 4th highest standard of living. The number of billionaires should have nothing to do with the standard of living of the average citizen.....if the system is free and the government isn't corrupt. That's the ticket. It's corrupt governments that cause social inequities not rich people. That's what Trump is trying to fix. End corruption. Don't end billionaires. You might as well say "End success".
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@kpNov23 "Is climate change real?" 97% of climate scientists say climate change is real. What a self serving statistic. The climate has always changed. There is only one honest way to answer that question. The climate does change. Then they tell us that we must sacrifice to stop climate change. What? They want us to sacrifice to stop a phenomenon that's been happening since the beginning of time. It can't be done. Then Al Gore predicts, using "science", back in 2006, that the glaciers will melt, that in 15 years a good percentage of Florida will be under water. That we'd be wading knee deep in ocean water to enter the World Trade Centre and that most tropical islands will be submerged. That polar bears, that scientific icon of climate change, would be extinct. That was 18 years ago. Apparently, his "science" didn't work. Not only are those island still in existence and Florida is still high and dry, but polar bear populations have increased. Do you know why? It's simple. Science is a procedure. It's not a result. That's the reason. Believe the science is nonsensical and is unscientific. It's something that we were taught in grade 5 but we've forgotten what we've been taught.
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@ What about them? We've always looked after those who've lived with physical disabilities. Before we left it to the government, it was the church, or similar institutions, and the family group. We were so poor that the able bodied people all worked because it was the only way to survive. Now, millions of Americans, who are have NO disabilities, sit at home, staring at their TVs and phones, eating junk food and getting high and collecting a government stipend just to exist. Then they blame rich people for their lack of effort. Your "whataboutism" is just an excuse to protect your envy and resentment. It provides NOTHING.
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@nicolash6553 You're missing one point. Those countries have corrupt governments and their leaders are making bank from the Chinese and other countries. For those corrupt politicians to keep filling their bank accounts, they need to keep their citizens poor and under the rule of their despotic authority. That's why the west is so rich. It's why Japan grew after WW2 even though their economy was gutted. My country, the Netherlands was also poor after the war. The Nazis gutted all the wealth that they gathered. My mother nearly starved and had to quit school at 11 years old to help support the family. However, they believed in freedom and it didn't take long for them to become rich again. Some of the most successful people in Europe, the US and Canada came from the places that you mentioned. They came to the west so they could freely live the way that they wanted to and NOT under the thumbs of despots in their home countries. It's not the selling of the natural resources that's exploiting those people. It's their leaders who allow it to happen because they're getting rich off of it. Had they allowed their people the same freedoms that we do in the west, they'd be just as well off as we are. Fair and equal trade is the key and not our supporting of their corrupt leaders.
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@caryg4638 Which is why a strong Constitution is mandatory for the democratic process to work. I also question who would decide on who's sophisticated enough to vote. That could lead to an elitism that could be a disaster for the average citizen.
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@west7192 A country cannot be governed by a Constitution alone. There are decisions that must be made, budgets as an example, that just can't be formed through a Constitution. We need representatives to take all the variables into consideration so to decide on how a budget is to be determined. We could have representatives who are permanent and pass on that status to their descendants but history has shown that this is highly susceptible to tyranny. So, we form a voting system, within the rules of the Constitution, to pick our reps. If they do a bad job, we can vote them out. That's how our Republic works. In fact, the fact that the founding forefathers felt that they were being taxed without representation, is why the colonies rebelled against Britain. It would have been pointless to revolt if we didn't form a system, within the Constitution, if the citizens had no say in choosing who would represent us. So, they formed their own style of democracy that was governed UNDER the Constitution. Without that form of Democracy, our Republic dies because we will once again be taxed without representation. It's an integrated system ruled by the constraints of the Constitution that gives us our freedoms.
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@mikez4760 Those countries didn't try to remove their ghettos. They set up a free market system that their citizens embraced and they produced the wealth to be able to afford their social safety nets. When the Islamic migrants arrived, especially in Sweden, they weren't on board with the success through the free market system, which implies hard work, something that the people in those countries believe in. The new migrants created their own ghettos, refusing to work and eschewing the beliefs and life standards of the people in the new home countries. The US has an underclass that has been told for generations that they cannot succeed and shouldn't even have to try to excel. Guess what. They languish in their poor neighbourhoods, blaming everyone else for their problems. If the majority of the populace embraces the idea of hard work, of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, you will have a prosperous nation. When you reject those ideals, you make life harder for yourself and those around you. It's the way of life.
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@ You implied that the rich obtained their wealth through nefarious means. That they haven't created new products that ALL of us want and buy....even you. If you took their products away, we'd ALL be the poorer for it. They hire us and pay us and it's the only way that most of us have the money to buy our homes, pay our rent, buy are cars, our food, everything that we need to live. To prove that's what you said, I'll repeat it for you. " but the rich obtained their riches" leaving no room for any other way but the one that you're about to tell us. I'm pushing back against that. The rich got rich in MANY ways, including providing services and products that we're willing to pay for. Maybe you didn't mean to make it sound as if there's only one way that they could become rich but it's what you said.
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@eohrefare7346 Trump owns his own golf courses. How does that cost YOU money? He's doing press briefings all the time. He's got audits going on the government. He's named his cabinet. He's stopped the flow of illegal migrants and started work on the wall, again. He's off right now to try and end the Ukraine war. He's done more in 3 weeks than Biden has done in a full term. I don't know how he's doing it. So, he takes time off to go to a football game or play a round of golf. We all need down time. You'd cry your eyes out if your boss forced you to work 10-12 hours a day, seven days a week. You're just filled with hatred and that's blinding your logic processor.
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@Nylon_riot It has nothing to do with the rich. It has to do with the corruption in our government, the career politicians and bureaucrats. They convince us that we need their help to get ahead in life and then tax the hell out of all of us. They give a nominal part of those taxes to the people in need, no one gets rich on welfare, and then divide the rest among themselves with corrupt schemes disguised as social programs. If these career government officials allow it to happen, corporations will be forced to go along and the officials just love that. It's why they hate Trump and Elon so much. They're trying to dismantle this career government corruption and it's enraging those who've been gobbling at the trough all their adult lives.
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