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Originally posted by lurkette
When we're dealing with the scale of inequality that we're dealing with in this country, looking at proportions and "fairness" is a misleadingly simple way of looking at a complex system that tends to reward those at the top disproportionately more than those at the bottom.
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No, I want the government to level the playing field...
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A level playing field means equality of opportunity for all.
Equal opportunities do not, however, guarantee equal results.
Look, I also want everyone to be rich and happy and successful and healthy and good looking, but the ends don't justify the means. Besides, where do we stop? When we discard all measures of objectivity and fairness (which you decry as "misleadingly simple" because the "system" is so complex) then you're left with arbitrary rules written by the whims of a fickle mob. It's already pretty bad when the richest 5% pay more than half of the nation's income taxes and the bottom 50% pay just 4% of the income taxes. We're already perilously close to a system in which the majority pay little or no income tax while receiving the lion's share of government entitlements - creating a sort of class-warfare where the nation's most productive citizens consistently find the products of their labor plundered and looted by an angry mob - where net payers of government revenues find themselves in a dwindling minority and the net consumers of government revenues wield the power.
And in the end, who should determine who needs what?