And as a consequence going to school with rich people, making rich friends, going to rich people parties, and getting involved in business deals with other rich people in turn making all of them more rich.
Yay capitalism!
I think this is just a dodge. It’s an attempt to invalidate the accomplishments of others (or magnify one’s own accomplishments) by saying that it all just came down to luck.
A life of privilege has advantages… you’re more likely to receive an education, for instance. But after that education takes place, are you not a more productive member of society? Isn’t that generally the point?
And, again, folks like Bill Gates didn’t inherit his vast wealth. He came from a wealthy family, but he then went on to make the biggest tech company in the world. That kind of thing cannot simply be attributed to luck.
I can’t recall numbers on how much on inequality is inheritance, hrm.
I’m not sure when inheritance became a dirty word. Isn’t part of the reason we work so that we can provide our children with more than we had?
Sure, but then you look at Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who realize that’s not necessarily a good idea.
They’re not raising useless maggot trust fund babies who will be entitled to jobs and fortunes because “daddy” made a call so junior can sit in a Wall Street office as Jr. VP of whateverthefucketting and repackage bad mortgages as AAA+ rated bonds because he knows the guy at Moody’s because they golf together.
Shouldn’t it be obvious to a market fundamentalist that the more you inherit the less incentive you have to be productive? If I’m already sitting on a enough wealth to buy a small nation from birth, if I have so much money that there is literally nothing left in life that I cannot buy, where do I get my cash motive to grow a company? If I do it anyway doesn’t that show that people will occasionally do things for reasons other than becoming wealthy?
I’ve seen nit picks at part of the data, and some ideologically motivated attacks ( I linked one earlier in this thread actually: http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=2289217&postcount=81) but nothing substantive that attempts to refute all his data. I doubt it can be easily done, and if it can’t be? If the fundamental capitalist world view doesn’t fit the data? Would you then abandon your views or would you continue to believe in it in the face of the evidence?
This is pretty much what government is doing when it makes laws that interfere with the market value as I believe we’ve already been over. With laws the government tries to figure out these “other” values and then they interfere with the market to represent them in various ways. Anyway, we’ve been over this once in the thread already. It’s not futile, it happens every day and is happening to markets right now all the time.
I spy a lump of coal at the end of someone’s rainbow.
Of course it’s not all luck. You’re reducing arguments to their absurd extremes again. Are you really claiming that being born into a wealthy family does not drastically improve one’s odds of being wealthy yourself later in life?
Think of it this way, we’re having a 400 yard race. You start 200 yards ahead of me and so only have 200 yards to go to the finish line. You’re going to have to put in a whole lot less effort than I will to get to the finish line.
Of course, as I admitted being born into wealth gives you significant advantages. But that doesn’t invalidate what someone accomplishes from that point on. You can use your advantages to make something more of yourself, or you can squander it like Paris Hilton.
Well, the government acts as another market force, doing things like offering incentives for certain commodities (like clean energy), which brings the price down, increasing demand.
It’s not actually imposing prices for things, as much as it’s just acting like another player in the market, essentially buying stuff with our tax dollars.
This is different than actually imposing things like direct price manipulations, such as price caps, etc.
Here are some papers from the British Medical Journal that criticize Wilkinson’s methods. Note, these papers are about an earlier paper, where Wilkinson attempted to make an argument for an inverse causal relation ship between inequality and life expectancy. Criticisms are the same, in that changes to the set of countries, or data from different years, do not support Wilkinson’s argument. I believe the same criticisms have been made of his attempt to link inequality to violent crime.
Of course no one says that the accomplishments of rich people don’t matter. Good for them. But the idea that 90% of those born rich should, in the meritocratic sense, be in the richest 10% of society, when it’s clear that there are structural hurdles for everyone else (and especially, the lowest classes).
And what is with your obsession with Paris Hilton? Would it shock you to find out that she’s not actually squandering anything? This is also a reason why I said that you have a weirdly moralistic view of economics before.
I didn’t realize that she managed to avoid jail, yet again, for drug possession… apparently she pled down the charges a week ago.
The reason that I see Paris Hilton as a prime example of a worthless person who just happened to inherit a fortune, is that she’s basically functionally retarded. She does stupid, stupid things. She has no grasp of what it’s like for normal people who aren’t able to buy their way out of everything.
Are you defending her? That seems odd. Isn’t she essentially the archetype of the bad side of inheritance that you dislike?
If she’s so stupid, how come she’s managed to get television deals from her PR stunts?
I think it’s likely because people like to have a monkey dance for them. Reality TV is full of people acting like idiots for our amusement. And for some reason, lots of people love watching “celebrities”.
You’ve seen her speak, right? Does she strike you as a particularly bright individual? When on probation, does driving with a suspended license make a lot of sense, especially when you have infinite dollars and can just pay someone to drive you around?
What bugs me a lot about Paris Hilton is that she’s an example of what happens when economic inequality (which I do not care about) turns into legal inequality (which I definitely do care about). Rich people should have to obey the same rules as everyone else. Possession of cocaine in Nevada (or virtually any drug) is a felony. But, almost certainly because of who she is, she was able to plead it down to a misdemeanor, and pay a $2000 fine, with some community service hours. This is after prior run-ins with the law, and probation violations.
Probably what bugs me the most is that here is someone who has literally everything… and she risks going to jail. And for what? I gotta figure that she just doesn’t really think it’s possible that she could actually be held accountable for things, so who cares.
This conversation has taken an odd turn though, hasn’t it… I wouldn’t have expected to have folks who are arguing against inequality come to the defense of the stereotypical spoiled rich kid.
What’s the point of that? This is a structural problem, with long-term detrimental effects. It wouldn’t magically disappear if rich people were saints walking the earth. Unless she explicitly uses her money to keep this structure in place, why would I be bothered?
On the scale of bad things rich people could conceivably do in general, she ranks pretty low, unless you’re REALLY ANGRY about inoffensive entertainment.
Well, see above for the issues that bug me. But I guess I understand where you’re coming from.