Posted by Rick Denney on March 18, 2004 at 15:03:42:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: More Bad News posted by Thomas on March 18, 2004 at 14:05:43:
Whether it is socialism or not is not the issue. But the notion that everyone should make the same does not work in practice. Everywhere it's been tried, it's resulted in pretty much everyone making pretty much nothing, except for the people in charge, who are then motivated to keep it that way.
I find that the people who most often state that money is not important are often the ones who complain the most about not having it.
Who would undergo the stress of a job that paid $500K if they had to deliver most of it to the government to be distributed to people who don't have to endure such stress? They don't give that money away for free. For all but a few celebrities (who pay in different ways), most folks in that income bracket earn what they make.
I make a small fraction of that, and I envy the lack of stress enjoyed by people who make a lot less than I do. But we build momentum in the lifestyle to which we've become accustomed, and change seems worse than the alternative. So, I put up with the stress of having to be productive in ways many folks who make less don't have to worry about, just because it's too hard to change.
The real injustice is when people have to endure the stress of a high-paying job for low pay. Often, the answer is to take the stress off their shoulders, rather than giving them more, because the stress would still be getting them down. Just as often, however, the stress they feel is partly internal rather than external, and they underestimate what it takes to make a lot of money, in terms of hours spent and the willingness to assume large amounts of responsibility for the well-being of others.
I don't see that any of this has anything to do with who sits in the Oval Office. And I don't get my information about the Oval Office occupant from websites with an ax to grind.
But I work with government every day, and the notion that they are better equipped to right wrongs than individuals working with their own money does is not supported in any way by what I see. Thus, I always favor individual generosity over government programs, but that requires the government to leave the money with the people who earned it. And generosity is the obligation of the afflent, and often not an option for the poor. Defeating affluence defeats generosity, and makes all society dependant on the government. But one way that people abdicate their responsibility to be generous is by putting it off on government to do it, rather than by leading the way with their own generosity.
Thus, promoting higher taxes so that government can provide more services or income to poor people often is counterproductive, and also gives people who don't want to be bothered with their obligation to be generous an excuse not to have to think about it.
Rick "who pays lots and lots of taxes and sees first-hand how those taxes suffer from a severe night out on the town in Washington" Denney