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To: rbg81
A few comments for Mr. Stiglitz.

First, equality can refer to many, many things, and one of them is equality of effort. In the story of the three little pigs, it is the industrious little pig who builds a strong house out of bricks while his neighbors, the other two little pigs, spent much less time and effort building their homes and made them more quickly out of less durable materials. When the time came for the big bad wolf to come eat them, only the third little pig was safe, because of his efforts.

Now, following your line of flawed logic, the problem would be the inequality in housing. You and your brethren on the left would likely say that the third little pig was a 1%er, and should have to ‘give his fair share’ to provide for the other two little pigs. You would not say that the other two little pigs were responsible for their own problems, because of their lack of equal effort. Of course, this is unfair to the third little pig - the industrious one, but using your line of reasoning only the outcome of ‘equality’ would matter.

Which brings me to the second point, which is that you are a hypocrite. As an academic you are definitively a member of one of the most hierarchical societal institutions that exists. Do you consider Instructors, Assistant Professors, and Associate Professors equal to Full Professors? Why not? Where's the equality? Why don't you just make everyone a Full Professor, from day one? Wouldn't that be fair? What about tenure? Why should only some people be tenured, while others have no long-term job security of the type that tenured faculty have? Don't you support ‘equality’.

Oh, one additional thought. In the 3 little pigs story, for the third little pig, the industrious one, to give safe harbor to the other two, voluntarily because he wanted to help them, would be the right thing to do - as an act of charity. In turn, the right thing for the other two pigs to do would be to thank him and be grateful. Charity, however, is not what the left wants from people. They want to take and redistribute, because then a grateful thank you is not required.

19 posted on 01/21/2013 12:47:23 PM PST by pieceofthepuzzle
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To: pieceofthepuzzle

Actually, I tooo am an academic. But before I became one, I was an AF officer for 21 years. Maybe you missed the [/s] in my initial post. In any case, I am under no illusion that everyone is equal or, for that matter, that everyone has “equal” opportunity. Ideally, opportunity should be both fair and equal, but we don’t live in a perfect world....and never will.

I once had an after-dinner discussion with one of my colleagues on the subject of who could get a PhD in Computer Science. His assertion was that anyone could do it. At first I thought he was kidding, especially because so many students clearly have trouble with introductory programming and Calculus, I pointed out that the task required a degree of intelligent, motivation, and work-ethic that most people lacked. But he continued to insist that anyone could do it if they simply tried hard enough, After a while, it dawned on me that he was being totally serious, especially when the discussion started to get heated. It still floors me to think that someone who taught in the same Dept could have such a different view of reality when presented with similar experiences.


35 posted on 01/21/2013 2:43:25 PM PST by rbg81
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