Agree or Disagree

[Joel]

I am reading a book that quotes a leading politician as saying,

"All of life is like a casino. Some have succeeded greatly at the gaming tables of life, others not. Those who have been successful should be forced to share their winnings with those who have not done as well."

I'm still looking to find the actual name of the politician but do you agree or disagree? And isn't that basically what our welfare does??

Joel

[Sasq]

I agree with the sentiment, however those that do really well at the tables, can afford good accountants which ensures they don't have to share

Dan

[Indiana]

Wow, that's communism pure....

(Don't ask what I voted for )

[Greebe]

No that's socialistic

[KRSESQ]

Saying "life is like a casino" and thus dismissing personal achievement as "luck" cheapens the success that comes from years of hard work and smart decisions.

Life isn't a casino. It's a meat grinder. If you can't keep one step ahead you'll get chewed to pieces. If you can get far enough ahead (by legal/ethical means, of course) that you'll never have to worry about getting eaten alive by someone hungrier than you, more power to you.

I don't begrudge Bill Gates his billions. He didn't get where he is by "luck." Smarts, definitely. Shrewdness, certainly. Ruthlessness, no comment. But not "luck."

Kevin

edit Well, maybe a LITTLE luck.

[Sasq]

ignoring the element of luck, there are good poker players and bad ones. at the poker table of life, most people still needs skills.

[Wombat]

I don't begrudge Bill Gates his billions. He didn't get where he is by "luck." Smarts, definitely. Shrewdness, certainly. Ruthlessness, no comment. But not "luck."

Nah, luck was a part of it. There are many great coders in the world, but he was just lucky enough to pick up that DOS contract.


And I <B>do</B> begrudge his billions, but that's because it was through illegal abuse of a convicted monopoly.

[Dr Mordrid]

The quote is from Dick Gephardt, outgoing Democratic (liberal) minority leader in the US House of Representatives.

He (and a lot of other Democrats) are "outgoing" largely because the American people have rejected the Democrats and their decades long campaign of class warfare, as shown by the crushing defeat handed his party in this months congressional elections.

The class warfare arguement is being rejected because the people finally realized that it wasn't a set of policies but just political rhetoric aimed at inflaming their base. The public now realizes that those who just offer rhetoric without rational ideas are intellectually bankrupt. The Democrats haven't been rational for at least 30 years.

In this election the Republicans (conservatives) not only widened their House majority but also took over the Senate, several Democratic state governorships and the majority of state legislatures.

It was a major hammering.

Dr. Mordrid

[KvHagedorn]

The problem is the all-or-nothing proposition. I DO begrudge Bill Gates his billions. Can any of you sit there and seriously advocate to me that one person should be "worth" One Hundred and Fifty Thousand times as much as someone else, when that someone else works hard (in a field that does not hold the possibility of making billions, such as teaching or the ministry) and faithfully serves the community and has a family to support, pays his taxes, and may be worth more as a human being than Bill Gates could ever be? Should his children (if he and his wife decide that they can afford them) forgo higher education and health insurance and any hope to pursue happiness because a very few are hoarding all the wealth? This is how things are in America now. Capitalism has gotten out of hand. Pure laissez-faire capitalism really has no place outside hypothetical discussions by college students in first-year political science or macroeconomics classes. It is as foolish to advocate such a thing as to advocate pure Marxism.

Should lawyers be able to bring class action suits that do nothing for the class they represent, but line the lawyers' pockets with millions? Should Mike Tyson be able to make tens of millions of dollars because he is a wild animal? The problem is that too many Americans are so stupid that they cheer these villians and say "well, if they can do it, more power to them!" This sort of society breeds rap "artists" who make millions from ripping off public domain music like Mozart's Symphony #25 when Mozart himself died broke, and would still die broke today because anything that isn't lowbrow doesn't sell, and recording companies wouldn't touch it. This is the sort of society that thinks Maury Povich is better than Nova because there are more morons who watch his crap (hey, democracy in action! There are more morons than geniuses, therefore the morons' ideas must be the correct ones!), therefore he makes more money, therefore he is a better human being than the writers of Nova. People who do good and make little money for it are scorned as idiots in this country. Their opinions, though often wise, are belittled because they are not rich.

No, life is not like a casino. Anyone who simplifies things to this extreme is either intellectually inferior or condescending to those he believes are. I also disagree with the proposition that luck had nothing to do with Bill Gates being where he is now. That was a combiniation of risk taking (where luck certainly takes a part), extreme ambition, and a lack of moral principles. Here lies a problem. The average intellect does not understand the pricniples of risk taking, nor do they understand extreme ambition. What they DO understand is lack of moral principles. This is what they see as the key to success. Honor and decency are for losers.. this has become the opinion of the young in the lower eschelons of society. It's no wonder so many young Americans turn to crime.

Pure "hands off" capitalism is just an economic version of the concept of "Might Makes Right." If you allow a society to be formed by this principle, you get a culture which is empty... void of any higher principle. Something just as bad as pure Marxism. Now that pure Marxism is receding from the scene, we should deradicalize capitalism as well, else we will inevitably become the new enemies of truth and justice in the world.

[KvHagedorn]

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
The quote is from Dick Gephardt, outgoing Democratic (liberal) minority leader in the US House of Representatives.

He's outgoing largely because the American people have reject the Democrats 40 year campaign of class warfare, as shown by the crushing defeat handed his party in this months congressional elections.

In this election the Republicans (conservatives) not only widened their House majority but also took over the Senate, several Democratic state governorships and the majority of state legislatures.

It was a major hammering.

Dr. Mordrid

He is outgoing mainly because of non-economic issues.. any non-support of a president during wartime is political suicide.

[KvHagedorn]

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
The quote is from Dick Gephardt, outgoing Democratic (liberal) minority leader in the US House of Representatives.

He (and a lot of other Democrats) are "outgoing" largely because the American people have rejected the Democrats and their decades long campaign of class warfare, as shown by the crushing defeat handed his party in this months congressional elections.

The class warfare arguement is being rejected because the people finally realized that it wasn't a set of policies but just political rhetoric aimed at inflaming their base. The public now realizes that those who just offer rhetoric without rational ideas are intellectually bankrupt. The Democrats haven't been rational for at least 30 years.

In this election the Republicans (conservatives) not only widened their House majority but also took over the Senate, several Democratic state governorships and the majority of state legislatures.

It was a major hammering.

Dr. Mordrid

OK, Doc... I like this version better. The democrats have always pandered to minorities and feminists and others whose idea of important issues is out of synch with the majority of people.

[Dr Mordrid]

It's not that different a version, just better stated.

The war stuff was a small part of that election, as anyone working on the campaign could tell you. I was.

The Democrats are starting to lose credibility in many areas. This hurt them in this election because of;

1. their mindless harping on the economy but with absolutely no policy changes they were willing to articulate. Most likely because this would recurse into the old class warfare/raise taxes/expand welfare droning everyone is sick of.

2. their ties to the the teachers unions; whose members can't seem to do their jobs no matter how much money is thrown at them. Well known to parents is that it's these unions who run their local schools by way of their infiltration of school management and school boards, mostly with the complicity of Democrat controlled state legislatures over the last 30+ years. This complicity was bought with huge contributions of teacher union money to Democratic campaigns. "Democracy" in action and a big reason why the number of academies and home schooling are exploding at lightspeed.

3. their ties to the trial lawyers, who want to sue everyone and everytying no matter the logic of the situation. $ame enabling cau$e$ as the teacher$ union$, same re$ult$.

4. the totally weird behavior of Tom Daschle (outgoing Senate majority leader) and many of his fellow Democrats during the campaign. The most notable examples;

a. the "memorial service" for Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash 2 weeks before the election. This nationally televised "memorial" turned into a quite ugly and partisan political rally, and in the process turned the stomachs of voters across the entire nation. Even the vast majority of Democrats and Independents were revolted.

b. the voters also didn't approve when Walter Mondale, tired old retread that he is, was presented as a "future leader" of the Senate when he was appointed to take over Wellstones campaign. This is the same Walter Mondale who, when he was nominated for president in 1984, commented to an associate "we're gonna tax the hell out of 'em". Yeah, right.

c. Tom Daschle's rambling rant on the Senate floor 6 weeks before the election, which was also shown on national TV NEWS programs. Even most independents who saw that performance were going "is he on acid or what??". Daschle was the Senate Majority Leader....supposedly a position calling for stability and responsibility. He sure blew that theory.

d. the Democrats schizoid attitude towards "supporting" the war on terrorism. On one hand they vote for the congressional authorizations for use of force, but on the other hand the Senate Majority Leader (Daschle) and the Senates ultra-liberal caucus (Sen. Kennedy and his crowd) tried to stifle the implementing legislation. The American people did not miss the contradiction.

e. their grandstand play holding up the Homeland Security bill. Their problem: unions didn't like the labor rules. As proposed this new agency would fall under the existing rules, as first proposed by the last Democratic president with a reasonable attitude on this subject: Jonh F. Kennedy. JFK was first to implement a policy that when national security is involved being able to hire/fire/move personnel should not always have to knuckle down to labor union rules. I thought JFK was their role model??

f. the Senate Judiciary Committee holding up federal judicial appointments. Here we sit with huge backups in the Federal court system (which will get longer with all the terrorism cases coming into the mix) and the Senates Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Lehey of Vermont, holds up appointments that would easily pass a floor vote with wide ranging and bipartisan support. All this with Daschle's blessing. The American public was not amused.

Those are the reasons why the voters rejected the Democrats.

Dr. Mordrid

[ZokesPro]

I believe where there's a will there's a way!

I have made some pretty stupid mistakes in life and there's only one person to blame and that's me. I look back on my life and wished I had made better decisions but unless there's a time machine then my hands are tied. I accept my future and try and make better decisions, and there's alwyas the unexpected, (which refers to the Casino part) but those are the road blocks of life, the unexpected, the variables in the programming we call life.

Most of us are either too comfortable, too scared or too lazy to want to change what we currently have, as humans we need stability.

Originally posted by Sasq
ignoring the element of luck, there are good poker players and bad ones. at the poker table of life, most people still needs skills.

Luck in life is what we would call the unexpected, imo.

[Wulfman]

maybe it's just me, but I am grateful that I was "lucky" enough to be born in a developed / industrialised country. jackpot!

if the quote was only targeted on the society of a highly developed country, I still agree.

mfg
wulfman

[Tempest]

Some loose thoughts off my head:

There are at least two kinds of rich people: Those that have gotten rich by work, and those that have gotten rich by luck. I consider myself one of the latter. I'm no millionaire, but I was born in a country where most of the people can trust on getting their daily food & shelter. We have a saying here in Finland, "being born in Finland is like winning on the lottery".

On the other hand, getting all that I need to survive without too much work has left me with very little ambition. I'm 24 and I still don't know what I want to do in life. I just kind of float along. I understand that I could be despised because of that, and if I were rich, I wouldn't want to share my money with losers like myself either.

But we also have a saying "doing honest work won't get you rich here". And indeed, it appears that most of the really rich people have gotten rich by either 1) cheating or by 2) luck, for example being born into a wealthy family. In the first case, they have gotten rich by abusing others, in which case I think their wealth is unfair. But wealthy people also tend to distribute their wealth in one form or another, for example making donations or offering jobs.

So in the end, because our society runs on money, the only kind of wealth that I think should be shared is the kind of wealth that is not used but taken abroad to accumulate into some dark locker. That kind of money does not keep this world spinning.

Edit: This rant was mostly about money, but it could also be implemented for other kinds of wealth...