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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (110060)	11/28/2007 11:16:20 AM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Skeeter, >so, you support the wealthy (mostly through dumb luck - intelligence is highly genetic) getting wealthier while everyone else kisses up. fine. i disagree.< Dumb people and lots of money are soon parted. That's one of the BEAUTIES of the system. By definition smart people tend to control the capital that creates jobs, improves standards of living, etc.. in the most efficient manner available to us. That in turns does the most to help the most people. Rich people are automatically doing good things in their efforts to get even richer even though it's sometimes a rough process in the short term as things change (unless they cheat and break laws etc...). You have to get over this crackpot idea that rich people are bad, lucky, or undeserving of their wealth because they might have had some advantages. It doesn't bother me that I can't play basketball like Lebron James and he's getting rich because of his physical genetic advantage and very hard work. I think it's great for him. I hope he gives some of it away to charity, but if he gives it all to poor relatives he loves because they supported him when he had little, that's cool with me too. >You seem to be saying warren would leave all that money to his children if the tax code were different - you just contradicted yourself. if the tax code is making buffet change how he disperses his money then it doesn't, by definition, support his core values.< You are misunderstanding the point. If the tax code stated that leaving money to children was not taxable but leaving it to charity was, he would leave it to his children but with strict restrictions over how it could be used (namely forcing them to give it away the way he wanted). That way he could again get good value, control how it was used, and "bypass government" totally.

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (110060)	11/29/2007 8:33:25 AM
From: Travis_Bickle	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

I think you need to define "luck," it is a pretty nebulous concept as applied to one's personal circumstances. It is easy to understand in a gambling framework; for example, if at the roulette wheel I bet on black 10 times in a row, and I win 7 times, then I think everyone can agree that my winnings are attributable to luck, given that (assuming it isn't rigged) the wheel is totally random (if we are uncertain about its randomness we could always test it by spinning it 10,000 times). To apply it to one's personal circumstances you have to assume that the universe operates in a totally random manner, which may in fact be the case but it is certainly incapable of any kind of proof. In any case the African orphan may indeed be "lucky," but it depends on who you compare him to ... take a thirty-something yuppee living in Manhattan ... he certainly seems to have it over the African kid ... but what if the yuppee jumps off the top of his office building because he has been living in misery that most people can't begin to fathom? What if he hadn't jumped and instead continued to live his life in misery? It's easy to look at people and declare this person lucky and that person unlucky, but in reality you don't have anywhere near the information to make that call.