[asjfkdldlg]

> The poor need an environment they can thrive in, not handout from the rich.

Well, they need someone rich and mighty to create this environment they can thrive in - poor people usually don't hire employees.

[discreteevent]

Hiring employees is not the only way to create an environment you can thrive in. There are plenty of examples in all cultures (maybe not the US?) of co-operative arrangements that were successful.

[lordloki]

Without benefactors providing large amounts of capital how would we advance our knowledge and thought? Without some form of inequality of wealth we would never have had the enlightenment, industrial revolution, and health systems that we have today. The poor today are better off in almost every measure than the poor of 300 years ago. Heck, the poor today are better off than the wealthy of 300 years ago. This is all due to large amounts of capital being invested or donated into science and technology. To an extent wealth inequality is a necessary evil. It's certainly exceeded it's beneficial point at the moment, but that doesn't mean we should throw capitalism away, we only need to rein it in some.

[traverseda]

>Without benefactors providing large amounts of capital how would we advance our knowledge and thought?

I mean if I didn't have to worry about money I'd probably devote my life to some interesting distributed operating-system problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

I think that the people who are already creating stuff would continue to create stuff, just exactly what they create would change.

I'm less worried about who would advance our knowledge and thought and more worried about who would manage the garbage or grow the food.

[krageon]

This point of view is called trickle-down economics, which is hilarious mostly because of how sad it is.