Study: Most Americans want wealth distribution similar to...

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i don't begrudge rich folk their riches, but i do get torqued when they pull [stuff] like opposing minimum wage laws, opposing health care reform, opposing unionization, while presuming my total ignorance in their ongoing reliance on distracting me with god, guns and gays- in general, peeing on my leg then telling me it's only raining. the repub "pledge" is only the latest offense.

Those aren't rich people in general. Those are libertarians and republicans.

i have not heard of poor libertarians.

Let me rephrase.

"Rich" is not synonymous with libertarian or republican, and republican and libertarian are not synonymous with "rich".

Most people don't want other people to not have stuff, they just have a hard time giving away their stuff so other people can have stuff.

and the people who do want to give away said stuff will probably want to do it themselves, and not have the government distribute said stuff as they see fit only to later learn that said government has been using it to buy stuff for themselves and not for other people.

I am a Republican and I'm certainly not rich. I'm unemployed and can't find a job in my area. I try to look for work, but everything is taken already.

It would be all well and good if the rich people were all talented, self motivated entrepreneurs, but these are only a small proportion. A huge amount of riches are either inherited or due to good luck (being in the right place at the right time). The bankers and CEOs of companies are not the entrepreneurs bringing us new and better goods and services, and are not necessarily particularly bright or innovative (although they do tend to work long hours - however so do many working class).

The flipside of this is that there are plenty of people who would make fantastic entrepreneurs, but are thwarted at an early age by poverty - never get a good enough education, have such a miserable homelife that they become emotionally crippled by it - saying people can rise above this is true, but only for certain individuals - the rest of the talent is effectively wasted because intelligent people see the system doesn't work for them and they will never have the opportunities of others, so they drop out.

most of life is luck, or the luck of having the non-teachable talent of being at the right place at the right time



that was very well put, and needs to be megaphoned widely and persistently.

I'm starting to think it's less painful to move from being a hyper-capitalist society to one having more wealth redistribution, than it is to do it the other way round. I speak of this as a British person. Our country went from hyper-capitalist, to socialist, to back again (well, we're still on the long, painful deathmarch towards becoming a country with no welfare). Sometimes, I think I'd like to live in a country that was clearly one or the other. Either the US, or Sweden. I think I would have less problems integrating in US culture, but I agree more with Sweden's ideology.

In the UK, I don't think neoliberal economic policies are as easy to live with as they are in the US. Our country is small and densely populated, so you notice poverty all the time. It's mostly an urban country, so you always feel like you're living in some kind of crazy, ruthless rat race. I suppose with all those open spaces, it doesn't feel like that so much in the US. They haven't been able to privatise absolutely everything here yet, but give them another 30 years, and we'll be back where we were in the 19th century. Our wealth distribution is already worse than it was in the 19th century. Our education system is really two tier. We're similar to Canada in social-economic policy, but we feel less comfortable. We're definitely heading more the way of the US, but with less space and opportunity.

Ah Canada, there's a country I could move to! Forget Sweden.

Nice try, but this is a fallacy. Many self made millionaires came from impoverished backgrounds, and many had mental and physical issues to overcome. All had the drive to overcome and make themselves, and this is the overriding defining factor of the sef made man. Its the drive that makes the difference, and makes the man. The circumstances of life have nothing to do with how far you go, its what you CHOOSE to do with it that count.

wallowing in self pity never got anyone anywhere, yet many of us choose to stay right there and convince ourselves that its good and that those that get anywhere do so due to luck or connections.

Luck = preparation + opportunity (+ the balls to grab that opportunity)

Harsh, but if you read the biographies of the successful people you will find that most start off from very average beginnings, but have a desire and plan to do it.

I would argue that this arguement is a fallacy. Often times, a certain degree of moral flexibility is required to reach the top. You've got to step on some heads in order to climb the ladder. Not everyone is comfortable or capable of doing this. The people who focus on helping others are often penalized for it in their paycheck. We don't value firefighters, teachers, police officers, nurses, etc. This does not mean that we don't have some great minds doing great things in community-minded proffessions. In our current system, we only reward the money-makers. We think of wealth being the equivalent of success. We've lost sight of our priorities and those not driven by money often suffer because of it.

Oh, so you are saying that there is no connection between wealth and background - that everyone has equal opportunity to become rich (or poor), and that proportionally just as many privately schooled upper middle class people make it in business as those with parents that don't care about their kids because poverty has worn them down? Or will you say that proportionally not as many make it and this is because they are 'inferior' (in the attributes needed at least)?

I never doubted that some people do make it from fairly 'average' beginnings - what about those people who are well below this average however? What happens to you early in your life influences your outcomes an enormous amount. Children develop their personalities partly by interacting with parents, educators and peers. Lack of a stable carer early in a child's life leads to massive issues. If the people around you don't value education then generally neither will you. If your family can't afford good health care and you die prematurely, then you will never make it, however good you are. If you constantly put in effort and try to get what you want/need but never get it, or even worse get a slap in the face, you will in the end give up. Motivation is like many other characteristics - partly inherited, partly environmental - there are no inherently motivated people, most depends upon circumstance.

By the way, I am not wallowing in self-pity - I am well educated and earn above the average national wage in a job I love, but I am only too aware of how much of this is due to my middle class upbringing. I can easily envisage versions of myself brought up in poverty who would be crippled by mental illness, poorly qualified and practically unemployable (in fact there was a point in my life that this could have happened, if it hadn't been 'assumed' by my parents (and myself) that I would go to university). I can also envisage versions of myself who with a slightly different upbringing (such as my parents telling me I was great instead of being over-authoritarian, which dented my confidence), would have become more successful than I am.

If you managed to get out of a difficult situation to become successful, then well done to you, but don't imagine that it was all down to your 'strength of character'. Think about what created that strength of character to begin with and where chance played a role.

Nice try, but this is a fallacy of generalization. You assume that because a subset of poor and disadvantaged are able to overcome their circumstances that ALL in those circumstances can also overcome them. Perhaps you should cite some statistical studies that would bolster your position.


http://www.logicalfallacies.info/releva ... k-analogy/

http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presum ... alisation/

Woow, another ignorance thread.

1. I probably make more money than you, since i am upper middle class. I'm not rich, but i can buy whatever i want within a few months. Or if i need it now - my personal economy is stable and i can get a loan quite fast.
2. Take a guess which country i live in.



No ordinary working person pays 52%. Its a progressive tax that goes up to that, the more you make the higher the tax. So, its still possible to make lots of money and live decently on that over here. If you want to run your own corporation, dont expect to be rich quick. That is a problem and a hurdle for small businesses - its almost as if the large corporations have bribed the politicians to prevent growth of small businesses.

And for the "brain drain", there are PLENTY of other problems, much of the youth are misguided idiots who dont want work with the stuff their parents did, the corporations think they are going to get everything for free and they dont want to hire people with no formal education who otherwise could ace the jobs anyways (+ more problems). I can only sum it up as: its f****d up situation. Most people who invent stuff exit the country because corporations also do not want to invest/help fund research. Same problem there, coporations over here want everything for free.

Politics wise, we have a new "republican party" in Sweden now called the "moderates". They basically do what the republicans do in the Us, they say they are a "workers party", and they are - the problem is that they love workers and basically tells the poor, unemployed and elderly to go f**k themselves.




We used to spend lots more. We had one of the largest airforces on the planets a while ago, but times changed and now we're practically nato members, Its only on paper that we are "neutral". And China is on the other side of the globe. Maby you could have learned that if you had something else than a educational system that most of Europe did not laugh at.

You do not have to. Most Swedes speak perfect English, even German, French and Spanish too. Only very old people do not speak English. Some of those can speak pretty good Latin though...

Btw, if you are serious - and single, we could talk...

I dunno. A lot of Working Class Americas (who are, by no means a homogenous group) seem harbour a lot of cognitive dissonance when it comes to economic policy. They buy into the "anyone can work their way up" American Dream mentality yet favour social programs like social securtiy, medicare, medicaid, support a public option, and (in the case of Joe the plumbing assistant) have even been on welfare.