Philosophy Now Forum

Can someone give an economic explanation to justify this?

PhilX

When (relatively) smart, mercenary folks go after (perceived) scarce resources, they generally get 'em, keep 'em, control 'em.

So: it's not about entitlement...it's about what 'is'.

I can ask an equally meaningless question: why are the poor entitled to subsidy (handouts, welfare, food stamps, etc.)?

Phil is assuming it needs justification. I think that's a mistake.

No one is entitled to anything, "inalienable rights" is a fiction created by the writers of the documents that Framed America. People have whatever they can take, earn or are given, and can hold on to.

Philosophy Explorer wrote:Can someone give an economic explanation to justify this?

PhilX

It's called private property. What's mine is mine! What's yours is yours! It needs no 'justification'.

Melchior wrote:

Philosophy Explorer wrote:Can someone give an economic explanation to justify this?

PhilX

It's called private property. What's mine is mine! What's yours is yours! It needs no 'justification'.

Till someone with a bigger stick takes it away from you.

Philosophy Explorer wrote:Can someone give an economic explanation to justify this?

I take it that you're surely referring to those who inherit rather earn their way up from lesser status during a single lifetime. It's not written in stone that the offspring, relatives, or significant others of affluent people ought to be granted the latter's wealth, but the youthful anticipation of it in the former is nevertheless there, as if a certainty. “Their sense of entitlement is overpowering,” psychologist Madeline Levine says, describing a teenage patient who stomped in furious and feeling deprived because he was stuck driving his mother’s “mom-car Lexus” rather than being given his own BMW. [...] “The rich are increasingly entitled . . . they set the cultural tone for advertising and all those kinds of things.”

Detouring a bit into the psychological version of self-infatuation and entitlement characteristics: They apparently don't offer an advantage in socioeconomic competition or becoming wealthy. It's usually the condition of already being rich itself that engenders the tendencies.

Studies supposedly support more ancient stereotypes of the affluent being the case than the "ought to" views adopted since the collapse of rigid class systems: “There’s this idea that the more you have, the less entitled and more grateful you feel; and the less you have, the more you feel you deserve. That’s not what we find,” says author Paul Piff, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “This seems to be the opposite of noblesse oblige.”

Statistics from one year showed that wealthier people are more likely to cut people off in traffic and to behave immorally in business and charity scenarios.

But OTOH, the everyday world which I actually encounter via personal experience seldom matches up well with the generalized models that quantitative sciences output from their collected data and inference engines. It would be astonishing if it did, since idealized, Platonic-like constructs are rather difficult to acquire lodging rights and living access to.

To clarify a bit, when it comes to taxation, just which tax theory should be applied to the rich? Progressive? Flat tax? None?

Judging from the tax shelters, the rich seem to think they're entitled to all of it.

PhilX

Philosophy Explorer wrote:Can someone give an economic explanation to justify this?

PhilX

It is a consequence of two things. One is the disorganised scrabble to greed, enabled by a dog eat dog economic system, and Two, the mobilisation of power to control the system in favour of the rich and powerful.

There is no moral justification of for this.

"The problem with the poor is poverty, the problem with the rich is uselessness."

George Bernard Shaw.

He did have a point: the rich are often too busy caring about money to do anything useful with it, to help their fellow man for example, often to even care about those who have not, few seldom do sadly, and the poor are often too busy having nothing at all and no real ability to do anything about it because they are poor. Inequality stems only from stupidity, it certainly has nothing to do with value, ironically.

The rich aren't totally useless. In fact they commonly do what is normally suggested: save. With the savings, banks and other institutions take the money and lend it out for (hopefully successful) projects which leads to jobs. Now businesses could speed up the creation of jobs by spending the money rather than just saving it.

Would this be enough justification for the rich to be rich?

PhilX

Philosophy Explorer wrote:Can someone give an economic explanation to justify this?

PhilX

Its all explained in Aesop's fable of the ant and the grasshopper.
http://www.umass.edu/aesop/content.php?i=1&n=0

From the Calvinist point of view the rich have a blessing from God and at the same time they are obliged to use the wealth for good deeds.

That´s why full-fledged protestants don´t use the money for themselves and live without luxuries, they satisfy only their basic needs.

They administer the money in God´s name.

tbieter wrote:Is a universal right to own private property morally justified?

Of course it is. Try living under a collectivist system and see how you like it. Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, etc....