121 lines
4.9 KiB
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121 lines
4.9 KiB
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From fork-admin@xent.com Sat Sep 21 20:22:07 2002
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<p05111a27b9b1d842c9fe@[66.149.49.6]> <m24rcjl8gh.fsf@maya.dyndns.org>
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To: Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@canada.com>
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From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com>
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Subject: Re: sed /s/United States/Roman Empire/g
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Cc: "Mr. FoRK" <fork_list@hotmail.com>, <fork@spamassassin.taint.org>,
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Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>
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Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002 14:18:29 -0400
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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Hash: SHA1
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At 10:32 AM -0400 on 9/21/02, Gary Lawrence Murphy wrote:
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> Cool --- I wasn't aware that the US had lifted it's population out
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> of poverty! When did this happen? I wonder where the media gets the
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> idea that the wealth gap is widening and deepening...
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All the world loves a smartass...
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:-).
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Seriously. Look at he life expectancy and human carrying capacity of
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this continent before the Europeans got here. Look at it now. Even
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for descendants of the original inhabitants. Even for the descendents
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of slaves, who were brought here by force.
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More stuff, cheaper. That's progress.
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Poverty, of course, is not relative. It's absolute. Disparity in
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wealth has nothing to do with it.
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It's like saying that groups have rights, when, in truth, only
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individuals do. Like group rights, "disparity" in wealth is
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statistical sophistry.
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Besides, even if you can't help the distribution, industrial wealth
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is almost always transitory, and so is relative poverty, even when
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there are no confiscatory death-taxes. The 20th anniversary Forbes
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400 just came out, and only a few tens of people are still there
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since 1982, a time which had significantly higher marginal taxes on
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wealth, income, and inheritance than we do now. More to the point,
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they're nowhere near the top.
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I'll take those odds. It is only when neofeudalism reasserts itself,
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in the form of government regulation, confiscatory taxes, legislated
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monopoly, corporate welfare, "non-profit" neoaristocratic tax dodges,
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and legalized labor extortion that we get slowdowns in progress, like
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what happened in Fabian-era Britain, or 1970's USA.
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In fact, it is in countries where wealth is the most "unfairly"
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distributed, that you get the most improvement in the general --
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economic -- welfare. More stuff cheaper, fewer people dying, more
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people living longer.
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I'll take those odds as well. People take greater risks when the
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returns are higher, improving the lot of us all as a result.
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Cheers,
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RAH
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--
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-----------------
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
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The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
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44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
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"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
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[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
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experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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