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Ignoramus31606

On 2010-04-24, wrote:
My own experience differs from yours. Can't say that I am fabulously
wealthy, but I worked or went to school pretty much all the time since
I was 16. I did miss something like 6 days of work because of lay
offs. Always saved money and now I am well off. So regardless of how
the world seems to you, there is a large group that has worked hard
and now has a good bit to show for it.

Don't believe me. Then ask Iggy.

Since you mentioned my name, maybe I will make a little comment. I am
not fabulously wealthy either, but I do OK.

Like Dan, I would say that I had some amount of luck, and pretty much
all luck, with two exceptions, came from either working or actuvely
looking for opportunities. I did not win lottery and I never bought
any single stock that made me wealthy. To clarify the stock comments,
I had decent results with investing and outperformed the S&P 500 by
something like 8 points per year, but since I started off without much
money, this was not enough to make me super wealthy.

I had essentially two elements of luck: 1) I received very decent
education in what proved to be a hot area (computers) and 2) I
registered domain algebra.com. Neither of these was done with any
foresight, and obviously I had to work on getting my education, and on
developing algebra.com into a major source of income for me, but
still, the element of luck is undeniable. I did not inherit any money
and came here with just $2,800 of what I saved, but on the other hand,
education was kind of like inherited wealth in many respects.

Don mentions luck as in "I worked and had luck". I sort of agree, as I
said, but there is one more kind of luck.

I would define it as a "negative luck", which is absence of bad
luck. In my case, I did not have a major body illness, mental illness,
I did not have an accident that was my fault and resulted in a huge
liability, etc.

I am much more reluctant to take much credit for this. Such things
could happen to anyone and they are always unexpected. The health
issue, specifically, is something where I personally want to be
assured could be well covered by the government.

Altogether, by definition of average, some people will do above
average and some people will be below average. There is no society
where that is not the case. The Soviet Union was also the kind of
place where one could be more, or less, successful, by the way.

The questions regarding this, to me, are 1) does the society have a
moral duty towards its citizens to maintain some minimum care for them
and 2) does this inequality create incentives to work. The minimum care
does not have to be large and for me, pretty much, it boils down to
health care and some income for any old person. Also, that minimum
care could, in fact, encourage entrepreneuship.

I would be reluctant to say that anyone down on his luck, like Gunner,
should get no help whatsoever and should shrivel and die. This just
seems somehow bad. I do not really feel that I would be worse off just
because a part of my income goes on to pay for health expenses of
Gunner, for example.

i