Text 15122, 102 rader
Skriven 2007-05-31 14:41:32 av Josh Hill (1535.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: OT: a proposal for increasing teachers' salaries
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On Thu, 31 May 2007 17:47:31 GMT, Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>In article <ai0u53top28pp12075fq26d3ol5fqg19r0@4ax.com>,
> Josh Hill <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>> >> >> Red is a color too, yet I don't think that hating someone with a red
>> >> >> house is morally equivalent to hating someone with (nominally) red
>> >> >> skin.
>> >> 
>> >> >        Unless, of course, he got that red skin from spending time at 
>> >> >his lavish estate in the Virgin Islands. 
>> >> 
>> >> Which he bought with the labor of the slaves he worked to death?
>> >
>> >     And this would apply to Gates, et al, exactly how?
>> 
>> You've never had to maintain a Microsoft OS, have you.

>       You want to tell me how many people have died or worked to death 
>maintaining Windows. Bored to death, OD'ed on caffeine, MAYBE. But to 
>suggest that maintaining MSOS is tantamount to slavery stretches the 
>bounds of even your credulity. 

Gawd. No sense of humor, innit.

>> > So, if a person 
>> >lives in some dictatorship and hates the dictator because the dictator 
>> >took the food out of the kid's mouth, I would say that is probably 
>> >justified by cause and effect. However, what we are talking about is 
>> >your garden variety entrepreneurial rich dude, not some dictatorship. 
>> 
>> And that rich dude is in many cases taking food out of people's
>> mouths. It depends, doesn't it? If he's contributed something
>> worthwhile to society, his income has more of a justification. By way
>> of contrast, if he merely inherited money, he's a social parasite,
>> someone who has the right to tax the labor of others and expropriate
>> resources, but gives nothing in return.
>
>      You have any real world indications that rich entrepreneurs or 
>others (as opposed to rich despotic dictators) take food out of people's 
>mouths? 

>     It is heartening to me on some level to suggest that the Kennedy's 
>as clan are social parasites, having inherited their money and all. (And 
>from a glorified rum runner at that).  Although I would also note that 
>many of the inherited rich still work for a living, the Fords for 
>instance still are active in their car company, SC Johnson Company, 
>Annheuser Busch, all have inherited wealth being active in acquiring 
>more wealth through many generations. Others, have gone on to take their 
>inherited wealth and build new companies on their own. The stereotype of
>the rich person clipping coupons is at least as bogus as the welfare 
>mom. Some of each, but not many. 

Those who work for a living are excepted to the extent that they work
for a living and their remuneration reflects their pay. And there are
plenty of coupon clippers.

>> But -- let us say for argument's sake that the person involved
>> received nothing more than the market value of his contribution. Is
>> the market everything? Are we nothing more than peas and beans, or
>> silver and flux capacitors? Do charity, generosity, and even the
>> enlightened self-interest of giving to build a stronger society and a
>> safer world mean nothing?

>         Yep. To the individual, maybe. But how does punishing a person 
>by taxing them more solely and utterly because they are rich (assuming 
>you can reach any kind of consensus on where that is) add to society as 
>a whole? 

I'll ignore for the nonce your unwarranted assumptions, e.g., that
taxation is synonymous with punishment.

Why do we tax anybody? Hopefully, it's because we need the money, or
feel that its expenditure would be socially beneficial, or useful from
a macroeconomic perspective. Even if one doesn't believe that, as
Teddy Roosevelt said in his proposal for an inheritance tax, "The man
of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state," the rich can
afford higher taxes than those who have low or middle incomes.

>> But there you have it -- there is a gradation. I mean, I don't hate
>> Bill Gatres for being a greedy, dishonest prick. I merely dislike him.
>> Others feel differently. An American doesn't think twice about someone
>> with two cars, because that's not uncommon even among the American
>> poor, but someone in the third world, where the poverty level is
>> defined at either $1 or $2 a day, may think him a greedy rich prick.
>> One simply can't attach numbers, except in a statistical sense.
>
>       But that is pretty much what you are doing. You are keeping score 
>of who is worthy and who is not based solely on a statistic. How else3e 
>do you make the decision on who is okay rich and who is greedy rich.

How do I decide who's tall and who isn't? Life doesn't have frets.

-- 
Josh

"See spot run. Run, spot, run." - William S. Gray
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