11-17-2011, 11:05 PM
(11-17-2011, 10:53 PM)kandrathe Wrote: Both views are wrong. The enemy is us. When we are young, we are poor and want to attain what the older people have without the struggle. We are both the rich, the middle, and the poor. This is why, baring feudalism, the class war goes nowhere. When you are 18 and living at home, your dad is your land lord. Love it or hate it, he's your dad.
Strangely, I just left a very interesting seminar with a French economic historian, who was trying to calculate for 1870-1930 in Paris, the proportion of wealth (and the wealthy) that was earned/saved rather than the residue of inherited wealth at time of death. His conclusion was that the vast majority of the wealthy, and the overwhelming majority of the wealth, were inherited, not earned.
Different time, different place, but I think you're dreaming in technicolour if you think that this is just a question of the young envying the old, or that inequality is just some illusory phenomenon. "We" are not all born into the same situation. Not even close.
-Jester