Looks like it’s a chicken-egg issue there, even given that your observations are right.
While it is undoubtedly true that one can fail to be successful financially in spite of all of your hard work, intelligence, determination and discipline … it is rather harder to succeed without any of these qualities.
That is of course assuming you weren’t simply born into wealth.
The more interesting question is the extent to which having the characteristics that make for success (such as valuing education, self-discipline, ambition and hard work) are in themselves an example of unearned privilege, in that one often gets these characteristics, at least in part, from being lucky in having parents who take the trouble to inculcate them into their children.
Another question is whether some of these characteristics come at the expense of other, equally important values.
What politicians have been saying that? None that I’ve heard. I think you’re fabricating an argument and motives for the purpose of discrediting them.
I remember reading a newspaper headline the day the U.S. national debt topped one-trillion dollars for the first time. Ronald Reagan was president at the time. Since then, the people of this country (myself included) have enjoyed a level of government service that we did not pay for. The sooner we correct that, the more the burden of repayment falls on the same people who enjoyed the benefit of living beyond our means. And I believe the rich can pay a larger share than they currently do, because they received a greater share of the benefit.
You have spoken much of fairness, how about fairness to the poor? We’ve made great strides in productivity in the last few decades. Ask your neighbor who runs the McDonald’s how service and staffing levels have changed compared to 20 years ago. The order takers have headsets, the orders are tracked by computer, customers have to fill their own drinks. I’ll bet a comparable size store and employees can serve more people in an hour than ever before. It’s not just the rich who make the pie bigger. People at all levels are producing more than ever before. Shouldn’t they enjoy the fruits of that labor? They’re doing their part, creating more wealth for the country, and yet their standard of living has stayed the same. How is that fair?
Why is paying taxes a punishment? I view it as something I do to make sure that the society that afforded me the opportunity to become successful stays solvent.
** Why do the world’s Joe the Plumbers think tax cuts for the rich benefit them?**
The answer is simple, because simple people stick to party principles, or in this case talking point, without actually thinking what it entails.So if the party dogma or lore says that a flat tax for everyone is the fairest, bestest thing ever that’s what they are going to shut and scrawl on their grammatically and/or syntactically challenged home made posters.
Like a kid that tells a dirty joke without actually understanding what’s funny about it, but he heard the big boys telling and laughing to it so he just parrots it back.
Why don’t yo give the “I woe the lack of civility” shtick a rest, would ya?
Some of them, sure. But some of them just have good fortune fall into their laps out of nothing more than dumb luck.
Exactly. McDonalds is a great example. Even though they pay the lowest wage the market will allow, they are constantly lobbying to eliminate the minimum wage. Their success has been turning food into a production line. Some locations have an automated drink maker for the drive-thru, I have seen an automated fry maker maker in some locations and they are testing an automatic burger flipper and ordering kiosk. In some higher wage areas, they are actually outsourcing the drive-thru operation - the person you are talking to is not in the store, but in another, lower-wage state.
The “productivity” of the American worker has increased dramatically - 25 years ago it took General Motors about 500,000 workers to make 5 million cars and trucks. Today it takes fewer than 150,000 workers to make that same number of vehicles.
Some would like to pretend that the market will somehow magically provide new jobs to replace the ones that are being automated out of existence, but the truth is that any new businesses are going to be created in such a way to employ as few people as possible.
To be fair to Starving Artist, I’m the one who brought the subject up in this thread.
Other than someone like this guy, give me an example of someone who amassed a large fortune out of “dumb luck”.
What do you think Wal Mart is? It’s the poor enjoying the fruits of greater productivity.
Automation and outsourcing allow products to be made more cheaply so more people can afford them and thus experience a higher standard of living. Those workers who were laid off are now available to work at new jobs addressing needs and wants in society that were not previously able to be met. Fortunately there are always people looking for new ways to make money.
But you are correct that it isn’t automatic. If a factory moves out of a town, there is no guarantee that a new one will move in. You may have to move and look further afield for new work or retrain.
As if anyone needed more encouragement to aspire to more than working at McDonalds.
Everything I’ve heard says otherwise. That the poor and middle clase are working harder, producing more, making the national pie bigger, but with the same standard of living they had twenty years ago.
OK, I’ll have a run at it. But before I go and get my google-fu all sweaty, let’s set some ground rules, so you won’t go whining that my choice doesn’t meet your specifications.
I will find someone who, by all standards, can be considered not just rich, but wealthy-rich; and that their wealth will have been amassed over their lifetime, and not inherited, or won in a lottery; and there is unambiguous evidence that everything they have came not as a result of ambition or achieving personal goals, but as a result of nothing more than fortuitous accident.
Is that acceptable?
And if I can manage to locate one such lucky, wealthy soul, you will forever shut-the-fuck-up with the nonsense about wealthy people and their "single-minded determination to achieve their goals regardless of the obstacles. "
Deal?
[QUOTE=Ale;11484851Why don’t yo give the “I woe the lack of civility” shtick a rest, would ya?[/QUOTE]
I didn’t bring it up, putz!
ETA: Thanks, RA. I didn’t see your post before I responded to Ale.
And thanks to you , too, Crafter Man, for the good word. I was sure that what I said would fall on deaf ears where it concerns the typical posters around here, but if I can keep even one unindoctrinated lurker from falling for that “rich is getting richer and the poor is getting poorer” bullshit, my efforts will be worth it.
Heh, heh…That was for Ale, who was imploring me to give up the “civility schtick.” I seem to have forgotten to include his post in my response. 
Let me guess: your proof of this is two more anecdotes about acquaintances?
The top percentiles of American earners are taking a larger percentage of total earnings than they were in years past. Relative to each other, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. I thought we’d already settled that.
And courtesy is all well and good, SA, but why do I have to keep reminding you to respond to the substance of my posts?
That never was my proof. The proof lies in the perfectly obvious fact that economies grow based on productivity and people can make as much as their abilities and ambition allow.
The fact that someone else is rich has no bearing on that.
As I said upthread and in previous theads as well, I won’t make one dollar less in my lifetime because Bill Gates is worth 50 billion dollars, and I won’t make one dollar more if he loses every cent. My income will depend on the work I do, not on how much money someone else has.
You can keep trying to get people to ignore my points by relying on the not-so-clever misdirection that you seem to love so well, but I doubt seriously that anyone is falling for it. As I said above, I’m confident that anybody who takes the time to stop and think about it will realize that other peoples’ wealth has no bearing on the amount of money available for them to earn.
If, on the other hand, you can show that the economy is indeed a zero-sum game and that for every dollar a wealthy person earns, the money available for a poor person to earn shrinks accordingly, I’d be most interested to hear it.
Yeah. We settled it by my saying, “So what?” It has no bearing on how much people can earn and it means nothing. The only purpose served by even bringing it up is to allow people who are inclined to do so to become jealous. If I find some way to become wealthy, I will be richer than you by that amount. The ratio is simple logic. If your neighbor down the street gets a promotion and buys a new car, he now has proportionately more than you. Again, that’s simple logic. What isn’t so clear is how that damages you?
Because you’re impatient?
I have put in a fairly good amount of time answering the substance of your posts, and in almost every case, that so-called substance was shown to be either in error or of no particular significance. Still, keep in mind that this is a message board and people post as they have the time and inclination. My time for tonight is up (and if you hadn’t seen fit to challenge me on why I haven’t answered your last post(s?), I’d have likely been answering them now rather than answering this flimsy attempt to make it look like I’m avoiding them), and my inclination is to go to bed now as I have an early morning coming up.
Name one error in my posts. Just one.
And I’d also like your response to my fairness argument. The rich aren’t the only ones who make the economy grow. Poor and middle class people are working harder and better than ever. They are, per person, serving more people, making more goods, being more productive than 10 or 20 years ago. They have also helped this economy grow, and have no improvement in their standard of living to show for it. Tell me, is that fair?
No rush, take your time.
This is simply not true. The super wealthy want to remain super wealthy and they can and will do it by influencing legislation through contributions and lobbyists. They will do their damnedest to ensure that politicians will take care of them first. The income disparity, which you pooh-pooh, is a serious problem and a snowball - the rich want to continue to be richer and will continue to run roughshod over everyone else, if that’s what it takes. (How many of those banking/auto CEOs declined their multimillion dollar paychecks/parachutes to allow more people to remain employed?)
Since you like examples: The Clinton administration brought us NAFTA, which sent jobs to cheaper-wage places, making the wealthy wealthier and more US workers unemployed. Bush took that idea and ran with it. In 2004 Bush even rolled by the taxes for US businesses overseas (from 35% to 5.25%), which apparently really caught on for them because it stuck. And more jobs (some economists estimate over 3 million) went overseas. Link. Link.
Therefore, you are incorrect when you say that the wealthy have no impact on what the less-well-off earn. They certainly do.
I see. So the proof of the premise you are trying to prove lies in the perfect rationality of the premise itself. The anecdotes were simply to permit us to know that, yes, indeed, you do know some people. I’m sure those of us who were anxious for insights into your personal life are much pleased.
Its not the possession of great wealth, but the purposes to which it is put. If a rich man purchases a few Congressmen on the open market, and thereby ensures that he will pay one dollar less in taxes than he otherwise might, who, do you imagine, will pay that missing dollar?
Why should a wealthy man have more access to political power? Why would we permit his voice to be louder? I ask this, and you tell me, once again, about zero-sum games. Which is an interesting answer to another question entirely, one that you persist in answering even though no one asks it.
Points? Plural? You’ve got exactly one, that you repeat over and over regardless of its relevance.
Let me ask the question another way, in hope that it may find its way through the folds of fatty tissue surrounding your cortex: why should I tolerate that a rich man has more political power than I? Its not about how the money is obtained, or whether or not our economy is a “zero-sum” game, those questions are entirely irrelevant. Not how it is gotten, but the uses to which it is put after it is gotten.
Please note as well that not all rich men are unspeakable swine. Even the aforementioned Scaife has some genuine philanthropic gestures. And Mr Gates has done the world a great service in his commitment to eradicate malaria, and it is my sincere hope that Divine Justice will weigh this carefully. Perhaps this is sufficient to nullify the release of MicroSoft Bob and Windows 95. And I have little doubt that utterly ripping off IBM will go on the plus side of his karmic record.
It appears that a great awakening can be accomplished when a total nerd actually gets laid. American hotties should take note: there is more than one way to take one for your country. So to speak.