Are they willing to let the world burn?

No; privilege is a legal entitlement to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation.

What on earth do you incorrectly imagine you think you might be talking about?

 

Like food stamps? People get food stamps without earning them.

I think I am talking about your repeated assertion that people who insist they earned their money actually got it through privilege.

 

Yes. Food stamps and many other government programs are examples of countervailing privilege: privilege that is intended to compensate for the effects of another privilege. But countervailing privilege is always less effective and less just than removal of the privilege that is causing the problem.

My assertion was that the more insistent people are that they earned their money, the more likely it is that they got it through privilege rather than earning it by commensurate contributions to production: i.e., they are defensive about it because deep down, they know they didn't earn it. It's a statistical observation, not a definition. There is a similar relationship with how much people have: the greater the accumulation of private wealth, the lower the probability that any significant portion of it was earned by commensurate contributions to wealth production.

 

Give me some examples of this bad sort of privilege.

 

Privilege is a legal entitlement to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation. The three most important examples would be land titles, bank licenses, and IP monopolies. Less important ones go all the way from broadcast spectrum allocations, oil and mineral rights, etc. to taxi medallions and local zoning.

 

Mineral rights? Taxi medallions?

Which privilege do you suspect @bricklayer of having?

 

The privileges most commonly owned by individuals are land titles. Of course, one can also own shares in companies that own privileges, and benefit from privilege that way.

 

So, if someone owns his own home then he doesn't have to work hard to get rich?

Do you know that bricklayer owns his own home, or are you guessing because he told you he works hard?

 

You do understand that gov takes from you and transfers it to themselves and their crony corporatist buddies?

 

Only if he owns the land sitting under the home:

“The most comfortable, but also the most unproductive way for a capitalist to increase his fortune, is to put all monies in sites and await that point in time when a society, hungering for land, has to pay his price.” -- Andrew Carnegie

The more land value he owns, the richer a homeowner can expect to get without working hard -- or working at all.

I assume he is privileged because he is so insistent that he has earned all his wealth. Land titles are the most commonly owned privilege among private individuals.

 

I know full well that earning money is only half of the battle. Keeping what I earn is the other half.
We all want the same thing. I just want to keep what I earn, and they just want to keep what I earn.

 

I want you to keep what you earn.

 

Because the privileged take it, and what they don't take, the government takes and gives to the privileged.

I want you to keep what you earn -- but not what you obtain without earning it, by dint of privilege.

 

Legislation and regulation that gives one group a distinct advantage economically over another group. This is easily observed in big business vs small business.

 

The EPA is a prime example.
Eliminating competition on the behalf of select, favored entities

 

It is a legitimate function of the people to choose how economic development proceeds.

 

Then you support the privilege that the corporate elite enjoy. But you should realize that you are encouraging greater wealth and income disparity.

 

Shrug. Nothing to be done. The rich rule now and always have.

 

And then cry about the 1% and not be able to figure out how it happens

 

So why do you want to take from the rich what is rightly theirs?

 

What "privilege", exactly?

Stop being jealous of others having more than you and be content with what you do have.

 

Yes they did.

 

Yes you would. You envy others having more than you. You wish to take from rich productive people and hand it over to poor unproductive people.

What is so bad about wealth inequality? YOU have the opportunity to earn more. You are not stuck at minimum wage.

 

No, I have said no such thing, in fact just the opposite. You are just makin' $#!+ up again, hiding behind the forum rule against identifying liars as such.

It is mostly caused by privilege and injustice.

"Shut up and get back on the treadmill!"

 

No, they obviously and indisputably did not.