College Students Favoring Wealth Distribution Are Asked.....

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So you're saying someone whom invented a product is now a millionaire from the fruits of his labors, should give up his wealth, but someone whom worked hard for a grade should get to keep their GPA, and you're telling me it is somehow different.

Sorry, but it really isn't different, and I'm kinda laughing at several of you here, because you all being so blatently hypocritical it is hysterical.

You have been proven wrong.

Inuyasha, it'd be immoral for anybody, willing or unwilling to transfer a GPA. It's not immoral to transfer wealth, and instead efforts to do so are lauded. DW_a_mom has put forward the issue in a very straightforward manner in this example: "Could you imagine the dean of a college giving his son straight A's without earning them first?"

Inuyasha, it is actually factually different. The examples are clearly given. They are numerous. They are very hard to deny. Your opponents are not showing fault, but instead you are either displaying idiocy or intellectual dishonesty, and either quality is a failing.

The point of this exercise is obvious to anyone who wants to see it. I believe people can construct defense mechanisms which are impossible to penetrate through rationality alone. You can split the finest of hairs because there is no such thing as a perfect analogy.

This exercise shows how people who favor wealth distribution don't take it upon themselves to distribute their own wealth. Whether or not that wealth be in the form of money - or as in the case of this experiment - in the form of a high GPA.

Right, Inuyasha is no better than a troll. He is so illogical that any claim by him to approach any form of reality is a joke. He makes no effort towards anything that can even be considered as truth, but instead everything he does is a blind effort to maintain an ideology. Not the result of any honest method or even honest attempt. He is a person so dishonest and morally flawed that he will take any path/argument, regardless of how flawed it is, just so long as it favors his chosen conclusion. Any claim by him that others are being hypocritical cannot trump his own failings, and any claim he makes to any moral high ground he'll ever make is continually undermined by his continual practice of obvious self-deception.

He has no justification to laugh at any of his opponents, but rather any claim by him to laugh is a pathetic sign of utter delusion. Inuyasha himself is, at best, a display of exactly how delusional a person can be before they are considered mentally unfit to exist in the broader society.

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 20 Aug 2011, 11:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You seem to hold academic institutions as being somehow morale and upstanding, sorry but in case you didn't figure it out, some are and some are not.

If someone wants to donate their own money to charity that's their business. However to forcibly take money from someone that earned it and give it to someone whom just sits on their couch all day playing video games is not right.

You are proposing the equivalent of giving someone a grade that they have not earned, just cause you get stressed out around people does not mean you can't handle having a job, even if it is volunteer work.

I said nothing of the sort, Inuyasha. My claim is that transfers in GPA are not acceptable. That has nothing to do with the moral quality of academic institutions. Please learn how to read, or how to stop being dishonest.


Ok? The point you are defending is that GPA transferral is THE SAME as monetary transferral. That has nothing to do with whether it is right or wrong to transfer money to someone who sits on their couch all day playing video games. As well, the example of "sitting on the couch all day playing video games" likely does not match what is typical in welfare(or even possible in welfare, as the concept of the "deserving poor" exists, otherwise where would CHARITY be valid???), so, in no sense is this valid.


No, I am not. I am saying that the two AREN'T equivalent. I have not made a claim about the desirability of welfare, or ideal welfare programs or anything else in this thread. Do not LIE about what I have said, Inuyasha. The case for or against welfare does not rest on this particular analogy and whether it succeeds or fails.

Even further, I have a job. I make a comfortable living. This isn't a matter of my personal well-being, and to attempt to act as if it is, is just utterly ridiculous. I am more intellectually honest when coming to my opinions than you are, and I neither crib from my blatant self-interest, or the playbook of some political party, and in a number of threads, I have clearly taken the more pro-market/anti-government position and am known for that tendency, so your efforts and perversions of truth are just ridiculous.

wcoltd, while it may be true that some of the opponents are ideological, the differences between the two situations are grossly obvious enough that they can't meaningfully be ignored or swept under the rug. You can claim "this is just a defense mechanism" but what the hell am I defending? My overall ideological worldview would go so much easier if the case for welfare were utterly defunct. Then we could just privatize this all and make sense of the world in that manner.

GPA just cannot meaningfully be transferred, nor does GPA impact a person's life in the same way that poverty does. The situation is not the same. This is not as if I don't donate to charity and just wish that everyone else make the world better. The simple, blatant fact is that this analogy is a poor analogy. Good analogies have a lot of commonalities between areas discussed, but this is not true in the case of GPA and wealth, and claims to the contrary are simply false.

Wcoltd's post shows that there's a subset of pro-deflation, economic extreme rightists who just don't care about intellectual honesty so long as they can score cheap political points based on piss-poor analogies.

Actually, I think the point is supposed to be that GPA transferral is similar to money transferral. No analogy is exact.

To take an example, in Song of Songs, a woman's neck is compared to a tower. There is a resemblance there, even though her neck isn't constructed of stone.

Ancalagon, here is what Inuyasha has stated:







Ancalagon, Inuyasha's words are plain. He regards the two acts as equivalent for our practical purposes in this discussion. Any point you have to make is AT MOST a nitpick. I am UNCONCERNED with such efforts though, as I am not overly concerned with the perfect analytical choice of words. My meaning was clearly conveyed to all but the most anal and that satisfies me.

I was referring to the point of the analogy in the OP, not Inuyasha's position specifically.

OK, here is the biggest reason we can't get on the same page. You are assuming that wealth redistribution, better know as welfare paid from taxes collected for a variety of purposes, goes to lazy crackpots living the good life at someone else's expense. But I see it as keeping a family that has suffered from illness or other misfortune from starving to death. You see worthless cheats on the other end. I see human beings doing the best they can.

I might give a few grade points to someone working hard and getting cheated by an unfair grading rubric, if it was allowed, but that isn't what the example asks. And if the reward for the top grade was money, I would share that money with someone i saw as having need, but that also isn't what the example asks.

If charity alone could be used to help those UNABLE to help themselves, I would much prefer that to government welfare. But it doesn't work for the simple reason that people ARE selfish, every last one of us, to some degree or another. We always think someone else should be taking care of it and, when that fails, we pretend the needy were never worthy anyway - which is what you do over and over.

Until you stop seeing only the lazy greedy bums among the downtrodden, we can never agree.

Well, I rather like my story on page seven for showing why it is truly false comparison.

Or what I wrote in the last post, about tweaking the facts to say there was an unfair grading rubric, so that sharing would make the donor feel the adjusted result was the "right" thing to do. Or maybe talking scholarship money earned by the grades. Make those small changes, and suddenly people might do it.

The comparison shows a misunderstanding of what wealth transfer is about, which is sharing in order to help those in genuine need meet the basics of life.

Tell me that if I don't transfer some of my GPA the other person will starve, then guess what? I'll transfer that GPA.

In the Suzie story, what if the daughter's friend was about to flunk out, but a gift of .2 of her grade point might keep her friend in school. Might she not do it then?

So much is missing from the hypothetical.

Also, for the record, no one can accuse me of disliking the analogy because I am affected by grades but not taxes. I am not a student, I am in the TOP income tax bracket, and my taxes will go up under ALL the tax proposals I favor. I am not talking about taking some unknown stranger's money, it is MINE, and that of my clients, who by and large feel the same as I do on the subject of the budget, even my miserly one. I see a difference because I believe there really is one, and not because it serves me personally to do so.

And I've got to work my way out of this discussion. I don't have time for it. I have client work to do, responsibilities to meet, a family to give my attention to.

This is a rather good criticism of the analogy.


Maybe. Maybe not.

How good of a friend is it? Is the friend trying? (If not, helping might not actually help, since the future GPA of the friend could become even lower next time around.)