On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 18:00:36 GMT, (Dave Mundt) wrote:

Greetings and Salutations...
Going to touch on a couple of things here...bear with
me.

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 21:41:08 -0700, Mark & Juanita
wrote:

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 20:06:06 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 22:38:54 GMT, (Dave Mundt) calmly
ranted:

.... snip


I fear Larry, that the prior comment was actually advocating expanding
the pork. i.e. by taking from the upper "extreme" and giving that taken to
the "lower" extreme.

Hum...I don't know if *I* am the "prior comment" here or not.
I suspect I am. In any case, let me touch on this a bit, too. When
I said "extreme" I was actually thinking more of some of the trend
towards black and white thinking as discussed above. However, I have
also spoken out with concern about the increasing disparity between
the lowest paid job in a given company and the highest paid job. It
makes no real sense for there to be a 50x or more difference between
the lowest and highest paid jobs. The main result of this is that it
fuels the trend of society in general to have more and more folks
drifting into poverty from what used to be the "Middle Class". I
would suggest that it would be BRIGHTER for the companies to do more
to pump up the pay of the lower ranks and lower the pay of the higher
ranks a bit.
Do I advocate the government using taxes to do this.
Emphatically, NO! Money to a politician is like crack to an addict.
It becomes the center of their lives, and, it does not matter how much
they have, they always need more. What good does it for anyone for
the goverment to take (as an example) a million bucks from one guy,
keep $900,000 of it for their own programs, and, "give back" $100,000
to folks in poverty? As we have seen time and time again over the
years, way too much of that cash ends up in the pockets of the "fat
cats" again through lucrative governmental contracts, double dealing
and padded billing.


David,

I apologize, I misinterpreted your remarks. I am somewhat
sensitive to the attitude that the government should make sure that
everybody are "equals" as opposed to "equal under the law" and took your
comment on extremes in society in that light. Again, my apologies, I think
you and I share very similar opinions.

Mark

John Stossel (sic), in a recent book titled "Give me a break"
has an interesting chart, showing the percentage of the GNP that is
eaten up by the government. It is a power curve that goes from a low
of a few percent back in the 40s to over 40% today. Think about
that. Actually, I found an interesting page that touches on this
very subject he
http://www.patriotist.com/taxfacts.htm
The facts that I recognize there seem to be fairly good...although
they seem to quote the GNP percent as 20%. On the other hand, they
also point out that we have to work until July to pay for our
share of the taxes collected by the government.
No...letting government do it is not a good way to go
about it. However, at some point, if the gap between the haves,
the "have mores" and the "have nots" gets too great...there may
well be a forceful realignment of wealth that will not be fun for
anyone, but, will be really uncomfortable for the folks at the
top of the pyramid. Now...in the late 1300s, the Black Death
acted as the agent to redistribute wealth in Europe, and, did
a pretty good job of it. I doubt that it will work as well
here, though.

I think what we are going to see here is simply nature taking its course.
The builder generation is aging and the boomer generation is going to
inherit the wealth they built -- some will be used for good, some not.
But, the boomer generation is also aging -- as their heirs inherit, or as
they spend their wealth, I think we will see that being redistributed as a
function of the capitalist process. One thing that can be noticed is that
second generation millionaires, with a few notable exeptions, have a
notoriously bad reputation for being able to hold on to the wealth they
have been given, rather than earned.