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.
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.