Harry Pollard wrote:
>
> Arthur,
>
> The attention always seems to be directed in the wrong direction. The 60,000
> families with more than $30 million net worth are unimportant. What is
> important is how they got their $30 million. If they got it serving the
> public, they should keep it. It's nobody's business.
>
> If they got it from privileges - they should give it all back. The idea that
> you take from the rich and give to the poor is nonsensical. The poor, along
> with those who should know better, might think that's a good idea but all it
> does is obscure their real need - justice.
>
> I remember Stafford Cripps, then Chancellor of the first UK Labor government
> after the war, making the point. At the annual conference, the rank and file
> were demanding higher taxes on incomes and profits. Cripps pointed out that if
> they took every penny of income over 2000 pounds, it wouldn't run Britain for
> one day.
>
> Don't worry about millionaires, and over-paid CEOs. Just work on Henry
> George's question: "Why, is spite of the enormous increase in our power to
> produce, is it so hard to make a living."
[snip]
Surely your closing question is a *very* good one.
But I wonder whether there is any important connection between the
difficulty making a living and "millionaires, and over-paid CEOs"?
Does human society function only by objective laws, and not at all
by subjective mindsets (beliefs, motivations, etc)?
If even several hundred thousand
low-paid working people just decided to not go to work any more,
wouldn't America have to impose martial law immediately to avert
societal collapse? And what if the troops didn't get up and
enforce, or the people still didn't obey?
I trust the concerns here are fairly obvious.
The point should also be obvious: "millionaires, and over-paid CEOs"
may have social import far beyond their objective reality. For those who
do not believe in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic Deity, said Deity
has less objective dimensionality than a single anthrax spore (which
does not mean these non-believers do not believe the
putatively non-existent Judeo-Christian-Islamic Deity -- or
at least the *idea* of said Deity -- is
nonetheless a historical force perhaps more powerful
than nuclear bombs!).
Isn't it obvious that "millionaires, and over-paid CEOs"
are very much worth worrying about? In an accounting system which
assigns values to all effective factors in social life, might they
may have far higher assessments than their nominal incomes,
cash flows, etc.? (Economics used to not take into account
"externalities". The solution to pollution was dilution, etc.)
Or do ideas indeed have no power at all? Which leads to the
further question as to what exists in any sense other than
as an instantiation of an idea, but that is a philosophical
question, and maybe you are saying that economics is not philosophical
or even "scientific" (which is also a subjective social
accomplishment), but Absolute Truth In Itself Apart From
All Human Existence (even though it would have
no real object without people living
a social life, etc.).
Or is this perhaps not what you meant?
"Yours in discourse...."
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
