The "Should Sally have to share her 'A' she worked so hard for in school" fallacy.

[ZombieHorde]

There is a popular conservative fable which concerns a student, who I am naming Sally for this thread, who works very hard in school and receives an 'A'. The question is then asked, should Sally take a lower grade and give one of her lazy friends a higher grade in the name of fairness. Socialism answers 'yes', while conservatism answers 'no'.

Conservatives compare the student to the hard working business person, who I am naming Kim for this thread, who works very hard and receives lots of money.

I personally believe this analogy to be false.

Reason I

Sally's 'A' comes from the teacher and is generally a measurement of the knowledge she gained from the class. If Sally takes a 'B' and gives her lazy friend a higher letter grade, her friend has not actually gained any additional knowledge.

Kim's money comes from the people. She makes a good or service, hires people to make this good or to perform this service, people spend their money on this good or service, Kim receives money, Kim's employees receive money, the employees spend their money. To me, this is very similar to the rain cycle; water evaporates into the clouds, and clouds get heavy with moisture and rain, the rain pools on the ground, the water on the ground evaporates. Capitalism is a cycle.

Sally can get her 'A' without her lazy friends, but Kim can not get her money without the people.

Reason II

Kim will still be rich after paying her taxes while Sally will loose her 'A'.

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I am feeling pretty groggy, I hope my post makes sense.

[valerief]

1. Sally needs to get money from lobbyists like other capitalists do. nt

[petronius]

2. Another major flaw in this fable is that it relies on the notion that hard-work vs.

laziness is the only determining factor in a person's current economic condition.

And, of course, it pretends that social services and safety nets (and pretty much everything else that we do as a society rather than individuals) consist entirely of dividing stuff up so that everyone has the same amount...

[ZombieHorde]

3. Excellent point. nt

[shadowknows69]

12. I've been on social services. You don't get "the same amount"

I'd rather been working.

[Hello_Kitty]

4. What I don't get is that 95% of the people

Who make these arguments and pass those asinine RW chain emails around are NOT rich. Not even close. They are getting screwed by the wealthy people they so vigorously defend and, what's even worse, they seem blithely oblivious to the fact that they are being insulted by them! I suppose they have internalized the Joe the Plumber meme of "one day my ship will come in and I will be among the ownership class" but that still doesn't fully explain the shocking cognitive dissonance of these people.

[surrealAmerican]

14. These people are like Boxer in Animal Farm.

They aren't rich from the work they do, so they keep trying to "work harder". They never see that they are being used by the upper class.

[Echo In Light]

17. Sometimes the loudest argument appears to be logical by those who identify w/those espousing it

Truth or reality doesn't enter into it; the identification with/alignment with what's perceived to be the dominant, 'winning' side is. For example, one routinely encounters people who denounce the notion of criminal conspiracies as being non-existent who likewise ground their position in this framework.

[county worker]

5. Everyone who works hard isn't rich and not everyone who isn't rich is lazy.

Not everyone who is rich works hard and not everyone who is lazy is not rich. You don't need more than that.

[MrsBrady]

6. as a college student...

we are all given the same access to materials, computers, tutors, books, class time, homework, the professor, etc (once we are there, at least).
So as long as I put the time in, I should do ok. I might have to work harder if I have a learning disability, but I can still get help.
At least where I am going to school, there is access to free tutoring through the department and the learning center.
Fairly equal to start to begin with...I don't see why the grades would be "equalized" when we have similar access and ability to get a good grade.

as far as business...if you don't have to have some money to begin with to start a business...if you don't have any money, don't have access to investors or loans, don't have knowledge of how to run a business, don't have access to money to hire lawyers to help with business plans or patents, etc....I don't see how this is an equal playing field.
Those with access to money and help have an advantage to begin with. Also, those with money have no need to innovate because they already have a lot of money. Capitalism only works if you have money to start with. Also, one can't be an employee if you don't have access to transportation, business attire, education, child care, and so forth.
Capitalism is not bad, per say, but...how much do those employees get paid?, how much does the company charge it's customers?, is it running a sweatshop?, does it have true competition?
Without regulation, normalization, or equalization, I don't see how capitalism is helpful in every context.
I don't think profit or money is bad, but at what cost to all those involved? And is the process truly fair for all?

I think I followed you? I've never really heard of this idea of equalizing grades to try to compare capitalism/socialism.

(yes, I used my own punctuation.)

[ZombieHorde]

19. Great points. nt

[Recursion]

7. Sally got her A in a public school NT

[shadowknows69]

8. I did a partner project in Journalism Law once

For my part I got an A, my partner got a C; bringing our overall to a B. Did he deserve the B? Did I deserve to only get a B? Maybe not, but it was a team effort, so is society. That said; if you're only as strong as your weakest link then the stronger links better step up and hold firm, and not gripe about it.

[Fireweed247]

9. someone somewhere on DU had a great answer to this

(very simplified version)

Republican/capitalist/corporatist/fascist analogy

Rich republican owns school
Everyone at school works hard all year...gets Ds anyway
Republican daughter receives A by virtue of being born into 'important' family

[Stevenmarc]

10. Sally works hard for her A applies to Yale and gets rejected over someone with a C

who's family has gone to Yale in past generations.

[sinkingfeeling]

11. I fail to see a connection to socialism in either case.

[ZombieHorde]

20. That was the point I was trying to make. nt

[Winterblues]

13. It's called grading on a curve and most schools do it.

:shrug:

[surrealAmerican]

15. It misrepresents both what grades are, ...

... and the connection between wealth and effort.
Grades are meant measure how well a student has mastered the material. Some students work hard to understand it, some understand it without much effort, and some work hard but fail to understand it.
Wealth has very little connection to how hard people work. If it did, those people who need to work two or three jobs to "make ends meet" would be the richest people in this country.

[TahitiNut]

16. The myth of a meritocracy in economics is strong in this one, Obiwan.

:shrug:

[Warren DeMontague]

18. Why bother with this bs? Here: Kim is a lesbian, and conservatives want to throw her in jail

for her consensual adult sexual behavior. She can't get married, or visit her partner in the hospital. Or, Kim wants to take the birth control pill, which the right considers an act of "murder". Again, they search her house and her medicine cabinet, and throw her in jail.

Or she goes to get a back-alley abortion, since conservatives have overturned Roe v. Wade, and dies in an alley.

Kim can't take care of her kids while they're sick, or get reasonable health insurance, because family leave laws or gov't participation in health coverage amounts to "socialism", and the free market ought to handle them.

Kim's house is on fire- again, municipally funded fire dept's are another form of "socialism", so the free market puts it out, just as effectively as it paves her highways and pipes the shit out of her bathroom.

Sally is exceptionally talented at science, medicine and/or technology, but she can't get a job in the global 21st century technology market, because Flat-Earth fundamentalists have destroyed her science curriculum and replaced it with a ton of creationist bullshit.

[readmoreoften]

21. Under capitalism Susie gets an "A" because she hires other students to do her work

or has her rich parents who donate to the university call the administration to dispute her grades. Her teacher changes her grade because he or she is an adjunct with no benefits, no union, and the administration doesn't want the hassle.

Meanwhile Kim is more intelligent than Susie but she is stuck flipping burgers and is saving to go to community college, but right now she can't afford it because she has to cover all the rent because her mom is out of work. She went to a shitty high school where the guidance counselor was a buddy of someone on the school board and thought all the students were trashy and hopeless, so no one ever told her how to apply for scholarships or student aid. She may or may not make it through college by her late twenties, while Susie will be working as upper management at a marketing firm by then, married to an executive. Who knows? Susie and her beau may have even met at a freshmen mixer for "C student" legacy admissions....

[fnofsports]

22. Just curious

Looking at a lot of the logic defending socialism (/wage distribution/whatever) I am wondering if you feel that doctors/lawyers/professors/etc should be treated differently then businessmen and how would we do that. I mean they are paid not by having others under them, but rather by hard hard hard work earlier in life (especcially for like a surgeon or the like).