Re:How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality
by notacoward on Thursday June 01, 2017 @11:52AM
(#14461345)
> Why should I not I want my kids to grow up with the privileges of the top 20%?
You might deserve whatever you've worked for, but that has nothing to do with the question of whether your children deserve more or less than others. I'll let you look up John Rawls's "veil of ignorance" thought experiment for yourself.
> Why should I feel hated for cashing in the chips ... 40% of what I win gets taken away?
The system does enough to incentivize gambling already. The results are already non-linear, and if you were truly one of those lucky ones then you're still richer than the other nine even with 40% taken away. To the extent that incentives for gambling and arbitrage displace incentives for more beneficial or sustainable kinds of effort, that's bad both morally and economically. Almost nobody's suggesting that everyone should be kept absolutely level. The question is to what extent we should attenuate the accumulation of riches (especially inter-generational riches) to balance out the various "rich get richer" amplifying effects that already occur.
You might deserve whatever you've worked for, but that has nothing to do with the question of whether your children deserve more or less than others. I'll let you look up John Rawls's "veil of ignorance" thought experiment for yourself.
> Why should I feel hated for cashing in the chips ... 40% of what I win gets taken away?
The system does enough to incentivize gambling already. The results are already non-linear, and if you were truly one of those lucky ones then you're still richer than the other nine even with 40% taken away. To the extent that incentives for gambling and arbitrage displace incentives for more beneficial or sustainable kinds of effort, that's bad both morally and economically. Almost nobody's suggesting that everyone should be kept absolutely level. The question is to what extent we should attenuate the accumulation of riches (especially inter-generational riches) to balance out the various "rich get richer" amplifying effects that already occur.