OK, now who really owns the government... not who is supposed to like, The People but who really has control of the "Cookies"?

Wow, that was deep.

We can't "all enter into a social contract" with individual employers, can we?

What if we don't have an "employer", for example, either because we are "unemployed" or we work for ourselves?

If we do enter a "social contract" at all, it must apply equally to all persons involved.

The implication of the "fact in (your) eyes" is that employees enter into one social contract, employers enter into another, and the "unemployed" are cast out completely.

That's not a "different viewpoint", that's just good ol' Neofeudal Corporatism.

The rest of your points are straw man arguments.

I don't play with straw men, they make me itchy. ;)

"...we all enter a social contract to be compensated according to the value of our productivity to the employer."

First of all, a "social contract" is one entered into between a people and their government, under which they determine together how the government will govern and how the people will participate in that government. Second, if it is up to the employer to determine the value of the employee's contribution and compensate them accordingly, but the employer is a corporation whose ONLY RESPONSIBILITY is to maximize shareholder profits, you can perhaps see that there's a good chance that the "fair compensation" might be harder to come by.

While you no doubt feel that your abstract dishwasher/Oprah example clearly defines the value/compensation paradigm you support, perhaps you could explain a more concrete example of wage disparity: In 2010 the average income of a Wall Street CEO was $9.3 million (figures from the Wall Street Journal), while an average teacher's salary was $55,350 for the 2009–10 school year (NEA Report 2010). Are you suggesting that the work that a Wall Street CEO does is 168 times more valuable than the work that a teacher does? When a teacher is responsible for the education of our children, and a wall street CEO moves imaginary money around in whatever deregulated fashion he wants, never actually PRODUCING anything. This is what people are complaining about.

And just so you know, very few people have ever really been in favour of taking everything away from everybody and doling it all out in equal shares. People like you like to pretend that that's what progressive thinkers are asking for so that it's easier for you to dismiss. But what people are really saying is that something isn't right when the top earners are making hundreds of times more than the average earners, and the average earners are having trouble making ends meet. If you believe that the people at the top have done something more valuable for our society than to figure out how the game is rigged, and play that game very well while actually contributing nothing tangible (talk about abrogation of the social contract) then I invite you to tell me what their contribution is. And please don't say that a rising tide floats all boats, because that clearly isn't true. There are too many boats going down these days for anyone to buy that anymore.

"Life isn't fair, and all are not equal in gifts, talents, abilities or drive."

So, you came into this world with nothing more than some genetic material imprinted predetermining your physical characteristics and some tendencies, but like everyone else you needed a Mummy to wipe your ass and feed you, teachers who gave you literacy, and some discipline, firemen, policemen, military, to look after your safety, sanitary engineers to take your waste away, African children to harvest the coco for your chocolate milk, Japanese engineers to design your game machine, Chinese labourers to put it together in a box, bankers, advisers, councillors, priests, lawyers, drivers, electrocutions, farmers, etc. etc.

In fact nothing about you, what you are and what you have or do could even exist without all those other people on the planet that either contributed to or effected it. And somehow you think it is "your" gifts, talents, abilities or drive that make the difference, not theirs. As it stands if you are the "average American" you have already taken about 5 times more of the resources of the world than the average in the word.

Do you really believe that your genetic code, or system of organizing society is that much more valuable, and even if it were, does that give you the right to just take more because you can? Is that either right or practical?

In fact if you study the matter you will perhaps find that gifts, talents and ability, are mostly the result of conditioning brought about by society at large, such as investment in education, health, infrastructure, and quality of life, not genetics, and since your greatest resources are derived from the human input, and since you are right that "the world is unfair" and that is why you have an unfair advantage, is it not your responsibility and in your best interest to help those less fortunate by improving their condition so that the general social condition and quality of life, including your own is improved?

Improving your own condition or that of your immediate group only, at the cost of others is obviously self defeating in view of the interdependence of the social and the economic fabric of the world.

"we all enter a social contract to be compensated according to the value of our productivity to the employer"

What you are saying in effect is that your productivity is defined by the capital that employs you. Do you actually want to work harder and get paid less than those African slave children. Because if we define societies economic structure only by the power balance; on one side, the ability of the usurers motivated purely by capital gain and profit to exploit those with less, and on the other side, you and your ability alone to sell yourself on the labour market (forgetting for the moment the support of all those others I mentioned that made you what you are) that is where you or your children will eventually find yourself.

In a debtor society based on usury there is always someone with more capital, in other words "richer", than you, and that is the one that "creates" the money; and who can direct the capital to its most efficient exploitation. I do not see how that is in your best interest or mine.

When you leave this life it will also be with nothing. What accumulated wealth you leave to inheritors can hardly be seen as earned by their merit. So this concept of property and capital is just a question of being given things, using other people to accumulate more things, and then leaving it all behind. Is it not more like "borrowing" than "owning"?

So what I understand from what you have said is clearly that the accumulation of capital is the arbiter of income. But if that is taken to its logical extreme, as money goes to money and debt increases, you will become, even if you don't know it, as much a slave as that African child and equally restricted in the development of your "gifts, talents, abilities or drive".

'Different Viewpoint' And when Murdock, Buffet, Koch Brothers and several other Bildenberg club members have all the $/toys and the keys to the refrigerator, and think they're so cool that they run to their mansion/rooms: What then'?? Do we just let the super rich starve the 999% just because a few more lazy people might unfairly get some free "sugar lunch money'?
The world global economy mostly works for just the 1%. That makes it a stupid economy made for stupid over privileged 'fat cats' who have turned the world economy into a Monopoly Game. Eventually about 50% of the 99% are going to rip your heads off, unless greedy sociopaths like yourself help the coming 'New World Economy' establish a economic system that allows all the people a fair and equal chance to make a 'LIVING WAGE'. Help save the world and join the OWS movement in any way you can.

We all are forced into a 'social contract' before we can as children decide on our own contract, that's because the twisted government of adult 'compassionate conservatives' want control, always....And by the way, you suggest we point fingers which is exactly what you are doing. And Uncle Sugar's money belongs to all, and Uncle Sugar (and the corporations) with the help of 535 members of congress, skims money, no it gouges money right off the top of the pile, dump truck loads of money that they spend on endless wars that make it impossible for the dishwasher to even live a reasonable life though defense contractors who in my opinion deserve nothing, live like kings. The dishwasher deserves enough to live 'well' because he cleans up after you sir!

Heh, heh.

Why not just bring-em in and let the cops try to haul them out?

The time of the non-permitted Protest Potty has come! ;)