Comment by skurry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skurry | Hacker News Reader

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Regarding human talent, we both can't prove either standpoint, so we'll just leave it at that.

Welfare is not the only solution to this problem. If minimum wage is not enough to allow a single mother to pay for child care, then we should just offer free child care, financed by taxes. Mom still has an incentive to work for a living, but is much better off. Scandinavian countries demonstrate that this works very well.

>Why should anyone in the US be guaranteed comfort when there are children begging in the street in Mexico or India?

Because as I said, the US as a society is incredibly wealthy. It's possible with a few political tweaks to fix this, and not a single person will be noticeably worse off. There's no real reason not to fix it, except for the extraordinary greed of a few.

I don't disagree with anything you have said here, only unless you also advocate a drastic overhaul of our educational system your proposals would seem to be nothing other than the most cynical form of wealth redistribution.

I think the social status quo would fall within a generation or two if the structural barriers to education were removed.

Humans have a strong desire to thrive intellectually and to understand the world. The US K-12 system has done much to stifle that and train people to be obedient workers.

As far as wealth redistribution, we've had two great successes with this in the US. The first was the Homestead Act which helped many Americans escape poverty in order to become smallholding farmers.

The second was WWII and the GI bill which constituted the greatest downward transfer of wealth in US history, and created the huge, stable, Middle Class that has survived well up until recently. The New Deal was at most just icing on the cake (and I think actually destructive to the overall trends). The wages of war, the draft, and the on-going benefits were where the real successes were.

The homestead act I can agree with, but not WWII. At least, I don't think WWII really created structural improvements that wouldn't have happened on their own if we'd stayed at peace.

I didn't say structural improvements. It just took a lot of money from the wealthy and paid it to people in exchange for military service. In other words, it set back the concentration of wealth, which is now continuing apace again.

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