DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Xavier_Onassis on March 16, 2013, 01:36:35 PM
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http://mashable.com/2013/03/02/wealth-inequality/ (http://mashable.com/2013/03/02/wealth-inequality/)
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and wealth inequality is bad because?
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It is not bad unless it causes problems.
What problem would it cause if someone invented such a great device that everyone wanted one and his saes of this device gave this one person half of all the worlds wealth?
I don't think it would cause any problem at all , one might even argue that all that value would not exist without that one guys invention.
Now what this guy chooses to do with that wealth can indeed cause problems , for instance Bill Gates contributed signifigantly to Barak Obama winning the presidency, but this was caused just as badly by a large number of smaller contributors so it is not fair to blame it all on Bill.
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Jeezus!
It's bad because eventually the rich bastards have it all and even clowns like you guys are serfs. Inequality prevents progress to the degree that it exists. Read some history.
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I do read history but I do not view the same way.
If the top ten percent went missing their productivity would also go missing.
Leaving the bottom ten percent with even less for the lesser largess.
The upper 50% definately creates more wealth than the lower 50% if that half went missing the lowest 10% would immediately starve.
If some small portion of the highest one percent invents something , or organises something better they CREATE wealth, letting them benefit in purportion is fair.
Getting rid of the upper crust is an experiment tried in several countrys in the 18th, 19th and 20th centurys increased wealth was never the result.
Think along another line , if Thomas Edison had never lived , how much less wealth would human beings have at this point?
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Imagine if you will, a chart that is aranged to show each percenttile of the population compared with the percentile that is employed by that particular percentile.
The lowest few percent would employ nearly zero.
The highest few percent would employ a massive purportion in purportion.
But the greatest number would be employed by the percentile group in between 60% and 95%.
The very top one percent of one percent would employ a lot of the above the median earners and most of the below the median earners are employed by people who are just above the second third themselves.
This chart will not come up evenly at 100% because the self employed are all over the chart , including the very high and very low areas.
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Jeezus!
It's bad because eventually the rich bastards have it all and even clowns like you guys are serfs. Inequality prevents progress to the degree that it exists. Read some history.
1. Being rich does not make one a bastard see Bill Gates and his drive to end malaria
2. We are all serfs anyway -- to the government
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Our constitution was written with the idea of limiting the governments ability to dominate the people, is that a dead letter or a still current idea.
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Our constitution was written with the idea of limiting the governments ability to dominate the people, is that a dead letter or a still current idea.
If a drone has the capability of flying over your head and taking you out, it is a dead letter.
If flying commercial means you are subject to strip search and invasive pat down, it is a dead letter.
If you are not secure in your electronic transactions, it is a dead letter.
ad infinitum
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Yeah, sure, how many people does a hedge fund manager employ?
The wealthiest companies in the country are Big Pharma and Big Oil, and they hire comparatively very, very few in relation to the money they pull in.
If all the fatcats were like Bill Gates, this would be a lesser problem.But the truth is, there dozens, if not hundreds of fatcats like Trump, Adelson and the Kochs for every Bill Gates. A lot of those who pull in the most money do not to anything at all. They hire managers to do all the work that their titles suggest they do. And if they vanished tomorrow, all the work would still get done.
I am not for taking away all their money, only taxing them reasonably and investing in education and other projects that would hire even more people and make this country even more productive.
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If they get taxed as you think is reasonably , why should anyone be anything like productive?
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Our constitution was written with the idea of limiting the governments ability to dominate the people, is that a dead letter or a still current idea.
If a drone has the capability of flying over your head and taking you out, it is a dead letter.
If flying commercial means you are subject to strip search and invasive pat down, it is a dead letter.
If you are not secure in your electronic transactions, it is a dead letter.
ad infinitum
Dont be gloomy about such flaws, we never have met our goals absolutely.
It required a lot of struggle to enfranchise most of the population, but we have progressed from a minority of literate landowner males to practicly everyone.
The problems you cite are departures from the ideal, but the struggle continues.
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Inequality prevents progress to the degree that it exists.
Unbelievable!
Yeah sure lots of progress in places like North Korea where everyone is equal.
Gvt forced equality is immoral, a disgrace....because it stymies progress and ingenuity.
Look at places where pretty much everyone is equal and you will see misery and poverty.
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Inequality prevents progress to the degree that it exists.
Unbelievable!
Yeah sure lots of progress in places like North Korea where everyone is equal.
Gvt forced equality is immoral, a disgrace....because it stymies progress and ingenuity.
Look at places where pretty much everyone is equal and you will see misery and poverty.
I am sure he does believe it.
I think he is way off from the truth, but I think it interesting that he states it as if it were axiomatic.
What if I were to state that inequality was a necessacery component of progress, because it is easyer for the talented to progress and the less talented to follow along than it is for the whole mass of us to progress at the same rate.Would he find that unbelievable?
I will not understand XOs point of view without further explanation.
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Yeah, sure, how many people does a hedge fund manager employ?
Wrong question, the real question should be how many people employ that hedge fund manager. His earnings are directly proportional to the profits he or she makes for his or her investors.
It's like asking how many people a heart specialist employs, when the real question of societal worth would be how many people employ the heart specialist.
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Yeah, sure, how many people does a hedge fund manager employ?
Wrong question, the real question should be how many people employ that hedge fund manager. His earnings are directly proportional to the profits he or she makes for his or her investors.
It's like asking how many people a heart specialist employs, when the real question of societal worth would be how many people employ the heart specialist.
Hey good point!
How interconnected are such relationships and does a large number of customers relate to wealth in a direct way?
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How interconnected are such relationships and does a large number of customers relate to wealth in a direct way?
Ask your insurance agent. Their earnings are directly related to policy renewals. The more customers the larger the base earnings.
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Ouch 8)
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The hedge fund manager may employ a staff of a half dozen. He contributes NOTHING to the economy. If he did not exist, what he sells would be sold in some other venue.
No reason to tax him at a measly 15% when someone who does actual productive labor pays a lot more.
His customers, without him, would get by with no difficulty whatever/
There is no ouch.
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No reason to tax him at a measly 15% when someone who does actual productive labor pays a lot more.
I doubt seriously that his commissions from managing the fund are taxed at 15%.
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Hedge Fund managers are taxed at the capital gains rate, even though you may doubt it.
You can check this out if you want to be sure.
The point is that wealth is very poorly distributed in this country and that is unhealthy for nearly all of us and should be changed.
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Hedge Fund managers are taxed at the capital gains rate, even though you may doubt it.
You can check this out if you want to be sure.
The point is that wealth is very poorly distributed in this country and that is unhealthy for nearly all of us and should be changed.
Are hedge fund managers not compensated based on profits generated by their trades? Unless it is their own stock they are trading why would they be taxed at a capital gains rate? That makes no sense.
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I do not know why. You could ask the IRS.
Here is what this is about:
[url]http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2011/09/14/hedge-fund-fair-tax-can-cut-deficit-by-18-billion//url]
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So what Mr. Cohan says is that a hedge fund manager pays @ the 39% rate (now) for the $100 mill he earns managing a 5 Billion dollar fund, but he only pays 15% on the second $100 he would earn if he returned a $500 million profit (capital gains) buying and selling from the $5billion portfolio he manages.
Other than the scale of his earnings, why should he be treated differently than any other investor who also earns a salary?
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Why would he pay any tax on money he manages?
He only owes on money that comes to him as income , not on money that belongs to other people.
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I believe the second $100 million is taxed as capital gains, because that is what it is, his share of the profits derived from the buying and selling of securities.
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If they get taxed as you think is reasonably , why should anyone be anything like productive?
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I suppose you think that Leonardo da Vinci would have dedicated himself to painting houses if it had payed better.
The truly creative are the inventors, the writers, the artists. They are never paid as much as those who make the really big bucks. Bill Gates BOUGHT the beginnings of MS DOS from some other guy for a pittance. He was not the creator. Only on rare occasions do the actual creators benefit from theior creations in any way commensurate with the benefit of their inventions. Hedgefund managers, CEOs, even a number of performers would have gone nowhere without others who did the truly creative things.
This is a bogus argument,
Ayn Rand was creative when she wrote We the Living. Read it, there is some really good prose there.
Atlas Shrugged is the work of a hack, high on Bennies and in love with herself. NO comparison.
No one wants to turn the US into North Korea, only into something as happy and pleasant as Denmark, where everyone can obtain an education commensurate with their talents and therefore can make a maximum contribution to society.
I observe that the people who make this "you have to pay for creativity" argument are never creative people, generally they are others who hire them. How is raising a CEO's salary from 1.5 million to $3.0 million going to make him more creative? There is an absolute limit to the amount of income that will make a person feel satisfied and decently compensated, unless they are some sort of ultra-competitive greedhead. We seem to have more greedheads in this country than creative people. Or perhaps is simply appears that way because greedheads think they are number one and insist on waving their giant rubber finger egos around, while a lot of creative people tend to ignore publicity entirely.
We had plenty of creativity in the US when the maximum tax rate was much, much higher. How much do you suppose Hemingway earned, or any of the Nobel laureates or even Sinatra? The people who are bitching about their creativity being diminished are not the creative ones. Dwight Eisenhower took to painting after he retired. Do you suppose that he would have spent his life watching TV had he not been able to sell his paintings?
I sure don't. People create most often to satisfy themselves. We should encourage creativity, but lowering tax rates on incomes over 400K is not going to do that, nor is raising them going to end creativity. It will have no real effect at all.
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If they get taxed as you think is reasonably , why should anyone be anything like productive?
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People create most often to satisfy themselves. We should encourage creativity, but lowering tax rates on incomes over 400K is not going to do that, nor is raising them going to end creativity. It will have no real effect at all.
Someone who kows a hell of a lot more as it relates to economics, even teaching it made reference that "This behavior in economics is known as the first fundamental law of demand. It holds that the higher the price of something the less people will take and that the lower the price the more people will take. There are no known exceptions to the law of demand. Any economist who could prove a real-world exception would probably be a candidate for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and other honor"
The higher you tax labor & those who provide it, the less of it you get. It has a quantifiable and profound effect
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Written by some economics guy, NOT someone who understands diddly-squat about creative people. You mighrt as well ask him about his recipe for Key Lime Pie as creativity.
Read what creative people say about their motivations, not bloody economists.
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The issue is not how creative some folks can be, but how taxing them higher supposedly has no effect. Outside of the occasional "DiVincis", that are likely to do whatever they do, regardless of their economic circumstances, the latter has been universally chronicled by economists and economic professors, the world around, in how it indeed suppresses creativity, research, and productivity. Continue to tax more of it, you get less of it. Any economist who could prove a real-world exception would probably be a candidate for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and other honor
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Again. this is balderdash. People are very often creative whether their creativity pays off or not. The guys who built the Cadillac Ranch and the Watts Towers expected no compensation, they did it out of sheer gumption.
Not everyone thinks like you, sirs. You are not a very creative person at all, as we have seen from your posts. You understand creativity based on crap you have read written by people who have not one speck of creativity. You follow people who know nothing, and arrive at the same erroneous conclusions that you do. Unimpressive.
First off, the wealthiest people in this country are NOT particularly creative. Warren Buffet understands investment. Bill Gates understood that software, not hardware, was where the money was in computers. The Koch Brothers know how to manipulate the soft, squishy brains of the lumpenproletariat. But none of these guys is close to being a Tesla or an Edison.
According to your theory, that rich people are all creative drivers of society, then we should not tax them AT ALL, because even the teensiest bit of taxes might cause them to go a scurrying off to hide themselves in Galt's Gulch, to be seen nevermore.
And that is just batty.
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You can call it whatever you want. Reality trumps your rationalizations, rants, & envy, of who and why rich people are rich. You tax more of something, you get less of it. Economics 101
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This is true only if you assume that Economics governs every aspect of human existence. It does not.
Does economics determine your taste in music? Do you listen only to cheap music? Is there any relationship at all between whether you like a cheap song better than one costing more?
Does economics determine what you feel like eating for lunch?
Does economics determine what clothing you decided to wear today?
Dos economics determine your taste in sports? would you go watch more cricket instead of baseball if it were cheaper to attend cricket games and buy cricket jerseys?
Marx was right only in saying that Economics had an influence in every human activity. But you are outdoing Marx, you capitalist twit: you are saying that it ABSOLUTELY governs every creative activity. Tax Edison at 10% more and he will invent a lightbulb only 90% as good as if you taxed him 10% less.
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Never said it governed EVERY aspect of human existance, merely reinforciong current reality for those who wish to remain ignorant. You tax more of something, you get less of it. Economics 101. You try taxing "rich people" even more then they already are, you get less creativity, less productivity, with the subsequent less jobs, and jobs created
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You sound like you think we need more rich people. Even if we must create more poor people to make them rich.
Economics is only one of many influences on creativity.
And AGAIN, your assumption that rich=creative is bogus.
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Perfect window into the mind of a hard core liberal. I don't think we "need more rich people"......we NEED MORE FREEDOM TO ALLOW PEOPLE TO BECOME RICH, if they're so inclined to make the effort. Nor do I equate rich with creative, so you can dispense with that strawman. I'm merely reinforcing reality that if you tax rich people more, REGARDLESS of their creativity quotient, you get less of whatever it is they do
Gads, leftists with their obsession of what they think pople need or don't need is truly nauseating :o
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Less of what some rich people do would benefit us all.
No one needs more damned casinos, oil speculators, house flippers that do not fix up the houses they flip. They just squeeze the essence out of others and make things worse.
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If they get taxed as you think is reasonably , why should anyone be anything like productive?
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I suppose you think that Leonardo da Vinci would have dedicated himself to painting houses if it had payed better.
The truly creative are the inventors, the writers, the artists. They are never paid as much as those who make the really big bucks. Bill Gates BOUGHT the beginnings of MS DOS from some other guy for a pittance. He was not the creator. Only on rare occasions do the actual creators benefit from theior creations in any way commensurate with the benefit of their inventions. Hedgefund managers, CEOs, even a number of performers would have gone nowhere without others who did the truly creative things.
This is a bogus argument,....
It is not bogus , you just are not getting it.
Leonardo Da Vinchi tried to make it big , one of his inventive efforts was a means of mass production for pins and needles, unfortunately Leonardos business auchmein did not match the high level of his other talents and the sewing public never got the cheaper pins that might have made Leonardos fortune.
If Leonardo da Vinchi had made a large fortune , do you think he would have been less productive? Or would his increased resorces have been devoted to his creativity?
I know that Bill Gates was not the originator of the OS he sold , nor was very much of the early microsoft products really a Bill Gates origional, but Bill served as a broker between those ideas and the people who needed them, this is a service of huge value , as witnessed the huge value that was handed to Bill Gates for doing it.
This is a central question, how much of the value created by creativity can be snuffed out and never realised? Whenever a great idea bears fruit , it benefits more than just the origional inventor or artist, it benefits also all of the customers ready to use the idea.
Forget all about Ann Rand if you want to, I do not intend to reference her here.
If Thomas A. Edison had not been the promotional genius he was , a salesman, as well as a very good inventor , we would all be signifigantly poorer, so why begrudge him a fortune? His fortune represents a tiny fraction of the benefit and welth humanity has gained from his work.
If Bill Gates had not been such a sharp dealer , the basics of PC computing might have developed much more slowly , Apple was playing its cards close to the vest, Bill Gates and microsoft put the power of computing much more in the hands of the common man. This is a lot like Henry Ford, who didn't make the first car or truck , nor the best ever, but made them effectively and effeciently so well that the common man could afford one.
Taking the toys of the rich and the select and adapting them to the masses is a proven fortune maker, the grattitude of the masses is cash.
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Bogus, bogus, bogus. Fatcats always want us to think they are indispensable, because that is how they think of themselves.
The fact is that the top 1% own too goddamn much of this country, and they are mostly uncreative parasites, not creative geniuses.
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And that's why their success must be punished. :o Envy & Hatred all rolled up into one neat irrational ball. Again, a perfect window into the mind set of a hard core liberal
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It is NOT a "punishment" to tax some guy making a million a year 40% of that because this country has made it possible. And AGAIN, creativity does not normally have much of anything to do with how much a person is taxed at any reasonable rate, which would be 40% or less. You do not understand creativity because you are not creative. You will never understand it because you will never BE creative.
You only parrot the ratbag right, it is worthless to debate this with you.
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It is wrong to treat one class of people differently than another class of people under the law, whether they are creative with jobs or ideas or not. It is simply a bullshit idea.
Treat other classes as you would wish to be treated.
Golden rule stuff, really.
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It is NOT a "punishment" to tax some guy making a million a year 40% of that because this country has made it possible.
Sure it is. YOU yourself have parroted over and over again, they have "too goddamn much". Higher taxing is merely punishment for their success. This country provides the opportunity. This country however did NOT give it to him/her, thus its not entitled to take whatever % they have merely because they "have too goddam much".
And AGAIN, creativity does not normally have much of anything to do with how much a person is taxed at any reasonable rate
And again, nor was it claimed so. The issue is, from a reality standpoint, the more you tax a person, the less of what the person is likely to create/produce/do. Its called economics 101
You only parrot the ratbag right, it is worthless to debate this with you.
and yet you do.....or try to, until you're stuck between a irrational rhetorical wall and a propoganda hard place. Then out come the insults, and claims of worthlessness, and that no one should have to view what they say
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It is wrong to treat one class of people differently than another class of people under the law, whether they are creative with jobs or ideas or not. It is simply a bullshit idea.
Treat other classes as you would wish to be treated.
Golden rule stuff, really.
One could argue its the polar opposite of "fair"
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To the list of liberals who vote for higher taxes – and then proceed to complain about them – add comedian Bill Maher.
Incredibly, the caustic, left-wing Maher recently warned, “ln California, I just want to say: Liberals – you could actually lose me.” As a resident of California, a state with high income taxes, Maher complained that his taxes are “over 50 percent.” What’s more, Maher made a point seldom heard except on Fox News or by a rich Parisian. Maher said, “Rich people … actually do pay the freight in this country … like 70 percent” of the taxes. (Presumably, Maher meant that the top 10 percent of taxpayers pay about 70.5 percent of the federal income taxes.)
Holy Grover Norquist! Was it an epiphany or merely the latest example of liberal hypocrisy?
Maher, just two years ago, painted this picture of the filthy, clueless, racist, sexist, homophobic, selfish, greedy rich:
“America’s rich aren’t giving you money. They are taking your money. Between the years 1980 and 2005, 80 percent of all new income generated in this country went to the richest 1 percent. Let me put that in terms that even you fat-a– tea-baggers, sorry, can understand. Say 100 Americans get together and order a 100-slice pizza. The pizza arrives, they open the box, and the first guy takes 80 slices. And if someone suggests, ‘Why don’t you just take 79 slices?’ – that’s socialism! …
“We have this fantasy that our interests and the interests of the super-rich are the same, like somehow the rich will eventually get so full that they’ll explode, and the candy will rain down on the rest of us, like they’re some kind of pinata of benevolence. But here’s the thing about a pinata – it doesn’t open on its own; you have to beat it with a stick.”
But – now – Maher complains.
Golfer Phil Mickelson, also a Californian, recently complained about high taxes. As with Maher, Mickelson earns the bulk of his money through ordinary income, not through Warren Buffet-type investments that get taxed at a lower rate. Mickelson said: “If you add up all the federal, and you look at the disability and the unemployment and the Social Security and the state, my tax rate’s 62, 63 percent. So I’ve got to make some decisions on what I’m going to do.”
But then came the backlash in this era of social media. People, in essence, said: “Look, Phil, we know you didn’t vote for Obama. But nobody sympathizes with a white, rich, California-living Republican who makes big dollars hitting a little white ball. You come across as a spoiled, ungrateful whiner.”
Mickelson actually apologized! For what? For engaging in a pastime older than golf – complaining about taxes?! For railing against tax hikes he did not vote for?! Apology?
OK. Let’s play this game. Like Mickelson, Maher is a white rich guy (net worth $23 million) living in the very same beautiful state. Like Mickelson, he complained about high taxes. But unlike Maher, Mickelson likely voted against Democrats who promised to raise them. Maher embraced Obama.
As for California’s state income taxes, Maher attacked the Republican California gubernatorial candidate who thought state government was too big. The winner, California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, successfully pushed to increase the top marginal state income tax rate from 10.3 percent to 13.3 percent for every dollar above 1 million, the highest state income tax in the nation.
Of the more than 12 million households in California, only 166,000 – or just over 1 percent of the state’s households – account for nearly half of the state’s income tax revenue. This would include Maher’s.
Did Maher not believe his party when Democrats hammered the greedy rich for failing to pay “their fair share”?
Former Democratic Chairman Howard Dean, just after Obama’s re-election, pulled no punches about the quest for more taxes from everybody – to pay for the welfare state America just voted to keep and expand. Dean said: “The truth is everybody needs to pay more taxes, not just the rich. That’s a good start. But we’re not going to get out of this deficit problem unless we raise taxes across the board.” Maher enthusiastically supported Obama and routinely attributed Obama’s political opposition to racism. Did Maher think the Democrats’ entitlement state would be paid for with magic dollars from someone else’s pocket?
Here’s the deal. Voters last November pulled the lever for four more years of expanded government – and for four more years of instructing Congress to get somebody else to pay for it. Bill Maher now says “ouch,” that the rich already pay a disproportionally high share of the income taxes.
The question remains:
Did Maher have an epiphany, and will he now use his considerable platform to similarly enlighten others?
Does he now recognize that, as former British Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher once said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money”?
Or is Maher just the latest in a long line of rich lefty hypocrites who want an expensive welfare state – on somebody else’s dime?
A hard core liberal finds his inner Grover Norquist (http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/bill-maher-discovers-his-inner-grover-norquist/)
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It is wonderfull to see a liberal growing more mature and wise.
Unfortunately only a certain number can go through the entire process that Mahaer experienced, seeing thequestion from both sides.
It is as if when Pizza was brought to the table , everyone got a slice or two, but the bill was presented to just one, and the guy that gets the bill shouts "Hey! I have to pay for this? I made the Pizza!"
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Maher can easily afford to pay his taxes. He should stop bitching
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this isn't exactly brain surgery....over the last century....where people are highly compensated for creativity you see the highest standards of living and the most game-changing innovations.
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and ONE MORE TIME: the actual creative people get a minuscule amount of the rewards.
People who keep saying this are not the creative ones. And if they are, they are more often repeating stuff they heard from their accountants.
Capitalism is NOT FAIR. Everyone knows this. But there are many assholes who think that somehow it was sent from God to reward them anyway.
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Communism isn't fair either.
Life isn't fair, the sooner everyone realizes this the better off we will be.
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and ONE MORE TIME: the actual creative people get a minuscule amount of the rewards.
People who keep saying this are not the creative ones. And if they are, they are more often repeating stuff they heard from their accountants.
Capitalism is NOT FAIR. Everyone knows this. But there are many assholes who think that somehow it was sent from God to reward them anyway.
What is more fair than Capitolism?
When someone creates a value , what makes it fair to force him to split it with someone elese?
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Social Democracy, as in Denmark, is FAR more fair.
Capitalism is just a tool. If you worship it, you are a dunce.
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Socialism is just a tool. If you worship it, you're a dunce
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Social Democracy, as in Denmark, is FAR more fair.
Is fair defined by being able to reach your full potential, or is fair defined by what the planners say is fair?
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What planners?
I don't worship anything. The most successful society is the one that gives the greatest potential to the greatest number. Socialism and Capitalism are simply tools used to attain the best possible society for the greatest number.
The individual determines his direction and the degree of his success. That isn't up to any planners.
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So who then is "worshipping" Capitalism?
And I agree, that the most successful societies are the ones that provide the greatest opportunity to the greatest number of people. Capitalism does exactly that, minus the taking away from others that Socialism requires
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What planners?
I don't worship anything. The most successful society is the one that gives the greatest potential to the greatest number. Socialism and Capitalism are simply tools used to attain the best possible society for the greatest number.
The individual determines his direction and the degree of his success. That isn't up to any planners.
This is not true at all in a socialist society where you are predetermined at a early teen age as to what your career path will be.
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So true
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This is not true at all in a socialist society where you are predetermined at a early teen age as to what your career path will be.
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There is no such determination in any of the Scandinavian countries. What you say is not even true in Cuba.
In the US, a person's career path is greatly affected by their family and how much money that have.
There is certainly no equal opportunity for anyone to get into or graduate from Harvard, Stanford, Yale, or even the major state run universities.
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This is not true at all in a socialist society where you are predetermined at a early teen age as to what your career path will be.
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In the US, a person's career path is greatly affected by their family and how much money that have.
Which has nothing to do with the Government........which is the key difference here. There is no right to equal outcomes, only the opportunity. and if you need a copius amount of examples of those who went from poverty to one of 'the rich", such a list can be provided for, which would refute the notion that there is no equal opportunity under a Capitalist system. For some its harder, but the door is never closed
Ironically, its apparently easier to get into some Ivy league schools, if you're merely a different race, than caucasion. Point being anyone can, if they have the grades and perserverence. Having alumni and/or rich booster club members does help as well
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This is not true at all in a socialist society where you are predetermined at a early teen age as to what your career path will be.
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There is no such determination in any of the Scandinavian countries. What you say is not even true in Cuba.
In the US, a person's career path is greatly affected by their family and how much money that have.
There is certainly no equal opportunity for anyone to get into or graduate from Harvard, Stanford, Yale, or even the major state run universities.
It was certainly true in Iceland when i was there.
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Iceland is a prosperous middle-class country. I doubt that what you say is even remotely true.
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Social Democracy, as in Denmark, is FAR more fair.
Is fair defined by being able to reach your full potential, or is fair defined by what the planners say is fair?
So should we avoid putting a ceiling on the potential for acheivement?
When the French start taking 75% off the top of their welthy 1% they are going to level down.
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Iceland is a prosperous middle-class country. I doubt that what you say is even remotely true.
I have no reason to lie. I was there from 71-73. Bobby Fischer at at a table next to me when he played Boris Spasskey, I was there when Nixon met Pompidou. I ran a majority Icelandic crew on base. I knew these people. I knew the limitations of their choices.