Quote:
Originally Posted by Dominate
Do you see any issue with the widening distance between the richest and the poorest?
Also,
to what extent do you believe a person’s wealth is a reflection of factors that person can control (eg work ethic, good decisions), both under the status quo and in your idea of an idealized system?
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to answer your first question, not really. when looking at our "poor" and our "wealthy" overall its how it always was, if not BETTER, for the poor today. if you are looking at strictly numbers than sure the gap is widening because there are more 0's to throw around, but money doesn't equal contentment/happiness etc. modern technology and everything else affords the poor luxuries that the poor from other generations couldn't fathom, in terms of everything from food/housing to entertainment etc.
and to the second part i think a persons wealth, in a perfect world is dictated by their worth. jeff bezos should be paid ridiculous amounts of money for creating services that people want to take advantage of and use that makes their lives better. but no single person is dictating his worth, the masses dictate it because they fund him by using his services. with the same logic the single mother who works for amazon making "only" 15 dollars an hour, is only worth 15 dollars an hour. that is the job she sought out and accepted. if she is worth more, she will work towards bettering herself and building a career where she can make more.
basically i don't believe in a government entity taking money from any citizen because they believe another citizen needs it.
i also don't believe in the minimum wage though, and don't believe the government should dictate what anyone pays their employees.