03-30-2013, 08:37 PM
The next part of the argument I'm trying to formulate is about the distribution of wealth/income in the U.S. and how that relates to the concept of "merit" in accumulation of wealth/income. Here are questions I want to address in the argument. I'd like to hear people's responses to the questions, but also like to hear people's opinions about the questions themselves. I imagine that at the least they will need to be reworked to some degree and your responses will help inform me of factors I haven't considered yet in shaping the reformulation of the questions (or just trashing the questions and the argument altogether).
1. Should wealth/income be distributed exclusively based on what one earns (deserves or merits) as a result of their own labor?
---> 1a. What about inherited wealth? Can you inherit the merit?
2. Does the present regulated free market system function to distribute income by merit alone? (This question is only about the free market system of distribution, not other "actors" like government distribution of wealth/income.)
---> 2.a If you think it does not, in what ways does it fail to distribute income only by merit?
