[detbuch]

Originally Posted by spence

I think that's more valid from the top down but less so from the bottom up. As far as the kids are concerned one has opportunity that the other doesn't.

Your top down/bottom up is confusing here. Do you mean top being parents and bottom being children? If so, OF COURSE top down is more valid--the kids are usually not going to strive harder to secure the parents future, it's obviously usually the other way around. If you mean top being wealthy and bottom being poor--I said to secure the children's future is ONE . . .ONE . . .ONE of the greatest motivations to rise above subsistance level. In the case of poor vs wealthy, is that also not one of those motivations for both once they achieve subsistance level? And if it is "more valid" for the wealthy, a lot of things are more valid for the wealthy. Why bother to become more wealthy if it does no more for you than being poor? And if poor kids have less opportunity than wealthy kids, isn't that, exactly, one of the reasons to become wealthy? What is it that you wish here? Abolish wealth so that everyone has the same opportunity to gain it? Does that make sense?

Your use of slavery is a bit inflammatory no? I don't know of anyone in present day America who feels they are enslaved.

It was a valid response of actual policy to your claiming that no-one ever called for a policy to remove the desire to rise above subsistence level. Your use of "on the backs of" is a trope used to invoke favor in an argument against the wealthy, or the "owners" and such. When it likens economic relationships in the free market between employees and employers to a slave like condition, that is not valid.

There was no double negative, I completely agree that talent and effort increase the chances to get lucky or exploit that luck. But let's say you had two kids with equal talent and both were raised to be hard workers. The one lucky enough to have been born into a family with means is going to have a far better chance at success vs one who was not.

"That's not to say . . . doesn't" I believe, is a double negative, maybe I'm wrong, no big deal. One of the reasons to gain wealth is to secure the future of your children. You insist that such children are "lucky" to be born to such parents. Never mind that those parents, in most cases, had intended to have children, and in most cases worked intentionally to gain wealth, and in most cases they secured their childrens "better chance" at success with that wealth. Isn't that the point? Isn't that one of the reasons to acquire wealth? Are luck and intention equal? Perhaps the children born to poorer parents are benefitting from the "luck" that was fostered by the lesser talent, effort, inelligence, of their parents? What are we supposed to do, inject all babies with some equalizing chemical so that they all tap into luck equally by striving with the same intelligence and effort and thus all leaving all their children with equal opportunities?

The point is that economics -- as you're well aware -- is about the relationship between capital and labor. Trickle up and trickle down are both valid but one doesn't work without the other...that's why I'm an economic convectionist

Well, economics is about more than the relationship between capital and labor. It is about the total relaltionship between all elements in a society which include beliefs, attitudes, talents, intelligence, MOTIVATION, and everything you can think of. A harmonious relationship between all elements is a utopian desire that would end the necessisty to further evolve. Since that harmony is likely impossible, we do evolve. But those that wish to artificially create this utopia rather than letting it naturally evolve, wish to do so by equalizing conditions. In which case convections trickling up and/or down will be eliminated. If you wish to have your convectionist economy, then accept that there will be an up and a down, and the up will have more opportunity, this being the reason to strive to get up.

Not at all, I just find a discussion about entrepreneurs without the inclusion of those actually doing most of the work to be incomplete. As for stirring the pot, I do make a mean risotto -spence

There is work and there is work. Most business owners work more at their business than there employees. But we, somehow, don't look at their work as work.

Good looking risotto. You have a lucky wife and children.