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Comment by forapurpose | Hacker News Reader

> that way it is harder for anyone to catch up to him

It's the opposite; it would be easier for people to catch up. By providing more funding for health, housing, and education, more people would have the opportunity to become wealthy themselves, and to do great things for society. How many potentially great developers are lost in awful educational systems, for example? The U.S. is supposed to be land of opportunity, where the belief is that anyone can thrive given liberty and opportunity, and that talent does not depend on the wealth of your parents. Right now, college education is determined, more than anything else, by parental wealth or income.

If you mean that it's harder for other billionaires to catch him, it's kind to consider their welfare. But as Gates would pay more tax than the other billionaires, they would catch up to him.

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> How many potentially great developers are lost in awful educational systems, for example?

not for lack of funding. taxing the shit out of billionaires isnt going to fix the structural problems that make the schools a poor environment for developing young minds.

>But as Gates would pay more tax than the other billionaires, they would catch up to him.

thats not really how progressive tax rates work. if he is paying more taxes under the same system he still has more after taxes. of course since he pledged to "give it way" then I guess theres nothing to tax?

> taxing the shit out of billionaires isnt going to fix the structural problems that make the schools a poor environment for developing young minds

It's going to be hard to fix those problems without taxing them. I'd say the right to an education trumps the right to have a billion dollars.

> It's going to be hard to fix those problems without taxing them.

its going to be hard to fix those problems if your only tool is "even more of some rich guy's money". there are structural problems, these schools have enough money to pay administrative staff into the 6 figures. theres no accountability as to the outcomes. its not a lack of funding. its a systemic problem.

>The U.S. is supposed to be land of opportunity, where the belief is that anyone can thrive given liberty and opportunity, and that talent does not depend on the wealth of your parent

To offer an alternative interpretation, I’ve always seen the “American Dream” as opportunity to improve your position in life, rather than creating an entirely-level playing field for all. The latter experiment has been attempted many times in the 20th century in many nations, and the results have not been encouraging, to say the least.

Besides wealth-of-money, many kids benefit from parents with wealth of character, intelligence, wisdom, and even love; the importance of these cannot be understated.

I agree, of course, that wealth has never been more important in determining one’s ability to receive a good education, and that is a major problem. One solution could be to increase funding for public schools... but I am rapidly losing faith in the results they deliver. The most disadvantaged people are priced-out of the market for private schools, and the same can be said for many in the middle-class.

There is also a fundamental problem at play: those not suited for academia, but have much value to offer society, are always going to slip through the cracks under the “must-be-college-educated” paradigm. I want plenty of low-skilled jobs with a reasonable wage available for those who just want an income, while they tinker away at their genius invention in the evening, for example.

In my [layman's limited] experience, the definition of "The American Dream" that most economists use is exactly what you suggest; the ability to move up a level (or more) from the starting position. Easy to quantify and measure. And by this measurement, the majority of the rest of the Western world is better at offering The American Dream to their citizens than America is.

Something like 60% of Americans have less than $1000 in the bank. 69% live paycheck to paycheck.

I don't see how not having at least a modicum of financial safety net could possibly be considered 'living the American dream'..

The American dream is just that - for most people it's just a dream, something to hope for but never achieve.

>a modicum of financial safety net

This is why I'm generally in favour of policies that create jobs, as the welfare system has utterly failed in creating upward-mobility for those in need and their progeny. (Edit: it's worth nothing that many charitable organisations do incredible work, with more cents of the dollars donated reaching those in need that gov. programs).

This is based on my presupposition that those people could, and would, thrive in an environment with more opportunities for work.

Edit: the downvote heat for non-socialist perspectives on HN is unreal. Simply unreal.

Yeah, I really don't get why your post is being downvoted. There's nothing inflammatory in it, just an opinion. Censoring opinions you don't agree with via downvote shouldn't be acceptable on HN

That's not censorship...

hahaha. 'non-socialist perspectives'. So..you have the impression the norm here is 'socialist perspectives'. Maybe you're right. That's just amazing to me though. My impression is Rand-type/libertarian/free market perspectives are the norm. (Or even more, not caring about politics, just wanting to get rich, which maybe comes to the same thing. Rand is certainly by far the most frequently-mentioned writer on here with any political..dimension, I think) I've never read anything I considered more than very slightly to the left on here, let alone 'socialist', which just makes me laugh when people from the US (which I presume you are, sorry if wrong) use. In the US 'socialism' seems nowadays to usually be used to mean both 'I don't like it' and 'anywhere to the left of far-right'.

Well, I was just reading the wise words of chairman dang yesterday, that everyone on here feels they're in a minority in every way. It's always surprising to read comments such as yours are for me; they reveal similar feelings in everyone.

Maybe the downvoting wasn't, as you assumed, for the 'non-socialist perspective'-ness of what you said, but the way you said it, or something else? I've noticed people are often wrong, or seem to be, about what caused the downvoting, when they reveal what they assume the reason is. Well, maybe they're not 2 separate things - the veiled assumptions coming out in the prose, and the assumptions coming out in the voting complaints.

My observation is that polite, decently-articulated comments are generally well-received at HN, and snarky, mocking comments are not tolerated. Stating an incorrect opinion as fact is not tolerated, but opinions are generally welcome.

This rule does not apply to political discussion, however.

If someone is incorrect, or there is a disagreement, the community will usually offer a correction, or open the topic for discussion. They will directly offer a rebuttal to what has been said in a manner that it beneficial. This, I believe, is what makes HN the great place that it is.

Again, this rule does not appear apply to political discussion.

I agree that the HN community runs the gamut of political views. I made no claim to the contrary. My observation is that I consistently see comments that meet the "HN Standard" of reasonable discourse being down-voted, and this practice appears to apply overwhelmingly to criticism of central-planning by the federal government.

I find your comment to be needlessly mocking, and I cannot make sense of your attempt to fudge the definition of "socialism" as "things I don't like".

Ok thanks very much.

I guess one example of what I was talking about is your phrase: "your attempt to fudge the definition of "socialism"".

That's a rather inaccurate, poisonous misrepresentation of what I said and was doing, it seems to me. Yet you say it like it's the plainest fact, and maybe you believe it is. It's snarky. It's not assuming good faith. It's pure downvote material.

I was describing how it seems to me the word is used in the US nowadays. Or as I said, even more carefully, how it "seems nowadays to usually be used". I don't hear much news at all, less from the US, but a fair bit of that (before Trump anyway) has been hysteria about purported socialism, and e.g. any policy or intention Obama had that the far-right didn't like, described as such. It's laughable—at best, The Worst Argument In The World[0].

I likewise can't make any sense of how you thought I was trying to 'fudge the definition' of a word, if I understand what you meant by that. And I can't see which part of what I wrote was 'mocking', at all. The 'hahaha' at the beginning, if you were referring to that, was me laughing - I actually physically laughed like that, it was a record of that.

But I really appreciate the effort put into the rest of what you wrote, thanks.

[0]http://squid314.livejournal.com/323694.html

The US is high variance. Almost my entire CS graduating class moved from Canada to the US because the dream is still alive there and hardly exists here (despite Canada certainly being a better place to live for the average citizen).

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