It varies. In her case, an expression of humor, in mine, a bald statement of fact.
And give up being a smug, self-satisfied asshole? Perish the thought!
Right, I’m the one that’s smug. You think you have the answer for how to make everyone’s lives better, and you want society to institute your policies by force. I want the government only to make sure everyone has equal opportunity and to let the chips fall where they may. Yet somehow I’m the smug one.
I’m not that mean, if it helps.
**
MeanOldLady** is neither mean, nor old, nor can I remember whether “neither/nor” is limited to two items.
You ain’t no “lady” either, lady.
Rand Rover, imagine for a moment that you were born in Somalia. Imagine further that you worked exactly as hard in that life as you have in your real life. What do you think your salary would be in Somalia, given the exact same amount of work?
The difference between what your salary would be in Somalia and what your salary is now is the amount of your salary that is due to luck, namely the luck of being born in a country with an expensive-to-run government.
Blow me.
One meeellion dollars!
Bullshit. Per Wikipedia (because my Spanish is pretty much limited to “Cuidado! Piso mojado!”), “Enchilada is the past participle of Spanish enchilar, ‘to add chile pepper to.’” If the sauce doesn’t involve *some *kind of chile peppers, it’s not a fucking enchilada, anymore than you could serve someone pan-seared salmon when they’d ordered a dish that called it “blackened.”
You emit beams of smug asshole with every word you write.
“Be cautious! The waiter has peed in your drink!”
I will withhold my devastating attack on this “argument” for the time being and ask you this: what are the implications IYHO of the fact that everything I have is due to pure dumb luck?
The implication is that your hard work would be meaningless without government intervention. It seemed like that was pretty clear from my post.
Cogency is not a matter of luck?
There’s simply no way around that for Rand Rover, no matter how much hand waving he does. His job requires there to be a government with a labyrinthine tax code. He hasn’t invented anything, or produced anything useful with his mind. He just knows how to game the system so that certain people get favors (“tax write offs”) from the government. He’s more like Jim Taggart than John Galt.
I understand that. Now: what is the real-world implication of this?
Ie, here we are, having a discussion. I will take it as a given that you are correct, that everything I own is due to pure dumb luck. What changes in the real world, outside of our discussion, do you think should now obtain?
Come now, young Rand. If you’re going to be a fatty, non-tipping ass, can you at least be honest about it? She’s not suggesting that “everything [you] own is due to pure dumb luck.”
The fact that Rand was ‘lucky’ to be born in the Western world does not obviate the fact that hard work was still required to attain his station in life. It enables the success, but definitely does not guarantee it. The mere fact that the USA has such high poverty (and after 45 years of a ‘war’ on it, kicked off by LBJ in his state of the union speech) shows that success is never guaranteed by virtue of citizenship.
And please don’t chalk that up entirely to racism; Sho is mostly right in my opinion; unmarried births have a lot to do with it. 11 percept of unmarried Hispanics had babies in 2006, the latest year I could find data for. That compares to 7 percent of unmarried black women, and 3 percent of unmarried white women.
Of course, there’s also a confounding factor
But racism probably accounts for some of the economic disadvantage as well. And some of it is culture (ie, “acting white”). And in some cases, it’s a consequence
A racist and a coward. What a surprise!
I help people invest in the most tax-efficient way. So, I’m like Eddie Willers or the wet blanket after he dries up and helps Hank. Jim Taggart got rich (or “attempted to get more rich” is probably the better way to put it) by using influence to get government handouts. That’s not anything like what I do.