The Lost Inheritance: Topics List

Chapter 7 (Poverty Isn't Relative)
Topics List

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Body Fuel: How Can The Poor Afford Their 8,640,000 Joules Per Day?: In 1994, its cost if from honey was Ł1.59. That is 94% of the Ł1.69 daily personal food budget with which state subsistence left me.
New Technology Destroys The Options For Those Who Cannot Afford It: If society adopts new technology, and some later become unable to afford it, they cannot simply return to doing things the way they did before.
Relative Poverty: Relative To What?: I am told that, compared to the poor of the Third World, my poverty is only relative. But that does not justify my poverty. Neither is it true.
Community: A Fundamental Need Seated Within The Human Mind: Sociological evidence suggests that there exists an optimum size limit for a human group, which may be determined by the physiology of the human brain.
Excluding The Old Leads an Industry To Repeat The Same Old Mistakes: Excluding the older worker from the computer software industry shows up in the constant repetition of the same old mistakes.
Earnings: Determined more by Market Forces than by Personal Virtue: Most think their hard work earns them their living. But no amount of human effort can, of itself, produce any of one's needs of life.
Basic Human Needs: The Needs of The Body, The Needs of The Mind: The human life-form is a composite creature. It has a mind as well as a body. Both have needs which must be satisfied.
Personal Income: An Insidious Attempt to Compare Human Worth: The fallacy that an employee's salary be a measure of his worth embarrasses him into hiding the extent to which he is being exploited.
Money: The Highly Elastic Yardstick by Which Human Value is Measured: To convert an amount spent in a given year to the 1999 equivalent, multiply it by the Inflation factor for that year.
Nuclear Family: The Basic Social Unit Determined By Human Physiology: The sexual dimorphism of human physiology forces pairs of individuals to co-operate in the instinctive task of continuing the species.
Scientific Method: The Clearest View of Reality, If Politics is Kept Out It: The human senses are limited. The human mind is fallible. A true picture of reality can therefore never be beheld by human eyes.
Social Class: It Exists Only in The Mind as a Dubious Aid To Perception: A social class has no tangible existence. It is merely a mental construct to aid one's perception of society. Why then is it so divisive?
The Team: Co-operation Evoked by The Sporadic Distribution of Talents: Our higher abilities are divided among us, making us all specialists. To deploy them effectively, we must combine them by forming ourselves into teams.
Poetry: Comparing War and Peace with Unemployment and Poverty: I would rather fight and die with a rifle in my hand than endure this purposelessness, this uselessness, this loneliness, this isolation...
The Lost Inheritance, Chapter 7: Structure