Attempted firebomb of times squareFollow

Heh.

Funny this didn't come up last night. Did Rush feed you this line or were you driving to work this morning and suddenly said "Damn it! That's what I should have said!" Costanza-style?

I disagree. While this may apply to a small number of "trust fund kids", the vast majority of those with wealth in this country worked to obtain it, and work to maintain it. While I suppose there's no easy way to test this, I think your example would go the exact opposite direction. I firmly believe that if you took the wealth held currently by the top 5% of the population and gave it to a random other 5% of the population, in 10-15 years, the original 5% would have regained most of that wealth.

People who acquire wealth do so because they understand how to do so. Most people are "consumers" and no matter how much money they have, they'll just spend it all and eventually have nothing. The evidence that I'm right and you're wrong is easily available by looking at lotto winners. Most people, upon obtaining wealth simply spend it all and end out with nothing. Thus, your assumption that those who have it and retain it are just "lucky" cannot be wholly correct. There is clearly some degree of skill, training, environment, etc which causes the "wealthy" to not just spend it all in a few years.


Pretty much the entire remainder of your post fails because it's based on the above false premise. But it was nice! ;)

I'd put a laughing smiley here but I can't.

People who are suddenly given a larger amount of money than they ever had before - lotto winners and what not - are not also magically given the ability to understand and handle money. This is true. That knowledge is usually acquired over a lifetime.

But that all goes back to one's background and opportunities, and none of that is inconsistent with what Smash said in the first place.

Yossarian,




Forbes list actually proves Gbaji's claim. Did you even look at that list? Out of the top 20 most of the americans on that list did not inherit their fortune.

Didn't listen to any radio on the way in to work today, but it's nice that you keep carrying around this stereotype of me in which all my thoughts are lifted from what others say. I'm thinking there's a bit of projection going on here maybe?

It's not like it's been hard to see the pattern present in Smash's continuous need to point the finger at angry white people within a larger liberal context Joph. It's pretty darn clear. I could probably write a whole paper just on the psychology of the need to "balance" acts of terror across different ethnic groups by the left, but it'd be too easy, and the people who most need to get that message would still keep their heads stuck in the sands of political correctness anyway.

I agree.

Smash denied that there was any skill involved at all. That it was just "luck".



Smash suggested an experiment in which a lottery was held at birth, and granted random children 1000 times the average wealth of the nation. It's an interesting one because you're both right, but not in ways you guys would likely want to talk about. That money will help out the child *if* the parents of the child also had the experience and approach to money that will help them obtain and retain it. Which is a wonderful argument for inheritance, but of course the left hates that as well.

If you just give random babies a ton of money at birth, they'll have random parents, who will statistically spend all the money before the kid ever gets any. If we assume they can't touch it, then they'll still not teach the kid how to handle the money, and said kid will blow it all in the same manner lotto winners do, upon his/her 18th birthday.

There's really no way for Smash's scenario to work. And if you stop and spend any amount of time thinking about it, you'll admit it. But it's a nice bit of fantasy that those who support wealth redistribution like to cling to, so they'll tend to ignore the facts. Those facts are that people accumulate and retain wealth because of their own actions. Yes, being born into wealth and taught how to manage it helps, but the idea that random distribution will ever work at all, much less "better" is just plain stupid.

Wait!? So there's no gap between hearing that they'd caught the bomber and that he was a Pakistani born Naturalized US citizen and having my opinion about that fact spoon fed to me? Um... Yes. I heard they'd caught the guy and who he was. That's it. I am capable of drawing my own conclusions based on that fact, and it should be pretty obvious that the point I was making yesterday was that Smash was completely wrong about it the last time he predicted it would be a stereotypical angry white Christian male instead of the far more obviously likely Mideastern Muslim.

I was going to wait and see, and was not surprised at all when I heard that they'd caught the guy and learned his ethnicity, religion, and connections. I know that it's not PC to point this out. Which is precisely why I'm pointing it out.

Follow the logic the other way. The success rates of the children of parents who obtained wealth and taught their children how to manage it is *not* luck. It's not random at all Joph. Only from some really bizarre point of view can it be made to look that way.

Do you really think Smash believes that there's a bunch of baby souls floating in the Aether waiting to be born and hoping that they win the lottery and get rich parents? Cause that would be the mother of all inconsistencies for him.