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

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People will 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.

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.

Awe-shucks!! !

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.

When you demonize the downtrodden by exaggerating how many luxuries they have, and how much alcohol they purchase, it gets hard to believe you see the possibility of starvation. If you can't see it, you can't be interested in preventing it, and you certainly are going to underestimate the cost it takes to prevent it. Basically, as long as that rhetoric continues, which you've already agreed is an exaggeration, it will be assumed you don't care. The exaggeration and rhetoric is destructive, because it pisses off voters enough to blind them to the truth. Do you know how many voters believe it? Seriously believe that all welfare recipients are sitting in front of big screen TV's and spending their checks on crack? If you want people to understand what you really mean, you've got to drop the rhetoric and talk as you have here. I know that language goes over well rallying the troops for people like Limbaugh, but it IS destructive and it interferes with intelligent dialogue.



We all know cuts have to be made. We totally get the math. Very much. But we do have to keep the promises that have been made domestically and internationally, and it simply is not possible to cut deep enough to solve the deficit, without negative side effects to the economy. It also gets very difficult to pick which entitlements to end, because no one thinks "their" entitlement is an entitlement. Talk to seniors about social security, or to homeowners about the mortgage interest deduction, and you have a riot on your hands, but BOTH are actually entitlements. It isn't politically viable to touch them. Until voters accept their part in it, it won't ever be. So it all has to be done in baby steps. It isn't going to happen overnight, but everyone I ever talk to in real life, my entire social and professional circle, knows it has to happen. Cuts to social security and the mortgage interest deduction included.



Well, here is where we most strongly part ways. We see the same problem, but not the same solution. I see the heroic players and the foolish ones differently. We will not succeed in reducing spending enough. It is not politically feasible to make the cuts that need to be made, as I noted previously, and the Tea Party is in a bit of denial about that.

In my opinion, there is no reason to stick with the disastrous Bush, Jr., tax cuts. He came up with those first to give back the surplus, and then when that disappeared he said it was stimulus. Well, that stimulus didn't really work, either, and we're stuck with a taxation system that wasn't enough to pay expenses when it was adopted, and still isn't enough. Until it gets rolled back, it is not possible to get a sound budget. Everyone sees some obvious way to cut expenses, but there is no uniform agreement on what that obvious way is. If there were, I promise, we would have done it. This wouldn't be raising taxes, it would be allowing a temporary tax cut to expire when it was meant to expire, but the Tea Party refuses to see it that way.



That would be great if enough money went into local charities, but it doesn't. Programs are closing left and right. Good programs, that really contributed value to the community. You can't count on people to accurately assess the need and then to selflessly try to meet it.

Right now school systems in my area, and services for the needy, are getting by solely because of super hero volunteers. I've just spent 7 years being one, working somewhere near full time for the school, while also having a paid job, kids and a home ... it isn't sustainable. I am dead tired, and I need to make some real money, maybe save for my kid's college, and maybe even save for my own retirement (frighteningly close and no where well enough funded because I've been too busy answering calls for help). I have backed off from all the volunteering this year. Everything I did was supposed to be temporary, an investment, something that pushed a rock down the hill, after which it would pick up momentum and gather moss. Well, the rocks did roll, but it continues to take super hero volunteers to push them further. I'm sorry, but the community is running out of super heros. To base safety nets, education, health care and other essentials on them is foolish. It just isn't sustainable.

Do you know how much effort goes into deciding where our charity dollars go? God, the calls we get. The mail we get. And most of them deserving, but how do we know which is efficient at distributing their funds? They all have overhead, too, and I don't want to donate and then find out 80 percent went out to paid fundraisers because they were "building" their donor base. I've had that happen. And then you think you've donated to support Veterans, only to find out there isn't just one charity supporting veterans, but 20, each with a focused mission. Who on earth has time to sort all that out and really decide the best place to put their dollars? I want to support them all, but I don't have the TIME to figure out how to do it. It is totally overwhelming. And I am far from the only donor who feels that way.

I really would rather just pay my taxes and know it is taken care of. Pay my taxes and enjoy my weekend with my kids instead of working on fundraising from my computer. Pay my taxes and not worry if the school will have paper next year. Pay my taxes and know that a toddler diagnosed with Autism can get the recommended services. Pay my taxes and know that the most disabled members on this site will have enough money to have lives of meaning. I know government is ridiculously inefficient, but so is asking people like me to take care of it on our own, through charity. Our lives get so complicated so quickly, so many voices asking for help, too many choices to make. Tax is so much simpler. I've already had to become an expert on school budgets, silent auction marketing, school fundraising, autism issues, and more. I'm too dang tired to learn about more issues and solve them. I don't want to be an expert on everything, and neither do the other people I know. I really just want to pay my taxes and have someone else do it.

And that is why the working rich aren't in the Tea Party, by and large. Or at least the ones who care about the need around them. You guys are fighting to keep their taxes low when they would rather just pay them.

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.

Thanks for this too.

No. You are the one who is not being rational here. GPA is not a currency of exchange, and money/income is not a measure of personal skills/competencies.

Here's a quote for you.

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein

All the people here in favor of this analogy are guilty of making something simpler than what is logical in order to drive home a partisan talking point.

I also tend to think this analogy is insulting to people who know that economics in the broadest sense is not a merit based system. To say that income is primarily driven by personal merit is an example of the "just world fallacy". This is psychological defense mechanism used to make people feel more empowered than they actually are. Maybe it helps people accept the world and feel more in control of things personally, but to impose this worldview externally to others is a prime example of harmful ignorance.

No. You are the one who is not being rational here. GPA is not a currency of exchange, and money/income is not a measure of personal skills/competencies.

Here's a quote for you.

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein

All the people here in favor of this analogy are guilty of making something simpler than what is logical in order to drive home a partisan talking point.

I also tend to think this analogy is insulting to people who know that economics in the broadest sense is not a merit based system. To say that income is primarily driven by personal merit is an example of the "just world fallacy". This is psychological defense mechanism used to make people feel more empowered than they actually are. Maybe it helps people accept the world and feel more in control of things personally, but to impose this worldview externally to others is a prime example of harmful ignorance.

I have a dozen extremely good answers/counterpoints to every question, ZerOnetgain, but i need to put my resources somewhere else. I've written a dozen posts in this thread including some already addressing those exact same things, IMHO. Read them.

I need to go to work. You know, that thing I get paid for. And then I need to help a family that just lost their father. And sort out my son's high school issues.

Like I said in another post, I don't want to decide anymore who needs what. I don't want to work my tail off for free because there is no budget for things we KNOW benefit everyone, like good safe schools. I don't want to read another ballot initiative. I am TIRED. I want to pay taxes and know it is taken care of. It's just EASIER. I've run of out of super hero powers.

Because in real life no one reads back the whole twelve pages, either, and you could have provided all the best information in the world, and they will STILL base their opinion on their first impression.

I don't have time for it.

... Remember, if you hadn't read it before, I ran a welfare program for a non-profit. We did as much good as we could, but it was a total circus getting anything done. Redundant paperwork for bean counters who probably never read any of it. Regulations that asked me to do something then more regulations making it difficult to do that. Measuring effectiveness by positive and negative outcomes in a program that deals with people who have lived a life of scamming benefits to get by, then they say we must enroll anyone poor enough to qualify (we didn't, but we had to keep that bit to ourselves). It was an utter joke, and in the end, trying to keep up with all that was asked of me...I had NO TIME for the people I was supposed to be helping. Imagine that....I'm supposed to HELP YOU but I'm so burdened with deadlines for paperwork being filed that I have no time to do the core function of my job.

This was GOVERNMENT helping those in need. Had we been privately funded, there would have been NONE of this, and only our donors would be in a position to gripe if they didn't like how we were spending money to help people. The law I was to administer was so voluminous that LAWYERS paid to consult and specialize in this act DID NOT understand it. Even the higher-up grudgingly admitted that it made no sense for a law to be so complex that a practicing attorney specializing in that one law could not understand it. This wasn't helping those in need, and as I implied above, we pretty much did our own thing to help those we could and prevent the program being exploited by people looking for an easy handout.

Is a GPA property? Intellectual property?

One does not own his GPA. Anymore than one owns the weight that a scale registers. The GPA is the outcome of activities that the student engages in.

ruveyn

...which is a statistical quantity that represents something of the self. If a professor places an unsolved math question on a test, you write down a solution...is it right for that professor to then take your correct solution and profit? Seems to me there is a sense of property here. Anyway, apples and oranges, I know, but you can multiply them!

Warren Buffett thinks taxes for the rich should be higher, but he doesn't voluntarily give the government his money, why not?