Asymmetrical Information

"My mother taught me that it was good to share, and to look out for those less fortunate than me."

Well, there is a difference in volunteering to share and being forced to share. When I give to a charity because I want to share and look out for those less fortunate, that is good. When the government takes my money and gives it to failing policies in the guise of "helping" but ultimately increasing depencency, that's not good.

Leftist policies want to take your choice away and give it to the state. That never works long term and will end up imploding eventually.

Well, with a Mom like that, you're almost certainly better than the rest of us. My Mother, the drunken gutter-slag, taught me to take whatever I could from others and laugh about it. I guess that's why I am not a leftist.

Damn you, Mom!

As stated before, what's so compassionate about plundering? What's so compassionate about using the power of the State? Perhaps we'd give more to charity if we weren't forced to pay such high taxes....

I suppose that this might account for the fact that Republicans donate more to charity than Democrats, both in numbers and in dollars. There is a big difference between voluntary giving and involuntary giving. Republicans like to give their own money, while Democrats like to give other peoples' money.

So, to you, Adam Smith was a snake oil peddler?

Sharing one's things and helping the poor are not per se "leftist policies". As other recent posters are basically saying, any strong household will emphasize these points as a matter of course well apart from any political orientation, and a weaker household may fail to train these virtues. Meanwhile conservatives can prove just as generous as the reddest of the bleeding-heart liberals when the stakes are free-will contributions.

Where the politics come in is when deciding to make such virtues a matter of state fiat. But then we get to the $64 billion question: what might the Law of Unintended Consequences say about a system that effectively divorces giver from givee and assigns the middleman role to a poorly accountable State apparatus?

I have always viewed money given to charity as a voluntary tax that allows me to choose the beneficiary whereas my liberterian colleague sees taxes as an involuntary charity that we are all forced to support.

Parents teach leftist ideals??? Are you high? Here's what I remember:

Parents: Stay the hell away from drugs and excessive drinking. Suffer extreme punishment otherwise.
Left: Aww! You poor thing! You drink too much? You have a *disease*! Let me get you a nice rehab clinic.

Parents: Don't take other people's stuff. Just because you like theirs doesn't mean you can take it.
Left: Hey, you make too much, we're taking it.

Parents: YOU take responsibility for YOUR actions.
Left: It's always someone else's fault!

Parents: 'Fess up.
Left: Confession presumed involuntary; silence no evidence of guilt. (Not necessarily a bad thing, but clearly distinct.)

Parents: Get a damn job. Do EVERYTHING in your power to keep it. If you lose it, that is worse than the apocalypse.
Left: Hey, no rush, we got benefits for you.

Parents: Think about your future.
Left: Future orientation is racist. (Yes, actual teaching material said this.)

I could go on and on... Leftism has always appeared to me a betrayal of the values my parents instilled in me.

To BC,

I've always considered "voluntary tax" as an oxymoron. How can the government demand money from me in any but an involuntary fashion? I'm not talking about the uses of the money, which I ostensibly have some say over through my elected representatives (uh huh, sure...), but the act of demanding the money or collecting it.

While I will match my personal generosity (in terms of my time, my difficult-to-spare money, and the literal blood in my veins) with anybody, I do reserve the right to say "no." When money that I give goes to people who are setting new records for feckless irresponsibility, I do want to call a halt.

What about the whole Progressive Movement? It had some aspects that modern leftists wouldn't like - such as support for eugenics - but in policy terms it was a precursor of social democracy, and influential by 1900.

Is there any chance that Winterspeak is being facetious? This is awfully similar to 'Why Mommy is a Democrat"

So, to you, Adam Smith was a snake oil peddler?

If I am not mistaken, Adam Smith advocated progressive taxation.

If the system inherently tends to concentrate wealth in the hands of relative few, I dont see what is so wrong to adjust (within reason) it to make it more egalitarian.

I suppose that this might account for the fact that Republicans donate more to charity than Democrats, both in numbers and in dollars.

The other interesting fact is that in general "blue" states receive much less from the fedral gov't per tax dollar than red states. So essnetially federal money is being redistributed from rich blue states to poor red states.

Anyway, liberal policies may be "failed" and wasteful. Fine. Charity is also nice. But I think anyone who thinks charity alone is sufficient in solving problems like poverty is as delusional as any "marxisit". Helping people help themselves doesnt have a great track record either. Unfortunately, too many people are content with that.

Oh and "My mother taught me that it was good to share, and to look out for those less fortunate than me."

Jesus taught that as well.

"Helping people help themselves doesn't have a great track record either."

Trying to help people who don't want to help themselves, or who don't have to help themselves because you'll have to help them again, certainly does not have a great track record. Our misguided "liberalism" has created the expectation of continuous support, regardless of personal responsibility. If an irresponsible individual has a child she cannot support, somehow "we" become responsible for that child instead. If an irresponsible individual gets hooked on drugs or addicted to alcohol, "we" become responsible for them instead. It becomes far too easy to be irresponsible when there is "we" who will automatically become responsible instead.

Jane,

I think part of the reason why you will find so many "leftists" in Academia, is because people who really think as backwards as leftists do, would find it very difficult to secure any kind of professional position doing anything of value in the private sector. Only Academia (with the artificial anti-free market, protections of "Tenure") offer the comfort and security that leftists require to speak their drivel and nonsense. Victor Davis Hanson wrote an outstanding essay on this concept of Tenure a while back.

So yeah, there are going to be more leftists in Academia than there would be in any other single profession. That does not surprise me. It shouldn't surprise any of us. What else do you want them to do? Leftists don't typically offer too many other skills that they could market outside of Academia other than being the "Comic Book Guy" and opening a comic book store. They don't bring anything else to the table.

" ... which would argue that whatever broader cultural forces that produced Medicare, Medicaid, and Civil Rights *also* put leftist professers in power ..."

No argument there.

Since I gave Winterspeak a good whack last time about the lack of "ideology" at work here, I'm now a little bemused that the emphasis has shifted to history. I think it'd be putting it a bit strongly to say progressive era ideals (which spawned government-enforced compassion) "put" leftist professors in power -- but they clearly didn't hurt. The 60s radicals just piled onto this effort with their rebellious "antis": anti-capitalism, anti-war, and of course anti-authority.

Strangely, it seems academics who came of age in the 60s didn't take much exception to these earlier top-down policies; almost as if that anti-authority thing was a pose ... and who could possibly be *against* health care and affirmative action for the downtrodden?

In short (!), I'm with you that leftist professors didn't gain power *then* institute these agendas -- but they certainly didn't seem to have any problem with them either. And I'm glad to see ideology back in the discussion.

I think that if you look at the redistribution of tax money from the blue states to the red states, you'll find that it is only because of the high-cost big cities that pay much higher than national average salaries and thus produce more tax dollars. This effect is apparent within states, too, as looking at the highway infrastructure around Albany, NY shows how the state revenues from high-cost downstate are moved upstate, leaving the transportation system around metro New York City a real mess.

And since the high-cost big cities are predominantly democrat/liberal, they are the reason why those states are blue in the first place. Upstate NY is majority Republican (with the exceptions of the larger cities and Ithaca), but the sheer numbers of Democrats in metro NY cast New York as a blue state. I understand that California is the same way, and that if you take San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco out of the picture, the remainder of the state is mainly blue.

I meant, of course, that the remainder of California is mainly RED.

I meant, of course, that the remainder of California is mainly RED.

Looking at an electoral map (county by county) of California following the 2004 election, you can see right where the San Andreas Fault exists. Everything to the "left" of the fault line (with the exception of Orange County) is to the "left" of politics.

Jane,

Winterspeak. Winterspeak! Read before responding. It helps credibility.

- people who really think as backwards as leftists do
- offer the comfort and security that leftists require to speak their drivel and nonsense
- Leftists don't typically offer too many other skills that they could market outside of Academia
- They don't bring anything else to the table

Why not just spit out the seven words and be done with it? "People who disagree with me are e~e~e~evilll."

There are numerous people who would qualify as 'leftist' yet fail your above tests, therefore your above statements are false as presented. Suggest looking into that.

Bryan:

The Progressive Movement certainly did begin earlier, and it also had leftist impact on government and soceity.

However, your argument was that left wing professors produced a left wing populace who then voted for left wing policies.

My argument was that professors have very little influence, and people vote for left wing policies because, inherently, they sound like good ideas. It is in human nature to both be selfish, and to beleive that being selfish is wrong, and this impulse would be there no matter what ideology professors had.

The policy results you cited could not possibly have come about through the left wing teacher->left wing student mechanism you propose because they happened *before* there were left wing teachers en masse producing left wing students. This is not to say there were not left wing elements in soceity (there were), but it's to point out that professors themselves did not produce this legislation, they were part of the same broader social movements that this legislation came out of.

If every left wing teacher was replaced by a libertarian tomorrow, I do not think that society would become a more libertarian place. I think the Academy would get a reputation for being even nuttier than it is now, and the world would continue to chug along much as it does now.

Forget about society as a whole, Bryan -- how many non GMU economists have GMU economists convined to become Large L libertarian?

Ed,

I agree that we should persue sustainable, long term solutions as opposed to encouraging dependency. My point was that for many people the fact that liberal policies dont work is a conveneint excuse to do nothing. Some are honest about it and claim that, despite what liberals/jesus/winterspeak's mom might say, there is no obligation to do anything. Since our society is rights-based (life, liberty etc) it is difficult to wrap one's mind that we could also have obligations. Still, solving issues like persistent poverty makes sense even if you are mostly self-interested. For example, less stress on the healthcare system, reduced crime, more productive society.

"It is in human nature to both be selfish, and beleive (sic) that being selfish is wrong ..."

Pretty sweeping there, Winterspeak, and I have to respectfully disagree -- especially since it appears to be a key part of your stance. Self-evidently contradictory drives are in our *nature*? Why don't we just call ourselves little Freudian misfits and call it a day? I'd say a belief that selfishness is *wrong* -- as opposed to, say, a belief that sharing by our own volition is good -- is more likely to have been guiltily pounded into us by various religions and (darn it! there they are *again*!) ideologies.

Coincidentally, these selfishness-is-bad proponents would appear to share a fair number of ideals with, well, the left -- and by extention, the professorship. The latter distinguish themselves by insisting on their enforcement by government, but they're clearly all singing from the same hymnal. And I seriously doubt they going to these lengths to reinforce our natural instincts.

At this point I *will* compliment you on your range of rationales for this slant: first philosophy (ideology be damned), then history (the 60s came after the 30s), now biology (it's in our nature, they can't change it). I'd suggest math next.

"People who disagree with me are e~e~e~evilll."

Those are your words. They are not mine.

The leftists in Academia that I have encountered believe in all their nonsense and simple rubbish because they have never had to live in the real world where their beliefs and best practices (when put into place) fail every single time they are attempted. So, they run to a world where they get things like "Tenure" to protect them (and their ideas) from critical inquiry.

That is not evil. That is just survival.

There are numerous people who would qualify as 'leftist' yet fail your above tests, therefore your above statements are false as presented. Suggest looking into that.

I'm not looking into anything. I know a live at home with my parents, cellar-dwelling, unemployable, "b*tch at the whole world", "woe is me", "if it feels good you better do it now because life sucks and then you die", leftist when I see one. The majority of these very few leftists aren't e-e-e-evil, but they are harmless. Thank goodness that there are very few of these creatures on the Earth. Better still, they don't tend to marry or reproduce which means they (and their nonsense ideas) tend to die off, unless they attain some level of expertise in Academia. Then they have a built in paycheck for the rest of their life. What is worse, they can infect other impressionable young people (who don't know any better but need to pull grades) with their nonsense. That is when these leftists can do real lasting damage.

Rex:
And since the high-cost big cities are predominantly democrat/liberal, they are the reason why those states are blue in the first place.

Wisconsin falls into the same topography, with Milwaukee and college-town Madison (and, just possibly, visitors from Illinois) barely bluing out the rest of the state.

I think that if you look at the redistribution of tax money from the blue states to the red states, you'll find that it is only because of the high-cost big cities that pay much higher than national average salaries and thus produce more tax dollars.

I dont think this takes away anything from what I said. The money is still flowing from liberal wealthier urban areas to convervative poorer less urban ones.

While it is true that Red states are welfare states, and Red counties in Blue states are welfare counties, it is not true that Blue people subsidise Red people. The Blue states get their higher incomes and taxes from Red people living in them. Well, economically Red, if culturally Blue, anyway.

"Look out for those less fortunate than me."

Yes. Look out for them, and hide in case they try to get your stuff. ;)

If you want to see why people think leftist policies are a good idea I would not bother with schools or universities, I would simply look at home. My mother taught me that it was good to share, and to look out for those less fortunate than me.

I think a bigger reason people lean left is that they don't have a clue about economics, and believe in the erroneous labor theory of value, along with it's mythical corollaries, surplus value and exploitation. They may not necessarily use those terms, but on an intuitive level, they believe in those concepts.

For instance, I'm willing to bet a lot more liberal Democrats are thinking thoughts along the lines of:

we need to put a cap on executive compensation, as well as oil company profits, because those are ill-gotten gains!

than:

the wealthy deserve all of their wealth, but I want to see it redistributed to American ghettoes and the third world anyway, because I like to see the less-fortunate looked out for

I dont think the money of the wealthy is either ill-gotten or deserved. "Deserved" implies that they possess that merit their wealth. Take Bill Gates. Is he so uniquely smarter and more hard working than millinos of people that he deserves to be thousands of times richer than them? I dont deny that he has many of the necessary qualities to make money. But there are thousands, millions of very smart, capable people who make much much less than him. Or put it this way: Is Bill Gates irreplaceble? Does he provide such an invaluable public good/service to society that he deserves all his billions? I have a hard time saying that he does. In many ways, he just happened to be at the right place at the right time. It has nothing to do with him, it just a fact that some people are more fortunate than others. It is also a fact that capitalism makes it easier to make money once you already have a lot of it. You can invest it, pass it on to your children and so on. Thats just how the system works.

Then you ask yourself, is this the ideal way a society can be structured? What good is wealth if a large portion of it tends to be concentrated in the hands of the very few, and many people hardly get any benefits? Dont get me wrong, capitalism is a great system of creating wealth. But it is not the perfect meritocracy some people would like it to be. And even if it were, you could still question whether a perfect meritocracy would be ethical (do we let people with Down Syndrome starve?) Understading economics is great (I agree that liberals sometimes dont), but at the end it comes down to what kind of outcome do you want, and economics is not very helpful in that.

The money is still flowing from liberal wealthier urban areas to convervative poorer less urban ones.

That includes federal money spent on defense. Your argument implies that 'liberal wealthier urban areas' are doing the military a favor by tossing a few bucks of their hard-earned journalism/professor money to the people who have sworn to fight and die for this country.

Your characterization of the leftist paradigm is explored in detail by George Lakoff (who wroke "Don't Think of an Elephant" and a bunch of other books on what Democratic political strategists can learn from linguistics). He says that people see the nation as analogous to the family. Liberals are people who believe in nuturing family, while conservatives are people who believe in authoritarian families.

I actually think there is some value in his observation. Still I find it amusing how confused he is by libertarians, whom he classifies as sort of defective conservatives. It never seems to have occured to him that libertarians are just people who don't accept his analogy.

In many ways, he just happened to be at the right place at the right time.

Yes, and there is perhaps some truth in this for most successful entreupreneurs, but it is a comparable truism that people who get rich by creating wealth from scratch often face a very high amount of frugality and risk in the formative years of their enterprise. Meanwhile others of comparable intelligence and work ethic avoid seeking such opportunities for any number of reasons.

So turn your question around: Does smart and hard-working Joe or Jane Schmoe, who decided to take a comfortable white-collar job at Acme Incorporated and has always had a decent salary, adquately-funded 401(k), and a health benefits plan, deserve to be as rich as someone who spent several years eating a diet of hardtack and swill, desperately making payments against a business loan tied to his or her home equity?

Moreover, people who create large amounts of wealth also tend to do so through business enterprises that, in turn, directly and indirectly create or support jobs for other people. How much wealth does a person 'deserve' for providing that kind of service to society?

Then you ask yourself, is this the ideal way a society can be structured?...Understading economics is great (I agree that liberals sometimes dont), but at the end it comes down to what kind of outcome do you want, and economics is not very helpful in that.

Knowing what kind of outcome you want -- and most people, in my experience, already have a pretty well developed sense of what outcomes they want -- is useless in the absence of a rational analysis of how known human behavior patterns will work for or against the obtaining of that outcome.

This is precisely where economics can be highly useful in evaluating whether the desired outcomes are feasible. Divorce the two, and suddenly either communism or extremist libertarianism look like pretty sweet deals. Save the marriage, and you suddenly have a lot of datapoints available to explain why neither of these, in spite of the wonderful outcomes they seek to obtain, is likely to survive in the real world.

Is he so uniquely smarter and more hard working than millinos of people that he deserves to be thousands of times richer than them? I dont deny that he has many of the necessary qualities to make money. But there are thousands, millions of very smart, capable people who make much much less than him. Or put it this way: Is Bill Gates irreplaceble? Does he provide such an invaluable public good/service to society that he deserves all his billions?

Bill Gates deserves to be thousands of times richer than millions of people for the simple reason that millions of people have chosen to buy Microsoft software over the last three decades, and Gates co-founded that company and still owns almost 10% of the shares. He never held a gun to anybody's head: everyone who purchased his software, came to work for him, or sold their company to him did so of their own volition. These were all free transactions with willing counterparties, therefore whatever he's left with as an end result is fair.

How "smart" or "hard working" Bill Gates is (astoundingly so on both accounts, from what I've read about the early days of Microsoft) is completely beside the point. All that matters is that his company offered something to the world, and the world chose to buy it. These millions of smart, capable people that you refer to, who are worth nowhere near what Bill Gates is worth, had nothing to offer that the world demanded nearly as much as the things Gates and his company had to offer. Or else, a few of them might have, but they squandered it away, not putting it to use because they didn't have the vision to recognize what it was worth - Gates' industry in particular is littered with stories like this (Xerox PARC, Gary Kildall, et. al.).

There are some sports stars who seem to represent the polar opposite of "smart" and "hard working", yet are so naturally endowed that they are among the best at what they do despite being lazy screw-ups. Guess what? They deserve every penny their agents are able to negotiate for them, despite the fact that millions are brighter and have a better work ethic.

It is also a fact that capitalism makes it easier to make money once you already have a lot of it.

Yes, property can be put to work to generate income. It's called investing, and there is nothing illegitimate or exploitative about this (unless you buy into the fallacious labor theory of value, that is). Obviously the more money you have, the more investment income you are able to generate.

you could still question whether a perfect meritocracy would be ethical (do we let people with Down Syndrome starve?)

True, which is sort-of echoed in the second viewpoint I raised in my initial post:

the wealthy deserve all of their wealth, but I want to see it redistributed to American ghettoes and the third world anyway, because I like to see the less-fortunate looked out for

This specific viewpoint is not held by many, since the Left doesn't think the wealthy deserve their wealth anyway, and the Right doesn't consider it just (or prudent) to fund government by "soaking the rich".

Regardless, unless they are hard-line libertarians, objectivists, or anarcho-capitalists, even those who recognize the justice (not to mention the productivity) of the free market tend to favor some sort of government assistance for those who truly can't take care of themselves.

I seriously doubt that voluntary charity wouldn't be enough to keep those with Downs Syndrome from starving, but I for one don't have much of a problem with providing them some taxpayer-funded assistance.

> My point was that for many people the fact that liberal policies dont work is a conveneint excuse to do nothing.

If they don't work, how are they better than "do nothing"? In fact, since they impose additional costs, they're worse than "do nothing".

If you can't do better than "do nothing", perhaps you should find a different line of work.

How "smart" or "hard working" Bill Gates is is completely beside the point. All that matters is that his company offered something to the world, and the world chose to buy it.

Forget about economics for a second. In english, when someone gets something not because of his natural ability but due to circumstances outside of his control, we do not say that person deserves what he got. We say he got lucky. When someone wins a lottery, trying to explain the rules and economics of gambling wont take away from the fact that that person got lucky.

Just because someone gets something because of they way the system works, it doesnt mean it was always theirs to be had and should be taken for granted. Drug companies get limited monopoly power for the drugs they make to provide them with incentive to make more drugs but patent laws can easily be changed to serve society better. God himself did not come down from heaven and tell Bill Gates "Thou shall become obscenely wealthy". He just had the right qualities to benefit from the circumstances he happened to be in.

The truly "fair" price for any good or service is what it would cost you to make it yourself.

How much would it cost you to make Microsoft software on your own? If you got it for less, then you got a great deal. Does Bill Gates "deserve" his fortune? Absolutely. He created a significant amount of value for millions of people, and was rewarded for doing so.

But of course, MS has a different concept of what deserved means. To him, what is deserved is in reference to an egalitarian standard. Though he mentions in passing that what is deserved has something to do with what is earned, he goes on to dismiss that as being of lesser value than the assumed need for equality. And that being the case, we're really just talking past each other.

But I think anyone who thinks charity alone is sufficient in solving problems like poverty is as delusional as any "marxisit". Helping people help themselves doesnt have a great track record either.

Herein lies one of the reasons conservatives and liberals talk past each other: Liberals see poverty as a problem to be solved, while conservatives tend to see it as a permanent part of the human condition that can, at best, be ameliorated. From the former perspective, the persistence of poverty is a never-ending rationale to increase the power of government (since the failure to "solve" the "problem" is seen as prima facie evidence that the government is not sufficiently empowered.) From the latter perspective, private charity is a reasonable approach subject to reasonable tradeoffs.

I've mentioned here before that I once helped administer a church welfare program. It was an enlightening experience. On the one hand, we had working poor who made significant sacrifices to contribute to the welfare fund -- the widow's mite, so to speak. (Our wealthy members nonetheless accounted for the overwhelming majority of the funding.) On the other hand, I think it can be accurately said that the majority of those assisted would happily have turned this safety net into a hammock had we permitted it. We tended to err on the side of generosity, but only to a point, because we knew the sacrifices some of our donors had made to make their donations.

This is not to say that there were not positive experiences. The most positive was my encounter with a young mother on her way to a new job and a new life, whose car broke down in our city. I took a replacement fuel pump to her, which she literally snatched out of my hand and began installing in her car. It's nice to see that kind of willingness to be as self-sufficient as possible, and I consider our assistance to her to have been well applied.

Sensitivity to the desire of donors to see their sacrifices used well doesn't seem to be a consideration when it comes to government "charity." The government can pretty much tax anyone as much as it likes, and then go pour the tax receipts in the gutter. Do I sound bitter? Government was the single greatest obstacle to performing our charitable work the way we would have liked.

Government is constrained by the requirements of law; there is almost no room for discretion. Private charities suffer under no such handicap. They can decide not to help someone for any reason, or no reason at all, though in practice they have criteria they consider reasonable. That's a much better approach, in my opinion. Put another way: Government has powerful constraints on its ability to require people to alter their habits. Private charities have no such constraints.

And, in my experience, bad habits are the root cause of most poverty. That many of the poor were raised with such habits, and are therefore in some sense not to blame for their plight, does not alter this reality -- a truth government has a terrible time coming to terms with. The second leading cause of such habits is mental illness, another reality the government has had a terrible time coming to terms with, but somewhat tangential to this discussion.

Actually, Gates got rich because IBM destroyed the competition (CPM) for him by buying the CPM license for a nominal sum and promises of royalties, and then pricing it higher than they priced MSDOS, thereby depriving CPM's parent company of both royalties and market share.
His mommy served on a board with the chairman of IBM at the time.

Forget about economics for a second. In english, when someone gets something not because of his natural ability but due to circumstances outside of his control, we do not say that person deserves what he got. We say he got lucky. When someone wins a lottery, trying to explain the rules and economics of gambling wont take away from the fact that that person got lucky.

Are you seriously comparing Bill Gates to a lottery winner? Among other things, Gates and Microsoft had the right vision for the future of business computing (a pc on every desk, not mainframes), and they also understood the value of the operating software that would power this vision (hence, they licensed it on a per copy basis). They beat out the competition - not completely, of course, but then again they aren't the only software company who made any money during the past thirty years. How is this like "winning the lottery"?

Saying that plenty of people are smart and hard-working, and therefore deserve as much as Gates has, is overly simplistic. "Smart" and "hard working" are not monolithic qualities that you can measure. Gates was smart in a very specific way, and he also knew what very specific things he and Microsoft needed to work hard on. This way, and these things, were of tremendous value to businesses and consumers, and that is why he is why he is rich and some anonymous math professor with a higher IQ is not.

He just had the right qualities to benefit from the circumstances he happened to be in.

You could say this of everyone. By this sort of reasoning, nobody has a right to anything more than anybody else has.

Back to some of your earlier comments:

Then you ask yourself, is this the ideal way a society can be structured?

Beyond the protection of certain negative rights, society should not be "structured" at all. "Structure" is a euphemism for tyranny.

What good is wealth if a large portion of it tends to be concentrated in the hands of the very few, and many people hardly get any benefits?

Wealth naturally accrues to those who created it. The benefits to "many people" are whatever the individual in question did to get wealthy in the first place. Microsoft provides software to millions (billions?) and jobs to over 70,000, and Gates was a key ingredient in creating this situation. He was not the *only* ingredient, but then again he's far from the only one who has made money, he's just made the most. There are several other Microsoft billionaires, and countless millionaires.

One's rewards in a free market are commensurate to one's contributions. Nobody claimed Bill Gates is responsible for Microsoft's success in toto, and his wealth reflects this - countless others are drawing salaries from the company, and countless others hold MS stock. Gates' wealth ($50 billion or so) actually represents only a small wedge of all of the revenue MS has generated over the years. For that matter, he owns a miniscule fraction of the wealth in the US - the tiny portion that he is responsible for creating.

Bill Gates deserves every penny that he has. He is the purest, most inventive, wealth-creating capitalist that has ever existed. He created billions (dare I say trillions) of dollars of wealth out of thin air for millions and millions of people. Over the last 13 years of my life, I have earned almost $700,000 either working with, configuring, installing, or writing code for Microsoft products. I don't think I am all that unique. There are millions of other people who have done the same thing.

We (those millions and millions of people who work with Microsoft products) are all collectively richer due to Bill Gates and his greed. His life is the most perfect example of why Ayn Rand wrote Alas Shrugged.

The major problem with state-forced "giving" to the poor and misfortunate is that it divorces the actual giver from the recipient, and by doing so, eliminates the force of shame which minimizes the instances in which one person is dependent on another.

Before, if you were down on your luck, and had to reach out for help, it was understood by both parties that you would take the help only so long as it was absolutely necessary, and that you would do everything in your power to get out of the circumstances that landed you there. Today, with government being the intermediary, people are dependent as long as they wish (see Social Security, Medicare, etc.), which is essentially until death. This, of course, leads to ever more people trying to suck the public teat, and the end result will be the collapse of the society.

I give up. My main point was that many wealthy people owe they success at least in part to luck. I dont think it would be such a contentious point. Bill Gates could have easily been from a different background/education and computer industry could also have been different that he had been able to obtain the strong bargaining position that he has. In fact, he could have picked a different field - it wasnt like he had divine providence about the direction of the software industry when he went to college. People in gerenal dont have perfect information when choosing their career. Point is, many things outside his control could have been very different. No, he didnt win the lottery but he was lucky to *some* extent. Taxing people for luck doesnt seem too unfair to me. No is helping some people who are unlucky is a waste.

Beyond the protection of certain negative rights, society should not be "structured" at all. "Structure" is a euphemism for tyranny.

Thats interesting because rich people happen to benefit the most for these rights. Govt protects it with laws, police force and military. It prints and backs currency, provides infrastructure, allows monopoly power in the form of patents, copyrights etc. People with high income therefore benefit more from the government, because government sets the preconditions for wealth to exist, and government provides the infrastructure by which more wealth can be created.

Lastly, some of you are almost willing to credit Bill Gates with the entire IT revolution. PCs would have been invented anyway, and it isnt very hard to imagine them being better. If Microsoft had to share the market with 5 or 10 roughly similar sized companies, it could not have gained nearly as much profit, yet the effect on the industry in terms of generating wealth (providing jobs, software for consumers, etc) would have been similar. The only difference would be that this wealth would be shared much more equally between MS and its competitiors and consumers. PC industry did not have to evolve the way it has. Internet companies of today are an example. Many are clearly very innovative and create tons and tons of wealth for society but simply because it is so easy for competitors to enter, relatively few have been able to generate large profits.

Finally, my one major gripe about liberatrian thinking is that they believe that as long as there is no use of force and all economic activity is voluntary, everything is fine. Consider this: a man and a woman are both working at the same company, doing the same thing equally well, and are equally qualified. Except the woman earns only 80% of her counterpart. Do you think:

A) the woman deserves to get the same pay as the man if she contributes the same value to her employer

B) it is irrelevant that the woman does the same job equally well, what does matter is how much her employer (and the market) is willing to pay her. nobody held a gun to her head and forced her to take this job, and she is free to leave if she feels she is not properly compensated. otherwise she deserves what she is getting

MS,

Re; "...because government sets the preconditions for wealth to exist..."

I disagree. Wealth existed before government, and without wealth there is no need for government. Goverment exists to either, a) expropriate wealth, or b) protect wealth. In a Democracy, the government does a bit of both.

MS,

Re; What the woman deserves to get paid...

B is close. But more precisely, what she deserves is whatever the employer and employee agree to. Agreement is the only applicable standard. There are other standards that politicians and sociologists would prefer to employ, but in the real world, the agreement is all that matters.

MS,

The obvious problem is defining what luck is. For example, if a ditch digger makes $25,000/year for digging ditches, and someone makes $25,000/year as a hand model, do you tax the hand model at a higher rate because he is luckier?

I am not an anarchist, and I believe there is a place for taxes and public expenditures, but the moral hazards involved in redistributionist government are ultimately self-defeating.

A) the woman deserves to get the same pay as the man if she contributes the same value to her employer

B) it is irrelevant that the woman does the same job equally well, what does matter is how much her employer (and the market) is willing to pay her. nobody held a gun to her head and forced her to take this job, and she is free to leave if she feels she is not properly compensated. otherwise she deserves what she is getting

Even a question as superficially simple as this one just isn't quantifiable this way in the real world, because biology isn't egalitarian.

For example, the market price for the female employee may be accounting (due to very real and irrefutable biological reasons) for the fact that the female employee on average is at a greater risk for needing to take six weeks' leave during the course of her career, and possibly more than once. The real cost of this possibility to the employer -- hiring a temp or else paying overtime to other employees for covering her workload, for example, plus skillset depletion or missed training exercises during the absence -- might well consume a 20% salary difference and then some.

Forcing the employer to make up the wage difference anyway might satisfy someone's egalitarian longings, but it might also be a distortion of the market that causes a loss in production or service efficiency, including a net reduction in employment and higher prices to consumers. Exactly how would one go about predicting that, and if it were to occur, is it worth the price?

Lastly, some of you are almost willing to credit Bill Gates with the entire IT revolution. PCs would have been invented anyway, and it isnt very hard to imagine them being better.

Bill Gates didn't invent PCs. Bill Gates invented operating systems and applications to make PCs valuable to the ordinary, everyday, consumer. It wasn't too long ago when senior executives at large computer companies used to believe that ordinary people would never have use for a computer. That same exec probably had an electronic typewriter on his desk. Bill (and his inventiveness) changed all that.

Besides, you can't make these remarks anyway. How can you assume that if Bill hadn't have come along the IT revolution would have been better? That is a strawman if I've ever heard one. You can't make that statement anymore than I can claim that if Jonas Salk hadn't come around someone else would have found a better and more effective cure for Polio. And if that sounds silly (because you can't even imagine a 21st century world filled with Iron Lungs and children who will die at very young ages), we are still waiting for someone to find that cure for Cancer.

Microsoft created the information age as we know it. The fact that you and I are even having this conversation may be a direct result of someone writing the Microsoft code (depending on what environment Jane set up her website.)

I'm just saying IT revolution would have come about anyway. Microsoft, at best, hastened the process, and at worst, stiffled competition that could have made it better. It hard to argue this but I just dont believe Bill is some saint without whom we would still be using typewriters. If not Microsoft, another company (or 2 or 10) would have eventually come along to make it happen. It is certainly *possible* that things could have turned out better in the long run. Maybe instead of praising Bill Gates, we should be praising Al Gore for taking initiative to create the internet =) Yes, lets give credit where it is due but not go overboard.

anony-mouse,
Even if that were to completely account for women getting paid less, paying ALL women (regardless of age, marital status, intent on having children, ability to telecommute) 20% less than men seems like a very bad solution. 3rd party pregnancy insurance or pregnancy savings accounts would be much better. Maybe asymmetrical information is the real reason? =)

I can not understand all the venom directed against professors here. My major dictated that I take courses in a wide range of fields - math, physics, computer science, economics, statistics. I also took a number of courses in oddly enough Asian history.

I found my professors to be extremely intelligent, hard-working, capable individuals. I saw international students flock to US schools at great cost because they thought there was value there. The best studies I saw on education did suggest a real positive income effect not driven by signaling.

Finally, Winterspeak writes "that most people claim" that the Academy turned leftward in the 1960s. I don't know about that. But I do know the Economist's poll of leading economists turned sharply against Bush after watching him govern for four years. I would guess a lot of scientists find it hard to support a party that advocates for intelligent design and regards global warming as a massive hoax. I know a lot of economists find it hard to support a party whose leader proclaims that his tax cuts have paid for themselves.

Tom

And I would guess a true scientist would roll his eyes at that most excellent collection of straw men and distortions.

Didn't your professors teach you the value of factual accuracy, Tom?

Re: the "rich people benefit most from government" theme -- Hogwash. Wealth exists because of disparities in ability and good fortune, which will always exist unless you go with the full Harrison Bergeron treatment. Wealth has also always translated into increased power -- generally more than sufficient power to preserve and expand wealth. Who needs the police when you've got a private army? How many peasant revolts successfully looted the baron's castle? Even if the baron only has a handful of hired retainers, if they've got armor and war hammers and you've got a stick, smart money bets on the baron.

Historically, the result of wealth's empowering effect is aristocracy: Those whose forebears got wealthy at some point have all the power, and there's a sharp demarcation between them and the commoners. Democracy changes that. On the one hand, the common people have access to political power, and the social gap between them and the rich isn't as pronounced (at least formally -- here, even waiters get called "sir"). The wealthy lose their monopoly on power -- but in exchange, since the rule of the strong is replaced by a rule of law which provides for much greater social stability and broader wealth, they benefit from the opportunity to amass a greater absolute amount of wealth than the old-style feudal aristocrats did. (How much wealth the guys at the top of the pyramid make depends on the size of the pyramid's base; the pyramid is a lot taller when its base is a stable society of millions than when it's a feudal county of a handful of manure-spread villages.)

If wealth were a function of government, it would follow that the more government, the more wealth. In that case, the USSR should have been the wealthiest country in the world. No, what's critical is that you have the right amount of government -- not too much (which stifles wealth-creation) and not too little (which historically allows the wealthy to accumulate all the power, but at the cost of limiting their ability to amass more wealth.)

That said, I do think it's legitimate for government to take account of the fact that wealth gives advantages, and adjust the operation of government accordingly. I think it's fair, for example, to require a landlord to observe certain rules concerning a tenant's security deposit, so as to minimize the inherent advantage the landlord has in a dispute.

(Now pardon me while I finish drafting my complaint.)

The truly "fair" price for any good or service is what it would cost you to make it yourself.

What, then, would be a "fair price" of a life-size replica of the Sears Tower made entirely of faeces?

Bob,

Well, someone would have to want it, of course. It wouldn't be worth crap to me.

TheProudduck,

I admire your name, but I missed the substance behind your comment/taunt.

Bush has said his tax cuts pay for themselves on multiple occasions. Republican Senator James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has declared global warming a massive hoax. And it was Republicans in Kansas that fought to bring intelligent design into the schools. Bush has backed them.

Which of those were the straw men or factual inaccuracies? Are there conservatives with different views? Sure, they just don't seem to have much power or voice.

Tom

Tom G
You've twice stated as fact that GWB tax cuts didn't pay for themselves. Can you demonstrate that?
All I know is that the economy has grown ever since (against a background of an inherited recession and 9/11) at a pretty fast clip and that tax receipts have gone up pretty substantially.
Please don't tell me that we have a big deficit - I'm sure you know that it is driven by the huge jump in spending on his watch.

Great Trojan horse, Jane. We have devolved into the ethics of the Gates fortune. An intersting topic for me because I noticed that that the work I did in 1966 one summer at LTV could have been done quickly by a computer, work moving a column of figures across a large page by successive algebraic steps. My conclusion, not knowing what might be called the heroic effort of impoverished Mr. Ling in eastablishing the avionics basis of his company, was, in part, to think that 'the workers should own the means of production' to make progress. That is what the professors you refer to, in a sense, do. The question about Bill Gates might be rephrased as, 'Am I a victim of Bill Gates?' Well he won a race I didn't even know I was in, which wasn't quite as satisfactory as losing a 440 to somebody who had magnificent legs, at least I knew the race. So I may feel that way. But then am I a victim of Christopher Columbus? Well decidedly not as the French might not have moved my Irish genes to Montreal in time, 1823, and the 2 situations in my mind are philosophically equivalent.

What, then, would be a "fair price" of a life-size replica of the Sears Tower made entirely of faeces?

In terms of bran muffins?

Paul -

First, consider how MS started off. Purchasing a liscence to a version of DOS (among several versions) and marketing it to IBM with a deal that IBM miscalculated. Great business decision. Not exactly a technical work of art.

The great innovations didn't come from MS; Xerox and the GUI interface. CERN and IP. etc.

Bill Gates is a brilliant business man who wrote in his book "the road ahead" that it would be a breakthrough to find a way to factor prime numbers. Can't he hire a technically literate proofreader with all his cash? I mean, if he just said it it would be forgivable, maybe. But wrote it in a book?

Microsoft had some great business ideas; partnering with clients, bundling software, supporting hardware from a variety of OEMs and other marketing alliances.

Offhand, I can't think when MS was a technical leader in anything. Maybe you can. But they were good at business and good at playing catch-up. Which is one reason why I think it's fair to say "if not MS, then somthing else." Maybe a variety of OSes and a Java virtual machine to promote a uniform user experience. Maybe Apple would have been a worse monopoly than MS if Gates were gone, given that they were so uptight about controlling their hardware. Who knows? Tech companies tend towards killer aps and domination by one or two firms, so it's hard to believe that OSes would have been fragmented forever, whatever happened.

Sure, Bill Gates "deserves" to be rich. But every indication is there that the most important technical innovations would have been acheived and promoted by someone else if not him.

Gazer,

Here's a good summary: http://www.cbpp.org/3-8-06tax.htm

No real economist, even Bush appointees, believes that at current levels tax cuts pay for themselves. Greg Mankiw, Bush choice to chair the council of Economic Advisors "compare an economist who says that tax cuts can pay for themselves to a 'snake oil salesman trying to sell a miracle cure.'"

The growth of the Bush years has not been extraordinary. It has been lower than under Clinton, and about average for the last thirty years. Yes, we recovered from a recession, but we always recover from recessions. Do you have some reason to be that this recession was going to be another great Depression.

Tom

Ryan,

You and others are probably right that if Microsoft hadn't done it, somebody else would have. But then that someone else would have been the one making all the money. The equation doesn't change. The person who creates the wealth is the person who deserves the profit.

We don't reward potential or existance. We reward achievement. So what happens if the egalitarians are succesful in changing this? Well, it seems obvious to me that a society that stops rewarding achievement will cease to achieve. Do you prefer equality to achievement?

I could not disagree more. The danger of leftists left unchecked in academia is a society that forgets its own heritage.

http://www.jacksonville.com/community/cc/bryant/stories/061406/06090671004.shtml

I am a Community Columnist (blogger) for the Florida Times-Union, and wrote the article listed above a few months ago. You may concider the above URL a detailed rebuttle.

I look forward to your response.

Tom,

Great article. You've obviously put considerable thought into the issue. But it is a conspiracy theory.

Bottom line, we have nothing to fear from communists, left leaning professors, or even dedicated conspirators if such exist. Why not? Because leftist theories don't work. The folks who follow such idiocy will always fail. And those who cling to the ethics of family, work, and education will continue to succeed. Its a damn shame that so many are so confused, but to be honest, their problems aren't my problem. If they ask, I tell them the truth - but if they choose not to follow my advice, hey, they're free people... And freedom means also the freedom to fail, or it means nothing at all.

Bush has said his tax cuts pay for themselves on multiple occasions. Republican Senator James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has declared global warming a massive hoax. And it was Republicans in Kansas that fought to bring intelligent design into the schools. Bush has backed them. Which of those were the straw men or factual inaccuracies?

Actually a better question of which of these are supported by actual citations so that the readers can verify what was actually said rather than the poster’s (mis)characterization of what someone may or may not have said. The answer so far is “none.”

Finally, my one major gripe about liberatrian thinking is that they believe that as long as there is no use of force and all economic activity is voluntary, everything is fine. Consider this: a man and a woman are both working at the same company, doing the same thing equally well, and are equally qualified. Except the woman earns only 80% of her counterpart. Do you think:

A) the woman deserves to get the same pay as the man if she contributes the same value to her employer
B) it is irrelevant that the woman does the same job equally well, what does matter is how much her employer (and the market) is willing to pay her. nobody held a gun to her head and forced her to take this job, and she is free to leave if she feels she is not properly compensated. otherwise she deserves what she is getting

Actually the correct answer is “C” as in “the idea that women on the aggregate are being paid less than their equally qualified male counterparts for doing the same job is a myth.” But thanks for playing.

Thorley,

Actually, I was suprised to discover not long ago that it is not entirely a myth. I saw a table that showed that in general, and in nearly every job category, women make less than men on average (I'll try to find it again if you're interested). But its still irrelevant. A fair wage is the wage the employer and employee agree to. If women are agreeing to work for less, then it is absolutely fair that they are being paid less.

Tom,

If President Bush ever claimed that the tax cuts he signed "paid for themselves" (whatever that means) entirely, I missed it. It would be a hard thing to measure in any case: How do you associate increases and decreases in tax revenues with specific adjustments to the tax code, when the energy of the entire economy (which has a much more significant effect on tax receipts) is fluctuating?

That said, I think the theory is sound that when tax revenues are so high that they discourage economic activity, lowering tax rates can in fact generate more tax revenue than would be received otherwise. The problem is that no one has ever precisely located the magic point on the Laffer curve that maximizes revenues. It's probably lower than the 70% top rate that Reagan cut, but it can be fairly debated whether cutting rates much below their present level won't reduce revenues rather than raising them.

Anyway, that's a long-winded response to your statement that Bush had said the tax cuts "paid for themselves." In my job, I'm accustomed to people putting a healthy spin on what people have said or done, so I tend to like to see the orginal quote before I accept the premise of the paraphrase.

You said the Republican party "advocates intelligent design." Intelligent-design advocates are usually Republican, but not all Republicans, obviously, advocate intelligent design, nor is it in the party platform. If I recall President Bush's statements on the subject, he was fairly noncommital, making some half-baked comment about "teaching the controversy," of which there really shouldn't be much. (I like the approach of my high school biology teacher to "teaching the controversy": After introducing evolution, he said "Some people believe that species were created by God in their present form. Go ask them about it if you're interested." And then back to mutation rates.)

"Global warming": As presented by actual scientists, with all the provisos and caveats and ranges and uncertainties disclosed, global warming is a credible theory that enjoys a substantial scientific consensus. As presented by the activist Left, Al Gore being prominent among them, "global warming" is absolutely a hoax. There is no credible scientific consensus behind the alarmist projections of massive sea level rise, monster hurricanes, and so forth. Gore and the political global warming lobby do exactly what other leftists accuse the Bush administration of doing with Iraq: They exaggerate the certainty of their evidence and consistently present the worst-case scenario as imminent, without regard to the lack of evidence for its likelihood.

That said, the "Republican party," or at least the Bush administration, has acknowledged the scientific consensus that the earth is warming and that human C02 emissions are likely a major cause of it.

> The money is still flowing from liberal wealthier urban areas to convervative poorer less urban ones.

Correction - there is TAX money flowing from liberal urban areas.

Folks in those "liberal urban areas" get that money by exploiting folks in the less urban areas.

Actually, I was suprised to discover not long ago that it is not entirely a myth. I saw a table that showed that in general, and in nearly every job category, women make less than men on average (I'll try to find it again if you're interested).

I’d be curious to see both it and the methodology behind the numbers. I suspect that they’re defining “job category” rather broadly (e.g. janitors to school teachers) and not accounting for number of years on the job, education levels and type, number of hours worked, etc. At least that’s been the case every time I’ve seen someone has tried to pass off the “women only make 70+ cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts” meme in the past.

"Global warming": As presented by actual scientists, with all the provisos and caveats and ranges and uncertainties disclosed, global warming is a credible theory that enjoys a substantial scientific consensus. As presented by the activist Left, Al Gore being prominent among them, "global warming" is absolutely a hoax. There is no credible scientific consensus behind the alarmist projections of massive sea level rise, monster hurricanes, and so forth. Gore and the political global warming lobby do exactly what other leftists accuse the Bush administration of doing with Iraq: They exaggerate the certainty of their evidence and consistently present the worst-case scenario as imminent, without regard to the lack of evidence for its likelihood.

That said, the "Republican party," or at least the Bush administration, has acknowledged the scientific consensus that the earth is warming and that human C02 emissions are likely a major cause of it.

Well put. There’s a huge difference between saying that the best scientific evidence we have is that human activity may be causing the Earth’s temperature to increase at an unnatural rate and what if anything we should do about it. Personally I think that the administration’s approach by working to reduce methane emissions (which give you more bang for your environmental buck both in the medium and long-term) and helping China and India (which were both exempt from Kyoto) to utilize cleaner coal technology for their power needs are more prudent steps than something as costly as Kyoto. Where I differ with the administration is that I’ve become a convert to higher CAFÉ standards for non-commercial vehicles and would favor a higher gasoline tax (with a commensurate reduction in the income tax) to pay for the full cost of driving (air pollution and the costs of our Middle Eastern foreign policy).

MS,

Forget about economics for a second. In english, when someone gets something not because of his natural ability but due to circumstances outside of his control, we do not say that person deserves what he got. We say he got lucky.

"In [E]nglish," someone's "natural ability" is by definition "due to circumstances outside of his [or her] control." People don't "deserve" natural talents any more than they "deserve" to win repeatedly at roulette.

And this:

Consider this: a man and a woman are both working at the same company, doing the same thing equally well, and are equally qualified. Except the woman earns only 80% of her counterpart['s pay].

Well, the libertarian take on that would be that the employer is a perfect idiot for paying the man 25% overscale merely for having the right, er, plumbing. If everything else really is equal, of course.

Randy,

Well, as you probably suspect I respectfully disagree with you.

You are correct in saying people have the right to be wrong or to fail. Couldn't agree more. But at the risk of sounding extremely cliche'd, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

The fact that Leftist policies and ideas are devoid of merit won't stop a true believer from trying to implement them. The question is how did they become true believers?

By a steady drumbeat of Leftist, collectivist propaganda lead by persons in positions of authority, pounded into their heads as children. By the slow and steady erosion of the family as the source of moral teaching, only to be replaced by the schools (condoms anyone?). By refusing to promote only those who refuse to tow the "party line" (remember the Leftist professor who refused to give recommendations to potential med school students who didn't believe in evolution?) By telling students what political beliefs they should have (remember the teacher who showed the anti-Bush filmstrip in class?) Yes its a conspiracy theory, but not without evidence and conclusions that logically follow that evidence.

Even if I'm wrong about the "conspiracy" itself, its still dangerous to allow Liberal's errors or machinations to go unchallenged. We did that once with the MSM with Vietnam. They tried it again with Iraq - continue to try it, in fact - but now it doesn't go unchallenged thanks to the blogisphere and talk radio.

We are now vigilant against MSM lies and distortions, and take action against it for the purpose of promoting the truth which keeps us free. Even cliche's can occasionally hold great wisdom. (And if I'm right about the "Gramsci conspiracy" thats all we're really talking about - challenging their "facts" and fighting to see that all sides of an issue or subject are presented fairly. The exact same thing we're doing with the MSM. All it takes for the truth to be known is for someone to speak up.)

Thank you Randy for the thoughtful response. This is my first visit to this blog (linked from Michelle Malkin). If this is indicitive of the quality of the respondents, I'll be visiting often.

Your new friend (in the tin foil hat)

Tom

Tom,

In my opinion, this is one of the better blogs in terms of intelligent discussions. Not to many total idiots, and not so many people that you can't get a word in edgewise.

You've got a good point about true believers attempting to implement their ideas regardless of merit. The Soviet Union is an excellent example - Islamic fundamentalism another. But I've noticed that really bad ideas tend to get rolling best among really stupid populations. And I just don't think that most Americans are particularly stupid. We don't fall for leftist ideas because we know they don't work. We may try them on for size in our youth, but quickly shed them for more utilitarian principles as we mature.

I also want to compliment the blog on its quality. I only recently began visiting here, but have been very impressed with the bloggers and the commenters (some of whom I recognize from other forums).

"...a higher gasoline tax (with a commensurate reduction in the income tax) to pay for the full cost of driving (air pollution and the costs of our Middle Eastern foreign policy)." I'd certainly agree with that IF I thought we'd ever see the reduction in income tax - but as things really work in Washington, a higher gas tax would just mean more money for the politicians to waste.

Back on topic, left-wing academics can hurt us in several ways:

1) Journalists learn from those left-wing professors, and most journos either have some sort of natural inclination towards socialism, or lack the intelligence and skepticism to throw off the indoctrination. So you get left-tilted reporting nearly everywhere. For instance, look at how defensive use of guns is hardly ever reported. Although most people are aware of a bias, few of them are energetic enough to hunt for alternative news sources, and I do not think it is possible to mentally discount for bias sufficiently to compensate for such consistently one-sided reporting.

2) They long ago turned teacher education into left-wing indoctrination. It only works on the weak-minded, but look at the average SAT scores of education majors - and when they graduate and get their union cards, they then get to indoctrinate your children before they are old enough to resist. This is not a product of the 1960's - when I went to public schools (class of '71) there was a distinct left-wing tilt among most teachers who'd graduated college in the 1950's and even earlier, somewhat restrained by conservative principals and school boards. I think that a large part of the leftist student activism that swung the colleges so far to the left in the late 1960's was a result of kids who hadn't yet shaken off their indoctrination in the public schools.

3) As others have mentioned, academians are distorting and losing our history. They write the history, oops I mean "Social Studies" books and they teach the teachers. I was fortunate enough to learn from history books written by an earlier and more conservative generation of professors, and to have some history and government teachers who had avoided or shaken off the lefty indoctrination, but most high school graduates now are not only abysmally ignorant about the history of this country, but what little they think they know is badly warped. So I grew up knowing that this country was founded by men who deeply distrusted governmental power while recognizing a need for a certain amount of it; modern graduates mainly know that Washington had wooden teeth and Jefferson raped slaves...

"In [E]nglish," someone's "natural ability" is by definition "due to circumstances outside of his [or her] control." People don't "deserve" natural talents any more than they "deserve" to win repeatedly at roulette.

Why stop there? It would be perfectly defensible to say that NOTHING AT ALL is within his (fine w/o her btw) control, and that people are ENTIRELY products of outside forces. But it is not helpful to go in that direction.

Anyway, I partially covered that angle by saying that a perfect meritocracy still wouldn't be just.

MS,

If you write

[W]hen someone gets something not because of his natural ability but due to circumstances outside of his control, we do not say that person deserves what he got[,]

you are saying by implication that "his natural ability" is not a "circumstance outside of his control." Otherwise the sentence makes no sense at all.

There is a case, obviously, for differentiating pure windfall from gains made through the exercise of natural talents, though good luck disentangling the two in the real world. And naturally you're free to argue that even exercising the talents you have is only another natural talent itself — a product of heredity or environment or both, take your pick. Sure; and you're quite right that taking that line leads you exactly nowhere. My point was only that making a distinction between "natural abilities" and "circumstance[s] outside of [one's] control," while prefacing the whole farrago with the comment that this is how we say things in the English language, is, erm, silly.

MS,

I forgot to address this:

Anyway, I partially covered that angle by saying that a perfect meritocracy still wouldn't be just.

Well, you didn't actually say that; you said this:

[Y]ou could still question whether a perfect meritocracy would be ethical (do we let people with Down Syndrome starve?)

A suggestion that one might question whether a system would be ethical is not the same thing as a frank declaration that it would be unjust. As for letting people with Down Syndrome starve, this isn't really the best hypothetical for your purposes, because we have. Or do you not remember the "Infant Doe" case of the early 80s? The baby in the case had a common defect of Down Syndrome children, a gastrointestinal blockage that prevented her receiving nourishment. It was easily correctable by surgery; the hospital was willing to do the surgery free of charge; there were many prospective adoptive parents; but the birth parents refused permission and the baby starved to death.

It's inconceivable that any court would have let that happen if the infant had been mentally normal; we can conclude, I think, that the child starved to death because she had Down Syndrome and for no other reason. I don't think this is possible now, because the immediate reaction of the Reagan Administration to this case was to order the Justice Department to look out for similar instances of denial of necessary medical care to handicapped American citizens. For some reason, IIRC, certain civil libertarians took exception to this.

Thorley and TheProudDuck,

Both of you express skepticism that I am fairly characterizing people's opinions. Let me provide one example.

Bush on tax cuts:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/02/20060208-7.html
"One of the interesting things that I hope you realize when it comes to cutting taxes is this tax relief not only has helped our economy, but it's helped the federal budget. In 2004, tax revenues to the Treasury grew about 5.5 percent. That's kind of counter-intuitive, isn't it? At least it is for some in Washington. You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase."
Would you accept that statement can be characterized as saying that his tax cuts paid for themselves? How else could tax relief "help" the budget?

I am confused by TheProudDuck's assertion that "t can be fairly debated whether cutting rates much below their present level won't reduce revenues rather than raising them." I am unaware of any real economist who believes that this is subject to debate. Mankiw's "snake oil" comment certainly suggests he does not believe the issue is open to debate. Nor am I aware of any evidence to support a debate here. I was asked for a citation and I provided it. Can you provide one for me?

Tom

In 2004, tax revenues to the Treasury grew about 5.5 percent.

I'm not an economics expert, but wasn't the economy rather in the toilet just a year or two before that? While you might be right, you still need to prove that this isn't a case of post hoc ergo prompter hoc.

Is there some kind of 'baseline' we can compare the effect of tax cuts to that would help moderate the year to year fluctuations?

Ryan,

Even on its own the 5.5% is not very impressive, when you consider inflation and normal economic growth.

Arbitrarily let's take the last few decades. In 1970 to 1980 total tax receipts grew 10% a year (inflation). From 1980 to 1990 they grew by 7% a year. From 1990 to 2000, they grew by 7% a year.

Tom

Michelle,

Actually I haven't heard about that Infant Doe (I was too young then and not in the US). Anyway, I think the fate of Baby Doe is not as important as public reaction to it, which was, from what I gather, that her parents' decision was unethical (some called it "infanticide"). It even motivated congress to pass legislation in 1984 prohibiting the withholding of "medically indicated" treatment from any disabled newborn.

As for your comment on "natural ability", I agree I should have been more clear. Your point is well taken. Regardless, most people perceive natural ability somewhat differently than pure luck. For example most people are happy with talanted scientisist or musicians being rewared for their skills regardless of whether those skills are in their control or not. I dont think the sentiment is quite the same when someone just happens to win a lottery out of dumb luck.

In general, we reward capable individuals because doing so makes society as a whole better off. Rewarding people for luck doesn't make as much sense.

In general, we reward capable individuals because doing so makes society as a whole better off. Rewarding people for luck doesn't make as much sense.

Okay...so some people win the lottery or are born to wealthy parents; that might be something to go by. Reasonable taxes on winnings and estates ought to cover a majority of those cases.

But what about the person who is 'lucky' enough to be at the right place at the right time, but then uses natural ability to exploit the opportunity? Meanwhile, perhaps dozens of other people were faced with the same 'lucky' opportunity, but didn't possess the skill -- physical ability, foresight, whatever -- to exploit it, so their names are never known.

Thus, only the people who take advantage of the opportunity are readily identifiable. How does it follow that the next step is to target their luck for redistribution? In short, I have no arguments with the sentiment, but in the real world, the separating of one from the other is fraught with peril.

Target 'luck' over-zealously, and you might just convince the next person who recognizes an opportunity, to deliberately avoid it.

1. To go along with Thorley on Women/Men Salaries:
I had understood that, controlling for years of uninterrupted experience (the best predictor of job success and thus salary), and controlling for hours worked per week, And controlling for the fact that a recent paper just determined that ~12% salary difference between men and women is attributable to sick days taken on a 28 day cycle...There is not any notable compensation difference between women and men.

2. Gates & Deserving
I don't think you can take desert, and make it mean anything at all, unless you apply it to Gates. And this as an Open Source + Java guy. What Gates did, like what most people with absurd amounts of $, is make everyone's life better by providing a product that people wanted to pay for, and doing it by working extremely hard, taking big financial risks, and accurately predicting how the future is going to go sometimes. If you can't say Gates deserves, then the Kenyans who win marathons don't either, and you don't have desert as an english word any more.

MS,

Re; "...we reward capable individuals because doing so makes society as a whole better off."

That's close, but not quite. Society rewards accomplishment, not capability. We don't really care about the role of luck, environment, potential, or anything else of the sort. We are only interested in value, and it is the accomplishment, not the capability, that adds value. But you are absolutely correct that this propensity does make society as a whole better off.

All I was trying to point out in bringing up Bill Gates was that luck was a factor in his success to *some* extent (definitely not all), which I think is undeniable. If you are free to use a different example.

Randy,
I'm fine with your correction. However, we do still care about things like luck and misfortune. An economic system based on free markets doesn't, but people do. There is a difference.

I think we are getting a bit closer to agreement here...

MS,

You're absolutely right that people do care about such things. Which is why so many are so shocked to find that the market doesn't. But in my experience, once one comes to terms with the idea that the market only cares about the value one can produce, and not a bit about one's innate value as a human being, it all starts to make sense. If I want comfort, I can turn to my family, friends, or church. If I want to make money, I can turn to the market.

Tom G: Bush said that tax revenues increased after the tax cuts. That statement is objectively true. What's your problem with that?

You are implying that tax revenues would have increased even more if tax rates had not been lowered. That's speculative enough that it's hardly fair to say that taking the opposite position is evidence of an unscientific mind.

MS,

I think the fate of Baby Doe is not as important as public reaction to it, which was, from what I gather, that her parents' decision was unethical (some called it "infanticide").

Aaargh. It was infanticide, though "murder" saves a couple of syllables and makes the point clearer. What else can you call deliberately withholding necessary (and, btw, free) medical treatment from someone, with the certain knowledge that doing so will result in death? Suppose the baby had been able to feed, but the parents just locked it in a closet and went on a week's vacation? I can see no difference.

Thorley Winston,

If you're still around, I found a link to the table I mentioned.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.pdf

TheProudDuck,

I anticipated your reaction and tried to head it off by highlighting the comment about helping our budget: "this tax relief not only has helped our economy, but it's helped the federal budget"

The tax cuts helped the federal budget. What did he mean by that?

Tom

Tom: He was clearly suggesting that the tax cuts had something to do with the increase in revenues.

You seem to think that's patently untrue. While it's true that correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, can anyone demonstrate conclusively that revenues would have increased by an equal or greater amount had the tax cuts not been in place? Wouldn't that require you to rule out the possibility that the tax cuts had something to do with the post-2003 economic recovery?

You may well be right that the 2003 tax cuts were a negative drain on the budget. But you were treating your position as so certain that disagreement with it should be tantamount to scientific illiteracy.

TheProudDuck,

Apparently I misinterpreted your comment before that what Bush said was objectively true. I am glad that we agree the he did in fact claim that his tax cuts pay for themselves.

And yes such a position is tantamount to scientific illiteracy. Remember Bush's choice to lead his council of economic advisors compared that purveyors of that view to "snake oil salesmen." Can you provide some serious economic study supporting this idea?

Your correlation comment seems odd to me. Are you assuming that an annual increases in tax revenue is not simply normal. There is no correlation here. For a correlation, you would have to show that growth was higher than usual following a tax cut.

Tom G.

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