Posted: 10/6/2011 10:04:46 PM EDT
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How do they work? I am not in the upper 1%, however I understand that wealth is dynamic and not static. You can take raw materials, add your labor and create a whole that has greater value than the materials you built it with. Likewise, you can burn down a house, blow an engine, crash an airplane, et cetera and you have destroyed wealth. The economic value in our economy does not get distributed elsewhere, it goes away. It is not a pie that gets distributed, you make your own damn pie.
The system isn't perfectly fair, but it favors those who generate efficiency. If someone figures out a way to be orders of magnitude more productive and then leverages labor to increase that productivity, even linearly per person added, the individual is responsible for creating orders of magnitude more wealth and they gain the resources to be able to create things they never would have been able to otherwise. Frequently they create more than enough wealth to cover their 1%, the rest goes to pay the people that help them, taxes, et cetera. These "99%-ers" must think the United States is a true democracy as opposed to a representative republic that it is, with its basis being individual rights, with the government's position to ensure those rights are protected. It's dangerous when politicians use the word democracy instead of republic to describe our nation for this reason. With democracy taking precedence over individual rights, a well-fooled 99% may vote away the 1%'s wealth and with it the means to production, economies of scale and scope and effective management. NASA, anyone? Who is John Galt? |
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Quoted:
Your theory is sound except that it ignores where wealth is distributed by command as opposed to the free market. This happens through government intervention, which includes, but is certainly not limited to bailouts, public works, subsidies, and taxation. Right, government creates false competitors to private enterprise. When your success is determined by what the government gives you, then it becomes critical to prevent success in private enterprise to give reason for the government to cut your funding. It creates artificial competition to those who have the natural ability and inclination to innovate. Would the Wright Brothers have continued development if there was a government funded shark waiting in the wings with 1000 times the resources and an excuse to take their invention? |
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Quoted:
These "99%-ers" must think the United States is a true democracy as opposed to a representative republic that it is, with its basis being individual rights, with the government's position to ensure those rights are protected. It's dangerous when politicians use the word democracy instead of republic to describe our nation for this reason. With democracy taking precedence over individual rights, a well-fooled 99% may vote away the 1%'s wealth and with it the means to production, economies of scale and scope and effective management. NASA, anyone? Who is John Galt? It most certainly is. A nation of laws- not men. |