It is perfectly disgusting and highly revolting to me to watch people who won greater gifts in the birth lottery, sacrificing nothing to get those gifts handed to them, then swagger around perfectly proud of sticking their luck in their pocket and preaching to the lesser-gifted "Hey, I got mine now you get yours".

Pardon me while I PUKE on the shoes of all the libertarian adult infants.

"But, stratos dwellers, note that while this agenda might impede your wealth accumulation in the short run, it would build such a strong middle class that you would soon see explosive expansion of any business you worked, and you would be back in the chips Big Time."

Really? Since you base your critiques on what are essentially ratios of inequality that cannot be permitted, when will you relax those ideas so that people can exceed your ideal ratio of highest to lowest earner?

And just where do you think the surplus value enabling capital growth will come from when the money they'll have from 'being in the chips' is simply money they already had before, but you seized? You may as well pick someone's pocket but tell them not to worry because at some point someone will buy something from them with their stolen money and then they'll have it back.

I recall an excellent quote from David Korten's classic, "When Corporations Rule the World": http://www.davidkorten.org/

"Corporate libertarians maintain that the market turns unrestrained greed into socially optimal outcomes. Smith would be outraged by those who attribute this idea to him. He was talking about small farmers and artisans trying to get the best price for their products to provide for themselves and their families. That is self-interest, not greed. Greed is a high-paid corporate executive firing 10,000 employees and then rewarding himself with a multi-million dollar bonus for having saved the company so much money. Greed is what the economic system being constructed by the corporate libertarians encourages and rewards."

"Smith strongly disliked both governments and corporations. He viewed government primarily as an instrument for extracting taxes to subsidize elites and intervening in the market to protect corporate monopolies. In his words,

"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."

"Smith never suggested that government should not intervene to set and enforce minimum social, health, worker safety, and environmental standards in the common interest or to protect the poor and nature from the rich. Given that most governments of his day were monarchies, the possibility probably never occurred to him."

The perversion of the real economic theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo by 20th century corporate stooges like Milton Friedman and anti-market ideologues like Karl Marx is something that needs to be reversed.

Microsoft is just one more gauntlet of totalitarianism. This isn't subtle, and they have openly crushed critics in their entire history with brutality. They are Rock Stars, however, to the US public, but enough fire hasn't been hurled back in their direction. Tyrant's always open a grandiose Foundation or org to further their life long cause of enough is never enough. Squeals of "we create jobs" and bloated protests of "communism", basic needs within their own communities whither and die from indifference.
By controlling, taxing, crushing innovation through the lie of convenience, the Robber Barron's are born with groupies marching in mindless unison assured that their needs will be met.
Almost universally, in industry and government, careers are frequently based on check writing to Microsoft. This is a complete surrender to a corporate titan. Microsoft taxes Americans, all of us, including other OS users, this is fact. Why the continuing assumption that our Government isn't controlled by business leaders?

Hey! Doing lunch and golfing and being avaricious in all your dealings is hard work. These guys deserve every single federal reserve note they manage to earn: honestly.

Reagan told us it would "trickle down", right?
Of course, I'm still waiting.

Close one loophole and the ruling class will open another. Incorporate We the People and WE will make the rules.

ezeflyer: I've championed that very idea for the past 2 years in comments here and there. It would effectively overthrow the US Government and in its current state, that would be good.

After all, the super-rich have swiped our money via the Bush Administration, who in turn has borrowed that money from China, Japan and Saudi Arabia and stuck us with the bill. This unilateral decision making has corrupted and bankrupted each of us. No thanks. Let's incorporate and never go public, a la Wall St.

For Labor Day

Join in the battle
Wherein no man can fail
For who so fadeth and dieth
Yet his deed shall still prevail

William Morris

7. Get to work on a pill to treat Insatiable Greed Disorder before us "class war" losers are all either drafted, in jail, or dead.

Good policies I've heard before except #5.

I'm somewhat surprised there was no suggestion of
removing the earnings cap on income for FICA
withholding.

While statistics of ratios between "lowest paid
workers" and CEOs may have a use in comparisons
with other countries, I think any policies proposed
should be based on minimum wage instead. It may be
too easy to manipulate the wage of the lowest paid
worker by contracting, outsourcing, etc.

In fact, tax rates and probably numerous other
economic policies should probably be primarily
based on minimum wage. Of course, one has to
keep in mind the potential for work being done
off the books. If minimum wage gets to a certain
level, you can be sure businesses will find ways
around it - for example doing work by contract
where there is no set hourly rate.

Of course there are many complex relationships
involved and having a fair economy is just one
part of the equation in the total picture of
living in fair society.

I do find these excessive retributions absolutely insulting and ridiculous. But there three points of view in which to evaluate their effect.
1.- The comparative insult that this represents to the lesser income groups, with the corresponding decohesion of social convivence.
2.- The economic imbalance in distribution of wealth, about which i have made no calculations but it would be interesting to figure. For instance, what percentage of the money allocated to education or health needs do these incomes represent?
3.- What kind of morality and human values can we expect from people who are incentivated by such huge sums? I believe the answer to this would also be negative:
only people whose primary (or unique interest)is money.
Pau

I've written about #5 in the past (http://paulbramscher.blogspot.com/2007/03/why-government-eschews-free-software.html)

* I suggest a salary differential of no more than 10x.
* This would include all salary/wages/tips/stock options/bonsuses, severance packages, etc. The whole comprehensive package.
* It must also include, recursively speaking, ALL subcontractors the company deals with as well.

That last point is an especially important (and tricky) one. Otherwise a corrupt money-taking government official will simply sign up with a shell company that employs a half-dozen scumbags all making a fairly similar amount of money, but all of the real work is contracted out to an Asian sweatshop, etc.

good comments, all. just remember that the War on Terror, w/its denial of democratic rights, wiretapping, indefinite detention, torture, etc., etc., is all about those CEO's keeping what's theirs. they don't give a flip about your safety. as orwell said in '84, warfare is the means of maintaining the class structure of society.

Long ago, the majority of humans decided it was a good idea to give up the right to murder, in order to be protected from murder, so they passed law against murder.

Now it is time for humans to decide to give up the right to unlimited personal fortunes, in order to be protected from unlimited personal fortunes, and to pass law against unlimited personal fortunes; to pass law limiting personal fortune to the maximum self-earnable...which turns out to be no more than a few millions.

What's in people's heads is what's driving everything that is going on. The rich are not the enemy or the problem. The enemy and the problem is an idea: the very bad idea to allow unlimited personal fortunes. It's a bad idea because it's inherently unjust, while justice is a virtue essential to happiness.

Do we want to be safe and happy, or not?

The maximum sacrifice of personal time and energy that can be made in order to contribute to the pool of wealth is FINITE. Yet, we allow infinite withdrawal, thereby getting farther and further from reality and justice. And safety and happiness. And survival.

"The rich get richer while the poor get poorer" means the 1% get paid more and more per unit of work while the 99% get paid less and less per unit of work.

Thousands of legal thefts not restricted to those that Sean Gonsalves has kindly listed for us, are constantly shifting money from earners to nonearners. Transaction itself contains the primary legal theft, since the two things in each and every exchange cannot be of equal value, ie cannot represent equal amounts of contribution to society through work. Over trillions of transactions that fact on its own must lead to an ever-stretching bell curve of overpay and underpay.

To which we add the coercive power of money to make money, plus the greed tendency to maximize the inequality of value of the two things exchanged; in most transactions people are trying to pull outlays and returns as far apart as possible. The merchant buys cheap and sells dear.

The customer has no way of knowing the exact value of the item, ie no way of knowing the actual workcost of making and offering the item for sale, ie no way of knowing how much he is overpaying...for Microsoft's products and others. Therefore every transaction contains a unilateral transfer of value in return for nothing - on top of a fair exchange. It's hard to beg a dollar, but easy to get $11 for something for which the total costs (including fairpay for the merchants) are only $10. Not that I'm going to argue for dropping the profit system – that is not necessary or desirable.

Once again: the answer that single-handedly and WITHOUT A DOWNSIDE addresses all unjustice in our economic system is to simply limit, by law, currently unlimited personal fortunes.

I speak only of marrying the good workhorse of capitalism (currently worked so badly by wealthpower giants) to justice. No new isms or ologies are required to be learnt, and no, no one will stop working when and because we decide to do justice.

The currently overpaid will continue to work with fairpay because if they don't work they won't get fairpay. The currently underpaid will continue to work with fairpay because if they don't work they won't get fairpay. The correct motivation for work is fairpay. Neither underpay nor overpay is necessary to get people to work - just as in nature: bear no fishee bear no eatee; and bird no catchee worm bird no eatee worm. The insertion of money in between work and eat doesn't change the fundamental situation.

Note that the few people who are currently fairpaid continue to work. Therefore fairpay does not cause unworkingness.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - We have used gold for motivation for so long we have forgotten there is any other way. Our society is so far from nature we have forgotten the underpinning natural sense in the system.

Broadly speaking, everyone is working, more or less equally, or in other words, working unequally within a small range. No one can work more than twice as hard as the average person who works more than 50 hours a week. Half the world's workers, housewives, work 70-90+ hours a week. No one can work more than about 100 hours a week long-term.

Meanwhile, pay ranges extremely widely: from a million times to 1000th of world average hourly pay, from US$1billion a fortnight to $1 a fortnight around the world average of US$1000.

Some in the subrational majority of people argue that work is unequal, therefore unequal pay is just. The error here is that this justifies only one out of an infinite number of possible inequalities of pay. If one works twice as hard, justice pays him twice as much - not any unequal amount from 1000th the average to a million times the average.

Most people will get hot under the collar if you suggest equality, because they think equality is unfair and/or would take away motivation to work. Some people take pride in working hard and they reasonably want to be paid more. They suspect or presume others are working less, and they don't want those others paid the same as themselves. Fair enough, reasonable enough, although one could still argue against it further. But the inequality of work does not prove that inequality of pay should be uncontrolled; it argues only that inequality of pay should be proportional to work, which is very different from what we have.

I don't think anyone will argue that the most overpaid is working a billions times harder than the most underpaid, who is presumably working his/her ass off to stay alive and save his/her family. And yet, many are the voices more indignant if some slacker's child gets a free sandwich, than they are over billions of doles to the richest sandwich eaters, the Welfare Kings.

One ought to be able to say just the one fact that pay per fortnight ranges from $1 to $1,000,000,000 and immediately everyone should understand that that is extremely dangerous, destructive, wasteful, miserymaking, violence making, chaos making, warmaking, slavery making, and ignorance-making... that it is putting a brake hard on human progress... and that that is destroying 99+% of human birthright natural happiness... and that it is in everyone's interests to have some mechanism for preventing or countering the ever-escalation of overpay and underpay with its attendant violence, crime and war, slavery and tyranny, and genocide.

Stop being geno-sadists.

The solution is so easy: counter the ceaseless automatic drift of money from earners to nonearners by shoveling money from the 1% overpaid back to the 99% underpaid who did 99% of the work that produced the goods that the money is token of.

Murder the idea of having wealthpower giants, who can't even see the ants they are grinding beneath their juggernaut.

And lastly, as the conceptualguerilla (dot com) has said: For anyone who isn't convinced that absolutely everything is produced by labor, now is a good time to take a dollar bill out of your wallet and tell it to fix you a sandwich.

Xavier,
You have many good arguments with which I agree, but theres is one factor that I would like to be included in your discussion. The one about productivity.
There actually are people who with a given effort, or amount of work, produce more than others with the same amount. Others who can organize the work of others to be much more productive, and I say productive by organization, not by over-exploitation.

quixix, if this is rude then please forgive me and ignore it, but may i ask you - and indeed everyone who reads this - two questions?

do you believe that equal sacrifice deserves equal compensation?

and, do you think that a person who gets a gift on his birthday should then be paid every day following, for the reason of having received the gift on his birthday?

There is no such thing as overpay and underpay, anyway. There is only overpayunderpay. The two are one, the two are two one: twone. (ah, thank you forever JJoyce)

Every dollar that comes across the counter came out of someone else's pocket. The extreme overpay we are currently collectively agreeing to give away to .25% of the human population, has to come from those who are earning, but not being paid what they are earning - what they have been earning all along. (The good news is we 99.75% know where our stolen earnings are, and i have already told you how to get them back, eh?)

Go teach this to others, eh?

Individual contribution by sacrifice of one's time and energy to work, is inescapably limited as long as we are living in human bodies.

Yes, the ultimate tyranny is the fact that we have to eat and sleep, or our bodies die. But i don't think there is anything we can do to change that, eh?

A few thoughts....

When you're done taking the 90% back from those danged rich people every time they get it, over and over again, where will the money to build capital equipment, invest, and innovate come from? After all you are each arguing to remove the surplus from their hands, claiming it is pay 'stolen' from workers.

When you remove the cash from the rich, do the goods this cash paid for, go back to where it came from too? Why should people get to use the money to purchase goods and services, take the money back, and yet keep the goods and services?

We humans are born equal in birth rights, but not in birth gifts of, for two examples, health and intellect.

The overpay for the overpaid has to come courtesy of underpaying the underpaid.

Can anyone present the sane, sound, reasoned argument why the lesser-gifted, who never chose to be lesser-gifted, should be made to pay the greater-gifted, who sacrificed nothing for the birthgifts, for having been more gifted, for all of their human existence?

Tell me again, someone, the very good reason we ever had for allowing unlimited personal fortunes??

MtnGoat

I'm not sure I understand your questions. Are you implying that we (whoever that is) are going to actually take money away from the "those danged rich people" and do whatever with it we please? What I'm proposing to you that even now, today, NOBODY really needs to take $365 million a year. What else can be done? Well, they can pay TAXES! Doesn't that sound nice to you? A highway system in good repair? School buildings that DON'T make our children sick and teachers paid well enough to stay teaching?

"Rich people" aren't paying more for "the goods and services," proportionately speaking. You and I are since our pay increases haven't been nearly as generous over the years as theirs.

Save your sympathy for the poor and jobless, they really need it not the "rich people."

A question perhaps only God can answer: When WILL libertarians acknowlege the fact that the most egalitarian societies have also the highest rates of capital formation?

Xavier O, good question. Another good question, when will the rest of us, we masters with no servants and no mansions, when will the collective "us" wake up and realize that no matter how hard we work and save, we'll never have that manner of wealth?

Here's another good question: when will we realize that the taxes we pay are our tickets to the show? We pay taxes in order to live in a better world. It's not an evil thing, no matter what sock puppets like Hannity and Limbaugh say.

Have sympathy upon YOURSELF by giving all people pay justice. injustice is reciprocated, and we are living in a never-before-world of highspeed transportation and communication. you are no island. look down - your feet are standing on every country on the globe. science can prove that if the globe goes, your locality will not remain. there is a bomb under every bed and chair on this planet, and the extremes of wealth continue to escalate exponentially...

I have said no word about charity, only justice.

"Woe to the society that relies upon charity to do the work of social justice!"

Pity the rich and poor of earth- so blind and so needlessly suffering...

We can deconstruct the stratospheric overfortunes gradually. It can easily be done without causing shockwaves to the economies.

We could begin by sanely restricting inheritance through taxes, yes.

Inheritance is pay for no contribution.

and just think - we haven't even got round yet to another component of import: the fact of everyone's birthright to a place to put their feet having been stolen off them by society sans compensation, since all land is already owned.

labor produces everything, and land is the field of all labor.

Yiz haz all been robbed to a far greater extent than Yiz haz imagined, humanity...

Xavier O said: "Inheritance is pay for no contribution."

So true, so very true. This nonsense about a "Death Tax" makes me sick. The contribution these children of the priviledged can make is paying a fair share of taxes on the money they've inheritted. It doesn't require any measure of hard work to simply be lucky enough to be born the children of already rich people.

Two points to make:
1. Friends recently visited their relatives in Norway for 3 weeks. They noted that Norwegians give up 70% of their income to taxes. They also noted how beautiful the country is; how well everything works; of course everyone is fully covered by national health; that, in fact, everyone is very well off. There are no "poor". The difference in the highest to the lowest wages is not very great. They said, I believe I recall correctly, that there is a minimum wage of about the equivalent of $35.00 an hour.
Seems like a pretty good deal to me.
2. Both ezeflyer and UtahRaven (above) refer to incorporating "We the people" apparently in the belief that doing so would more than offset the power and influence of the already incorporated. There's just one problem with that: Existing corporations have virtually unlimited money to buy the government they have. Where would "We" get all that money when considering that fewer than ten percent of us who can and do occasionally think, can't agree on much of anything?

Thank you, Glaxia, for reminding us that Norway is proof we are not needing to reinvent the wheel at all.

We are not in need of "changing the world".

We are only in need of beginning to act in accord with what we all already actually believe, which can be demonstrated thusly:

Everyone will agree that everyone will agree that if a government took 80% of aftertax income off of 99% of people and gave it to the richest 1%, that that would cause an enormous tension, ruction, escalating to violence that wouldn't stop until the policy was reversed.

Our reality is even worse than that 'silly' scenario. Our current economic injustice factor resides in the billions.

I have wondered...if all the wealth that is being sucked up into the personal fortunes of the wealthpower giants was instead being sucked up to the moon or mars, would people then be able to see what is going on?

People know that wealth is power, but still they deny to themselves that having extremes of wealthpower is having tyranny and slavery, guaranteed. (while they speak of democracy as if it exists.)

And so they do not strike the root. They do not focus themselves like lasers on the issue and the answer that awaits their commanded attention.

Being reality based is easier for dogs, who cannot overide their mechanics and have no choice but to face whatever reality is in their face. But the train will hit us, even if we are facing away from it.

choo choo!

Like always, mtngoat doesn't get anything that doesn't come from a right wing spin machine. Let me ask you this, my friend: When the top tax rate was 92% and business paid 33% of ALL taxes collected in this country, where did the money for that investment come from? You are a fool of the highest order if you really think that higher taxes will stop investment and building in it's tracks. Maybe for those with no vision whatsoever, but they aren't the ones who should be making investments or decisions anyway.

You have such sympathy for those who have declared war on you, it's amazing. You just don't get it, yet, do you? They are not helping you to advance yourself, they are doing their damndest to keep you from doing so! And you stand there and defend their rights to do so. You, my friend, should just go and offer your self to them and beg for leniency in their treatment. Tell them just how loyal you have been to them, and see just what kind of reaction you get. The laughter won't be stopping until LONG after you leave the building in embarrassment.

Learn which side your own bread is buttered on, will you? It's not on the side that says "corporate advantage here". Quit standing up for those who are shafting you and your future. Unless you are in the top 2%, you are doing nothing but slitting your own throat with every statement.

Xavier,
"Can anyone present the sane, sound, reasoned argument why the lesser-gifted, who never chose to be lesser-gifted, should be made to pay the greater-gifted, who sacrificed nothing for the birthgifts, for having been more gifted, for all of their human existence?"

Why should anyone forced to pay anyone else for something they don't value? Are you advocating for the state to impose a value for the labor of lesser gifted people, forcing everyone to value those skills by whatever standard they came to said value? What should be our standard and who would decide this standard?

"When WILL libertarians acknowlege the fact that the most egalitarian societies have also the highest rates of capital formation?"

Which egalitarian societies are you refering to? When you refer to capital formation are you suggesting that the state (in these egalitarian societies) has been a successful social and economic planner and manager? I wonder how the government has a better grasp of what my money is worth to me considering that i earned it by my own ability? I wonder how just a system can be when it forces its citzens to value such things as war, welfare, gauding and unnescessarily austentatious buildings, an education (indoctrination) system, and polk barrel spending? I don't argue that a government like the one you advocate for doesn't ever get some things right, what i would say is that there is no justice in a system that forces those that it purportedly serves on what ought to be valued. I think that people will value services voluntarily if there is reason to do so.

you miss understanding, then ignore my serious questions and instead attempt to put words i did never speak in my mouth, Othinker.

why do you do this thing?

Xavier,
What thing do i do? You could be more clear as to what i've incorrectly assumed about your point. It sounds like what you want is a different shade of what we already have, one that redistributes income by force, ie. you don't pay taxes, you go to jail. I am Pro-choice yet, i would not attempt to force someone else to pay for my abortion, as would i attempt to stop someone from having one. I value education highly, yet think our failing federal system should not be funded by forced taxation. My belief is that other people in my community also value education, they also see it differently than GW Bush and cronies, but we must foot the bill for their failures. Doesn't sound too free or just to me.

If you'd like to respond to the point i was attempting to make about freedom and justice we could continue the discourse.

thanks,
OT

What you did, OT, was to fail to answer my two simple yes or no questions, which have received a resounding silence that everyone must mistakenly be thinking will protect them, then you failed to provide a sane, sound, rational argument why the lesser-gifted should be forced as they are now to pay the more-gifted all their lives long, and after feeling free to ignore my questions you then insist i answer yours.

you do not address what i have said, but would like to address what i have not said.

i may have been born at night, OT, but it was not last night. i have seen very often these tactics employed by disingenuous 'debaters', to allow you to derail the discourse that matters here by burying it under distractions, strawmen, etc.

i cannot address "the point you were attempting to make about freedom and justice", because i do not see what point you are trying to make.

it would be helpful if you would restate it, thanks.

Trickle down economy, eh? Its like when you take a pee in a hurry and zip up too soon. Thats trickle down. It doesn't feel too good when you realize what you are getting.

OT, as Xavier says, it does appear you are using strawmen
to make a point though I suppose I could be misinterpreting.
We all pay taxes. Some do not want their taxes paying for
abortions, some do not want their taxes paying for war,
some do not want their taxes paying for corporate welfare,
others not for individual welfare. I think these are side
arguments.

The point is justice as a society. Another poster a month
or so ago compared the labor of a dairy farmer with the
labor and compensation of a CEO. Is the labor of the CEO
really worth that much more than the farmer? Are the
lesser gifted (or "disadvantaged" because of the luck of
birth), deserving of less than a rewarding life? If they
are willing to labor/produce what they are able to provide
what they can to society, should their labors be worth
that much less?

If a society overall produces a certain level of
goods/services, then that society should at least
distribute the value of those goods/services to everyone
that has contributed to the society (if they are able)
at least to the point a person can live a decent life
no matter what they contribute. If they cannot do this,
then perhaps there is a problem with the society itself.

If a person works twice as hard (80 hours a week instead
of 40), should they be taxed more than twice as much as
the person who works 40? That is a hard question. But
does a person who works 40 or 80 or more deserve hundreds
(or even tens) of times as much compensation?

If our education system is failing, is the solution to
make people pay more to send their children to private
schools? Guess who can afford to do that? If the teachers
in private schools are so good, perhaps if we paid teachers
a decent salary and closed the private schools (heresy to
some) then these well-qualified teachers could benefit all
instead of only the privileged.

The rich have their mantra of letting a person be rewarded
for their labors, yet they seem to think their labors are
worthy of so much more than the lower classes. And then
completely ignore the argument when it comes to passing on
their gains to their progeny. And what exactly did these
progeny labor so hard for to be worth their inheritances
(besides staying in the good graces of their parents to
prevent being disinherited)?

Xavier,

Your questions

Xavier asked the same two basic questions in two different
ways (in my interpretation):

1.

do you think that a person who gets a gift on his birthday should then be paid every day following, for the reason of having received the gift on his birthday?

Can anyone present the sane, sound, reasoned argument why the lesser-gifted, who never chose to be lesser-gifted, should be made to pay the greater-gifted, who sacrificed nothing for the birthgifts, for having been more gifted, for all of their human existence?

2. (actually these may not be exactly the same, but could
be construed to be such)

do you believe that equal sacrifice deserves equal compensation?

Tell me again, someone, the very good reason we ever had for allowing unlimited personal fortunes??

Perhaps the bottom line is:

Do we organize our society around the law of the jungle and
survival of the fittest (however that is defined) or on a
higher plane with a basis of justice and equality as we
purport to do? The hedge fund managers MIGHT be better at
managing money which equates to power in our "jungle" or
they might just be lucky. But in a real jungle of brute
power how many would survive one-on-one except as underlings?
Do you want your success in life determined by how much
stronger/weaker you are than someone else - or by your
efforts to support your community and family?

#
cybro4 September 1st, 2007 3:56 pm

Reagan told us it would "trickle down", right?
Of course, I'm still waiting.

No I got it right away. The corporation I worked for at the time started pissing on me and I wasn't fooled by the predictions of rain.

Peoplefirst,

"do you think that a person who gets a gift on his birthday should then be paid every day following, for the reason of having received the gift on his birthday?"

Yes, i think the person should benefit directly from the gifts, talents, and skills that they possess. Who else sould directly benefit? Why should they forced to sacrifice because their skill is valued by others. i think skills are learned, we are born with different physical and mental capacities, yet it is our own energy and focus that hones these skills and this is what i value. If one decides not to learn anything of value ( in the sense that she/he cannot find a place to sell his/her skill) why should anyone but that individual be held responsible?

"do you believe that equal sacrifice deserves equal compensation?"

"Tell me again, someone, the very good reason we ever had for allowing unlimited personal fortunes??"

I'm not sure how these questions relate, but as for allowing unlimited fortune, why do we belief it is our right to control anyones fortune if they obtain their fortune by trading value for value without force, without assistance. I am not attempting to take the wealth from professional athletes because i don't agree with their exorbantly high pay? What do they do for society? I would argue, less than any CEO. Their profession is one that is valued in "our society," what can i do about that other than no supporting it myself.

"Do you want your success in life determined by how much
stronger/weaker you are than someone else - or by your
efforts to support your community and family?"

No, i don't really care about whether i am stronger/weaker than anyone. My success is measured by what i accomplish on my own accord, with my mind and body. Not to say that i do not value working with other people, i do, but i will not controlled by other people and i will pretend to be less than i am. I'll say that i do support my community, by being myself and by supporting the same in others.

As for your example of the hedgefund manager, her/his job is one of a gambler and i do not value it because it produces nothing but speculative earnings.

Thanks,
OT

Where scientific methods have been applied to practical problems, they give us ever-increasing control of our environment. Before the application of scientific methods to a particular practical problem we are at the mercy of blind forces. Where we begin to apply scientific methods, these forces begin to come under our control. The ideal of straight thinking must be the application of the scientific habit of thought to all our practical problems, and the replacement of blind forces controlling our destinies by our own intelligent and conscious control. In some fields we have already begun to apply this conscious control. The diseases which at one time were blind forces under which we bowed (as we now submit ourselves to earthquakes, thunderstorms, and trade depressions) have now begun to be brought under conscious control by the development of the science of medicine.

Snip

snip...Still less do we believe in the scientific understanding and control of the economic processes in a single country by which its goods are given in extravagant abundance to a few, while others have so little share in the country's wealth that they have little more than shelter and the food necessary to sustain life. These processes remain the product of the blind interaction of the individual interests of different merchants and buyers, of employers of labour and manual workers. There is little attempt at conscious control. Political economy remains largely a theoretical science.

Let us compare our attitude towards such questions with our attitude towards disease. The man who brings a scientific attitude of mind to the analysis of a dispute between his own country and another is labeled a 'traitor'. In politics we are told that it is the glory of the Briton that he distrusts 'logic' (by which is meant the coldly scientific approach to problems which is the only certain way of solving them), and that he trusts to his instinct for 'muddling through'. When we suggest that poverty is an evil whose causes must be discovered and, at all costs, removed, we are told that the life of societies follows unchangeable economic laws with which it is dangerous to tamper.

It is true that social life follows economic laws just as a motor-car obeys mechanical laws and the human body obeys physiological laws. But we are not content to say that a motor-car must follow mechanical laws and then leave it to go where it likes. On the contrary, we move its steering wheel and its throttle until we have produced conditions under which the iron mechanical laws it obeys carry it where we want at the speed we want. We do not consider it dangerous to interfere with the conditions in which its mechanical laws work. We get rid of that danger by understanding these laws. As to the danger of interfering with the conditions under which economic laws act, we may well ask whether it is not much more dangerous to leave them uncontrolled when we see the terrible effects in human misery which follow at present from their action.

Why should we adopt toward these problems an attitude so different from our attitude towards illness? In the course of ages, scientific methods have slowly replaced other methods in the treatment of disease, and, as a result, a very large part of disease has come under our control, and this part is always increasing. When we are ill and call in a doctor, he does not encourage us to hope that we shall muddle through. He seeks for the cause of our condition – whether it is a germ infection, an internal injury, or just a set of ideas in our own mind – and he tries to remove that cause. He does not doubt that in sickness as in health our bodies obey physiological laws. He is not, however, content simply to say that and do nothing about it. By medicine, by surgical operation, or by other treatment, he puts our bodies in conditions in which physiological laws will work for and not against our health.

Behind his work is that of a great army of research workers who have made his treatment of us possible. These have not attacked the abuses of microbes in emotionally colored phrases; they have instead impartially studied their habits and conditions of life. They have shown no reverence for modes of treatment (like bleeding) which merely have the recommendation that they are old. They have boldly challenged every ancient habit of thought in the science of healing until it has proved itself to be of value.

Our own individual illnesses can be cured by scientific methods. The diseases of the great society to which we belong cannot be so healed because we distrust the cool impartial voice of science in national and international affairs.

It is as if we were all travelers on a motor-car traveling at speed over an unmapped plain. The driver has not his hands on the wheel, for he knows neither where he wants to go nor how to get there if he did. When we suggest he should put his hands on the wheel and exercise his intelligence in thinking where he wants to go and how to get there, he turns to us with an idiotic smile and says that the car must obey mechanical laws and that we must trust our British instinct for 'muddling through'. We know that the plain through which we are traveling has ravines and morasses in which lie the wrecked remains of cars which have traveled blindly across it in times long past. Occasionally we come into collision with other cars, but such collisions fill the survivors with such exalted emotions and are believed to be productive of such extraordinary virtues that no one blames the drivers for the deaths of some of the passengers and the grave injuries to the car.

Occasionally the passengers are allowed to decide who shall have the privilege of sitting in front of the steering wheel, but as they too do not believe in intelligent choice of route and know even less than the driver of how to get there, and since the new driver may also sit with his hands off the wheel, these occasional lapses into apparently democratic control of the car have little practical importance. In increasing volume, however, are voices now to be heard protesting that a car can only be driven in safety by conscious and intelligent control, that their experience of car driving has shown them that there is no such thing as an instinct for muddling through, that the relaxation of intelligent control means inevitable disaster, and that a car which is allowed to obey merely mechanical laws obeys them by crashing.

What will happen to that car in which we are traveling I do not know. Perhaps the mechanic will push the driver to one side and himself place his hands on the wheel. He too may bring us to disaster through not knowing how to drive, but the disaster will be somewhat less certain than if we hope to muddle through. Our better chance of success is if we all apply to national and international affairs conscious control and intelligent thought. We can solve the problems of war and poverty if we approach them in the same scientific spirit as we have now learned to apply to disease, sure that every effect has a cause, and that impartial scientific investigation will reveal those causes and that sufficiently determined effort will remove them.

A really educated democracy, distrustful of emotional phraseology and all the rest of the stock-in-trade of the exploiters of crooked thinking, devoid of reverence for ancient institutions and ancient ways of thinking, could take conscious control of our social development and could destroy these plagues of our civilization – war, poverty, and crime – if it were determined that nothing should stand in the way of their removal – no old traditions and none of the ancient privileges which are called "rights" by their holders. That would be a beneficent revolution which we can have if we are willing to trust our own intelligences sufficiently boldly and if we want it badly enough. But the revolution must start in our own minds.

the above from an out-of-print book "Straight And Crooked Thinking" by Robert H. Thouless

Bloody revolutions are history on repeat because no one has changed the minds of people, showing them why it is justice to limit personal fortunes to the max self-earnable. The only revolution worth having is the lasting, peaceful revolution that will mean education won the race with catastrophe on earth.

"Why should they forced to sacrifice because their skill is valued by others."

I think it is not so much a matter of sacrifice, it is a
matter of sharing that part of their good fortune that is
above what others are born with. I might differ somewhat
with Xavier here. I probably can't say I really have a
problem with "unlimited wealth" (depending on how it is
achieved) as long as no others are not being denied a
decent life. But I do agree unlimited wealth should not
be passed on to "heirs".

There are many arguments (including from Warren Buffet)
saying those that accumulate great wealth do so at least
in part because of the infrastructure and support the
society in total has created. A person does not succeed
only on their talents alone, no matter what they may think.
They succeed in the framework and structure of what has
been created by those before and is being created now by
those that live in that society.

How much money would Bill Gates have if our forebearers
had not created the basis for our current society? In
fact, how much money would Bill Gates have if he had not
gotten "lucky" and purchased the basis of his empire from
someone else who actually created it? What if IBM had
more foresight itself and done the same thing? Bill Gates
would possibly just be another entrepeneur who went onto
other things. Is Bill Gates worth more to society than
the person whose creative abilities actually produced the
product? Is the CEO of a company worth that much more
than the creative people that work in the company?

I may address the remainder of your post later, but time
to go back outside.

unlimited personal fortunes = injustice

why be soft on injustice?

Our ability to state the obvious is pretty impressive. It's interesting...80% of the population has *no* idea what's going on...but so what if they did? Do you think that would change anything? We sure do go on and on and on about it, like we think "Knowing is half the battle," when in reality knowing something awful is happening without the ability to do anything about it merely leads to depression.

The basic problem is capitalism steals from the poor & gives to the rich. (It's opposite number is essentially communism, where the rich have had their weath redistributed, and it doesn't work either.)

We can't change it. Repeat after me, and be liberated. "I CAN'T CHANGE IT." Seriously, you're a powerless serf, and the sooner you realize it, the happier you'll be.

What's the solution?

Ideally, I think it's "vote with your feet." Refuse to be taken advatange of while there's a better deal elsewhere. The trick is finding someplace that'll take you: Norway and the European union aren't accepting new hires, for all intents & purposes, because they know a massive influx of unskilled peasants from plebeistan will drag down their standard of life. (Good luck emmigrating to the Uk, for instance: they only accept doctors, rich people, and humanitarian refugees. Shoe salemen need not apply.)

Take all Bill Gate's billions & distribute it to China, every dime of it. What do they all get? A check for $25. Wow, that sure solved a lot! The basic problem is, there's too many damned people. If you really want to make a difference & chart a change in Earth's history, get on the pill & don't reproduce. It'll increase your ability to take care of yourself, your already existing loved ones, and stop destroying the planet.

It'll still get destroyed, of course, because the stupidest people on Earth wont's stop breeding, but it won't be YOU or your descendants that did it.

"because the stupidest people on Earth wont's stop breeding"

I assume you are talking about Republicans, specifically
George Jr, and George Sr.

Newt is getting it very wrong. Here is help for Newt:

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/3046/index.html

Scroll down the easy page to 'site map', Newt. Click where it says "Our Crowded Planet - NOT", Newt, so you can stop getting it wrong, and be safer and happier. Much, much safer and happier is one idea away, Newt.

The car was once just an idea in someone's head, Newt. Today, the idea of 'car' is ubiquitous.

Get it, Newt?

Who said anything about cars, Xavier? I'm saying "If you are a powerless serf, you will CONTINUE to be a powerless serf," and even that homemade-ass, officious & citationless Geocities site you reference agrees with that.

("It takes most people most of their lives to buy theirselves part-way out of that serfdom, by eventually owning their own home. All that effort merely to claim enough of your own to live in, let alone live from")

You think there's not too many people? You obviously don't live anywhere near New Jersey.

And what part of NJ is that? Of course I personally have
not flown over NJ to take a survery...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/27/3429/

...

Well RUCOGNIZANT, if your argument is NJ is no longer The Garden State, I'll agree. NJ is now heavily populated. But if you fly over the entire state and look down at the ground, you will note that over 70% is mostly un-used farm land, about 6% is the Pine Barrens, NJ still has the most fertile land for area in the Unied States and the weather conditions required to grow from three to four annual crops. Geo-poitically, NJ is very important.

...

Editing did not allow me to change NY to NJ...