“But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property … [ One ] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.” — Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, October 18, 1785.
Yes, it is always easy to attack a straw man of your own creation: whether it the mythical “evil rich” or the equally mythical “jealous poor” attacking their hard-working moral superiors while worshiping entertainers with microphones or balls in their hands. Personally, I don’t mind anyone getting rich. But I do agree with the Biblical precept that the you have the more is expected from you in return. And I also think that the laws should not favor those who are already ahead of everyone else in the game, or be manipulated by them for their own advantage at the expense of everyone else.
Michael wme: I’ve concluded that you’re not doing satire. Instead, you’ve tapped into a newspaper from an alternate universe, in this case one where the Axis won. Your words on the USSR, and WWII, sound so authentic it’s scary.
All I can say is, WOW!! The TED talks are usually some of the best comments I have seen, and this one is THE best I have seen on economics, by far! Thank you very much for the excellent internet reference!
When I graduated from high school in 1962, my husband and I owned a three bedroom two bath house and two cars within two years. Most of the men who graduated with my class had similar paying jobs right out of high school. I didn’t work, didn’t need to. Most women didn’t, and those that did actually chose to work. Today, it’s not a choice for most families, and when those families break up, everyone lives in poverty. When I did decide to go back to college, I paid $79 tuition for 15-18 hours of credit at SIU Edwardsville and we paid a $20 fee to rent whichever books we needed. Everyone could go to college, paying for it with a part time job. Since then American productivity and GNP have skyrocketed. But, Middle Class people don’t have anywhere near the advantages we did. All the money is going to the top 1-5% of earners. And, with the cost of college, it’s darn near impossible to get a start, you already owe the cost of a house before you graduate college. If the American worker is the most productive in the world, and all the stats say they are, the prospects for the young people of today should be better than they were for us. Instead, we produce the highest quality goods in the world—and can’t afford to buy them.
@DLee – Globalization has made it more difficult to have a 1 income household. Investors can get their widgets manufactured in other countries where the wage rate is lower.
With that reality in mind – What do you suggest to make it more fair?
If your suggestion is to use the IRS to rob the productive to pay the less fortunate – you won’t get my support.
If your suggestion is for the government to spend it’s scarce resources on improving our infrastructure to make is even more productive so there is more pie to go around – you do have my support.
The problem, as I see it, is that there are plenty of progressives out there who point to somebody rich and say – “He got there by exploiting the masses” and the rabble buy into it because they seem unwilling or unable to reflect on what is keeping them from becoming rich.
My wife and I have worked hard and saved aggressively all our lives. We are now part of the 1% and started with almost nothing. It angers me to here the rabble claim that the government should loot my earnings and savings so that those who haven’t been so fortunate can enjoy a better life.
The government does have a role to play and here are some areas where they could help those who feel they haven’t gotten a fair shake:1) Encourage couples to stay married – Nothing destroys wealth like a divorce.2) Encourage families to shop locally – This enriches their neighborhoods and builds strong communities.3) Find ways to keep kids in school – The path of the high school drop out is rocky and unpleasant.4) Encourage (not demand) that people control their vices. How much wealth in this country has been spent on: Booze, Drugs, Gambling, Gluttony, etc.5) Make money management classes mandatory in high school so that kids learn how to survive in our economy.6) Raise Interest rates at the Fed – This will make it harder for people to borrow money but it will reward savers. Currently the Fed is making savings terribly unappealing by holding interest rates artificially low.7) Create a tax policy that encourages production and savings rather than punishes the productive i.e. Tax on spending and not on earnings.
@Trusted – Is that an allegory or an anecdote. I’m not sure what your car buying experience has to do with teaching people how to thrive in a capitalistic society. I certainly don’t condone criminal or unethical behavior.
But if we take your story a step further – The fact that you or the victim in the story got swindled – Does not give him or her immediate mortgage on the earnings and production of others.
I agree – 7 is a shift in taxes to the broader base but only because they currently aren’t paying taxes at all. They are paying for the SS/SSDI and Medicare but they aren’t paying taxes at all.
All of my suggestions for the Government are getting people to do the very thing that leads to the accumulation of wealth and self-sustainability. Tax policy not-withstanding you certainly can’t argue that my suggestions would make citizens less wealthy.
But I am trying to layout a blue print for the successful person and the successful community. You seem to be stuck on how can we rip off the wealthy because they don’t deserve it. Your anger is misplaced.
I’m not dismissing the rabble at all. I still remember the great unwashed occupying parks and complaining the government wasn’t doing enough to help them out. While I was funding my kids’ college expenses; they wanted Obama to give them a free ride. While I was working – they were talking socialistic tripe.
Everybody who thinks they didn’t get a fair shake is not entitled to take it from the guy next to them.
“Nothing is stopping you from becoming wealthy. Stop listening to the naysayers out there.
You want wealth? The vast majority of the evil rich are first generation wealthy. That means THEY worked hard and made their money. THEY had an idea, worked 60, 80, or more hours per week to make their dream come true. To build a company, hire people, push the idea, make it a reality, and took ALL OF THE RISK and made very little doing it for years, while they lost time with their spouses, children, and families.
Yes, some make a lot of money. And there is nothing stopping you from doing it either."-Well said. It is natural for people to envy what other people have. However, in a country that enjoys significant equality of opportunity, wealth disparity is a natural outgrowth of that freedom. Those who argue for equality of result are really arguing against economic liberty.
DaSharkie & TripleAxel:“To build a company, hire people, push the idea, make it a reality, and took ALL OF THE RISK and made very little doing it for years, while they lost time with their spouses, children, and families. Yes, some make a lot of money. And there is nothing stopping you from doing it either.” — Da Sharkie“In a country that enjoys significant equality of opportunity, wealth disparity is a natural outgrowth of that freedom. Those who argue for equality of result are really arguing against economic liberty.” — TripleAxel DaSharkie, you contradict yourself mightily in three sentences. You talk about risk and you about “some make a lot of money.” You don’t talk about hard work being a sure thing, or that anyone who works hard makes a lot of money. It is about risk, and risk is about CHANCE, i.e. about factors over which you can have no control. Which why only “some” who take those chances and put in that work, make that money. LUCK. “The is nothing stopping you from doing it either.” Sure there is. I know more than one person who put heart and soul into some risky venture and still failed, through no fault of their own. That’s what “risk” means. Ability, judgement, brains, are not simply a function of hard work, either. You can be a paragon of virtue and work like a dog all your life, but if you don’t have a certain kind of savvy, you may still not make it. Just because SOME people can make it big with the qualities that nearly everyone possesses, does not mean ANYONE can make it with those qualities alone. Your statement is like telling the runners in a race that they call all win. NO, they can’t. “Nothing can stop you from doing it”? How about all the others you are competing against? Really an asinine, and demonstrably false argument you are making.As for TripleAxel, — you’re absolute correct that “arguing for equality of result is really arguing against economic liberty.” And I have yet to hear of anyone arguing for equality of result, except a tiny handful of far-left radicals to whom nobody listens. The problem is the lack of “equality of opportunity.” That is a sort of equality rapidly diminishing today in this country. Not that it, in any absolute sense, ever existed. I was lucky enough grow up in a stable, two-parent middle-class household where I was taught the value of a dollar, the importance of character, etc. I attended excellent public schools, and my parents paid my college tuition at a good public university. I did not earn any of those advantages, they were handed to me because of the good fortune of my birth. Now you tell the kid who grows up in a poverty-stricken one-alcoholic-parent household in the inner city, with the “wrong” color skin, lousy schools, a violent neighborhood, etc. that he has the same opportunities that I did?! Or the kid who grows up in some remote appalachian “holler”, or on a reservation, or was brought into this country illegally when a baby, or has some chronic health problem, or … need I really go on?You tell me that I had the same opportunities as the kid who was born into a family that could and did send him to the best schools money could buy, introduce him to all the right people, get him into the most prestigious schools, etc.,and provide capital for any scheme he wanted to try?! You call that a “level playing field”? You call that “substantial equality of opportunity”? Yes, SOME people overcome the most horrible disadvantages and emerge triumphant. And does that mean the disadvantages are of no consequence? That’s like saying that because SOME people survived Auschwitz, you can’t really call it a “death camp.” I really wonder what planet you live on.
Who is rich? Being a millionaire, that is to say having a net worth of $1,000,000 hardly puts you into the top 10% if you are 65 years old, and only those in your age group are considered. To be in the top 1% requires a net worth of about $8-9 million over all, but if you consider only people over 55 years old, it’ll take a worth of 10-12 million to put you in the top 1% of wealthy Americans. But the whole 1% thing is terribly misleading. It is the top 1/10% who are the truly rich. The top 315,000 individuals earn half of all capital gains. To be in that group you have to take in at least $1,600,000 each year. But it is the even smaller group, the 30,000 or so who are the top 0.01% who have been the real winners in recent decades.“The big winners are those in the top 0.01 percent. These folks, who have a net worth of more than $100 million, have seen their share of wealth more than double since 1995, from around 5 percent to just under 12 percent. Over the past half century, they have nearly quadrupled their share of wealth.”A “millionaires” is a person worth a million dollars: and that includes a lot of middle-class people of retirement age who have paid off their mortgages, own businesses or parts thereof, and have retirement nest eggs, but hardly live in the lap of luxury: you are talking about many people who have spent a lifetime building up assets that don’t match a single year’s income for the 0.1%. It is true that 80% of millionaires did not inherit their “fortunes.” But while these people are “rich” in the global scale, they are not in the same class as the top 1%, and are just small fry in the world of that top 0.01%.I don’t envy anybody his millions, per se. What worries me is their power. Money is power, and the concentration of so much of the nation’s economic power in the hands of a few hundred thousand citizens (and non-citizens) has a very great tendency to concentrate the political power of the nation into the same hands. We see it happening now.I don’t blame the rich for wanting to bend the laws and institutions of the nation into forms that strengthen them, and advance their interests (even as the expense of everyone else). They may even believe that what is good for them is good for America. They’re only human, like the rest of us. They aren’t to blame for not being saints. I blame the rest of us for letting them get away with it. In allowed ourselves to be bamboozled into supporting policies that disempower ourselves and empower them, that tilt the scales ever more in their direction.
“Why should we be forced to live our lives according to your religion?”
It’s not my religion, merely my opinion. But why should you be “forced” to live your life according to anyone’s opinion other than your own? Good question! Why should you be “forced” to refrain from murder and mayhem just because some other person is of the opinion that such things are “wrong”? I’d say, basically, because that is how civilization operates. We give up, to some extent, our right to do anything we damn well please, in order to live in a society with others and enjoy the benefits thereof. Like the rule of law. You want to declare war on society, be my guest. It will cast you out for its own survival sake, for it cannot exist if each individual is utterly and totally a law unto himself. Here’s a little something from Benjamin Franklin, that says it well: “The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People’s Money out of their Pockets, tho’ only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors’ Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell’d to pay by some Law. “All Property, indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it. “ -- Benjamin Franklin, December 25, 1783.
“Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.” — Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice (1795).
“I returned , and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding , nor yet favour to men of skill ; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” Ecclesiaties 9:11
Northern Redman: Worship or not, you still have to support it (to paraphrase the United Methodist vows of membership) with your prayers (secular definition – dealing with government), your presence (unless you go into exile – I had to once to feed my family and would prefer not to again), your gifts (taxes, being mandatory, are not exactly gifts, but close), your service (conscription is still on the books, and I would hope you would vote, serve on juries, etc.), and your witness (which is what we are doing here). That is close enough to worship to produce ethical dilemmas when it conflicts with one’s real religion.
@old1953 – I am far from an anti-taxer. I believe there are important roles for each level of Government and that those need to be funded.
What I am against is the use of taxes to create equal outcome regardless of input.
Roads, Schools, Telecommunications, Investments, Police, Fire, Hospitals, Sanitation – These are all areas where we, as a society, should pool our resources to create a single facility rather than try to each provide those services.
But I am not in favor of government spending that takes money from a group that can’t muster the votes to protect themselves and passes it out as vote buying largess to the group with a lot of people. There exists no nobility in looting the productive and claiming its fair because the masses voted for it.
@NightGaunt – So let me make sure I understand your last point. Are you saying the Wealthy are cheating the masses when they replace people with technology?
Really?
When GM replaces workers with Robots – The price of a car goes down.
When my bank puts out an ATM to dispense cash and replaces a human teller – The lines get shorter and I have more time in my day to do other things.
The list of advantages from technology are numerous and it isn’t just the wealthy who benefit.
But you have struck on a very key component to the current wealth disparity. Many of the Wealthy have figured out how to use technology to make them more efficient and more effective at their jobs which means they can make more/hour then their neighbor. It has always been this way.
Read about the Luddites that were throwing wooden shoes into textile machinery because they saw it as a threat to their livelihood. That was more than 100 years ago.
And just how far are you willing to go: Would you do away with televisions because they put local actors and actresses out of work? Would you do away with tractors and trucks and send us back to horse drawn equipment because it would employ more workers? Should we give up modern medicine because it drives the local doctor out of his community? We all benefit from technology.
The trick is to figure out how to use it to your advantage to make yourself successful.
If they have been debunked by previous comments, show me where. And if your dismissal of my links is based on your perception of their political point of view then they haven’t really been dismissed at all.
“How many raised in the top quintile end up in the bottom quintile? "-You said, “use any definition of success you like.” Now you are defining success as “reaching the to quintile of income,” something which is by definition not available to everyone and is a goal that not everyone will choose to pursue. -“You have a very naive understanding of the way the world actually works, and the way the laws work in practice. "-I think that your understanding is far too cynical. Our laws are remarkably impartial and our society allows any determined person to pursue a lawful business. To tell certain classes of people that the law is a barrier to any chance of their success is to invite them to live in a self-made prison of paranoia and resentment.-“This is nonsense. America was a lot richer in 1960 than it was in 1890, and it was also a lot more equal.”-There was a larger gap between the poorest person in 1960 and the wealthiest, although for tax reasons this gap may not have been as obvious on paper.-“Principles of the sort you speak of are the mental shortcuts employed by people who want to avoid facts. "-People like the Founders of the United States Constitution, who established principles to limit the activity of the Federal Government, even though that activity might be intended for the common good.-“I find it hilarious that those well-heeled people who tout individual effort, and individual merit, and personal accomplishment become downright socialists when it comes to their families”-That’s the tragic attraction of socialism. It works best at the family level, and as a result people think that we can run a country like a gigantic family. There is the added feeling of warm fuzziness that comes from imagining that by doing so we increase our kinship with each other. But what works within a family system does not necessarily work as government policy, as we have so often discovered, often at the expense of those whom the government would treat as its “children.”
@TripleAxel“But what works within a family system does not necessarily work as government policy.”
Agreed. Which is why it is absurd to talk about always consistently defending “prinicples”: they work in some contexts, but not in others. Which was my point. I don’t want the local market to be public, and I don’t want the local library to be private.
But you did get me good in one place: “use any definition of success you like.” Yes, success can be defined in such a way to prove that success has been achieved when it hasn’t.
You seem consistently unwilling to address the points I have actually made, and prefer to tear down the straw man you have construction out of ideological assumptions.
You don’t seem to understand the methods by which social mobility and inequality are measured. And you reduce our entire society down to “the laws”: I agree, that many laws intend that citizens should be equal (and praise to them for that), though many other laws in fact (though sometimes indirectly) favor the wealthy. You have to look at the way the law actually operates, in actual consequences, not the rhetoric supporting it, to know the reality of it. And “the laws” are not the whole story by any means. But rather than bore you with a lot of examples, anecdotes and statistic to which you will pay no attention …
I will bow out, and leave you the field, sir. No point in arguing with non-sequiturs and, uh, “factual errors.”
braindead Premium Member over 9 years ago
Nah, we’re all equal. I mean can’t everybody pay 13% total income taxes, just like Willard the ChickenHawk?
I mean, he did release an entire partial tax return of a selected year, didn’t he?
Doughfoot over 9 years ago
“But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property … [ One ] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.” — Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, October 18, 1785.
Doughfoot over 9 years ago
Yes, it is always easy to attack a straw man of your own creation: whether it the mythical “evil rich” or the equally mythical “jealous poor” attacking their hard-working moral superiors while worshiping entertainers with microphones or balls in their hands. Personally, I don’t mind anyone getting rich. But I do agree with the Biblical precept that the you have the more is expected from you in return. And I also think that the laws should not favor those who are already ahead of everyone else in the game, or be manipulated by them for their own advantage at the expense of everyone else.
Cerabooge over 9 years ago
Michael wme: I’ve concluded that you’re not doing satire. Instead, you’ve tapped into a newspaper from an alternate universe, in this case one where the Axis won. Your words on the USSR, and WWII, sound so authentic it’s scary.
Or maybe you’re just scanning Fox News.
magicwalnut Premium Member over 9 years ago
@michaelWME…I get a giggle out of your sarcastic comments every day, but many aren’t aware of your intentions. Sure gets the place humming!
frodo1008 over 9 years ago
All I can say is, WOW!! The TED talks are usually some of the best comments I have seen, and this one is THE best I have seen on economics, by far! Thank you very much for the excellent internet reference!
Diane Lee Premium Member over 9 years ago
When I graduated from high school in 1962, my husband and I owned a three bedroom two bath house and two cars within two years. Most of the men who graduated with my class had similar paying jobs right out of high school. I didn’t work, didn’t need to. Most women didn’t, and those that did actually chose to work. Today, it’s not a choice for most families, and when those families break up, everyone lives in poverty. When I did decide to go back to college, I paid $79 tuition for 15-18 hours of credit at SIU Edwardsville and we paid a $20 fee to rent whichever books we needed. Everyone could go to college, paying for it with a part time job. Since then American productivity and GNP have skyrocketed. But, Middle Class people don’t have anywhere near the advantages we did. All the money is going to the top 1-5% of earners. And, with the cost of college, it’s darn near impossible to get a start, you already owe the cost of a house before you graduate college. If the American worker is the most productive in the world, and all the stats say they are, the prospects for the young people of today should be better than they were for us. Instead, we produce the highest quality goods in the world—and can’t afford to buy them.
hippogriff over 9 years ago
Northern Redman: It would be better than being forced to worship Mammon and Ares as we are now.
Mephistopheles over 9 years ago
@DLee – Globalization has made it more difficult to have a 1 income household. Investors can get their widgets manufactured in other countries where the wage rate is lower.
With that reality in mind – What do you suggest to make it more fair?
If your suggestion is to use the IRS to rob the productive to pay the less fortunate – you won’t get my support.
If your suggestion is for the government to spend it’s scarce resources on improving our infrastructure to make is even more productive so there is more pie to go around – you do have my support.
The problem, as I see it, is that there are plenty of progressives out there who point to somebody rich and say – “He got there by exploiting the masses” and the rabble buy into it because they seem unwilling or unable to reflect on what is keeping them from becoming rich.
My wife and I have worked hard and saved aggressively all our lives. We are now part of the 1% and started with almost nothing. It angers me to here the rabble claim that the government should loot my earnings and savings so that those who haven’t been so fortunate can enjoy a better life.
The government does have a role to play and here are some areas where they could help those who feel they haven’t gotten a fair shake:1) Encourage couples to stay married – Nothing destroys wealth like a divorce.2) Encourage families to shop locally – This enriches their neighborhoods and builds strong communities.3) Find ways to keep kids in school – The path of the high school drop out is rocky and unpleasant.4) Encourage (not demand) that people control their vices. How much wealth in this country has been spent on: Booze, Drugs, Gambling, Gluttony, etc.5) Make money management classes mandatory in high school so that kids learn how to survive in our economy.6) Raise Interest rates at the Fed – This will make it harder for people to borrow money but it will reward savers. Currently the Fed is making savings terribly unappealing by holding interest rates artificially low.7) Create a tax policy that encourages production and savings rather than punishes the productive i.e. Tax on spending and not on earnings.
Mephistopheles over 9 years ago
@Trusted – Is that an allegory or an anecdote. I’m not sure what your car buying experience has to do with teaching people how to thrive in a capitalistic society. I certainly don’t condone criminal or unethical behavior.
But if we take your story a step further – The fact that you or the victim in the story got swindled – Does not give him or her immediate mortgage on the earnings and production of others.
I agree – 7 is a shift in taxes to the broader base but only because they currently aren’t paying taxes at all. They are paying for the SS/SSDI and Medicare but they aren’t paying taxes at all.
All of my suggestions for the Government are getting people to do the very thing that leads to the accumulation of wealth and self-sustainability. Tax policy not-withstanding you certainly can’t argue that my suggestions would make citizens less wealthy.
But I am trying to layout a blue print for the successful person and the successful community. You seem to be stuck on how can we rip off the wealthy because they don’t deserve it. Your anger is misplaced.
I’m not dismissing the rabble at all. I still remember the great unwashed occupying parks and complaining the government wasn’t doing enough to help them out. While I was funding my kids’ college expenses; they wanted Obama to give them a free ride. While I was working – they were talking socialistic tripe.
Everybody who thinks they didn’t get a fair shake is not entitled to take it from the guy next to them.
echoraven over 9 years ago
Listening. Sounds interesting.
TripleAxel over 9 years ago
“Nothing is stopping you from becoming wealthy. Stop listening to the naysayers out there.
You want wealth? The vast majority of the evil rich are first generation wealthy. That means THEY worked hard and made their money. THEY had an idea, worked 60, 80, or more hours per week to make their dream come true. To build a company, hire people, push the idea, make it a reality, and took ALL OF THE RISK and made very little doing it for years, while they lost time with their spouses, children, and families.
Yes, some make a lot of money. And there is nothing stopping you from doing it either."-Well said. It is natural for people to envy what other people have. However, in a country that enjoys significant equality of opportunity, wealth disparity is a natural outgrowth of that freedom. Those who argue for equality of result are really arguing against economic liberty.
Doughfoot over 9 years ago
DaSharkie & TripleAxel:“To build a company, hire people, push the idea, make it a reality, and took ALL OF THE RISK and made very little doing it for years, while they lost time with their spouses, children, and families. Yes, some make a lot of money. And there is nothing stopping you from doing it either.” — Da Sharkie“In a country that enjoys significant equality of opportunity, wealth disparity is a natural outgrowth of that freedom. Those who argue for equality of result are really arguing against economic liberty.” — TripleAxel DaSharkie, you contradict yourself mightily in three sentences. You talk about risk and you about “some make a lot of money.” You don’t talk about hard work being a sure thing, or that anyone who works hard makes a lot of money. It is about risk, and risk is about CHANCE, i.e. about factors over which you can have no control. Which why only “some” who take those chances and put in that work, make that money. LUCK. “The is nothing stopping you from doing it either.” Sure there is. I know more than one person who put heart and soul into some risky venture and still failed, through no fault of their own. That’s what “risk” means. Ability, judgement, brains, are not simply a function of hard work, either. You can be a paragon of virtue and work like a dog all your life, but if you don’t have a certain kind of savvy, you may still not make it. Just because SOME people can make it big with the qualities that nearly everyone possesses, does not mean ANYONE can make it with those qualities alone. Your statement is like telling the runners in a race that they call all win. NO, they can’t. “Nothing can stop you from doing it”? How about all the others you are competing against? Really an asinine, and demonstrably false argument you are making.As for TripleAxel, — you’re absolute correct that “arguing for equality of result is really arguing against economic liberty.” And I have yet to hear of anyone arguing for equality of result, except a tiny handful of far-left radicals to whom nobody listens. The problem is the lack of “equality of opportunity.” That is a sort of equality rapidly diminishing today in this country. Not that it, in any absolute sense, ever existed. I was lucky enough grow up in a stable, two-parent middle-class household where I was taught the value of a dollar, the importance of character, etc. I attended excellent public schools, and my parents paid my college tuition at a good public university. I did not earn any of those advantages, they were handed to me because of the good fortune of my birth. Now you tell the kid who grows up in a poverty-stricken one-alcoholic-parent household in the inner city, with the “wrong” color skin, lousy schools, a violent neighborhood, etc. that he has the same opportunities that I did?! Or the kid who grows up in some remote appalachian “holler”, or on a reservation, or was brought into this country illegally when a baby, or has some chronic health problem, or … need I really go on?You tell me that I had the same opportunities as the kid who was born into a family that could and did send him to the best schools money could buy, introduce him to all the right people, get him into the most prestigious schools, etc.,and provide capital for any scheme he wanted to try?! You call that a “level playing field”? You call that “substantial equality of opportunity”? Yes, SOME people overcome the most horrible disadvantages and emerge triumphant. And does that mean the disadvantages are of no consequence? That’s like saying that because SOME people survived Auschwitz, you can’t really call it a “death camp.” I really wonder what planet you live on.
Doughfoot over 9 years ago
Who is rich? Being a millionaire, that is to say having a net worth of $1,000,000 hardly puts you into the top 10% if you are 65 years old, and only those in your age group are considered. To be in the top 1% requires a net worth of about $8-9 million over all, but if you consider only people over 55 years old, it’ll take a worth of 10-12 million to put you in the top 1% of wealthy Americans. But the whole 1% thing is terribly misleading. It is the top 1/10% who are the truly rich. The top 315,000 individuals earn half of all capital gains. To be in that group you have to take in at least $1,600,000 each year. But it is the even smaller group, the 30,000 or so who are the top 0.01% who have been the real winners in recent decades.“The big winners are those in the top 0.01 percent. These folks, who have a net worth of more than $100 million, have seen their share of wealth more than double since 1995, from around 5 percent to just under 12 percent. Over the past half century, they have nearly quadrupled their share of wealth.”A “millionaires” is a person worth a million dollars: and that includes a lot of middle-class people of retirement age who have paid off their mortgages, own businesses or parts thereof, and have retirement nest eggs, but hardly live in the lap of luxury: you are talking about many people who have spent a lifetime building up assets that don’t match a single year’s income for the 0.1%. It is true that 80% of millionaires did not inherit their “fortunes.” But while these people are “rich” in the global scale, they are not in the same class as the top 1%, and are just small fry in the world of that top 0.01%.I don’t envy anybody his millions, per se. What worries me is their power. Money is power, and the concentration of so much of the nation’s economic power in the hands of a few hundred thousand citizens (and non-citizens) has a very great tendency to concentrate the political power of the nation into the same hands. We see it happening now.I don’t blame the rich for wanting to bend the laws and institutions of the nation into forms that strengthen them, and advance their interests (even as the expense of everyone else). They may even believe that what is good for them is good for America. They’re only human, like the rest of us. They aren’t to blame for not being saints. I blame the rest of us for letting them get away with it. In allowed ourselves to be bamboozled into supporting policies that disempower ourselves and empower them, that tilt the scales ever more in their direction.
Doughfoot over 9 years ago
“Why should we be forced to live our lives according to your religion?”
It’s not my religion, merely my opinion. But why should you be “forced” to live your life according to anyone’s opinion other than your own? Good question! Why should you be “forced” to refrain from murder and mayhem just because some other person is of the opinion that such things are “wrong”? I’d say, basically, because that is how civilization operates. We give up, to some extent, our right to do anything we damn well please, in order to live in a society with others and enjoy the benefits thereof. Like the rule of law. You want to declare war on society, be my guest. It will cast you out for its own survival sake, for it cannot exist if each individual is utterly and totally a law unto himself. Here’s a little something from Benjamin Franklin, that says it well: “The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People’s Money out of their Pockets, tho’ only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors’ Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell’d to pay by some Law. “All Property, indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it. “ -- Benjamin Franklin, December 25, 1783.
Doughfoot over 9 years ago
“Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.” — Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice (1795).
Doughfoot over 9 years ago
“I returned , and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding , nor yet favour to men of skill ; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” Ecclesiaties 9:11
hippogriff over 9 years ago
Northern Redman: Worship or not, you still have to support it (to paraphrase the United Methodist vows of membership) with your prayers (secular definition – dealing with government), your presence (unless you go into exile – I had to once to feed my family and would prefer not to again), your gifts (taxes, being mandatory, are not exactly gifts, but close), your service (conscription is still on the books, and I would hope you would vote, serve on juries, etc.), and your witness (which is what we are doing here). That is close enough to worship to produce ethical dilemmas when it conflicts with one’s real religion.
Mephistopheles over 9 years ago
@old1953 – I am far from an anti-taxer. I believe there are important roles for each level of Government and that those need to be funded.
What I am against is the use of taxes to create equal outcome regardless of input.
Roads, Schools, Telecommunications, Investments, Police, Fire, Hospitals, Sanitation – These are all areas where we, as a society, should pool our resources to create a single facility rather than try to each provide those services.
But I am not in favor of government spending that takes money from a group that can’t muster the votes to protect themselves and passes it out as vote buying largess to the group with a lot of people. There exists no nobility in looting the productive and claiming its fair because the masses voted for it.
Mephistopheles over 9 years ago
@NightGaunt – So let me make sure I understand your last point. Are you saying the Wealthy are cheating the masses when they replace people with technology?
Really?
When GM replaces workers with Robots – The price of a car goes down.
When my bank puts out an ATM to dispense cash and replaces a human teller – The lines get shorter and I have more time in my day to do other things.
The list of advantages from technology are numerous and it isn’t just the wealthy who benefit.
But you have struck on a very key component to the current wealth disparity. Many of the Wealthy have figured out how to use technology to make them more efficient and more effective at their jobs which means they can make more/hour then their neighbor. It has always been this way.
Read about the Luddites that were throwing wooden shoes into textile machinery because they saw it as a threat to their livelihood. That was more than 100 years ago.
And just how far are you willing to go: Would you do away with televisions because they put local actors and actresses out of work? Would you do away with tractors and trucks and send us back to horse drawn equipment because it would employ more workers? Should we give up modern medicine because it drives the local doctor out of his community? We all benefit from technology.
The trick is to figure out how to use it to your advantage to make yourself successful.
TripleAxel over 9 years ago
If they have been debunked by previous comments, show me where. And if your dismissal of my links is based on your perception of their political point of view then they haven’t really been dismissed at all.
TripleAxel over 9 years ago
“How many raised in the top quintile end up in the bottom quintile? "-You said, “use any definition of success you like.” Now you are defining success as “reaching the to quintile of income,” something which is by definition not available to everyone and is a goal that not everyone will choose to pursue. -“You have a very naive understanding of the way the world actually works, and the way the laws work in practice. "-I think that your understanding is far too cynical. Our laws are remarkably impartial and our society allows any determined person to pursue a lawful business. To tell certain classes of people that the law is a barrier to any chance of their success is to invite them to live in a self-made prison of paranoia and resentment.-“This is nonsense. America was a lot richer in 1960 than it was in 1890, and it was also a lot more equal.”-There was a larger gap between the poorest person in 1960 and the wealthiest, although for tax reasons this gap may not have been as obvious on paper.-“Principles of the sort you speak of are the mental shortcuts employed by people who want to avoid facts. "-People like the Founders of the United States Constitution, who established principles to limit the activity of the Federal Government, even though that activity might be intended for the common good.-“I find it hilarious that those well-heeled people who tout individual effort, and individual merit, and personal accomplishment become downright socialists when it comes to their families”-That’s the tragic attraction of socialism. It works best at the family level, and as a result people think that we can run a country like a gigantic family. There is the added feeling of warm fuzziness that comes from imagining that by doing so we increase our kinship with each other. But what works within a family system does not necessarily work as government policy, as we have so often discovered, often at the expense of those whom the government would treat as its “children.”
Doughfoot over 9 years ago
@TripleAxel“But what works within a family system does not necessarily work as government policy.”
Agreed. Which is why it is absurd to talk about always consistently defending “prinicples”: they work in some contexts, but not in others. Which was my point. I don’t want the local market to be public, and I don’t want the local library to be private.
But you did get me good in one place: “use any definition of success you like.” Yes, success can be defined in such a way to prove that success has been achieved when it hasn’t.
You seem consistently unwilling to address the points I have actually made, and prefer to tear down the straw man you have construction out of ideological assumptions.
You don’t seem to understand the methods by which social mobility and inequality are measured. And you reduce our entire society down to “the laws”: I agree, that many laws intend that citizens should be equal (and praise to them for that), though many other laws in fact (though sometimes indirectly) favor the wealthy. You have to look at the way the law actually operates, in actual consequences, not the rhetoric supporting it, to know the reality of it. And “the laws” are not the whole story by any means. But rather than bore you with a lot of examples, anecdotes and statistic to which you will pay no attention …
I will bow out, and leave you the field, sir. No point in arguing with non-sequiturs and, uh, “factual errors.”