Jimbeaux wrote:
This is why such people will usually give to private charities rather than sending extra money in to the government.
Not an honest response. You claimed it was those who would benefit who held a particular point of view, the claim that those who would not benefit but also hold the view could or do do X is utterly irrelevant. It is not just who would benefit who hold the view and some who would benefit are opposed to the view. Private charities have nothing to do with who does or does not hold the view in question and to what extent potential benefit correlates to holding the view in question.
pandd wrote:
Many more ARE willing AND ABLE to do it than are willing and able to be the CEO of a large company, or even the owner of a small company. Most people will choose the security of a steady job than put a lot of their own resources on the line to build a business. And people aren't just put into positions of power in private industry without having a proven track record. Those that are, the companies generally fail.
So you claim, but you produce no evidence and I expect are in no better position to produce the evidence as to your point of view as I am. The best means by which the evidence could be produced would be to formulate a set of tasks capable of representing the skill set in question and test a sufficient sample of 'average wage earners' and correlate performance accordingly. I'm not in a position to conduct such a study at this time which is why I limit myself to mere suspicions. Are you in a position to conduct such a study? Have you done so?
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What you call begging the question I call an economic reality.
I am aware of your opinion, but am making it clear to you since the opinion is the point under discussion, that using the opinion to prove the opinion begs the question, is circular and will not be convincing to others.
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Spears and her ilk may not be the best singers in the world, but those behind them, their promoters, managers, handlers, coaches, etc. ARE some of the best in the world! The finished product you see in those entertainers is the result of huge behind the scenes effort that the public rarely glimpses.
So now your position is not that everyone earns their riches, but that for those who have riches, someone associated with them (possibly but not necessarily themselves) has earned their riches for them? Interesting back-slide, because that's not necessarily something I would argue the contrary over.
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Got any evidence? Or is this based on pure emotional supposition based on second or third hand filtered knowledge? Having worked in private industry and known many corporate executives, I have seen first hand that the days of a corporate bigwig leaning back in his chair in a corner office lighting a cigar with a dollar bill are long since gone.
I do not see what evidence I could possibly produce to convince you that my opinion is what I say it is. Consulting my own mind provide me with sufficient evidence that my opinion is my opinion. Do you think I'm lying about my opinion being my opinion, or just mistaken that my opinion is my opinion?
Does or did anyone who is not a 'monopoly' character ever actually make a habit of lighting cigars with dollar bills?
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Yes, it is extremely unfair and immoral to do so.
User-pays is unfair? That's a bit of a problem given that the entire economic system relies on the concept. How would anyone get rich if we dumped the concept of user-pays due to its unfairness?
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I am where I am now because of years and years of hard work, risks, and sacrifice. I ran into a friend I graduated from high school with who works in a record store. He spent his whole life taking it easy, partying, working jobs that take little or no effort, and now the disparity in our incomes is completely fair.
It certainly sounds as though disparity itself is both merited and fair in the circumstance you describe. But that is not the same as the extent of disparity being merited and fair.
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The rich already do. They buy bigger houses, so they pay a greater amount in property taxes. They earn more, so they pay not only more money but a larger percentage of their income to maintain said structures.
Which to me appears both fair and pragmatic. Who has the most to loose if society comes crashing down and anarchy is resorted to?
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My dad was a teacher and my sister and brother in laws are teachers. I work in Information Technology. I make more than them because I have more ability and expertise than them. They also have far more job security and free time than I do, so that is a huge trade-off. Teaching is a position that requires less expertise and ability than working in IT. I also pay more taxes, which supports the infrastructure which pays teachers.
None of which is relevant to the point I was making and which you apparently do not feel comfortable discussing or responding to. Your job in IT would earn you much less if there were not wide-spread literacy within your society which facilitates an IT industry of the scope that your society generates.
The benefits of many socially provided goods and services are correlated to the potential for wealth generation. Such goods and services cost money, and the resources cannot come from those who simply do not have them.
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Yes, I do, however people need to take responsibility for themselves and better their situation. In America, we can do that. Yet many people who aren't content do NOTHING to better their situation, or have made so many bad decisions in their lives that they aren't in a position to better themselves at the present time, and instead just demand that we who have made sacrifices, good decisions, and work hard give more and more of what we earned so they don't have to.
All this moralizing does not change the objective facts. Many necessary jobs in the US are poorly paid, and it's not possible for everyone to better themselves above the need to work in such jobs because someone needs to be at the bottom of the heap or there would be no one who would do those essential bottom of the heap jobs. Some things just cannot be outsourced.
Evidently, societies that offer more social benefits, and have lower GDP still have lower unemployment than the US as well as significantly less disparity between the very few at the top and the masses at the bottom. I wonder why people who live in such places are able to better share wealth while having more of society productively employed.
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And that is generally from where they DO come, both in the form of higher tax rates AND in providing jobs for those at the bottom! To take more and more and more from those people means they will have less to provide jobs to others.
Which is as it is supposed to be in theory. The system becomes completely unworkable if resources do not move around. If the very richest returned nothing we'd probably all abandon money (for having none) and conduct our trade in strawberries or some such instead.
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For example: I have someone who cuts my grass. The Democrats are saying they are going to raise my taxes. Therefore, I will cut my own grass, as will many others, and the man who used to feed his family by cutting my grass will be out of luck.
I find that really very silly. Either you do not belong in an earnings bracket that would merit a higher tax rate, or you can afford to have your lawns mowed and then pay for the rest of the street to have the same, and still have much more than those on the next lower tax bracket. That taxes are a useful means of balancing disparity to prevent undesirable outcomes is not proven false by the premise that the same tool can be wrongly applied. That a motor-vehicle can be misused does not in itself remove the utility of motor-vehicles. That an economic tool can be misused or poorly executed in application does not prove that the economic tool is innately bad or flawed, just that it can be misused or misapplied.
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And they do, in more ways than through government. See my grass cutting example above.
From each according to his need from each according to his means is Marxism.
I am aware of that fact, and you might have noticed (even if your comments imply otherwise) that I have never suggested such drastic recourse as adopting a strict Marxist approach.
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It has been tried over and over again and it simply doesn't work.
I am also well aware of this, and in fact have explained the point to many a young 'marxist rebel'. If you can come up with no better objection to a position that is contrary to Marxism, than that Marxism does not work, it does not say much for your position.
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Having spent time in the former Soviet Union, I saw first hand the results. Human nature takes over, and a VAST majority of people will do as little as possible, since working harder and bettering yourself won't produce a good return on investment. Why work hard for 40 hours a week to live at a certain standard when doing nothing or next to nothing will only lower your standard of living ever so slightly? This is human nature. It will always win.
Why are you explaining this to someone who so clearly advocated retention of some disparity and in fact described it as a necessity? What did that strawman ever do to you?
12 Jan 2009, 3:31 pm
