Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jan 18 2020 11:44am)
in capitalism, like in most other systems, the overwhelming majority of people can move up or down according to their ability, but only within a limited range around the position they were born in. in almost all cases, the son of a millionaire can only fall so far, no matter how incompetent or lazy he is; and the daughter of a plumber and a nurse will only be able to move up so far, even if she's doing everything right.
as I said, that's a feature of almost all systems and not a problem specific to capitalism; but it's still worth pointing out that "everyone floating to their natural level of ability" is not an accurate description of what's happening in capitalistic societies. those "from rags to riches" stories are very rare and dont reflect the reality of most people. also, most of those stories involve someone having insane amounts of talent coinciding with extreme luck. for every successful rapper/athlete/actor/businessman/lawyer who turned into a millionaire coming from a modest background, there are 10-100 equally talented individuals pursuing the same career who failed and got left along the way.
Crafting policy to target statistical outliers is a recipe for failure.
Quote (remco6 @ Jan 18 2020 11:43am)
Redistribution to a certain degree keeps heads off spikes every couple hundred years, not that you would ever have to be worried about being in that segment of the population
Churches and local organizations like the knights of Columbus have aided with redistribution for hundreds of years.
Why would we trust the government to do it when all they end up doing is lining their pockets with money that just seems to disappear?
This post was edited by EndlessSky on Jan 18 2020 10:46am