Senator wants study on video game violence

[cmdrdredd]

Let me ask you this. Let's say you ho to school for electrical engineering. You study 4 hours a day to keep your grades up and work two jobs to pay for your education. You work hard even on holidays and weekends. You take an internship at nvidia and do quite well. When you are done they hire you full time at a good salary. After a few years you move up and are making $150,000 a year or more.

Then there is another guy who thought high school was a joke. He skated by just barely. He smoked weed all the time and did coke on weekends. In college he just drinks and does not study. He doesn't have a job and ends up dropping out because he can't afford it. So he takes a job working at a food processing plant. Starts off OK but when he gets money he burns it up on drugs and alcohol and eventually his land lord throws him out on the street.

You worked hard to do well for yourself and you want to have a family and a wife. Do you call it fair when the government takes your money that you worked hard all your life to be able to have. You wanted nice things, a nice house, a nice car, so you worked for it. So the government comes in and says "hey you shouldn't have that car or those clothes or that watch. give us your money so we can give it to the drug addict down this street because its only right that he have a place to stay." You consider it fair that your good fortune and hard work means nothing and only goes to hand outs for the guy who did nothing his whole life and made all the wrong choices. That is what you consider fair?

If you deposited money in the bank and they started shifting it to people with low balances in the name of being fair you would switch banks wouldn't you?


I always say if you are so willing to pay more money to people who have less where is your yearly donation check to the various charities? Anyone who ever has mentioned redistribution is a good thing, does not give out buckets of money to the homeless do they? Of course not...its only a good thing when it does not affect your living standards. Once it touches your comfort of life things change drastically.

The harder you work and the better off you are, the more they want to take.

 

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

I don't know about you guys, but if I had to play Tetris for more than 15min, I'd go on a shooting spree too.

 

[BrightCandle]

How much disparity in wealth do you as an Nvidia engineer think is acceptable from your 150k wage to the CEO? Is he worth 100 what you are to the company even if replacing him with a chimp shows no difference in profits? Most employees think that isn't right, and when you look at what it gets the employees and society its certainly questionable.

Actually all these societies that perform better are still unequal, they are just closer to equality than the USA. In Japan for example executives earn about 6x what their average employees bring in which is a disparity but not 300x like in some UK and USA companies. In cooperative firms its regularly less than 10x. People often underestimate the amount of inequality and who this impacts. The data suggests about 95% of the population benefits, and with prospects comes less of the anti social behaviour associated with the "unclean" and undeserving.

Its not actually an argument about communism where everyone is meant to get exactly the same, there is still a difference its just smaller so that everyone benefits from progress. If you have a more inclusive society then everyone does better than a very tiny minority, we aren't impacting on the middle classes at all, we are taking millionaires.

The very wealthy 20% in the USA have 84% of the wealth. That causes a lot of problems. Don't look at your distrust of the individual who might spend redistributed wealth on drugs, ignore your distrust of him and his motives for dropping out of school. Instead focus on the fact that if you do it you will live longer, suffer less crime and suffer a lot less stress. On average what will then happen is Mr high school drop out will actually not drop out, he will finish school, he will become productive and be more useful because you assumed he would.

 

[cmdrdredd]

How much disparity in wealth do you as an Nvidia engineer think is acceptable from your 150k wage to the CEO? Is he worth 100 what you are to the company even if replacing him with a chimp shows no difference in profits? Most employees think that isn't right, and when you look at what it gets the employees and society its certainly questionable.

Actually all these societies that perform better are still unequal, they are just closer to equality than the USA. In Japan for example executives earn about 6x what their average employees bring in which is a disparity but not 300x like in some UK and USA companies. In cooperative firms its regularly less than 10x. People often underestimate the amount of inequality and who this impacts. The data suggests about 95% of the population benefits, and with prospects comes less of the anti social behaviour associated with the "unclean" and undeserving.

Its not actually an argument about communism where everyone is meant to get exactly the same, there is still a difference its just smaller so that everyone benefits from progress. If you have a more inclusive society then everyone does better than a very tiny minority, we aren't impacting on the middle classes at all, we are taking millionaires.

The very wealthy 20% in the USA have 84% of the wealth. That causes a lot of problems. Don't look at your distrust of the individual who might spend redistributed wealth on drugs, ignore your distrust of him and his motives for dropping out of school. Instead focus on the fact that if you do it you will live longer, suffer less crime and suffer a lot less stress. On average what will then happen is Mr high school drop out will actually not drop out, he will finish school, he will become productive and be more useful because you assumed he would.

His job is to make money for the company. The better he does, the more money the company makes and thus my work can pay off in the stock options I buy and my bonuses at the end of the year. Employees are happier when the company they work for is making money. No, a chimp would not do the same job. That just shows you don't know what running a business entails.

You say unequal, I say you get paid what you're worth. When someone makes $3,000,000 a year, it means the company thinks they are worth that amount. When you have the janitor getting paid $12.50 it says that his work which is hardly skilled labor and hardly needed any education to perform, is worth that much to them.

You really think if the drop out has money he suddenly won't drop out? That's disproven immediately when you look at the recent Newtown shooting. The shooter came from a well off family. By some standards it could be considered wealthy. No amount of money fixes evil and evil people will always exist. You are delusional if you think money will prevent people from being losers in life. Some if the most wealthy are the worst, just look at any celebrity. They have money, fame, could live an easy life. Yet they seem to go off the deep end more often than not. What did money do? Nothing...people who are a-holes will still be a-holes.

Also, in the USA the top 40% of income earners pay 85% of all the taxes each year taken in by the IRS. The bottom 40% only pay 6% of the taxes. There are a good 40% or more of the population who isn't paying any taxes at all. Don't tell me that rich people don't pay enough. They pay more than everyone else already.

Take a guy paying 10% of his income in taxes but he makes only $60,000/year. He pays $6,000 in taxes. The guy paying 5% but making $1,000,000 a year is paying $50,000 in taxes. Yes he pays a lower rate but he pays over 8 times the dollar amount.

 

[blackened23]

His job is to make money for the company. The better he does, the more money the company makes and thus my work can pay off in the stock options I buy and my bonuses at the end of the year. Employees are happier when the company they work for is making money. No, a chimp would not do the same job. That just shows you don't know what running a business entails.

You say unequal, I say you get paid what you're worth. When someone makes $3,000,000 a year, it means the company thinks they are worth that amount. When you have the janitor getting paid $12.50 it says that his work which is hardly skilled labor and hardly needed any education to perform, is worth that much to them.

You really think if the drop out has money he suddenly won't drop out? That's disproven immediately when you look at the recent Newtown shooting. The shooter came from a well off family. By some standards it could be considered wealthy. No amount of money fixes evil and evil people will always exist. You are delusional if you think money will prevent people from being losers in life. Some if the most wealthy are the worst, just look at any celebrity. They have money, fame, could live an easy life. Yet they seem to go off the deep end more often than not. What did money do? Nothing...people who are a-holes will still be a-holes.

Quoted for truth. In brightcandle's opinion, apparently incentive means nothing. If someone spends 8 years of their life getting a degree and accumulated 50,000$ in school loan debt along the way, what's the incentive if they have to pay 50% in taxes to help some bum who "didn't feel" like going to college?

The most productive economies are based on opportunity costs and incentives. You take away the incentive, those people would not be there in the first place -- why would anyone bother with a degree if an incentive does not exist? Why would an unskilled worker bother getting a degree if he KNOWS that he will get carried by some rich guy his entire life? Secondly, let's get back to the topic. Some people are beyond saving; the Newtown tragedy is proof of this. He was raised well, was wealthy, throwing money at someone like that does not solve the problem.

Now with that said, income redistribution already exists - it allows those of the lowest utility within an economy to receive non-income help in times of need. Such as food stamps, welfare, etc. I am not opposed to this. Bad things can happen to good people. What I am opposed to, is broadly raising everyone's taxes to 60% and pretending that it will fix all of society's problems. Or you want to raise the taxes on the wealthiest people so they pay 80% in taxes? Yeah that makes sense, whats the incentive for one to spend 50,000$ on an education to become an engineer when they will just throw their money away on others who didn't bother getting an education.

 

[BrightCandle]

The assumption seems to be that only the poor become mentally ill. That simply isn't the case. In unequal states booth the richest and poorest 20% are more mentally ill, its just the poor benefit more from the move to more equality.

This individual like so many others was quite mentally disturbed, regardless of his wealth. Its tragic to have had so many shootings in such a short period of time. But you really need a lot of people to die before it makes news now, its become pretty common for people to be shot. I find the level of violence quite disturbing. A shooting is big news in the UK, its pretty rare and yet like the Americans we have horrible social problems and mental illness compared to many other countries.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Quoted for truth. In brightcandle's opinion, apparently incentive means nothing. If someone spends 8 years of their life getting a degree and accumulated 50,000$ in school loan debt along the way, what's the incentive if they have to pay 50% in taxes to help some bum who "didn't feel" like going to college?

The most productive economies are based on opportunity costs and incentives. You take away the incentive, those people would not be there in the first place -- why would anyone bother with a degree if an incentive does not exist? Why would an unskilled worker bother getting a degree if he KNOWS that he will get carried by some rich guy his entire life? Secondly, let's get back to the topic. Some people are beyond saving; the Newtown tragedy is proof of this. He was raised well, was wealthy, throwing money at someone like that does not solve the problem.

Now with that said, income redistribution already exists - it allows those of the lowest utility within an economy to receive non-income help in times of need. Such as food stamps, welfare, etc. I am not opposed to this. Bad things can happen to good people. What I am opposed to, is broadly raising everyone's taxes to 60% and pretending that it will fix all of society's problems. Or you want to raise the taxes on the wealthiest people so they pay 80% in taxes? Yeah that makes sense, whats the incentive for one to spend 50,000$ on an education to become an engineer when they will just throw their money away on others who didn't bother getting an education.

Yes exactly. America, the US specifically was looked upon by the world as the land of opportunity. You could go as far as your drive and determination for success would take you. Start a business and watch it grow, if you desire it to do so. R.H. Macey started a dry goods store four times in Massachusettes and each one failed. Then he moved to New York and had success. He could have given up after 4 failed attempts but didn't. He had the courage and determination to be successful. Maceys is a household name now. In the society that some would like to see, you wouldn't work hard for anything. You'd just wait for the checks to roll in. So what happens when you have more people waiting for checks than are working and paying into the system? You can take 100% of all their earnings and still not have enough. Any business would tell you what happens when you are paying more than you earn, you go bankrupt.

The assumption seems to be that only the poor become mentally ill. That simply isn't the case. In unequal states booth the richest and poorest 20% are more mentally ill, its just the poor benefit more from the move to more equality.

This individual like so many others was quite mentally disturbed, regardless of his wealth. Its tragic to have had so many shootings in such a short period of time. But you really need a lot of people to die before it makes news now, its become pretty common for people to be shot. I find the level of violence quite disturbing. A shooting is big news in the UK, its pretty rare and yet like the Americans we have horrible social problems and mental illness compared to many other countries.

You keep stating equality. There is no equality when I am paying lets say $5,000 and the fellow next store is paying $0. That's not equality at all.