Tuesday, April 21, 2009

wealth comes from working hard....


yglesias points out the obvious naivete of such a concept...

I’m reading some of this coverage of Meghan McCain’s latest thoughts on the direction of the Republican Party and I can’t help but wonder to myself who on earth is Meghan McCain? To the best of my knowledge we’re talking about a young woman who’s never accomplished anything or held a job.

But, you know, before I begrudge the success of a not-clearly-qualified young blogger/pundit I suppose I’d better the insulation on my glass house. So instead I’ll just say that the fact that Meghan McCain is, apparently successfully, launching a career as a political pundit capable of garnering a book deal worth hundreds of thousands of dollars all based on being the daughter of a failed presidential candidate should give people pause about the meritocratic nature of American capitalism. I mean, more power to her. But I’d sleep better at night knowing she’s going to pay a very high tax rate on that book deal, and the money could be put to use giving Pell Grants and health insurance to kids who don’t have multi-millionaire celebrity dads.

My favorite Warren Buffett quote notes the utter obviousness of this

“If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru, you’ll find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil.”

Which Peter Singer quoted in his article, What Should a Billionarie Give--and what should you?   Singer points out why this is true via Herbert Simon:

The Nobel Prize-winning economist and social scientist Herbert Simon estimated that “social capital” is responsible for at least 90 percent of what people earn in wealthy societies like those of the United States or northwestern Europe. By social capital Simon meant not only natural resources but, more important, the technology and organizational skills in the community, and the presence of good government. These are the foundation on which the rich can begin their work. “On moral grounds,” Simon added, “we could argue for a flat income tax of 90 percent.” Simon was not, of course, advocating so steep a rate of tax, for he was well aware of disincentive effects. But his estimate does undermine the argument that the rich are entitled to keep their wealth because it is all a result of their hard work. If Simon is right, that is true of at most 10 percent of it.

I was listening to Neal Boortz the other morning and he went on some screed about the Left using the term fortunate and less fortunate. Boortz is mad that Obama uses the term "fortunate" to describe himself and his wealth. That this is a ploy:

The fortunate and less fortunate lexicon that Liberals use... It comes down to this Liberals do not ever want to admit that people with money, earned it.

So what about the legal system? The military? The police? The clean air? The clean food? The education system? The patent protections!?!?!?!?

I’ve seen the light! That dot.com millionaire did it all on his own!

Except for... he did it on a computer and online web built from tax payer dollars, got his schools at a state univerity working under a tenured professor who recieved a federal grant for research (and the money to pay a research assistant... ah'hmmm), then after getting out of school off the subsidized federal loans, he created this great widget all on his own gumption, it got big... 

Let us not forget the intellectual property rights which this millionaire then had to go to court to defend after his widget went big.

Conservatives like the nanny state... they just don’t like anyone to know about it.

Plus the data doesn't back up their argument when it comes to getting an education... College Attainment and Family Income

As you can see, family income has a big influence here. Two thirds of the kids with average math scores and low-income parents wind up not going to college, while almost two-thirds of high-income kids with average math scores do go. And as he shows in the following slide, parental income also has a strong impact on college completion....This, in turn, has a substantial impact on a person’s long-term economic prospects as seen in our country’s large and growing wage premium...

Unless you are trying to make some social Darwinian argument that wealthy people are superior, all things should equal out statistically speaking. But they don't... meaning prosperity doesn't come from sheer individual initiative and hard work.

Go figure--we are social animals, in a social system, is it shocking that this is a collecitive effort where prosperity comes from a pooling of resources, expertise, specializations, and skills?

Posted via web from jimnichols's posterous

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