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Old 11-02-2015, 12:37 PM   #1115
Solecismic
Solecismic Software
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Canton, OH
Enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act might be nice. If you leverage your dominance of one market in order to gain a foothold in another market, that can hurt consumers.

However, that's very hard to judge. Microsoft was allowed a lot of latitude as to what's part of an operating system, and that mostly helped the software industry. And Apple is somewhat of a competitor.

There's no question Wal-Mart helps keep prices down for many goods. If we came down hard on aggressive retailers, that might have benefits for competing retail, but it might have unintended consequences for the poorest among us.

It used to be that the most noble thing you could say was that you wanted your children to have more than you did.

If we start judging who is deserving of how much, that seems dangerous. If Sam Walton feels the best use of his money is giving it to his relatives - isn't that his right?

There are 7 billion people in the world, and the world GDP is about $70 trillion per year (that's hard to measure because the cost of stuff is hard to equate). That's about $10k per person per year. We have a standard of living that most around the world would judge as obscene. Even leaving $200k to a child - ostensibly for college costs - could be seen as many as crazy-undeserved in terms of providing for some kid who hasn't earned anything. That's more than the median world worker will earn in a lifetime.

I think we have to be more careful in our assessments of who deserves what. At a certain point, if that becomes entrenched in policy, your wealth will eventually go on trial. Population is increasing at a scary rate, and many around the world (India and China in particular) feel the United States should pay to develop more undeveloped countries.

Many in India even today say that we need a global tribunal to redistribute world wealth - that our standard of living, in particular, is now on the table in terms of negotiations.
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