[Dylan16807]

> She believes that the “rich elites” have a great burden of responsibility towards the world, which she justifies with shaky zero sum logic that suggests that because they have more, they necessarily took it from those who have less (her bulky villager metaphor).

A single person can only be so productive on a consistent basis. There's a threshold of wealth where you can say that on average 90% of the money is coming from the labors of other people.

Labor and trade are not zero sum. The decision of where the generated dollars go is zero sum.

> She might not be openly jealous, but she still seems to believe that her rich peers must somehow earn this wealth (an undefined and likely impossible undertaking), and writes about them with condescension when she sees they do not meet her burden.

Do you mean they can't 'earn' it in her eyes, or are you agreeing that a certain amount of wealth cannot actually be earned?

Ideally nobody would condescend here, and taxes would have taken care of things right from the start. But taxes in the US are a lot less progressive than they used to be, so they come nowhere near taking care of that burden on their own.

(Well, ideally ideally social services could be funded well without taxes at all, but that's not a real-world outlook. And income inequality would be fixed too.)

[refurb]

But taxes in the US are a lot less progressive than they used to be, so they come nowhere near taking care of that burden on their own.

This is one of those “facts” that simply isn’t true.

US taxes have become more progressive over time.

Look at the first chart: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/02/the-s...

[Dylan16807]

On the other hand, this chart: https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/taHyLEiwFvxZO4U3BfvmJ...

The top percent or two are sucking up increasingly large amounts of GDP, and they're not paying taxes appropriate for being at that level.

And capital gains taxes push the high end down even more.

[refurb]

That chart doesn’t tell you much at all. Who cares what the marginal rate is, if you’re allowed huge deductions (as was common back in the 1950’s).

That’s why the marginal rate was higher 40 years ago, but the amount of taxes collected was lower.

[nyxxie]

> Labor and trade are not zero sum. The decision of where the generated dollars go is zero sum.

Certainly, my point was that possessing a greater share of wealth is not the same as the completely unearned disparity in distribution of common resources in the author's hypothetical scenario. We live in a world of scarcity, so disparity when that scarcity is left up to market forces is to be expected and in fact could even be argued to be earned. This is completely different than this sort of village commune that the author envisions. Nevertheless, the author equates the two to justify her argument, which I believe is fallacious.

> Do you mean they can't 'earn' it in their eyes, or are you agreeing that a certain amount of wealth cannot actually be earned?

The former. This responsibility that the author posits her rich peers have is based on nothing other than her feeling that they didn't earn their position and aren't even using it properly, which will only go away after said peers do something that alleviates this feeling. What is that thing? Only the author knows. Maybe she doesn't even know, she just knows that she wants the rich people to fix it.

> they come nowhere near taking care of that burden on their own.

I don't believe it's fair that they even be under some sort of implied burden. Unless they are criminals, their family earned that wealth playing the same game as everyone else and have chosen to use it to ensure their offspring are comfortable. I see no problem in that.

[Dylan16807]

The game isn't half as fair as it should be. I see great problem in that.

Even though some fraction of the disparity is earned, a lot clearly isn't.

[Invictus0]

The game was and has never been fair. The parent is merely arguing that you should blame the game, and not the players.

[Dylan16807]

You can blame the players for not helping other players, and not wanting infrastructure that takes excess resources from the winners to help all players.

[nyxxie]

> You can blame the players for not helping other players

Assume we did, what is the correct amount of help that the successful players should help the unsuccessful ones? Unless it's codified into the game itself (being made to pay more taxes based on wealth for example), it's unfair to expect arbitrary players to pay some undefined price to the satisfaction of another arbitrary set of players.

[sagichmal]

> Assume we did, what is the correct amount of help that the successful players should help the unsuccessful ones? Unless it's codified into the game itself (being made to pay more taxes based on wealth for example), it's unfair to expect arbitrary players to pay some undefined price to the satisfaction of another arbitrary set of players.

It's completely appropriate and reasonable to answer that question with: I don't know exactly how much, but certainly a lot more than is currently occurring, so let's {double, quadruple, 10x} the current levels and then re-assess.

[Dylan16807]

It definitely should be codified. And anyone with power that isn't strongly advocating for that is acting immorally. The nature of the game is very much not an excuse, it's something to rally against.