Equality?

[PaulS1950]

Equality in human terms is not equal pay but rather an opportunity that is available to each individual to achieve any level of success that they are willing to work for.
Some find success in having enough money to have the necessities and a bit left over while others see success in building a business that helps those who don't want to run a business of their own to reach the level of success that they aspire to.
There are very few people who are willing to put in the 16 - 18 hour days for years on end that it takes to make a business successful. Fewer still who will risk everything they own to try to make their own way into a successful career as a buisinessperson. Most would rather go to work for someone else who provides all the work, the building and pays all the costs associated with a business including the wages of the individuals who are working for them.
You are free, in these United States, to leave your place of employment to start your own business but few do so because they would rather settle for the wages paid every month by the man who did just that.

 

[Rebekah]

I wouldn't really say that people "settle" for wages by working for someone else or for an established company, actually, I think it's very normal and natural to fear risking everything you have in the bank or invested in your belongings in order to build your own business from scratch, especially when the vast majority of new businesses fail. I fully agree that most people don't want to work 16-18 hour days for years in order to build a business, but I do think that a lot of those people don't want that type of commitment because of family, school, social life, and so on.

 

[9thIDdoc]

It has always seemed to me that most successful businessmen have found a way to become wealthy from someone else's hard work.

 

[9thIDdoc]

 

[Katzndogz]

Equality and freedom are mutually exclusive terms.

 

[percysunshine]

2+2=4

 

[Wiseacre]

It has always seemed to me that most successful businessmen have found a way to become wealthy from someone else's hard work.

You say that like it's a bad thing, typical leftwing liberal crap, bashing success. They took a chance. They risked their investment, their time, their own hard work. They give someone else a job, what's so bad about that? Those people got paid, did they not? They have the choice to quit and go into business for themselves, no? Who's fault is it if they don't have the ambition, the drive to succeed, the guts to try? How many employees put in the time and effort that the boss does? You tell me, what kind of country would this be if millions of businessmen didn't try to get wealthy from someone else's hard work.

 

[Wiseacre]

We have an all volunteer Army, nobody got forced into military service. For sure that guy is way underpaid, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with what a CEO makes.

 

[Wiseacre]

Equality and freedom are mutually exclusive terms.

Really? How so? There's no reason why equality and freedom can't go hand in hand, with the proper governance.

 

[9thIDdoc]

It has always seemed to me that most successful businessmen have found a way to become wealthy from someone else's hard work.

You say that like it's a bad thing, typical leftwing liberal crap, bashing success. They took a chance. They risked their investment, their time, their own hard work. They give someone else a job, what's so bad about that? Those people got paid, did they not? They have the choice to quit and go into business for themselves, no? Who's fault is it if they don't have the ambition, the drive to succeed, the guts to try? How many employees put in the time and effort that the boss does? You tell me, what kind of country would this be if millions of businessmen didn't try to get wealthy from someone else's hard work.

I hope your business decisions are better than your assumptions.

We have an all volunteer Army, nobody got forced into military service. For sure that guy is way underpaid, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with what a CEO makes.

Yeah? You mean that draft notice they sent me was just a joke?

 

[midcan5]

The worship of money is an odd sentiment in America today. It is an interesting change of ideas and values from our past. Christian principles turned upside down. This change demonstrates the power of propaganda over people who argue for a status quo which is like all things temporary.

In the mid fifties, "generosity was voted the most conspicuous American characteristic, followed by friendliness, understanding, piety, love of freedom, and progressivism. The American faults listed were petty: shallowness, egotism, extravagance, preoccupation with money, and selfishness." William Manchester in "The Glory and the Dream" quoting George Gallup's Institute of public opinion.

"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there, good for you. But, I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along." Elizabeth Warren

"... legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property... Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right." Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Madison 1785

"What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable." Adam Smith 'The Wealth of Nations,' Book I Chapter VIII

 

[Skull Pilot]

If you're broke or in a job you hate it's no one's fault but your own

 

[martybegan]

It has always seemed to me that most successful businessmen have found a way to become wealthy from someone else's hard work.

You say that like it's a bad thing, typical leftwing liberal crap, bashing success. They took a chance. They risked their investment, their time, their own hard work. They give someone else a job, what's so bad about that? Those people got paid, did they not? They have the choice to quit and go into business for themselves, no? Who's fault is it if they don't have the ambition, the drive to succeed, the guts to try? How many employees put in the time and effort that the boss does? You tell me, what kind of country would this be if millions of businessmen didn't try to get wealthy from someone else's hard work.

I hope your business decisions are better than your assumptions.

We have an all volunteer Army, nobody got forced into military service. For sure that guy is way underpaid, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with what a CEO makes.

Yeah? You mean that draft notice they sent me was just a joke?

Selective Service is not "The Draft." All it does is create the database to ENABLE a Draft, if and only if congress votes and approves for one.

 

[Katzndogz]

Equality and freedom are mutually exclusive terms.

Really? How so? There's no reason why equality and freedom can't go hand in hand, with the proper governance.

Where you have freedom, automatically someone will have the freedom to succeed and another use that freedom to fail. Equality demands force. The force of proper governance.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Equality and freedom are mutually exclusive terms.

Really? How so? There's no reason why equality and freedom can't go hand in hand, with the proper governance.

Where you have freedom, automatically someone will have the freedom to succeed and another use that freedom to fail. Equality demands force. The force of proper governance.

proper governance is not force.

 

[9thIDdoc]

You say that like it's a bad thing, typical leftwing liberal crap, bashing success. They took a chance. They risked their investment, their time, their own hard work. They give someone else a job, what's so bad about that? Those people got paid, did they not? They have the choice to quit and go into business for themselves, no? Who's fault is it if they don't have the ambition, the drive to succeed, the guts to try? How many employees put in the time and effort that the boss does? You tell me, what kind of country would this be if millions of businessmen didn't try to get wealthy from someone else's hard work.

I hope your business decisions are better than your assumptions.

We have an all volunteer Army, nobody got forced into military service. For sure that guy is way underpaid, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with what a CEO makes.

Yeah? You mean that draft notice they sent me was just a joke?

Selective Service is not "The Draft." All it does is create the database to ENABLE a Draft, if and only if congress votes and approves for one.

And I got mine in 1968. Don't tell your Grandpa how to suck eggs.

 

[martybegan]

I hope your business decisions are better than your assumptions.

We have an all volunteer Army, nobody got forced into military service. For sure that guy is way underpaid, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with what a CEO makes.

Yeah? You mean that draft notice they sent me was just a joke?

Selective Service is not "The Draft." All it does is create the database to ENABLE a Draft, if and only if congress votes and approves for one.

And I got mine in 1968. Don't tell your Grandpa how to suck eggs.

yes, in 1968, and the post you were talking to was discussing the CURRENT ARMY which is all volunteer.

So your reference point is moot, no egg sucking required.

And if you got yours in 1968 you would be my father's age. My Grandfather was doding Japanese Mortar Shells in Mindanao while trying to splice comm wire in 1944-1945.

 

[Katzndogz]

Really? How so? There's no reason why equality and freedom can't go hand in hand, with the proper governance.

Where you have freedom, automatically someone will have the freedom to succeed and another use that freedom to fail. Equality demands force. The force of proper governance.

proper governance is not force.

It has to be if equality is to be mandated. If a midget wanted to play basketball for the Lakers it would take a government force to put him on the team and paid equally to all other players whether or not he ever played. In fact, if he never played, he'd be treated as if he was not the equal of the other players. You cannot have equality and freedom. They can't exist together. Someone will always be better and someone will always be worse. Then a supervening force has to come along and impose equality so that no matter how good, or bad, someone is, they are the equal of everyone else. This was admirably explored by Kurt Vonnegut in Harrison Bergernon. It was also a subject of past philosophers who conceived of utopian societies of equality (except for the ruling class, the Princes or Philosopher Kings). Equality cannot exist without external force which destroys freedom.

 

[9thIDdoc]

yes, in 1968, and the post you were talking to was discussing the CURRENT ARMY which is all volunteer.
So your reference point is moot, no egg sucking required.

Sorry, but it is your statement that is beside the point What he wrote was: "nobody got forced into military service"which is untrue.
So put the egg down and back away. Slowly.

And if you got yours in 1968 you would be my father's age. My Grandfather was doding Japanese Mortar Shells in Mindanao while trying to splice comm wire in 1944-1945.

If so then he was serving with hundreds of thousands of others who were drafted just as I was when I was dodging mortar rounds in '70. The point is that don't all have the same opportunities to do as we would like.

 

[Katzndogz]

Everyone has the same opportunities, they just don't have the same outcomes. Everyone who was drafted had the same opportunity as everyone else who was drafted. Everyone who was drafted and left the service had the same opportunities as everyone else who was drafted and left the service.