On Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:45:06 -0500, "Tom Gardner"
wrote:

I heard of a study that stated that if all the world's wealth was redistributed
equally, it would all legally be back in roughly the same hands in a few years.
It seems that some people are smarter and more industrious than others. How
come the socialist pamphlets never include the words "Hard Work" or "Manage
Money"? (It seems the public school system doesn't include them either.)
============
This appears to be another urban myth with nothing to back it up.

As far as the omission of phrases such as "hard work" or
"managing money," I don't recall words/phrases like "lucky" and
"born with a silver spoon in one's mouth" being used much either.
Winning the lottery or choosing rich parents is not a mark of
moral superiority or superior intellect.

What is certain, based on hard data from a number of
societies/economies, both asian and western, socialist and
capitalist, is that concentration of wealth/productive assets
past a given point is a sure recipe for disaster, social upheaval
and/or economic implosion.

Wealth (in terms of ownership of productive assets) of the
richest 1 percent of Americans is now slightly greater than 40%.
The last time it was this high was in the summer of 1929...

There is also the question of *HOW* this concentration of
ownership of 40 % of America's wealth by 1% of the population was
achieved. It is clear that increasingly this concentration is
*NOT* the result of hard work, innovation and risk taking, or
even "luck," but rather the product of large scale organized
criminal activities such as fraud, extortion, insider-trading,
arms-smuggling, drug-dealing, money-laundering, stock option
back-dating/spring-loading, and tax-evasion.

Enforcement of the organized crime statues [such as RICO]
combined, with the enhanced financial tracking possible under the
Patriot act, and communications monotoring under FISA, should be
resulting in governmental seizures of massive amounts of
executive bonuses, deferred compensation, and other assets such
as Rolex watches and Maybach autos, in addition to long prison
sentences for the officers and directors of many of our
corporations.

It is well to remember this 40% number when the complaints about
taxes start. It seems only reasonable to me that if you own 40%
of the productive assets, you should be paying about 40% of the
total taxes, which is not the case.

Wealth is power. This is a fact that many people seem to ignore,
and wish to suppress. It is ironic that many of those lucky
enough to possess the financial equivalent of a hydrogen bomb are
among the most rabid advocates of disarming the general
population by the abolition of the private ownership of firearms.
If a law abiding citizen cannot be trusted to own a firearm, why
should they be trusted to own/control a [financial] h-bomb?
George Soros is the poster boy for this.