College Students Favoring Wealth Redistribution Asked to Pass Their GPA To Other Students

[UWDude]

DP................

 

[UWDude]

You either earn money or you steal it. Are you claiming we're surrounded by a "ton" of thieves?

The world is run by the best cheaters and sycophants. Over 50% of college students in America admit to cheating. People cheat, because it is the easiest way to win. Santa isn't real, and cheaters always win.

Furthermore, large shares of the nations wealth are held by corporations and families that profited directly from the exploitation of stolen native land, international colonization, slavery, and colonial slavery*, which did not really end until the 1940's. That wealth never went away, it was just passed down from generation to generation. I suppose an analogy would be if college students' parents were writing their essays and taking their tests for them. (which, many do).

 

[Mr Tansill]

I dunno, I think it's a fine analogy and illustrates a point - obviously, it's not perfect.

 

[AlexAmore]

To be fair, grades are (in general) earned and a direct reflection of one's merit.

Wealth, on the other hand, can be: inherited, married into, nepotism, luck (lottery), etc... in addition to being straight up earned.

Yes, it's true a grade here or there can be the result of something other than merit, it's far more likely to be the case with wealth.

The analogy, while 'funny', isn't really an accurate representation in terms of reflecting the argument for some degree of wealth redistribution. If everyone was born with no money and no last name (ie, no family connections) we'd have a far more reasonable comparison.


I've said it before on these boards, and i'll say it again -- if you want any chance of convincing someone of something, you need to understand why they hold the views they do. simply assuming they are stupid, or ill-informed, isn't enough. the issue most people have with concentrated wealth is that wealth begets wealth - or, put another way, it takes money to make money. not only is it harder to make money if you start off poorer, you're also far more likely to have a substandard education and a generally more volatile environment growing up. Yes, the rare individual can break through any barriers, but to absolutely ignore the class difference in this country requires blinders. Wealth redistribution is a possible answer to this. Does it work? Well, obviously, there are significant problems with most wealth redistribution. But that doesn't address the fundamental problem people who support various forms of redistribution have.

I realize most here believe wealth redistribution is theft. It's a valid point. But understand that concentrated wealth is also a form of theft, just different. By claiming something, you are denying it to others. Fair enough, but then when one takes into consideration that some people are born into a world where everything is already claimed, it sure feels like they're being robbed from their perspective. Robbed of the ability to exist. Obviously, I'm oversimplifying, and likely in the wrong forum since I know the libertarian line on this topic... but truly, the first thing one must understand is that not all wealth is earned.

To use a slightly different analogy -- one i'm making up on the spot -- imagine a deserted island with two people. The only source of food is an apple tree. The short man can not reach any apples, and before he can climb the tree the tall man takes them all. Now, he earned those apples -- it was his labor that retrieved them. But given this is a limited resource, and a vital one (food), it can be argued that in denying the other man apples, he is stealing from the shorter man just as much as if the shorter man grabbed an apple out of the tall mans hands. Did the apples belong to all to begin with? Did the man who grabbed them because he was born with advantage truly 'earn' them? These are difficult questions. There's no clear answer. Some would say that man owns the apples, and they would be right. Others would argue that man has no right to lay claim to all the food on the island, and they too are right. And I suppose that's why people will never agree on this issue. The concept of property requires the denial of said property to others. And so the argument will go on forever, and ever.

Ok so wealth can be inherited. That's true. So let's assume for a second that inheritance is an evil in this world or at least unfair. This means we need to tax inheritances, correct? So we need an IRS agent in each house during Christmas and Birthdays. But seriously, people will get around that loophole very easily OR simply we need bigger government insight into our private finances. Don't you believe in privacy? Do you just tell friends, family, and strangers how you're doing financially every day? But it's ok to tell government? Of course there's a gun to your head to do it but let's ignore that little bit for a second...

Marry into it, yes you can. So now a guy is thinking "I earned this wealth fair and square, but if I marry that chick I lose X amount of money to the government". So now we are taxing marriage...which means what my libertarian children??!? Ahh that's right! You get less of it! Very good! So this one is easy, people will simply have private marriages.

Then we have luck (lottery). The lottery is a great example and really hammers down a great point to think about. Most lottery winners lose their money in a short time or worse they go into severe debt! Heck while we're talking about this even those professional athletes apply here because they are rich but not wealthy and have gone into debt! Now there are financial schools for professional athletes. What is the meaning of this? Well these people didn't earn it through investment and creation. So as soon as the money supply runs dry, they are done. They don't understand how to appropriately use their money to create. It's a brilliant little real life experiment that we can look at and examine. We can see that giving money to uneducated people AKA subsidizing the poor is simply going to create more of it. Why does government give money to corn farmers? To create more of it. I'll let Chris Rock explain this while he was educating his black audience, obviously he feels strongly about this subject matter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m37JkkGjAY&feature=related

The substandard education the poor grow up with is thanks to the government. The volatile environment can be attributed to the welfare state subsidizing single parents. Single mothers get better funding from the state than two parent households. So the mother think it's in her best interest to boot the father out and turn to the state. Remember what happens when you subsidize a certain situation! So black fatherless households are huge now compared to years ago when we weren't subsidizing it and the child grows up very F'd up because of it.

Your problem is you think wealth is a zero sum game. In other words for there to be a winner there must be a loser. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Since the free market took over at the beginning of America we have ALL gained. Our definition of poverty includes households that have incredible technology such as a TV or two, refrigerator, Xbox 360, clothes washer, A/C and a roof over their head and even food to eat. When America first started out you have to be hella rich to get a fraction of that if it even existed, now you're in poverty if you have even all of it and can sit back waiting for Uncle Sam's check.

If you look at the CEOs who get a shitload of money you might say they are taking away from the workers. Again, wrong. Businesses who get a good CEO will make the company stronger, bigger, and wealthier. This is a win for everybody that works there. A bad CEO will make the company bankrupt which means pay cuts, and a loss of jobs.

Ben and Jerry is a great example of bleeding heart hippy business owners trying to walk their talk but failing miserably when reality struck, but not for the worse since they learned their lesson.

Ben & Jerry's used to have a policy that no employee's rate of pay shall exceed seven times that of entry-level employees. In 1995, entry-level employees were paid $8 hourly, and the highest paid employee was President and Chief Operating Officer Chuck Lacey, who earned $150,000 annually. When Ben Cohen resigned as Chief Executive Officer and Ben & Jerry's announced the search for a new CEO in 1995, the company ended the seven-to-one-ratio policy

“Jerry appeared holding a poster that showed him and Ben dressed like jolly Uncle Sams, with upside-down pints on their heads, announcing the 'Yo, I'm Your CEO' contest. Anyone could apply, and, in 100 words or less, explain why he or she would make the best CEO. The winner got the job, and the runner-up got ice cream for life. More than 20, 000 applications poured in, mostly from caged yuppies desperate to escape.

On February 1, a press release announced the lucky winner: Bob Holland, whose poem was attached 'as per direction for Ben and Jerry's `Yo I'm Your CEO' contest.' What the release doesn't mention is that he wrote the poem after he was picked. A month after their press conference, Ben and Jerry's had hired Russell Reynolds Associates, a New York executive search firm to do the real work. The firm discovered Holland, a thirteen-year veteran at McKinsey & Company and consultant to several Fortune 100 companies. If asked, officials at Ben and Jerry's don' t lie about the search firm; they just don't mention it. No one at the shareholders' meeting I spoke to knew Holland had skipped the essay contest. But they didn't seem to care much, either. 'You must be related to Maya Angelou,' gushed one shareholder after Holland, who is black, read another poem at the meeting. 'No wonder they picked you.”

One last thing. Look at immigrants coming to our country now who come here and create a lot of wealth. I meet so many immigrants with thick accents who moved here and then accumulated a ton of wealth in a short time. It's very difficult for them to get welfare, plus they were coming to the great USA for it's famous opportunity and they grabbed the bull by it's horn and took action.

 

[Erentheca]

AlexAmoore (I won't quote you since your post is very long), but yes, I agree.

The world is run by the best cheaters and sycophants. Over 50% of college students in America admit to cheating. People cheat, because it is the easiest way to win. Santa isn't real, and cheaters always win.

Furthermore, large shares of the nations wealth are held by corporations and families that profited directly from the exploitation of stolen native land, international colonization, slavery, and colonial slavery*, which did not really end until the 1940's. That wealth never went away, it was just passed down from generation to generation. I suppose an analogy would be if college students' parents were writing their essays and taking their tests for them. (which, many do).

I definitely agree that much of the super wealthy have inherited their wealth from people who broke the law, committed exploitation, murder, and other heinous crimes. This isn't to say that I am threatened by their descendants, or that that I think government should be in the business of redistributing their wealth. The fact remains that the mega rich are extraordinarily good at keeping their wealth safe, and not even the most gargantuan or ambitious tax law will ever effect their holdings, simply because it is too easy for them to move their wealth beyond our government's reach. Tax-wise, we need to encourage those people to invest in our own economy, and that can only be done by removing taxes and restoring sound money.

I think though, there is something bigger going on, and it actually helps the mega rich. Much of our tax structure and social programs, despite promises of redistributing wealth for the common good, has, in combination with debasing the currency, actually redistributed wealth away from the middle class and the poor and into the pockets of the wealthy (and well connected). Socialism is the best vehicle for widening the gap between rich and poor.

I think we need not be concerned with how much money the rich have, we need to be very concerned about how much opportunity and freedom the rest of us have.

**
And on the subject of redistribution of "wealth" in education, while this is funny analogy, I think we do have a real form of education "inflation". There is no question the quality of education is under assault, and has been for some time. All the while, government keeps spending more and more on education, and we are told continually how much help the government is giving our underprivileged students, how everyone will get to go to college. "No child will be left behind." But what is a college degree worth these days? Well, it depends on what school you graduate from. Many businesses though, are now getting very skeptical about graduates, and holders of Bachelor's degrees are having more and more difficulty finding jobs right out of college. Some see this as a reflection of "market over-saturation" but this is more likely a reflection that many graduates are reaching the workplace with less and less skill.

It's just funny that we are talking about redistributing "educational wealth" as a metaphor, but it has already happened.

Oh, and good luck getting your 4 year old (with a 3rd grade reading level, 3rd grade math level, et cetera) into 3rd grade. He'd make the other kids feel bad, and it's not good for socialization, so he needs to get bumped back to preschool, so says the conventional wisdom. We need to opt out of our educational and economic mess.... en masse.