To deserve is "to merit, be qualified for, or have a claim to (reward, assistance, punishment, etc.) because of actions, qualities, or situation" Dictionary.com
"People who possess great wealth in a time of poverty are directly causing that poverty… …regardless of whether you have earned it, to what degree are you morally permitted to retain it? The question of getting and the question of keeping are distinct." A.Q. Smith
"Over historical time most wealth was not gained through "hard work" most wealth was gained by exploiting others (slavery) and people and persons having bigger sticks then the other guy." Foo3333
"The story goes like this: America’s affluent are affluent because they made the right lifestyle choices…What’s wrong with this story? Even on its own terms, it postulates opportunities that don’t exist. For example, how are children of the poor, or even the working class, supposed to get a good education in an era of declining support for and sharply rising tuition at public universities?
So how can the myth of the deserving rich be sustained? Mainly through a strategy of distortion by dilution. You almost never see apologists for inequality willing to talk about the 1 percent, let alone the really big winners. Instead, they talk about the top 20 percent, or at best the top 5 percent. These may sound like innocent choices, but they’re not, because they involve lumping in married lawyers with the wolves of Wall Street." Paul Krugman
"…if you think these guys got unfairly rich at someone else’s expense, who are the unfairly plundered?" John Goodman
"If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire." George Monbiot
"…the range of successes and failures available to individuals are largely determined by the situation into which they entered the world." Andrew P Street
Arguments against the Deserving Rich:
- Retaining wealth is undeserved when others are in need.
- Most wealth is acquired through exploitation and force.
- Even if ability and hard work generate wealth, luck is the ultimate cause because a person's wealth-producing qualities are a product of favorable circumstances.
- Lots of hard-working people remain poor.
- Lots of people get rich because of connections or lucky breaks.
- Size matters. No one deserves to be filthy rich.
Next: Truth, Principles and Consequences