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The 'Fairness' Fraud
Topic Started: Feb 23 2012, 03:19 AM (982 Views)
Chris
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We keep hearing about fairness from liberals but never what it means or how to measure it.

The 'Fairness' Fraud
Quote:
 
During a recent Fox News Channel debate about the Obama administration's tax policies, Democrat Bob Beckel raised the issue of "fairness."

He pointed out that a child born to a poor woman in the Bronx enters the world with far worse prospects than a child born to an affluent couple in Connecticut.

No one can deny that. The relevant question, however, is: How does allowing politicians to take more money in taxes from successful people, to squander in ways that will improve their own reelection prospects, make anything more "fair" for others?

...A more fundamental problem with the "fairness" issue raised by Beckel and many others is the slippery vagueness of the word "fair."

To ask whether life is fair -- either here and now, or at any time or place around the world, over the past several thousand years -- is to ask a question whose answer is obvious. Life has seldom been within shouting distance of fair, in the sense of even approximately equal prospects of success....
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Stoney
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The closest we will come to "fair" is equal opportunity.
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colo_crawdad
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Are you going to argue that that a child born to a poor woman in the Bronx and a child born to an affluent couple in Connecticut actually have "equal opportunity?".

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Chris
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I will.
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Thumper
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You would just for the sake of argument.
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tomdrobin
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Quote:
 
How does allowing politicians to take more money in taxes from successful people, to squander in ways that will improve their own reelection prospects, make anything more "fair" for others?


Taxing to pay the bills isn't necessarily squandering. I assume by improving reelection prospects you mean getting earmarks or entitlements for people they represent. Worse things are happening, like giving the wealthy and corporations what they want to keep the campaign money flowing in.
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Stoney
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colo_crawdad
Feb 23 2012, 10:17 AM
Are you going to argue that that a child born to a poor woman in the Bronx and a child born to an affluent couple in Connecticut actually have "equal opportunity?".

Not only would I argue it, but the proof is all around us. There are more millionaires who have come from nothing, worked for it, than those born with it.

Those born of a poor woman in the Bronx would have more of an opportunity if we were more interested in "teaching them how to fish" than using them to garner votes from well intentioned do gooders.

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While inheriting a billion dollars is still the easiest way to land on our list of the world's wealthiest, it certainly isn't the most common. Almost two-thirds of the world's 946 billionaires made their fortunes from scratch, relying on grit and determination, and not good genes.


Forbes
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Stoney
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tomdrobin
Feb 23 2012, 12:58 PM
Quote:
 
How does allowing politicians to take more money in taxes from successful people, to squander in ways that will improve their own reelection prospects, make anything more "fair" for others?


Taxing to pay the bills isn't necessarily squandering. I assume by improving reelection prospects you mean getting earmarks or entitlements for people they represent. Worse things are happening, like giving the wealthy and corporations what they want to keep the campaign money flowing in.
"Worse things are happening, like giving the wealthy and corporations what they want to keep the campaign money flowing in."

Exactly. So how could we diminish that.
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Chris
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Stoney
Feb 23 2012, 07:28 PM
colo_crawdad
Feb 23 2012, 10:17 AM
Are you going to argue that that a child born to a poor woman in the Bronx and a child born to an affluent couple in Connecticut actually have "equal opportunity?".

Not only would I argue it, but the proof is all around us. There are more millionaires who have come from nothing, worked for it, than those born with it.

Those born of a poor woman in the Bronx would have more of an opportunity if we were more interested in "teaching them how to fish" than using them to garner votes from well intentioned do gooders.

Quote:
 
While inheriting a billion dollars is still the easiest way to land on our list of the world's wealthiest, it certainly isn't the most common. Almost two-thirds of the world's 946 billionaires made their fortunes from scratch, relying on grit and determination, and not good genes.


Forbes
This 1992 Joint Economic Committee Report, Income Mobility and Economic Opportunity, concluded:
Quote:
 
Currently there are two models of the American economy, one static, and the other dynamic. The first portrays the United States as a caste system and misapplies the characteristics of a permanent income strata to those only temporarily moving through income brackets. The alternative view portrays a much more complex and interesting social reality in which the composition of income classes are in constant flux. According to this latter point of view, simplistic generalizations about actual persons and families (or "the rich" and "the poor") cannot be drawn from data on a conceptual artifice which does not exist as such in reality.

The empirical data support the view of the market economy as a dynamic and open society which provides opportunity to those who participate. There is no evidence of stagnation, with the turnover rate in the most stable quintile -- the top fifth -- exceeding 35 percent. The turnover rates in the bottom four quintiles were at least 60 percent over the period, with most of this reflecting upward progress. Analysis which assumes or suggests stable composition of family or household income quintiles rests on invalid assumptions. It makes no sense to draw sweeping conclusions such as "the income of the bottom 20 percent of families fell" in a 15-year period when most of the people originally in that category have long since improved their standard of living enough to have moved up from the bracket entirely

Nothing has changed, liberals still take a static view and conservatives a dynamic view.

And there's still Good News on Income Mobility.
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Stoney
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I don't know that they see anything but tribalism, and the Democrat Party is their tribe.
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