Re: Atheists: America's most distrusted minority

On Mon, 03 Jul 2006 11:53:22 -0700, Charlie Edmondson
<edmondson@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Josh Hill wrote:

I disagree. Wealth consists of ownership. Own a business, and you get
a slice of the labor that people put into that business, a slice of
what people pay to purchase its products. Own a bond, and you own a
debt -- the right to receive interest and principal. In effect, wealth
allows you get to suck some blood out of the economic activities of
others whether they like it or not. So it's just like a tax, a tax
that benefits you.

That can be justified economically and morally if the ownership is a
reward for something someone has done -- inventing a new gadget,
building a railroad, doing without some of the money you've earned so
that a company can expand or a neighbor can build a house. But if it
isn't a reward for something someone has done, then it's just
parasitism, the legal right to suck money out of the labor of others
and spend it on oneself. And that's no different from welfare.


I see, you get upset when someone horns in on the government's
business... 8-)

It isn't parasitism, it is CAPITALism, the providing of capital (ok,
capitol/capital, I might have it backwards, again... 8-) ) that is the
foundation of our economy. Only if someone is willing to back an
endevour with the fruits of their labor, can that endevour succeed.

Inheritance has little to do with capitalism and incentive, and
everything to do with hereditary aristocracy, the system that came
before. It is the very antithesis of capitalism, since for the most
part it uses wealth to reduce incentive rather than increasing it.

You
just have class envy that some have been able to earn more money than
you, or have an easier life than you.

Charlie, as it happens, I'm the upper-middle-class graduate of a
prominent prep school and an Ivy League college. I grew up with 1250
acres in the country and a townhouse in Manhattan and a maid who made
my bed, and, sadly, I can earn more in an hour or two than many
Americans earn in a week. And really, that means nothing, except that
it makes it rather unlikely that I would harbor class resentment to
anyone short of the Queen of England.

I resent the insinuation that my concern for the poor has anything to
do with petty jealousy or personal resentment. I don't think you
realize it, but you've made a smear of the highest order, the sort of
smear that has the effect of justifying greed by claiming that those
with generous hearts are secretly bad, resentful, and self-centered.
It strikes at the very possibility of generosity and decency and
concern for one's fellow citizens and country and world, and it
strikes below the belt.

If money was that important to
me, I could probably have a lot more of it, but it really isn't. I have
enough.

And you think you're alone in that? Do you really think that if money
were important to me I'd be advocating that we share more of it? Or,
alternatively, that I'm a poor, uneducated guy from the wrong side of
the tracks who looks at the big bad capitalists with jealous rage?

You just seem to have housed the green eyed monster of envy,
and appear to be a closet Soviet - you can have stuff, just not more
than I have...

Charlie, that's a fucking lie. Sorry, and if the moderators want me to
resend this message with more considered language, I suppose I'll have
to. But you're just making stuff up with which to smear me at this
point, even going so far in your slander as to call me a Communist,
and I think that requires strong language.

What has happened to the American heart?

Is it really so inconceivable to so many of today's Americans that
someone could care about those less fortunate in their choice of
parents than themselves, or believe that every child should have the
same rich opportunities he did?

I feel ashamed for my country.

--
Josh

"I love it when I'm around the country club, and I hear people talking about the debilitating
effects of a welfare society. At the same time, they leave their kids a lifetime and beyond
of food stamps. Instead of having a welfare officer, they have a trust officer. And instead
of food stamps, they have stocks and bonds."

- Warren Buffett

.

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