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Originally posted by KrazyHorse
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Human wellfare is maximized when the fewest number possible are in poverty or poor.
Then we should kill everybody
This is not going to happen when wealth becomes the domain of the few inherited, or the few very lucky people who have everything else align their way.
So by spreading wealth out among the children of the rich we somehow make other people richer? Don't be ridiculous. If we want to raise the average starting wealth of the next generation then we should just sterilize the poor.
But wait; I thought you didn't care whether the children were born rich or poor?
As an example, rich people by luxury cars. If there are people who make little money (say, 40k) and very wealthy (say 40m), the luxury cars will cost 1m rather than the 60k that they do now. Why? The cars are maent to be a luxury good, one that the rich can only afford. By having a large gap, it insures that luxury goods are so high that the nonrich won't be able to afford them.
Now I don't care about cars (and nor do you). However, some luxury goods do benefit and make life more enjoyable for those who own them. For example, private clubs. Private clubs provide connections, if the distance between the wealthy and the rest of society is too great no one but the wealthy will be allowed to get in. If the distance isn't as great, non-wealthy who want to can sacrifice so that they can get in and so get the connections that they lacked due to accidents of birth.
It is like an gap in physics... if the gap is small then it is a lot easier to get the electron (or nucleon or whatever is the relevant 'particle' for that particular gap) to jump the gap and move from one level to the next.
My preference would be some way so that the starting level of the poor was about the same as the starting level of the rich, so both could have ample opportunities to succeed and the Ford/Einstein/Bill Gates who currently aren't born to the right parents (or have the needed luck) to succeed will have the opportunity to succeed and create to their potential.
The main benefit does not go to the parents. Often the kids do nothing for the parents, even when the parents are old (in our current society). Additionally, the parents generally die when the kids reach middle age (before they are at their wealthy stage if they follow the DanS method to becoming rich.
Are you being deliberately dense? The main benefit to having children is non-monetary in nature, of course. I've already said this a number of times.
I already referenced culture and biology, and those are precisely the reasons that many middle class and wealthy people have children. The capitalist class, of course, don't have to work hard to have great materialistic success, so it isn't as true with them.
In a materialistic society, there are large forces against having children, which aren't natural (biological) nor benefit society as a whole. They just benefit the single (materialistic) member of society that decides not to have children.
It is the children that provide future workers, tax earners, employers, scientists, problem solvers, etc. It is entirely in the states interest to have well educated children that have the opportunity to become productive citizens.
Look, I'll try to put this as simply as possible, because you're obviously not interested in thinking deeply about this issue:
Perhaps you've heard the old saying: "for every mouth that God sends he also sends a pair of hands". Well the converse is also true. It is not AT ALL obvious to me that the net benefit to society of a marginal child is positive. Certainly not large and positive.
People who take advantage of their opportunities produce more than they use. This is why larger cities produce more than smaller, larger nations produce more than smaller nations, etc.
And yeah, that is with some other things being equal. But even countries which are behind others produce a lot more if they are much larger. And there is no reason why a large country has to take less advantage of it's people than a smaller one.
Your statements go against all of earth's history. It is true, there might be some point where we just don't have places to put everyone, where we just can't fully utilize our population. But no nation has shown itself to be there yet. And China and India, the worlds two largest nations (in population) are still growing at a frantic pace. They show that at least all 'first world' nations would benefit from having greater population.
I and most of the people I know who are scientists, engineers, etc.. are so because they had government subsidies helping parents educate us.
Really? If the government stopped paying to educate people then nobody would get educated? Don't be ridiculous.
I went to a private college for my bachelors. The students there either had wealthy or upper middle class parents (a large number had parents who were millionaires, some drove porsches/etc), or they were on scholarship and getting support from the federal government... like me. And the vast majority that were in technical disciplines were scholarship/supported by the government students.
So yes, if the government stopped education then it would go down to just the children of the wealthy (the middle class would have even less children, because they would try to educate them, but a lot would fail... my middle class friends had a more difficult time than me sometimes because the federal government didn't help them that much... their parents had to sacrifice a lot).
And a lot of the reason the last 100 years has seen the great strides in technology, science, etc... is because of the great numbers of engineers, scientists, technical people who have been educated. This did not occur before the government was involved.
But if I didn't have the education subsidies and my family didn't have the other subsidies... I would have to be working such jobs to be able to survive. And then I wouldn't have been able to acquire the education to become a physicist (or an engineer/etc, if you argue that physicists aren't useful... you will note that currently I am thinking of switching to something that is more applied, although I am not yet sure).
So your education cost more than the discounted value of your lifetime earnings (above that of a cannery worker)?
call it 8000$ for 13 years + 20k for 4 years at 5% real return (gets you to grad school where you start to get paid) in constant dollars adds up to 280k after college. By the way, the lifetime returns to a PhD over a high school graduate is ~2 million.
So yeah, the government subsidized my education. By doing so, my overall productivity has increased enormously.
This is a good thing, obviously.
By subsidizing education and providing opportunities to kids who would otherwise not have them, the government allows those with the ability to, to become much more productive than they otherwise would be able to be. This increases the overall productivity of society, and so is an overall benefit for society.
In India, where my roommate is from, and were people don't have as many opportunities (provided by the state), things are much worse.
In India the GDP per capita is 2600$ per annum. So no **** things are worse.
Why is China and India always discussed as being the future? When it comes down to it, it is because they have the population resources so that if they don't screw up... that they will dominate all the positions which can be achieved without inherited wealth.
Jon, what exactly is the argument you're making here? That India and China will be important countries because they have a lot of people living in them? Sure, why not. But HOW DOES IT RAISE THE HUMAN WELFARE OF CHINA OR INDIA TO HAVE SO MANY PEOPLE?
Think about the US now. Our position comes from having a larger population than other first world nations and being able to take advantage of that when they were having to rebuild (And repopulate) after WW2. So the creativity and innovation was centered here, in the US. That caused money and talent to pour into this nation, giving us the riches we have enjoyed in the last 50 years.
Now it is true, I am not all about materialism. I actually don't like it particularly much, and would prefer we moved to some other system. However, it is the one that most everyone can talk about. A lot of people would think that a spiritually focused (for example) system would be crazy, and even the people who would all want to be spiritually focused, wouldn't agree on how to do that. And family focused systems people think are outdated/outmoded/etc.
I am afraid until a singularity we are stuck with a materialist system.
JM
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