# Whence comes wealth? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 11, 2011, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618 "2011-07-11T12:19:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/21 "2011-07-12T00:18:24Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > You’re confusing earning something with owning it. If it is OK to take money from you because you didn’t earn it, then robbery is not a crime. > > And the notion that all wealth is the result of luck and/or force is simple nonsense. > > Regards, > Shodan I don’t know about that. The market took all kinds of wealth from me in 2000-2001. That wasn’t robbery. People who lost money on their homes weren’t robbed. For my stock, I earned the money which bought it at 15, I didn’t earn the increase in value to 100. And I didn’t earn the money I got from cashing some of it out before the crash either (not enough.) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/22 "2011-07-12T00:25:50Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Technology has created so much of an increase in marginal productivity that almost all of the wealth accumulated by individuals is a result of their own talent and efforts and not on wealth stolen from individuals in the past. Say create, not accumulate. I’ve been investing long enough that a very big chunk of the money in my retirement accounts is not earned, even counting the matching as earned. The still significant amount of equity in my house from the increase in price from 1996 (even after the crash) isn’t earned either. And I can’t claim to have earned my investment dollars from labor or intelligence, except the intelligence of getting a good investment advisor and listening to him. You could say Bill Gates earned every penny. I doubt you can say that about some early Microsoft employee who got some stock and ended up with millions. I don’t begrudge him it, but I doubt he did anything differently from the poor saps who got stock in losing companies and wound up with nothing. And we can also speculate on how much those with multi-million dollar bonuses really earned them. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/23 "2011-07-12T00:45:19Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > since my neighbor’s adopted daughter didn’t earn this adoption into a middle-class American family that she stole that life from someone else? It’s incoherent to say that this girl doesn’t deserve the life she has, that she doesn’t deserve to even be alive just because other kids in her position are now dead or still in that position. Not that she doesn’t deserve her life, but it would be sad and wildly inappropriate if she grew up to denounce relief for the disadvantaged on the grounds of “Hey, I got mine, let them work hard to get theirs” as all these self-righteous Republicans, with only a few less obvious debts to others’ beneficience and their own good fortune, seem very comfortable doing. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/24 "2011-07-12T03:08:51Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Say create, not accumulate. I’ve been investing long enough that a very big chunk of the money in my retirement accounts is not earned, even counting the matching as earned. The still significant amount of equity in my house from the increase in price from 1996 (even after the crash) isn’t earned either. And I can’t claim to have earned my investment dollars from labor or intelligence, except the intelligence of getting a good investment advisor and listening to him. > You could say Bill Gates earned every penny. I doubt you can say that about some early Microsoft employee who got some stock and ended up with millions. I don’t begrudge him it, but I doubt he did anything differently from the poor saps who got stock in losing companies and wound up with nothing. > > And we can also speculate on how much those with multi-million dollar bonuses really earned them. It would really help if you could define/describe for us someone that did actually earn something. Is it even possible? You’re ruled out investing, real estate, and anything pertaining to capital. And your last throw away line was obviously directed at the over paid CEOs. Who is left? ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2011, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/25 "2011-07-12T18:19:07Z")
> **[The Rich Won't Speak For Themselves. So I'll Step Up.](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-rich-wont-speak-for-t_b_895589)** > > Do the top one percent of American taxpayers truly believe that the government should shut down if we increase their taxes by what amounts to a rounding error? They're conspicuously silent of late. here is a guy speaking for the poor misunderstood rich. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/26 "2011-07-13T08:02:01Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Cite? > > You need to show that most wealth is this rather than, say, through financial markets or the _ownership_ of physical property, which is where I believe most wealth actually originates. If the top 10% of a society has 80% of the wealth, that can’t all be from wages. Wages? Most of it is from return on capital investment - the result of compounded growth. In fact, from Pareto’s Principle you would actually expect to see that kind of wealth accumulation at the top. That doesn’t mean it’s unearned - it just means that not everyone is the same, and the ones whose strengths are particularly valuable to others simply rise a lot higher than those who have characteristics that hold them back. The real question is, how much can you extract from the peaks to fill in the troughs before you start lowering the general standard of living by killing your own productive giants? ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/27 "2011-07-13T11:00:22Z")
Well, no, the real question that seems to be lost here is how this issue affects how you FEEL about paying taxes to help support the disadvantaged. It’s obvious to me that most (wealthy) people feel that they’ve earned their wealth themselves, and seriously understate the degree to which their wealth derives from good fortune, criminal acts on the parts of many unknown ancestors, breaks given them by the government whose taxing powers they resent, and other non-personal sources. The mnore acknowledge this (to me, self-evident) truth, the less you resent paying taxes to help people less advantaged than you, because you’re view taxes as an attempt to give back some of the wealth you’ve accrued through no work of your own. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/28 "2011-07-13T13:27:12Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I don’t know about that. The market took all kinds of wealth from me in 2000-2001. That wasn’t robbery. People who lost money on their homes weren’t robbed. For my stock, I earned the money which bought it at 15, I didn’t earn the increase in value to 100. And I didn’t earn the money I got from cashing some of it out before the crash either (not enough.) Yes, you did - return on investment is what you earn by taking a risk. If you disagree, and feel that you didn’t earn the increase in value since you were 15 and therefore have no right to retain it, do you agree that the government or some private actor could simply confiscate _all_ of that value? You have no right to any of it, if you didn’t earn any of it. So it isn’t really a matter of the government taking some of it for the benefit of another - the government can take all of it for the same reason they can take some of it. Which forms one of the disagreements between liberal views of government and taxation and conservative ones. I as a conservative, have no philosophical objection to taxation as a way to fund the limited functions of a constitutional government. I don’t like it, but I recognize its need. What I object to, is the notion that government has an unlimited claim on my property because the scope of government action is unlimited. Thus conservatives have the advantage in debates about taxation. We have the consistent principle that governments may not raise taxes unless they can point to the specific clause in the Constitution authorizing the function to be funded. Liberals/“living Constitution” types cannot, beyond a general assertion (as here) that government can claim any or all of the income and property of its citizens, because by default citizens have not earned and may not keep any of their property unless the government decides to let them. There is IOW no principle to justify the notion that the rich did not earn their money but the poor or middle class did. Which even leads to bizarre notions about how the poor have the right to health care or transfer payments simply because they are alive and breathing, whereas the middle class or rich have no right to their money or property simply because they earned it. Fortunately this notion becomes ridiculous as soon as it is clearly stated. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/29 "2011-07-13T13:38:46Z")
> [@](#): > > It’s obvious to me that most (wealthy) people feel that they’ve earned their wealth themselves, and seriously understate the degree to which their wealth derives from good fortune, criminal acts on the parts of many unknown ancestors, breaks given them by the government whose taxing powers they resent, and other non-personal sources. The mnore acknowledge this (to me, self-evident) truth, the less you resent paying taxes to help people less advantaged than you, because you’re view taxes as an attempt to give back some of the wealth you’ve accrued through no work of your own. I think there’s your problem. None of this is self-evident, and most of it isn’t even true. I put out this challenge before. I have a very close acquaintance who is, by virtually any standard, rich. He and his partner founded a small business which became very successful. If what you allege is self-evidently true, it should be possible for you to point out the breaks he got from the government that weren’t available to anyone else, or that his success is due entirely to good fortune, or that his ancestors committed criminal acts that accrued to his benefit but not to anyone else’s. But nobody seems to be able to point that out. What breaks did the government give him that they didn’t give to anyone else? Police protection? What protection did he get that allowed him to build up a business from almost nothing that they didn’t give to everyone else in the society? Subsidized tuition to school? He didn’t get any - his wife put him thru school. Good fortune? He didn’t marry his wife by accident. And it wasn’t by happenstance that he worked sixty hours a week for many years to build up the business. But you allege it is self-evident that his success had nothing to do with his hard work and risk taking. I disbelieve this, and invite you to prove it. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/30 "2011-07-13T14:15:06Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > No one “deserves” his wealth, is what I’m saying, and all attempts to claim that one’s wealth has been earned by oneself is kind of small-minded and self-serving, though I’m not giving up my 401K on that basis, either. Then your entire OP is bullshit because you don’t really believe it. It sounds like the point of view of someone who probably grew up with a relatively comfortible existance without any real idea or understanding how everything around them came into being. To them, it just “is”. The water just pours out of the faucet. The garbage just sort of magically disappears every Tueday (or whenever trash pickup day is in your neighborhood). One of the advantages of having an education in engineering and business is that you actually learn where wealth comes from. All wealth is derived from someone’s labor. Whether it’s digging ditches, coming up with an idea for the iPod, writing a play, pouring concrete or organizing a bunch of people to complete a particular project. It is the conversion of that labor that transforms raw materials in goods and services that people need and want. Certainly some degree of luck is involved. And some forms of wealth aren’t “earned” since they required no risk and no labor. But saying that all wealth is a result of luck completely invalidates all of the hard work, calulated risk taking and good decision making that people do in order to build wealth. I didn’t win my job on a game show. I do what I do because I worked hard to educate myself and build a professional reputation. And really you know all of this to be true, which is why you don’t just cash out your 401k and give it to the poor. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/31 "2011-07-13T15:24:29Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > I think the origins of wealth (property, goods, holdings etc.) lies at the heart of political philosophies. I’ve slowly come around to questioning the propriety of anyone’s wealth, including my own, such as it is, and I think this questioning is the source of my politics. To take my example, I think around 1990, I owned exactly nothing and owed people (primarily my divorce attorney) a lot of money, but two decades later, I had accumulated a decent 401K, so I certainly could claim that I earned every bit of my “wealth” by the sweat of my brow, and I ain’t sharing it with no one. > > But I haven’t. I earned that in part by having the education I had, and I got that education in part through my parents’ resources, and by the good fortune to attend an expensive college that awarded academic scholarships, advantages that everyone did not start out with. My point is that if you go back far enough, and no one can except in theory, all advantages stem from luck and force, in that most wealth stems from acts that now we would consider crimes–slave-owning, to be sure, but also from following despotic leaders, who doled out rewards, or simply taking things because one had the strength to do, or by waging war on one’s neighbor’s (I’m talking about caveman days here–no need to get your hackles up from the insult to your noble grandpa.) No one “deserves” his wealth, is what I’m saying, and all attempts to claim that one’s wealth has been earned by oneself is kind of small-minded and self-serving, though I’m not giving up my 401K on that basis, either. I think this realization underpins my inclination to help the disadvantaged, and I also think the rejection of this understanding (if it is a violent enough rejection) underpins the philosophy of those offended by the idea of helping the disadvantaged, which is basically “Why should I?” > > In a philosophical sense, do you see any merit in the argument that wealth is ultimately unearned? Some people are a hell of a lot luckier than others. Some people do literally nothing for their wealth. Some people work for it but they have had some good breaks like having parents who can afford to pay for a good college. Some people come from very poor or disadvantaged backgrounds and pretty much do it all on their own (I have one parent in the second category there, one in the last, so I know how much of a difference it makes in terms of how hard you have to work). Based on that, how do you measure how much of a person’s wealth they deserve and how much they don’t? ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/32 "2011-07-13T15:43:44Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > …you’re obligated as an evolved member of civilization to pay back some of the victims of that criminal behavior by recognizing the degree to which your wealth is self-generated. Whence comes your right to make that determination? Philosophically, how do you separate yourself from the thief? ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/33 "2011-07-13T16:56:26Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Then your entire OP is bullshit because you don’t really believe it Thank you for not being, you know, hostile or anything. > [@](#): > > I do what I do because I worked hard to educate myself and build a professional reputation. And how did you come to have the opportunity to educate yourself? Are all disadvantaged people just born lazy and shiftless, or did you have any natural advantages over some other people? > [@](#): > > And really you know all of this to be true, which is why you don’t just cash out your 401k and give it to the poor. No, as I explained, I don’t live in a barrel on the street because I’m selfish, and because the system won’t change an iota because I did that. But my compromise is that I don’t express self-righteous umbrage whenever the idea of higher taxes is discussed. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/34 "2011-07-13T17:16:08Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > Thank you for not being, you know, hostile or anything. It’s nothing personal. I’m just hostile towards the philosophy you proposed. > [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > And how did you come to have the opportunity to educate yourself? Are all disadvantaged people just born lazy and shiftless, or did you have any natural advantages over some other people? It’s a combination of natural advantages and having the infrastructure available to maximize those advantages. It’s also the product of making intelligent choices. > [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > No, as I explained, I don’t live in a barrel on the street because I’m selfish, and because the system won’t change an iota because I did that. But my compromise is that I don’t express self-righteous umbrage whenever the idea of higher taxes is discussed. The whole “all taxes are theft” rhetoric is bullshit too. Taxes are a maintenence fee for living in a particular city/state or country. If you live on a self contained farm a hundred miles from nowhere, then maybe people can complain that there is no need for you to pay taxes. People who like having access to police, fire protection, paved roads, schools, hospitals, and so on should just accept that taxes are a part of not living in caves. As for your selfishness, the whole point is that there is nothing wrong with that kind of selfishness. I presume you work for a living and are paid for it. Why should you not be able to do with your earnings as you see fit? ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/35 "2011-07-13T18:11:15Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Why should you not be able to do with your earnings as you see fit? Because far less than 100% of my earnings derive from my own self-generated labors. The labor of others has helped me to earn it, and I acknowledge this to be true by agreeing that some of my gross salary should be taxed. What that precise percentage is, is to be determined by a discussion, and elections, and so forth, but simply “NO NEW TAXES–NOW AND FOREVER, and no old ones either” is a self-serving position that I reject utterly. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/36 "2011-07-13T18:16:24Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > “Hey, I got mine, let them work hard to get theirs” as all these self-righteous Republicans Unlike the self-righteous Democrats that insist that there’s no possible way to get ahead in life and anyone that succeeds only did so by luck and accident. > [@Shodan](#): > > Which even leads to bizarre notions about how the poor have the right to health care or transfer payments simply because they are alive and breathing, whereas the middle class or rich have no right to their money or property simply because they earned it. Fortunately this notion becomes ridiculous as soon as it is clearly stated. Amen to that. I have no idea of this board’s liberals maintain the fiction that wealth is accidental. > [@Shodan](#): > > But you allege it is self-evident that his success had nothing to do with his hard work and risk taking. I disbelieve this, and invite you to prove it. Don’t bother. People with this sort of idea are the people that have never actually spoken with a successful, rich person. They think CEOs work 10-hour weeks instead of 10-hour days. They think that if you just pay enough money, you’ll get a degree. They think that the only way to get a decent job is to know someone high up. Currently, I’m solidifying my resume by studying up on Yemen. I believe that that’s where my industry is headed next. When my predictions come true, and they start looking on [Monster.com](http://Monster.com) for a Yemen expert and I get a job making a quarter-mil, I can’t _wait_ to hear all the ignorant rubes on here tell me it was all due to accident, privilege, and chance. **prr** , I’m giving you a homework assignment. Find a non-famous rich person and ask them how they got to be so. Ask them if it was handed to them or if they had to work for it. Report back here with your findings and tell us if you agree with their assessment or not. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/37 "2011-07-13T18:18:09Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > What that precise percentage is, is to be determined by a discussion, and elections, and so forth, but simply “NO NEW TAXES–NOW AND FOREVER, and no old ones either” is a self-serving position that I reject utterly. As does everyone else. Why have you constructed this strawman labeled “no taxation” and insisted on beating it up? ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/38 "2011-07-13T18:32:01Z")
I don’t know, I hear a lot of Republican pols saying that they’re offended by the very concept, and that they’ve pledged on their honor never to support any tax hikes ,for anything, ever, under any conceivable circumstances, and that they’d rather die with their heads in a barrel of pig shit than ever discuss the idea of raising any new taxes. Or haven’t you heard this sort of talk? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/39 "2011-07-13T18:37:32Z")
[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber] Because far less than 100% of my earnings derive from my own self-generated labors. [/QUOTE] No one since the beginning of time has generated everything themselves, so it’s a ridiculous bar to meet. If we take you out of the equation entirely, assume you had never been born, then there wouldn’t be some non-zero amount of labor and value that was generated by some sort of place holder for you, however. No PRR doesn’t mean that the 30, 40, 50% (or whatever) percent of your earnings that you didn’t deserve is still generated even if you aren’t there. > [@](#): > > The labor of others has helped me to earn it, and I acknowledge this to be true by agreeing that some of my gross salary should be taxed. What an odd notion. I pay taxes for the services that I expect the government to provide, not as some sort of guilt tithe for all the labor that supposedly got me to where I am. > [@](#): > > What that precise percentage is, is to be determined by a discussion, and elections, and so forth, but simply “NO NEW TAXES–NOW AND FOREVER, and no old ones either” is a self-serving position that I reject utterly. As Chessic Sense said, you are building a strawman and then knocking it down…and, frankly you aren’t doing all that great a job of knocking it down with your odd notions about why people should or do pay taxes. Only the fringe say no taxes at all, and saying no new taxes is saying that the person making that statement already thinks that they are saying sufficient taxes…which is a debatable point, even if you ‘reject utterly’ that position as ‘self-serving’. Personally, I think wallowing in guilt over how well you’ve done in your life is ‘self-serving’ in it’s way as well, but you are certainly free to do so. As to the question in the title of ‘Whence comes wealth’, well…obviously the Magic Wealth Fairy is the source of all wealth. The MWF’s name is Need, of course. Your participation was not necessary, as if you weren’t around then a place holder for you would have generated all of the labor and wealth that you ended up generating, since wealth is merely a collective and unconscious magic engine that chugs along whether we participate or not, and those folks who get rewarded by the magic engine do so because of luck, since any other place holder could have done the same, if they were merely lucky enough to have all the advantages and to do the same sorts of things and have the same sorts of ideas. I’m sure you could run a company and be a gazillionaire too if someone would just give you a company… -XT ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618/40 "2011-07-13T18:45:43Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > Because far less than 100% of my earnings derive from my own self-generated labors. The labor of others has helped me to earn it, and I acknowledge this to be true by agreeing that some of my gross salary should be taxed. Right. And those people are compensated for their labor just as you or I am. Rational people\* who are against the idea of raising taxes are against it because increasing taxes slows the economy. People and businesses have less purchasing power. They also believe that depending on the central government to provide all these expensive services is inherently unsustainable. The government cannot make good on all the promises that people expect it to make and must then deficit spend itself into debt. You can see this happening now in much of Europe and the US where debt is at an all time high. Not that I am not specifying Democrats or Republicans because I think both parties are guilty of overspending. Just on different stuff. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-comes-wealth/588618.md?page=3)