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

Post Reply New Topic

Because having more grades then you'll reasonably "need" for many things represents the situation of money a lot better. Allowing for the ability to "save" excess grades to give to family or distribute to other courses breaks the pure meritocracy assumption in the OP. It's still an imperfect analogy, but the transfer of grades is a MAJOR change to the OP's framework.

Then you (and others) simply don't get it.

In school, GRADES ARE PAYMENT for your skills, talents, work, etc. just as money is the payment for your skills, talents, work, etc. in the workforce. The idea of taking from you for what you EARNED through YOUR efforts so that others benefit is the same.

You say that there is no universal benefit in doing this for grade but there is one for money. I disagree. Most government programs supported by taxation, and if you look at it, the ones you could argue does convey a universal benefit represent a very small minority of government spending. Hence, a tax increase to transfer wealth from those who have to those who do not largely does not go to those in need, but rather it goes for a multitude of wasteful spending programs we do not benefit from enough to justify the practice.

And for those of you who think I'm some far right cruel conservative, perhaps you are right.

I've seen enough "welfare recipients" to know most of them don't deserve a dime. I'm offended that money is stolen from my paycheck to "help" these sorry excuses for humanity. I'd rather give my money to a private charity who will use some discernment to help those who have legitimate needs than let it go to a government program that must help anyone who meets an arbitrary standard and can not tell those who can work but would rather not work to suck it up and get a job.

In my area, lawyers trying to help people get on SSI/Disability advertise all the time. Some people need to go on disability, others just want to stop having to work for a living and let others support them. It's very easy to get sick of all this "help your neighbor" garbage when you see how many lie, cheat, and work the system to get something they really don't deserve because they don't want to be responsible for putting food on their own tables.

Heck, my sister and her family are in financial straits because of how the economy has hurt them. I have zero sympathy for them. Why? Because in spite of both my sister and her husband working hard and having good incomes, they insisted in living beyond their means in spite of warnings from myself, their relatives and my parents. They've gone bankrupt, are living in a rented house (used to own their home), and are fretting about what happens if one of them loses their job. Had they SAVED when they were earning money (as we told them to), they could have owned their home, and they could have had money in the bank. Instead, they wanted trips and toys and whatever lit their fancy, and now that they are struggling, they think they should be an object of pity. Sorry. Someone deserving pity is someone to did the responsible thing and then still lost everything...not someone who spent like a drunken sailor and keeps making the same bad choices over and over again.

Grades are a measure of performance, not a medium of exchange.

ruveyn

That is the key difference. I can not trade GPs for food, rent, or clothing.

But some people do trade money to get better grades.

So only people with intelligence and common sense that end up in financial trouble are worth support? How far does the frustration go? Until they starve to death, or does it stop somewhere before that?

If you had been God talking to Solomon, how many just people would it have taken before you would save the city?


And grades might be the performance review, but I will never see them as payment. If that were true, there would be ways to get an A even if you didn't understand the material, as long as you found a way to turn in the essay paper, and no one would care if you had gotten your neighbor to do it for you. A scholarship based on grades could be construed as pay, but not the grade.

Finally, read my post before this one for why I don't want to hear, "let charity do it.". You may as well be saying "let HER ( or him) do it.". Because people who don't want to pay taxes are too often the same people who don't want to volunteer or donate unless it is somehow self-serving to them ("my" church, "my" child's class). They piggyback off the efforts of people like me but they don't see it. Still, they do it. And I don't want to break my back for spoiled brats who insist they have a right to be selfish because they worked hard. Give me a break - - while they've been off on their third vacation this year I've kept the roof from falling in. After running the fundraising campaigns for the school for all those years, I KNOW who the truly selfish people are. Thankfully, they are a small fraction around here. I can sympathize with people who just don't have the intelligence or common sense to get their finances right. But the ones who really should know better ... not one ounce. You think you aren't crying "woah poor me" when you say, "I'm not going to pay those taxes!"? Well, you are. Same trick, different face.

Footnote: just read that the Republicans don't want to extend the social security tax reduction. Hey, I agree with them, can't afford it, BUT, if they are going to take that stand on this, they can NOT in the same breath continue to resist expiring the Bush tax cuts, by calling that expiration a tax increase. When we get to a tax that falls heaviest on the poor, NOW they are OK with letting it expire, effective increase? But other tax cut expiration's are off the table? Stubborn, ridiculous, and self-centered.

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 22 Aug 2011, 10:14 am, edited 5 times in total.

And so we're back to the same arguments because people jump in who haven't read eleven pages. Not that I blame them, but. I don't have time for it.

I wasn't only addressing the opposition, I could well be talking about myself. What I was saying was basically, if you want to introduce someone to your point of view it takes more than just rational. Arguing is futile. You can state arguments without arguing, all it takes is to devoid yourself of personal attachments to arguments. Arguments aren't a thing that can belong to anyone, they are entities onto themselves.

There are tremendous differences between GPA and wealth, and there are commonalities too - if you care to look for them. The problem is that once people get attached a certain position - even if it doesn't coincide with their world view - the person tends to only acknologe things which reinforce their position.

If what you are trying to do is develop an understanding, it's important to see things from all perspectives - not just one side. Arguments are usually founded on a false dichotomy, in the words of Max Planc; "It's as if two people standing facing eachother, debating which side is left or right."

Our entire country is bankrupt..........but yeah its never smart to live beyond your means, but I also have to say just because I don't have much does not mean I am going to avoid enjoying myself like the plauge...yes in order for me to stay sane I do have to make time to relax all. But really the point is there are many people who could use help and financial assistance and some of them are in a situation simular to me some of them are worse off....but when you try to claim an entire group of people as a sorry excuse for humanity that can only result in bad things...especially if enough of you decide that is the case.

I wonder if Inuyasha is aware that I was once a registered Republican?

wcoltd, seeing things from multiple sides only is relevant if there are multiple viable sides. If there are not multiple viable sides, then there is no meaningful ability to see things from all sides. Instead, seeing things from multiple sides would be a failing.

In this instance, the disanalogies between GPA and wealth are too significant to take the analogy well. Even in terms of a comparative transfer of wealth to GPA, within a 4.0 scale, where 4.0 is the top bracket, we have to realize that only a small fraction of these higher GPAs would be needed to keep people from falling below 2.0, which is utterly unlike levelling everything out at 3.0, which is presumed in the example. As well, welfare is more like making everything go up to 2.0, than it is to make 2.0 into a 3.0.

The objections are more sensible than the claims that the analogy works. This is a definite stand on the matter, but it is the stand I think is correct.

As for the claim "arguments are usually based upon a false dichotomy", depends on the argument in question. Some arguments are. A lot of arguments are not. There are definite differences in perspective that will result based upon the success or failure of this analogy in isolating the relevant variables. This is not like "left or right". Either a person who believes in welfare but not GPA redistribution is contradicting themselves, or they are not.

That and you used to be a minarchist IIRC.

I'm tired of this whole "You don't get it" crap. Just because the analogy is s**t it doesn't mean we don't get it:

Also, private charity isn't exactly efficient either. There's no cause, ideal, or campaign that can't be run like a business. There are charities that don't do jack s**t for the poor and for those that do have good intentions, they still have significant inefficiency. Also the idea of leaving social assistance entirely up to private charity sets a dangerous precedent. I wouldn't want to leave it entirely up to them since there's no quality control when it comes to discretion. Can we rely entirely on their judgment when it comes to who deserves welfare and who doesn't? What if some manipulative f**k who knows how to pull people's heartstrings ends up with charity money while someone who isn't as charming ends up coming across as a lazy a**hole?

Don't get me wrong I think teaching a man how to fish rather than giving a fish a day is the way to go, but the difference between private charity and a safety net is that the safety net secures their needs which is necessarily for them to not be standing on shaky ground. Once again, your income has a lot more social dynamics involved than your grades so when it comes to your income, you aren't what you make of yourself but you are what you make of yourself in accordance to your interactions with others. I'm not against social assistance, but I am against goal post shifting when it comes to pouring more and more money into it rather than increasing efficiency so I can understand people being against this but what annoys me is ignoring the social dynamics of income and making it out to be more of an individual affair than it actually is.

ZerOnetgain, maybe it is easier for me to accept foolishness in others for a few reasons:

First, I've been told my whole life that I'm smarter than almost everyone else. I have an IQ score up in the top 1 or 2 percent. I learned early on that people don't grasp what I do without a little help. And sometimes without a lot of help. And sometimes never. So I stopped expecting it, and I stopped using my concept of knowledge or even of common sense as a standard.

And yet, I can be extremely dense. From that I've learned that my gifts aren't everything. There is still something to be learned from almost anyone else out there, some benefit that they can give me. I can admire how my husband's barber knows almost every name and face in this city, and can almost always give you the story on anything that happened. And so on. All people have value, just in some you have to dig harder to find it.

What I have little patience for is selfish arrogance. The attitude that says I got the toys because I have more value in this world. Baloney. They got lucky. They had the right talent - or just the right connection - at the right time. The people I've seen with the most value, that I truly admire on all levels, they don't think like that. They don't see themselves as superior. They see themselves as fortunate. Because they understand that all their gifts still wouldn't have meant a thing without a little luck. And because they are still honest enough with themselves to see their own disastrous flaws, which allow them to give better leeway for the disastrous flaws in others.

People refuse to share because they gain a false sense of their own importance and worth. This I earned it crap, is crap. There is no grading rubric in life after school, where the standards are clear and as long as you follow the standards you'll get the A. Life isn't like that. Life, and money, is a lot less fair. And the standards a lot less consistent while also being a lot more difficult to meet.

People can get on fine in life with a 2.0 if they have offsetting gifts. And someone with a 4.0 may still never get the job because he flunked the interview. Want to share the GPA? Then better share popularity, social skills, and connections, too. Otherwise you didn't just even the playing field, you tipped it.

I don't understand how people can only see the cheats, but never see the need. I don't understand how you'd cut off the bright but unlucky light to get at the one you are mad at. I don't understand how George Washington could keep slaves. I don't understand why we can't all do more to fight against our selfish natures.

And I am rambling. I barely slept. I have a work deadline I don't know how to meet. And I learned last night that another sweet, kind and generous person has left this earth too soon, leaving behind a wife, kids, and a community that will very much miss him.

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 22 Aug 2011, 12:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thinking that grades are a payment (and therefore a medium of exchange) seems like a very common misconception. Maybe it's the use of the word "earn" for both grades/degrees and money that confuses people. I've come across a lot of graduates who don't realize that they haven't "bought" a job by using their degrees/grades as a medium of exchange. But grades and degrees are nothing but a way for other people to get an idea of what you know and what skills you have and how likely you will be able to correctly do certain work. They can't be exchanged for a job because they aren't a medium of exchange. But many college students/grads don't realize that. It's a hard and painful lesson.

High achievers usually earn more, it's not always the case, but it's generally the rule rather than the exception. The higher your wages, the higher tax bracket you find yourself in. In an academic climate the more you achieve the higher your grades are generally. Some have to work harder than others to achieve higher GPA's but the concept remains, you get out of it what you put into it.

In Washington logic need not apply. What's 2 apples plus a banana? Answer: An automobile. - Don't expect anything that comes out of politics to have any bearing on reality. The louder gears get the grease in Washington, and the more dangerous your group appears to be tends to get more respect. The political world is full of people who can make your life a living hell, that's why you can never equate achievement with hard work when dealing with politics, it's all about positioning and power.

Someone mentioned a lower tax rate for capital gains taxes. Well I have a good understanding of this:

When you are compensated with a salary or paycheck, your risk for losing your pay is very low or next to zero. That money can be taxed at any rate deemed acceptable by Washington.

When you make a profit from a capital gain, you're making money on an investment where the money is at risk of being a 100% loss. The risk is much higher, so you're taxed at a lower rate.

I read that last night too and thought the same exact thing. I like to think of my family as upper lower class and that expiration will hurt a bit, but I get it. I don't like it, but I get it and can support the expiration. It was a temporary measure with the aim of boosting the economy. It didn't. It's the same story with the Bush tax cuts, only those cuts were even more of a failure.