Posted on 02/13/2004 9:26:11 AM PST by PoliSciStudent
Greetings, all! I'm new here and hope that I will not offend anyone by confessing at the outset that my personal political leanings are probably farther to the left than is the norm in this forum, but I promise, I'm not here to be disruptive or disrespectful of anyone.
I am a graduate student in political science and would honestly like to hear the views of conservative thinkers on a point which has been troubling me with respect to the direction our country is heading, namely the widening gap between rich people and poor people.
According to the US Treasury Department, the richest 2% of the country own 80% of the wealth in the US. That's honestly not just some liberal's opinion, that's really true, you can check the statistics yourself if you don't belive me. Flip that around and that means that the remaining 98% of us have only 20% to go around amongst all the rest of us. In the last three years, the income of the wealthiest .001% has increased by 600%, in other words, for every $10 million/year they were making before, they're now making $60 million/year.
I read in another article that 5 of the 12 wealthiest individuals on earth are from the Walton family which owns Wal-Mart. At the same time, human resources staff for Wal-Mart, when they hire a new employee, will routinely complete paperwork for new hires to receive foodstamps, as the wages they pay their workers are so low that, even as full-time employees, they are assured of falling below the poverty level and qualifying for foodstamps, without which they wouldn't even be able to afford to feed their families.
Does this sort of thing not bother conservatives? I've read studies which suggest that Americans by and large don't mind extremes of personal wealth as, this being the land of opportunity, we harbor some hope of one day rising to those lofty summits of affluence ourselves, so don't feel we should judge others for achieving that to which we ourselves aspire. Does that sound about right to you all? Anyone have any thoughts?
I need to correct you here. I have a Norwegian friend who is going to school w/me here. She says that in Norway they still have to take out student loans in order to live. The "modest" stipend doesn't' begin to cover the cost of living, which is quite high.
In addition, there are a lot of things they have to pay for now, that used to be covered by the government. Even with the money from oil, the government just can't provide everything for everybody anymore.
You do a lot of complaining for a grad student. This is only part of your life. If you have to take a loan to finish school (or god forbid, get a job), you can still finish your program and you will have an income on the other side. Your current state of 'financial embarrassment' is transitory.
Most of my classmates gave up good jobs to go back for their PhDs. Being temporarily w/o funds is part of the package. I hardly expect the government to start redistributing the wealth because I choose to forgo a big income for a few years. Everyone makes choices. Some people choose to have 3 kids and not get married. Some people choose to drop out of high school.
I can't get too worked up over the choices other people make as it effects their income. Why are you afraid to let people live with the consequences of their choices?
I wouldn't doubt if he's been sticking around for the ride thru all these posts. He probably doesn't want to have to answer all the logical questions everyone's asked him. I'll bet he had to read alright... Read thru this thread without having to come back with some good responses!
There is a difference between being 'bothered' that something is the case, versus wanting to use the force of government to change it.
Does it bother me that some hateful moron like Barbra Streisand has tens of millions of dollars at her disposal while I drown in debt and my disabled wife is unable to find a job? Sort of.
Does that mean that I can use a gun to go take BS's money and use it for my own needs? No. And confiscatory taxation amounts to the same thing. BS acquired her money legally, so far as I know, and nobody has the right to take it from her simply because they think I and other less wealthy people deserve it more.
I've read studies which suggest that Americans by and large don't mind extremes of personal wealth as, this being the land of opportunity, we harbor some hope of one day rising to those lofty summits of affluence ourselves, so don't feel we should judge others for achieving that to which we ourselves aspire. Does that sound about right to you all?
Generally, although it should not be based upon a hope of becoming wealthy ourselves. Even if I knew I'd never be rich, it would still be wrong to rob those who are.
"In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens and to give it to the other."-- Voltaire - "Philosophical Dictionary" (1764)
I have. I worked hard, raised a kid by myself, and bought a home, then bought another one in a better area. Then I had to work even harder and more. Now, after many years, it's paying off, my house payment 20 years ago was almost the entire salary of one job, now it's a mere pittance.
Easy to say, hard to do.
Not really, although I wouldn't want to do it today. That's what youth is for.
The flaw is that you make it sound like the wealthiest .001% are the same people. Twenty Five years ago Bill Gates was not in the 0.001% Now he's the richest man in America. Ten years or so ago Warren Buffet was the richest. The point being the top 0.001% is a dynamic group. The people who come out on top of the next big industrial wave will supplant all the people that are there today.
I'll ask you a question: If you were lucky enough to discover the cure for cancer should you be able to profit from it??
This is a myth. If you took the richest 100 people burned their address book and forced them to develop all new contacts. Gave them each $200,000 (the price of a college education) and made them start over. I would venture to say that many wouldn't make it back to the upper ranks of wealth. They would do ok. But let's face it the ideas that rocket you into the super wealthy category don't happen all that often.
Having said that, and inviting you to come pay a visit, I will add one other thing. There is in addition to the traditional argument for the Capitalist system, and an acquisitive tendency for people to accumulate and pass on the fruits of their labor and ideas--things we support unequivocally, a somewhat less desirable factor at work in the present self-focused American society. In my opinion, this is in part a reflection of the "liberal" denigration of traditional social values--especially those which went to a sense of community, as opposed to a broader focus on a bigger, less personal involvement with "humanity" in general.
But the present pattern, whereby the upper echelons of Corporate management, award themselves with compensation packages, whereby a functuary without any real genius, pads his estate by taking compensation amounting to a multiple of more than 100 times, what other employees of the Corporation are receiving, displays a level of greed that may be legal, but is properly a subject of disdain by other members of society. It is the modern equivalent--without even the claimed rationalization--of the arrogant indifference to other considerations, which was captured at the beginning of Dickens A Tale Of Two Cities, where the Marquis' carriage recklessly runs over a small child, and he tosses a few coins to the crowd, and drives off without the trace of normal compassion.
A sense of proportion, would tell some of these management types, that they may be able to persuade the Board's to go along, because the Boards are full of those with the same self-serving, self-centered lack of real accountability to the defused stockholders; but the managers really are not worth that type of money; and if shareholder groups were as well organized as some other people in our society, some of those management positions would be turning over very frequently indeed, until they found a group who were willing to work for something better related to what they actually do.
Let us put this in another perspective. Some of these outragous pay packages are performance related. But that is illusional. Very few of the recipients, who rake it in during the good years, kick anything back to the shareholders, when the bubbles burst, and there is a net negative rate of return to the latter.
I make these points, not to encourage your anti-Capitalist skepticism. I am all for a boy making billions of dollars by ethical means. The practice I have just attacked is at its core a cutting of corners by fiduciaries, in positions of trust, to line their own pockets. That is not Capitalism. It is skull-duggery, pure and simple. But it is a factor in the statistics that concern you.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
I have to go now, I have to read "War and Peace" in the original before Monday morning...
;O)
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