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On Sun, 14 Oct 2007, Jack Smith wrote:
An attitude I've noticed is that often people who are rich, or well off,
think that people who aren't did something to deserve their position.
"Deserve" is an incorrect word and implies that there is some great
arbiter up there that hands out fate and dollars to people. I think that
is what many statists (e.g. some Democrats) believe when they talk about
"income re-distribution" and "giving people money" with tax cuts.
All money is created by states. Apparently, back when FDR was president,
any income over $3,000,000 per annum was taxed at a rate of 90%. Sounds
like a good idea. That worked well and the middle class grew rapidly.
Do you want to live in a country with a strong middle class, or would you
prefer to live in a country with a small number of very wealthy and a
large number of poor? The future distribution of wealth in our country is
determined by the tax laws of today. We can become more like Scandinavia
or more like Latin America.
As if everyone that is poor does drugs, spends money foolishly, makes
no effort to develop job skills, etc. An attitude that totally ignores
that sometimes things are beyond our control.
Most things are completely within peoples' control. Sure, there can be
things that happen that are unpredicted, such as getting leukemia. But
all of the things that you mention are completely within peoples' power
to change. Sure, you can end up getting yourself in a real pickle if you
make a whole long string of bad choices, but they are just that- choices
that YOU made!
Why would a person make a bad choice?
Nobody is making you do drugs. Nobody is making you spend money
foolishly. Nobody is preventing you from developing job skills. Nobody
is making you have children out of wedlock as a teenager (and if the
aforementioned are not true in your case, then the person making you do
that should be arrested.)
Why would anyone do such things?
There are multiple opportunities to improve yourself and many are free.
You can go to school without paying anything out of pocket. If you are
low-income, then the school and government will pay some if not all of
your bill just because of that, and you're able to get loans to pay for
the rest, pretty much no-questions-asked.
Why don't people take advantage of opportunities such as these?
I'd say this attitude is popular among Republicans. I hear it a lot on
right-wing radio talk shows as an excuse as to why we shouldn't develop
better social programs. I hear it a lot among geeks too - regardless to
political affiliation.
This attitude is simply the counter to the "oh, nothing is your fault,
we'll make those evil people that are successful care of it for you"
statist view espoused by most every other media outlet other than talk
radio. Geeks tend to be rather logic-driven and can see the relationship
between decisions and outcomes and are thus not surprised when bad
decisions lead to bad outcomes. Decision-outcome mapping is the basis of
almost every software algorithm out there.
Why isn't everyone "logic driven?"
Mike
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