patrick.net

"Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism"
-- Barry Goldwater

Since the American public did not elect AuH2O, I assume they have the wrong understanding of equality.

Equality of opportunity, rather than equality of outcomes. I think we have neither though, these days.

IMO the decline of America started with the defeat of Barry Goldwater.

Well of course. Every class but the top tier are not happy with their current state, and want to be millionaires...or have the millionaires dragged down to their level. It's been that way since the dawn of man.

Wow. What a great study and story. To think that we're essentially on the same page with our views of fairness and equality is encouraging. We all agree that American income levels are out of balance, but don't agree on how to even them out. That's not very far apart.

From the story:
If our politicians also accepted this starting point, they might argue less about ideology and differences and more about paths to get closer to our common goal--a much less extreme level of inequality.

Me:
Amen.

I agree I think all public schools should be equal, and the we need to stop emphasizing on the thug kids that hold court in the classroom with hostage teachers acting as their concierge. These assholes should be thrown out of school, and the parents should have to provide schooling for them or a good asswhooping and attitude adjustment to make their kid get with the program. That way the resources at the school can focus on educating the masses there in, rather than performing social triage on a few "at risk" kids(destined for prison anyway, even with the current track record) at the expense of the other 90% of the kids, that have to just witness this shit take place instead of being taught in the class room. While being sent home to learn the assignments at home, with out the aide of the teachers as intended.

I think the school budget of every public school should be the same per child, no more and no less. And we stop investing in the worst of the lot, and more on the majorities future. Less we expect them all to be headed to Sing Sing.

what?! i'd be a 'job creator' with that .25 of $250 mil...

real estate lawyers for my new purchases
contractors to renovate same
medical care for all the family, even extended and hated members, up to and including cosmetic surgery of their ugly mugs so i don't have to look at them around Thanksgiving dinner
reliable transport for same
putting kids through college
putting adults through college
world trips with my entourage
hotels, dinners, museums, music, wineries, hayrides under the stars

what's not to love about this list? it's the urban hick retirement plan/stupidity tax, but it puts a lot of people to work.

Ruki says

The cognitive dissonance inherent in these 'studies' is quite amazing...almost as amazing as those who read them and go along with their non-logic.

I guess I missed the non-logic in this study. What part of the study and or story didn't make logical sense?

Actually, I've asked my husband to not buy Lotto tickets ... because I'm worried he'll win! He's a lucky person and I think winning the lottery would be awful. You'd be inundated with people wanting a piece of what you won, you wouldn't know who your friends were -- that's not the kind of life I want. And I can't help but think there are other people who feel the same way.

Maybe that's why I didn't catch the meaning of your post the first time...