Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-66.87.85.222-20170412181021/@comment-31370220-20170418081931

Greyhound9721 wrote: 00Fez wrote: That's what tax is for. Good for your guitar teacher. The only difference in my version is that:

A. When you die more of your money goes to the government.

B. More of that tax money goes to providing a free education.

And C. Private schools are abolished giving everyone a relatively equal chance in life. If rich people wish to improve their child's education they may donate to their local state school instead of squandering money into old, out of date institutions.

Is that not only fair but possible. People still earn money and can become rich but it is by their own individual merit and not by their birth.

Bullcrap. Let's say I work my butt of for 50 years throughout my life and build a very successful business so that I can pay for my children to go to a great school and that when I die my kids can enjoy what I have worked hard for and then they can work hard as well. What your saying is that most of my money will go to the government when I die and that my kids won't get to enjoy what I worked hard to get for them. Here's my life saying you work hard you play hard. Basically I work my butt of and I get to enjoy the rewards for it. This highlights a central problem with capitalism. Very well, perhaps you have spent a lifetime establishing a fair and honest business that did provide jobs and was generally beneficial to your local community. Then you reaped the deserved benefits of your enterprise. Eventually your children inherit said wealth and the company. These now live from what you have created and lead a parasitical life thereafter, just by being major shareholders in your self-perpetuating company. This is the problem. Not the fact that people, by their own labour, can be successful, but that their kin can live off that success without too being beneficial to their communities, or in fact being harmful. (Now, some of you will claim "This doesn't happen" or "This doesn't have to happen", but it can happen and that is damaging enough)

Furthermore, many businesses that are created are not in any way beneficial to society. What aid is the variety of "higher fashion" designer firms? Who will benefit from trade in the stock markets the most? Cigarette and tobacco producers? There is an endless list of such enterprises, successful, but harmful or useless.

I also wish to present to you the following story, I believe first invented by an economist: "Two economists were stranded on a desert island. Over the years, the two made millions upon millions of dollars selling their hats to each other."- I shall leave interpretation to the reader.

I do wish to point out that I am not some disadvantaged easterner, ranting against the rich. I was raised in a well-to-do family in central Europe.