Its just like speed limits! The government says you can’t go faster than 55 miles a hour in your car. Rationale: its safer, and saves gas. Well, whats to stop the government from making the speed limit zero miles per hour!? That’s totally safe and saves* all *the gas!
That’s the trouble with you liberals, you don’t think things through to their logical conclusions!
Which you don’t contribute to.
Hence the need for taxes.
Dumbass.
Listen. Since you are obviously a sociopath with no emotional empathy for anyone or anything, perhaps a utilitarian argument will make a dent in your skull.
Governments, over the centuries, have discovered that the underclass (a) is persistent, and (b) must be kept mollified, lest it become agitated. People without jobs have lots of time on their hands, you see, with which they can make mischief. Better to shave a few coppers off your pile of gold and distribute it among the poor than to have them get pissed off at you, burn down your mansion, and take everything for themselves.
Only the most densely short-sighted aristocrats are unable to grasp this basic idea, that public charity is defensive. If you hoard too much of the wealth, too obviously, it won’t be long before the mob comes streaming over your wall and puts your head on a stick.
As a hedge against this somewhat unpleasant outcome, your fellow oligarchs have determined that it is preferable to force even the greediest and grabbiest among you to part with a small number of shekels, which will be distributed among the stinking rabble, the better to keep them sedately comfortable, rather than loud and pitchforky.
Your stated philosophy, if allowed to be followed to its conclusion, would constitute your rapid suicide.
How about them apples, sparky?
Soylent Green.
Cervaise, you have just made all of the points I was thinking of while reading the thread, albeit in a much more literate and pleasing fashion. My hat is off to you sir!
If the pitchforky mob streams over Rand Rover’s wall and puts his head on a stick, may I please have the youtube link?
My take is: Sociopath or Troll? Why not both? One thing is certain- for a “$500/hour” lawyer, he sure has a lot of time on his hands…
You know, as a modern lefty I’ve pretty much tossed the “class warfare” schtick into the dustbin, its old fashioned and quaint, like Pinkertons and Wobblies, more of a time when Granpa Simpson was a Trotskyist agitator.
(The suppressed episode…)
But darned if some people don’t make it seem like a pretty good idea, a golden oldie. I mean, if we don’t feed the rich into the wood chipper of people’s justice, how do we prevent more Paris Hilton’s from being born?
Thanks for the actual discussion instead of just the invective I keep gettingt from other people.
I understand what you are saying. However, the number of jobs, promotions, etc.(Lets call them “wealth opportunities”) isb’t a fixed number. A person can create their own wealth opportunities. Also, these opportunities are not uniformly distributed across industries and locations’ so a person can increase thier chances by moving or changing industries.
Also, I’m not sure that the binary succeed or don’t succeed model is the right way to look at it. Rather, there is a range of outcomes. To extend your Olympics analogy, they do give medals to second and third, and everyone in the race at least made iÞ to the olympics. You can’t say that they didn’t succeed at all just because they didn’t get the gold.
You’ve raised word twisting to an art form. I dpon’t have time now to respond to this strawman party, but I will later.
You have misunderstood what i called a far out and nutty thing.
Being as I don’t make anywhere near what Rand Rover does, that the notion that it is entirely one’s own fault if one is poor is absurdly simplistic, that I somehow get by relatively comfortably on the amount I make, and that I don’t begrudge my tax burden all that much even though I know some of it is wasted, I find it rather difficult to work up much agreement with his position. Sorry.
Just giving some feedback on the relative effectiveness of his arguments.
He’ll bill us at the end of the month.
Hey Randy, that’s at least the second time in this thread you’ve typed a thorn instead of a T. How does that even happen?
Because he’s a prick.
How the heck did you make a typo like that, Rand? I mean, physically?
Edit: Ha! Guess I wasn’t the only one wondering.
It’s a $500/hour tax lawyer tic.
Doesn’t this strike you as something written by a top-flight attorney?
I’m leaning toward college sophomore, possibly employed in food service.
Come on, guys. The great value he provides to society should allow him to use thorns instead of T’s whenever the fuck he wants without the likes of you bleeding-hearts ganging up on him.
I’d like a cite that Obama’s economic plan calls for cash handouts to the poor.
People like Rand Rover make me sick. They get so worked up over welfare, but they don’t seem to care about corporate welfare, or the huge percentage of tax revenue that goes to pay interest on the debt, or any other of tons of wasteful things the government does. They don’t care that we shrinkwrapped billions of dollars of cash and flew it to Iraq and lost it. No, they lie awake at night terrified that some poor mother is going to get an extra can of beans to feed her hungry children, and it might cost the government a dime. What a mean, hateful way to go through life.
Not that he’s not a nutbar, but maybe he’s using a non-English keyboard?
Or posting with his teeny RandWang. It could be either.
Hahahahahaha!!! I never thought I’d read actual interplay between normal people and That Guy, but here it is. Folks, Rand is That Guy*, so I wouldn’t get so worked up over anything he says.
…and anyway, his boneitis should be kicking in any day now and he’ll be gone. 
But see, the corporations provide so much wealth and do so much for society-they DESERVE the handouts!!! Those greedy little brats don’t do anything!
Onomatopoeia, for those of us not familiar with the reference?
Since the only other response I’ve spotted to this statement is just abuse, let me address it myself: No. You don’t.
Your skills are of more value to that particular minority subsection of society which has the majority of the wealth. You can charge more because your clients can afford to pay more. Measuring worth on a purely monetary scale thus presents a skewed assessment of your value to society as a whole.
Rather, as a test of “value for society”, I propose the following thought experiment: imagine that all the tax lawyers disappeared one day and their jobs were not filled. Now imagine, instead, that the same happened to all the garbagemen. Which would result in a more rapid and catastrophic breakdown of society? Even excluding the usual lawyer jokes, the garbagemen will win that one hands down.
Income and wealth are not a reflection of societal value, nor of the quality or quantity one has contributed to the world. Paris Hilton is ample proof of that.