I got to the club meeting late tonight (had to get art hw done) but here are a few things i picked up on/ were requested to be posted:
- LBJ's Great Society [Connor]
- The Millionaire Next Door
- The New Elite [Charles Murray Washington Post article] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873.html]
- How do you help people?
- Poverty is not not having money. It is socioeconomic. [Rohan: See socio part]
- Competence vs. Intelligence
- Necessity saying [someone comment with the right one, I think it is: nothing works like necessity, necessity is the mother of invention, etc.] This was used in context of how easy it is to get money in America. It is an indication that life is easy if no one is knocking on your door asking to mow your lawn etc.
- Land of the Billionaires argument. [Philip please expand this one. It's yours and I don't want to skew any points].
- 4 yrs of college vs. 4 yrs of WSJ [See my last post on higher education bubble]
- Chales Murray [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8GN8g0Si7Q] [Philip - please correct me if this isn't the right video]
- On eduction: See WSJ articles: The Origins of Good Ideas; Why Some Islanders Build Better Crab Traps; and No You Can't - Is genius a simple matter of hard work? Not a chance]. Soltas and Tisdall - if you have read any more in this vein, let me know.
As I said, I got to the meeting near its end so please supplement this post in the comments.
- James
[Evan: Add that video, Cobbe: Economist article you were talking about, Tisdall: Article Jack gave you about designing your own undergraduate degree].
- It would be fun to have a discussion comparing and contrasting The Millionaire Next Door by Stanley and Danko with The New Elite. Would you rather be accepted amongst the HYP cogniscenti as, say a middling bureaucrat, or be a trade school graduate owner of a trucking company that has made you rich?
ReplyDelete- I think you have to differentiate caring (ending a negative, eg alleviating suffering) from helping (starting a positive eg teaching someone to read)
- the Land of the Billionaire's argument goes like this. I would rather live in a land of billionaires than a land of poor people. While I would always have less money than everyone else in the former, I would be a millionaire, because those richer people, would and could pay me a lot for my services, a simple supply-demand concept. None of those poor people could pay me much. This serves as a thought experiment to the socialist-Democrat belief that unequal = unfair. I should only care how much money I have to make my choices in life. More money = more choices. To care about what others have, and to feel that I am somehow poorer if I have less than them, is purely envy.
- yes the Murray video cited is correct. 10% of people have the intelligence to master a serious undergrad BA
Philip,
ReplyDeleteI am still confused about the Land of the Billionaire's argument. If everyone was a billionaire, sure there would be more demand in the economy for your services and consequently you would have a more wealth. But since there would be more demand, wouldn't goods and services be more expensive as well. I naturally feel like $20 in a world of Billionaires would get you just as much as $1 in a land of poor people, where people would be willing to sell and do things for less. Therefore, how would this give more alternatives to you?
Zach, I'll let Philip give a good answer, but typically when things are made more efficiently (ie billionaire land) they become less expensive. Food prices are a good example. $20 in the US can buy you a LOT more than in Somalia etc.
ReplyDeleteThings over everything. Refrigerators, TVs, Microwaves, Telephones, Computers, etc. Everything that used to be owned exclusively by the rich is now owned by the vast majority of Americans.
Is a latina girl is fed, sheltered, and talking to her parents back in mexico on a cell phone really that impoverish?
Once we answer no, this is just relative poverty, we then enter the Republican Club coup d'état of Democrat arguments: if people are concerned with relative inequality and not absolute inequality, then the only emotion behind attempts to achieve "justice" by "fair redistribution" is be envy.