Talk:The rich get richer and the poor get poorer

Any need for this page?
This page seems to have a bizarrely narrow focus, and I'm sure it's covered in other articles. Any objection to deleting it?--CJGB (Chris) 20:00, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * How about a link to the other articles first? If it's only a tiny part of one larger article, I'll turn it into a REDIRECT. Fair enough? --Uncle Ed 20:57, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * If the fact that it is one of the three central tennets of marxism can be verified it might have possibilities. savidan(talk) (e@) 22:40, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Marxism scholar Sang Hun Lee wrote:
 * According to Marx, capitalism will inevitably lead to ruin in accordance with certain laws of economic movement. These laws are "the Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall," "the Law of Increasing Poverty," and "the Law of Centralization of Capital."


 * Also, it's such an article of faith among socialists (and socialist sympathizers) that the notion is often considered common knowledge. It's probably the single most widely-held economic belief in the world. I think it deserves an article of its own (especially if there's significant dispute among economists as to whether it's true!). --Uncle Ed 14:06, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * There are already articles on Economic inequality and Standard of living in the United States, which might cover the content of this one (at least a far as the U.S., in the second case). As far as the critique of Marxism goes, Marxism might be the best place, or (conceivably) separate articles on the Law of Increasing Poverty etc. But "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer" strikes me as more of proverb than the sort of term one would look up in an encyclopedia.--CJGB (Chris) 18:23, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Religious interpretation
I'm not sure how common this is:


 * Another common interpretation is that those who are blessed by God and use these blessings to serve him, will get additional blessings; those who misuse them will have them withdrawn.

Is this view unique to the Unification Church? It's used in the chapter of Divine Principle on the Mission of the Messiah to advance the POV that "Jesus did not come to die". The reasoning there (which BTW I should turn into an article or article section) is that there were "dual prophecies" in the Bible:
 * 1) a set of prophecies about what would happen if the Israelites accepted the Messiah (good things: "Of the increase of his government of peace there will be no end")
 * 2) a set of prophecies about what would happen if they rejected him (Isaiah 53: "He was a man of sorrows, rejected of men")

I might be confounding the specific (narrow?) interpretation proposed by Father Moon with generally accepted theology. Someone with more expertise on this matter, please help me out. --Uncle Ed 13:40, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, I've since noticed that there is more than one passage in the New Testament with similar wording. For the purposes of the article I'd say that the article is not primarily about "To him that hath shall be given," it's about "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer," and it seems to me that the essentials of what need to be said are:


 * a) there are one (or more) Bible passage(s) which have become proverbial, are often quoted vaguely or approximately as "to him that hath shall be given." It's often jocular, and without much reference to whatever the Scriptural meaning might be. You know, there's still some beverage left in your glass and the person with the pitcher says "Have some more, to him that hath shall be given."


 * b) The passage(s) should be identified and quoted correctly in some reasonable translation (I'd say KJV)


 * c) Whatever they mean, none of them mean "the economically rich get richer and the economically poor get poorer."


 * d) That it don't mean that should be shown by giving a succinct explanation of what the passage does mean, without going into nuances or disputes


 * e) A footnote pointing to further information for those who are primarily interested in "To him that hath shall be given" rather than in "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer."


 * Consider what I put in to be a placeholder... I don't know whether the "right" passage to mention would be Matthew 13:12, Matthew 25:29, or Mark 4:25, or all three, and the explanation I put in of what I think Matthew 13:12 means is not based on any deep understanding. But again, we want some kind of short summary. This article isn't the place for an in-depth discussion of the three passages and their meaning. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:11, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Jesus Quote
FYI, Jesus said the poor will always be with us in the bible.Septagram (talk) 05:28, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Vanity Article
Someone with too much time on their hands... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.166.29.116 (talk) 04:08, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

There is no "Law of Increasing Poverty"
I just removed all mention of Marx from this article because it was based on an unreliable source: a Unification Church pamphlet,. The author has apparently made up the following "Law of Increasing Poverty":


 * Since capitalists intend to increase profit, they always intend to reduce wages. Because machinery is constant capital, and labor power alone produces profit, they try to increase profit by keeping wages down and strengthening labor power. At the same time, because of the introduction of new machinery, many laborers are dismissed and become the unemployed.


 * In this manner, the increase of profit and the increase of wages are mutually contradictory. Therefore, in the capitalist society the increasing of poverty is inevitable.

The first sentence may be true (as in, truly an assumption in Capital), but the rest of it is an attack on a straw man. The author doesn't cite any particular part of Marx's work, but it seems that he has the following in mind:


 * the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse. The law, finally, that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital. (Capital, vol. I ch. 25,, emphasis added)

In other words, workers' material conditions may actually improve, but their say in working conditions is lost, they get deskilled by mechanization and they lose their freedom. That was Marx's objection to capitalism, not any prediction regarding poverty. FNAS (talk) 12:11, 16 August 2018 (UTC)