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richardhutnik on 05 April 2011
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HappySqurriel said:
mrstickball said:

Something I was thinking about today:

If extreme wealth was a product entirely of luck, and nothing else, wouldn't that mean that no studies could be done to attribute wealth to anything but luck? Wouldn't it then be reasonable that wealth, being entirely existent on luck, would be evenly distributed among all countries, and among all socio-economic backgrounds?

If luck was indeed the primary attribute of extreme wealth, then there could be no trend charts or studies to prove otherwise. However, in reality, many studies have been done that can attribute wealth to various factors - none of which are luck.

Since that is the case, from an empirical standpoint, there can't be *luck*, as luck is the absence of skill, talent, or abilities. One can attribute some generic qualities of *luck* like being at the right place at the right time, having certain parents, but I don't think that really qualifies all wealthy people as merely being the ones with luck. Again, if that were the case, then all countries with have a similar statistical distribution of extremely wealthy, which is far from reality.

And Richard, being a Christian, why are you attributing things to something that the Bible is inherantly against? Both James and the writer of Ecclesiastes 3 as well as the book of Proverbs were certainly against the idea of major events being random luck or happenstance. James emplores Christians to pray and ask God for guidance in business decisions, which should make one assume that decisions or success isn't in luck, but in the hands of God. Ecclesiastes (as well as Proverbs) maintains that wisdom, not luck, are attributes of wealth. These ideas agree with the other posters on VGC.


I don’t want to make any claims about anyone on this forum, but many extreme political positions can only be defended by unsupported and irrational beliefs. In the case of extreme wealth redistribution a person has to believe that all economic outcomes (positive or negative) are the result of factors that are either irrational (luck) or unfair (exploitation of the poor). The reason for this is quite simple, people must believe that their political beliefs are "good", "fair" and "correct" and few people could maintain this personal image while supporting significant wealth redistribution if they believed that most people’s economic outcomes were based on rational factors that were within their own control.

Essentially, if you believe that the wealthy small business owner is reaping the benefits of decades of hard work and self-sacrifice, and the high-school drop-out crack head is suffering from the result of selfish and poor decisions, it becomes nearly impossible to argue that the wealthy person should give up the bulk of his income to support the lifestyle of the crack-head.

I would say that it can be argued that the belief a person has in society as a whole to engage in wealth redistribution by government, or other societial entities, to give funds to those who have less, would connect to how much a person believes that where someone in life is, is based on their efforts or not.  In short, how "just" one believes life is without there being intervention by humans to readjust outcomes. 

I would say this is interesting, because take another argument: Why should people who win lotteries or at other forms of gambling in a big way be taxed at all?  Didn't they risk their money?  Why get taxed?  It seems this is seen as less correct then to say that the person was an entrepreneur or investor who took a big risk with their money, and it paid off.  Why should the amount of effort put in be a determinant of how much they would get taxed?