Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND
It isn't about wealth. Or jealousy or entitlement. It remains about opportunity. Case in point re: opportunity.
I heard an interesting take on the Facebook IPO. lots of people made lots of money yesterday, BUT (with the Painter and other exceptions) MOST who made a lot of money already HAD a lot of money to invest in the first place (i.e. Bono). Kudos to them for taking the risk, but unless you had 10's of millions to invest in the first place, the opportunity for, say me, to have invested a few 10's of K in it as a start up and then make a lot of money isn't there. It is tough to feel like the game isn't rigged to those who already have a lot of money to begin with....
This is like saying that existence is rigged. There is nothing you or the government can do about what species you were born into. The game seems to be rigged for humans. There is nothing you or the government can do about Jupiter's unpropitious distance from the sun. There is no way to have less fortunately endowed people be reborn with the genes necessary to play professional sports, or be mathematical wizards, or possess the drive and desire to accumulate wealth, or even to be reborn into a family that had accumulated wealth. So, what should be done? Give everybody 10's of K so they can invest more easily? Not feasible, and even if it were, would most invest it or spend it, and of those that did invest, would they succeed? Or should we just make it more difficult for those that have the 10's of K to invest to make it more fair? If life were "fair," life as we know it would not exist. I can imagine a bland total equality of all things so boring as not to be worth existing. No adventure, no diversity, no wonder, no striving, no reason for anything else except your inconsequential solipsistic self mirrored by the rest of existence. What is so evil about INVITING those that have wealth to invest it? Isn't that a good way to redistribute it, a more creative, diverse way than disincentivising such investment by taxing it at the same rates as income? We keep talking about investing--in education, in health, in opportunity--but somehow investing in wealth, which makes all the other nice investments possible, is not so important?
JFK, Roosevelt etc.. at least had the ability to (or appear to) connect with the middle class, to understand the plight. I don't think Romney appears that way. Even Regan had the ability to connect with blue-collar workers.
I don't think Obama does either. He connects well with the so-called the liberal elite.
I think Biden does connect, very well, which makes him valuable to the election cycle and image of the whitehouse
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