[Palit_Guy]

Taken to their extreme democrats are socialists and republicans are isolationists. Of course no one ever actually goes all the way to the extreme but this is what shapes their positions.

I don't believe that all people remain equal even though they are created that way. Some people get cancer and die early while some live to be 100 with a cigarette in their mouth the whole time. that's not equal. Men can't give birth, women can. That's not equal.

Equality among people is something that we impose and it is not something that simply exists. If you steal something you will pay a consequence (most of the time) that someone who did not steal will not have to pay. That's not equal.

If two people steal something of the same value and get two different judges there is no reason to expect they will receive the same punishment. If two people do the same job at two different companies and make the same amount of profit for those companies there is no reason to expect they will receive the same amount of compensation for their efforts. Two more things that aren't equal.

In fact, I would be willing to bet that the ways in which people really are equal (yes, there are some ways) is so vastly outnumbered by the ways in which they are NOT equal that it wouldn't even constitute a rounding error.

I think the next evolutionary step in our development as human beings is to start trying to identify the ways in which we are not equal. We need to learn to accept these differences because it is from these differences that we learn our sense of self.

There are certain things that I'm good at and there are certain things that I'm not good at. Over the years I've come to realize that other people make up for my shortcomings. I find that i always do better when I'm working as part of a group than when I'm all alone.

THERE IS A REASON FOR THAT. The reason is the differences between me and the rest of the team. I'm not better than other people but I am different.

Redistribution of wealth based simply on the amount of money you have doesn't help those that don't have it to get it on their own. It creates a class-based society of the people that do and the people that do not. Simply handing people money does not improve their self-esteem nor cause them to want to improve themselves.

Being poor is not a problem. I lived in a pickup truck in downtown Boston for about 4 months many years ago. A cardboard box was the next step down. Surprisingly enough i wasn't terribly unhappy. Inconvenienced, yes, when it came time to pick up a girl because I couldn't exactly take her back to my place but not really unhappy.

Eventually I got tired of living like that and I came back home. Lived with my mom for a while, went through a series of jobs and here I am today. I achieved all this because I finally decided I wanted something more than my pickup truck. Simply handing me some money from time to time would likely have extended the period of my my being ok with living in the damn truck.