Your percception of inequality is wrong.

In, my world any of the super rich can fall to mere averageness. In your world they remain rulers for eternity.

Think I am wrong?

Apply a 99% tax on all the businesses and people past $100,000 income a year. Then consider that some are bigger than others. The CEO of Walmart could grow his company faster than the CEO of Costco. Size alone counts under socialistic ideals. I would never make a million dollars under such a tax plan, so I could never compete with them.

Under a free market (and not this buttered up biscuit you wish to call a free market) Walmart must always improve what it offers or it could lose. A Costco could easily unseat them, and my chances of becoming a billionaire actually go up from nil to a measurable number.

The American Dream was based upon the idea you could grow, you could own what you wanted if you tried hard enough, and so forth.

Btw under my model there is still luxuries... it is just that some 'luxuries' move to the easily affordable standard.

And for closing... why should you determine I cannot have more rooms than you percieve I need? I would love a gaming room, a business room, a political room, a library, and a spare room for visiting friends and family.

How dare you presume upon my rights to grow as I desire!

Savings,

Ummm. Please spare us from the likes of Rawls whose philosophy is based on an abstract dummy. Although a situation with a Rawl veil of ignorance/original position will compel a rational person to prefer one society over another, it amounts to constructing society based on fictitious circumstances. That is such a lolz way to do Political Philosophy.

Imo, Political Philosophy that can not appeal to experience should be thrown to the flames.

> Justinian I wrote:
>
> Savings,
>
>Ummm. Please spare us from the likes of Rawls whose philosophy is based
>on an abstract dummy. Although a situation with a Rawl veil of ignorance/original
>position will compel a rational person to prefer one society over another, it
>amounts to constructing society based on fictitious circumstances. That is such a
>lolz way to do Political Philosophy.
>
>Imo, Political Philosophy that can not appeal to experience should be thrown to the flames.

I disagree.  The entire point of the original position is to ask yourself what an ideal society would look like without marring your judgment due to your knowledge of your own condition.  Knowing my own condition my ideal society affords people in my occupation $5mil/yr salaries and lots of good sex, but absent that knowledge, in the original position, I can imagine a society that is equitable and just for all its inhabitants.

The original position is perfectly compatible with experience by the way.  It's just not compatible with experience about your specific condition.  And that allows people from the original position to fashion a society that is fair to all its members and that doesn't afford certain members special favors at the expense of the rest.

Actually if it is impossible then you must identify the next best system and move to it... aka Capitalism, Republicanism, Free Market, and Conservatism.

> Einstein wrote:
>
> Your percception of inequality is wrong.

This is quite remarkable.

I come on here and see Einstein explaining what other people think and then declaring them to be wrong.  Unfortunately for Einstein, what he thinks that other people think is not actually what they think.  I inform him of this minor dilemma.  His response is that I don't know what I believe but he does?  That's bizarre...

>In, my world any of the super rich can fall to mere averageness. In your
>world they remain rulers for eternity.
>
>Think I am wrong?
>
>Apply a 99% tax on all the businesses and people past $100,000 income a
>year. Then consider that some are bigger than others. The CEO of Walmart
>could grow his company faster than the CEO of Costco. Size alone counts
>under socialistic ideals. I would never make a million dollars under such a
>tax plan, so I could never compete with them.

Holy reductio ad absurdum batman!  For one, is this another incidence of you telling me what I believe?  I'd like to remind you that a 99% tax on all "businesses and people past $100,000 income a year" seems just as absurdly ridiculous to me as it hopefully does to you.  I'm a big fan of steps taken to equalize opportunity; I think this provides a tremendous welfare gain to the economy as a whole.  I'm also a proponent of moderating outcomes.  It improves the human condition, it makes up for a lot of failures in attempts to equalize opportunity (no human left behind), and it does quite a bit to ensure that the social contract is fair to all its adherents.  I'll get into this discussion another time, but social contract discussions aren't short and I don't wish to derail your thread.

Secondly, and your hypothetical begs the question, do you really believe that there would even be a CEO of Walmart or Costco if their income was tapped out at $100k?  Who would want to work for a penny on the dollar?  The Laffer Curve is surely oversimplified but it's actions near the tails are surely correct.  You could never compete with a millionaire but nobody could.  Under your proposed 99% tax rate, we'd all be paupers together.

>Under a free market (and not this buttered up biscuit you wish to call a free
>market) Walmart must always improve what it offers or it could lose. A Costco
>could easily unseat them, and my chances of becoming a billionaire actually
>go up from nil to a measurable number.

First, let's not kid ourselves.  Walmart and Costco are not direct competitors.  Sam's Club (part of the Walmart family) and Costco are direct competitors, but Walmart and Costco sell to somewhat different customer bases.  Within the general industry the two are about as far apart as you can find and their business models are very different.  Bad example.  If you want a really weird chain of competition, UPS's main competitor is USPS and FedEx's main competitor is UPS, but USPS's main competitor is not UPS and UPS's main competitor is not FedEx.  All three are much more concerned with the bigger dog than the smaller one, but that's completely off topic.

Speaking specifically to your example, an interesting feature of the retail industry is the value of an economy of scale.  Wal-Mart operates with a huge economy of scale and though this creates difficulties in product quality it allows them to showcase their characteristic low prices.  Their market is one that is not easily broken into.  It requires a very substantial investment to even get a foothold in that industry.  Your chances of becoming a billionaire genius who managed to overthrow that empire is pretty much nil.  But in most mixed economies we're focused on the concept of a meritocracy.  That we should provide people the opportunities to rise up to what they're capable of.  This is true of socialist economies like those found in Scandinavia and it's true throughout the industrialized world.  It's not particularly true of a society, like your utopia, that provides opportunities based on nepotism rather than merit.  And tell me that it doesn't... an economy where children are given educational opportunities based on the affluence of their parents rather than their own potential, an economy where wealth is inherited rather than earned.  That's the brutal reality of laissez-faire and that's why it wasn't successful a century ago when we tried it.

>The American Dream was based upon the idea you could grow, you could own
>what you wanted if you tried hard enough, and so forth.

Sounds quite a bit like what most socialists are in favor of.

>Btw under my model there is still luxuries... it is just that some 'luxuries' move
>to the easily affordable standard.

Under my model there are luxuries as well.  I think you're being quite unrealistic to assume that *any* model can turn modern luxuries into common conveniences in a way that numerous alternatives can't.  It's kind of like the Heritage Foundation pretending that the Paul Ryan budget could drop unemployment to half the NAIRU and simultaneously stop inflation.  It's pushing the verge of intellectual dishonesty to assert these sorts of things, and that's to say things nicely.

>And for closing... why should you determine I cannot have more rooms than you
>percieve I need? I would love a gaming room, a business room, a political room,
>a library, and a spare room for visiting friends and family.
>
>How dare you presume upon my rights to grow as I desire!

Let me quote what you said:

"That is when a person at the lowest wages will have a Testerosa if they desire, when all houses will come with 2-3 spare rooms, when all are able to get a precise education as they see fit"

This seems for obvious reasons completely nuts.  It's wonderful that in your utopia everybody who wants a Testerosa will have one if they so desire, but it's completely unrealistic.  What is a Testerosa but a very nice thing that most other people can't have?  A rose by any other name is still a rose, but if a rose is no longer a rose can you call it that?  The value of a Testerosa is derived not least from the fact that is a work of fine engineering and is rare.  It is hard for me to understand how you expect for state of the art engineering to become commonplace, as that seems a very unrealistic expectation, or how you expect a Testerosa to hold any of its current value if everybody and their brother is riding in them down I-5.  How exactly does "everybody can afford a Testerosa" equate with the fundamental reality of limited oil and other natural resources either?  If everybody is driving a gas-guzzling sportscar, what exactly do you expect to happen to the price of gasoline?  Here's a hint: With fixed supplies, no amount of economic opulence can change the brutal reality of supply < demand.

Let's get to the 2-3 spare rooms in every house thing though, because this is what you protested.  Talk to any economist, I beg you, and ask about government subsidies for housing and what it does to the natural equilibrium of the market.  Between direct subsidies, indirect subsidies, and zoning regulations, there's a huge preference built into our society for oversized suburban homes.  That is, oversized and suburban compared to what the natural free market equilibrium would be.  There's an opportunity cost to everything that you have.  If I have a house with 2-3 spare rooms, the money that I spent on rooms that I didn't really need is money wasted that could have been spent on more useful ventures.  Sure, it's nice to have a gaming room, and a political room, and a business room, and a library, and a spare room for visitors, but that's not economically efficient.  That money could be far more efficiently spent to maximize utility on blow and prostitutes, or whatever you personally think makes your life better.  To assume that in your utopia all homes would come with 2-3 spare rooms is to pretty much claim economic inefficiency and distortion.  That's not a realistic natural market equilibrium.

Also too, absent government subsidies for education, how exactly do you expect that anybody but the fortunate heirs of reasonably well-endowed parents (probably including much of the middle class) would be able to afford an "education as they see fit"?  How?

I see a lot of: (1) Create Utopia.... (2) ???..... (3) PROFIT!!!!

I'd like to see a few less proposals that are contingent upon the prayer that a miracle occurs.

Problem 1. Externalities

Problem 2. Why are you mixing religion into this?