puff cough Yeah, ain’t life funny? Good thing we can always garden! 
Well, then OTOH we have America, which has its own systemic problems. From “The American Paradox,” by Ted Halstead, published in The Atlantic Monthly, January/February 2003:
Each approach to the social contract has its pluses and minuses, of course, but on balance America has made a very bad bargain for itself and should learn from the examples of other countries.
Sounds like something Hank Hill might say about hippies.
You are mistaken – always mistaken – in thinking you ever earned a dime without the government’s help. It might seem that way because the government’s most important contributions are practically invisible and mainly done to provide a safe and stable work/business/social evironment that seems “normal” and “natural” to you – but, no, it don’t just happen; and it would happen no more, if we all stopped paying taxes.
“If I want to be a right bastard and hang on to every penny, then that’s none of the government’s business” sounds like standard libertarian sociopathy to me. And I don’t believe that someone who talks like that is going to be giving anything to charity.
No; you are just taking a group I made up as an example of why being amoral is a bad thing for society, and acting like one brand of amorality is bad, while the other is good. In this country “I’ve got mine, let the world burn” is a politically acceptable form of amorality, while “Let’s have the government steal all your stuff” is not; but both are just as amoral and destructive. What you are doing is trying to divert the conversation away from that, using an imaginary group as your bogeyman so you don’t have to try to defend the “I’ve got mine” position.
But did he, with the government’s help, earn those dimes by being a productive member of society? Did he, while guarded by cops, build me a house? Did he, thanks to a student loan, earn the medical degree that let him save my life? Did he, upon noting that government-backed dollars were treated as legal tender, become a fisherman who could put food on my table in exchange for green pieces of paper?
Careful how you open the door for government to decide (since there’s no one else, not even the marketplace, who can decide so’s it matters) who is a “productive member of society” or not.
He may or may not. With guys you say have a “confiscates everything you own” mentality, we’re beyond “may or may not”.
The amorality that leads people to confiscate my stuff is bad, in that it hurts me. The amorality that doesn’t confiscate my stuff (a) is, at worst, not hurting me; and (b) for all I know includes charity above and beyond that baseline. They’re already on the wrong side; he’s already on the right side, with an open question as to how much further he chooses to go.
You say that group is my bogeyman? You invented them! If you’d attacked the “I’ve got mine” position without bringing them up, my response may well have been different. Instead, you said it would be “just as OK for those people you dislike to get together and impose a government that confiscates everything you own”; I can but disagree with the points you make.
Why “not even the marketplace,” exactly? Surely we have some say?
The problem with your thesis is:
(a) highly subjective and idiosyncretic class definitions based on stuff like what people name their cats and whether the female partner works out of the home or not (the notion that a family whose male partner is a lawyer earning $400,000 a year and whose female partner stays at home with the kids is “middle class only” rather than “upper middle class” strikes me as absurd), combined with:
(b) the notion that there exists strong barriers to moving from class to class.
The combination appears to lead to the conclusion that the son of a lawyer earning $400,000 a year whose mom stayed at home would be unlikely to marry the daughter of a lawyer who earned $400,000 a year whose mom worked out of the home. Very counter-intuitive.
The reason for this absurdity is, of course, that the “classes” are nothing like rigidly defined, let alone rigidly exclusive. The idea of some sort of unified overclass based on some very subjective notions of what the relevant classes are is ‘not disprovable’, hence in my view unlikely - and a poor basis for some sort of social movement.
The marketplace tells you only who has the capacity to earn – well, acquire – money. Such a person is not necessarily a “productive member of society” in any other sense, the characterization applies to mafiosi.
:dubious: Whaddaya want, a social movement based on social science?! Nothing would ever get done waiting on that. And if you ever think you’ve got a social science with definite political implications, sure you’re not a Marxist?
You don’t need any social scientist to tell you what’s obvious if you live in America:
(1) In America as elsewhere, hierarchically-ordered social classes exist; maybe that’s just human social nature and we have to put up with it and a classless society is impossible, maybe not.
(2) In America as elsewhere, classes have their class interests, sometimes identical with other classes’ interests, sometimes in conflict.
(3) The upper classes in any society can generally serve their interests better than other classes can, sometimes overwhelmingly so.
(4) We don’t have to put up with (3).
Well, maybe your reference to “mafiosi” brings it back around to a point where I better understand what you meant about the government deciding: I’m not allowed to declare “murder for hire” or “protection racket” on my taxes, I’m not allowed to “acquire” money by simply wearing a black mask and a striped shirt while climbing in and out of houses with a bag with marked $; I am, however, allowed to earn money by opening an ice-cream parlor or repairing your car or curing your blindness. Is that about right?
To my mind the real problem is not a system deliberately established so that the parasitic few conspire to rob the hard-working many of their sweat-earned labour, but rather the unconcious accretion of issues that, unplanned by anyone, act so as to reduce social mobility and result in a system that increasingly becomes ‘winner take all’.
Look at it this way: if the world were a perfect meritocracy, and of course assuming that objective superiority can be measured, everyone would have the best lawyer, the best doctor, listen to the best music, have the best accountant, etc. What then happens to the second-best? The tenth-best?
[If objective superiority cannot be measured, substitute “most popular” for “best”; or some combination of the two].
Our system, in its ideal form, praises meritocracy as an ideal. The “best”, in common measure, should be rewarded for his or her success. Parasitism of the sort you mention is rightly condemned as a failure of the system. While there is no doubt whatsoever that there is a certain amount of parasitism about, I think by far the more intractble problem is where the system is in fact working according to the ideal. The problem is this: if we only reward “the best” or “the most popular”, there are going to be a lot of people who are not “the best” but who are nevertheless "pretty damn good’ who go without.
Yes, but, still, is a person who lawfully offers what goods, services or labor others will lawfully buy necessarily, therefore, a productive member of society? What if you work for the tobacco industry? A case could be make that drawing welfare would be more civically responsible. Are gangsta rap artists productive members of society? I think so, but I know many would disagree.
Except that none of this is by any means “obvious”. Look at the problem of making any class definition that can pass the laugh test.
How can “class interests” be defined let alone “class conciousness” develop when many if not most have no idea what class they are in? Or where the classes themselves are fuzzy and ill-defined?
If you want proof of this difficulty, look no further than the Dope. Examine any thread attempting to define who is or is not “wealthy”. No consensus whatsoever emerges.
Again, if that’s what you mean buy “for government to decide” – in the sense that we feel certain “goods, services, or labor others will lawfully buy” should be outlawed along with arson, murder, and jaywalking – then, yeah, I think I’m on board with that.
Your friends will call you a New Dealer, and your enemies will say you want a Harrison Bergeron world.
But you’re right, of course. We need something better than “winner take all” if we really want to maintain, let alone increase, general quality of life.
All this talk about classes and the 1% or 5% conveniently overlooks some critical factors.
The “underclass”, or whatever you want to call them, are much different now than they were in the income equality heyday of the 1950s. They have most of their kids out of wedlock, they’re less literate and worse educated (this may be getting better, but it’s a battle between more rigorous public schools and mass immigration), and a much higher fraction of them have been in jail. These are all factors that strongly affect economic prospects.
Which came first, the low-class behavior, or the lower class?
The lower class came first – that is, lower-class Americans today are, mostly, people whose parents or grandparents were lower-class in the 1950s. (Plus some once-middle-class families that have slipped down the ladder, plus immigrants still getting a grip on the bottom rung.)
A free market allows people to pursue the best service provider FOR THEIR NEEDS. Some combination of price, talent, height or whatever is right for them.
But I believe you are somewhat correct. Education has become a major class barrier. It doesn’t really matter what you do, so long as you go to a top (and expensive to the tune of $150,000+) school. Not even counting law, business or medical school.