I think you are underestimating the resentment of those from whom wealth is being distributed. Your comment suggests that all of the resentment lies with the disadvantaged. Separating individuals in need into worthy and unworthy fosters prejudice, which hinders the worthy and unworthy alike from a fair game. The point being, the resentment of the advantaged maintains an unlevel playing field.

Please reread your post, Chris: You said that “the figure,” referring to Koss’ finding that “1 in 4 college women have either been raped or suffered attempted rape,” was “bogus.” Your arguments in support of that claim don’t stand up to examination, as I’ve already pointed out.

In addition, you don’t deal with the fact that Koss’ three primary findings — that actual rape prevalence is much, much higher than standard crime measurements indicate, that most rapists are known to the victim (i.e., not strangers), and that most rapes are never reported to police — have been replicated multiple times by major studies.

Natalie: The evidence on the question of how many men rape (including Koss’ study) indicate that approximately 95% of men never commit rape. However, the small minority of men who commit rape, includes some men who commit rape multiple times in the course of their life.

It was a warm spring morning in Oakwood Forest, and entrepreneurship was in air. Bear and Fox decided that today would be a good day to start a company.

Bear hired ten squirrels for his company and made one of them CEO. He paid both the worker squirrels and the CEO squirrel one acorn per day. Fox did the same thing, hiring ten squirrels (nine workers and one CEO) and paying each of them one acorn per day.

Business was split equally between the Bear’s company and Fox’s company.

Business continued as usual, until one day Fox had a brilliant idea. He decided to pay the CEO squirrel 10 acorns per day. The CEO squirrel didn’t do any more work than he used to. He just got fat. But the other squirrels started working like crazy! They came into work early, ate lunch on the job, and worked late into the night. Some of them slept at the office. Others stopped going on vacation. All of their squirrel spouses grew quite upset and most of the squirrels working at Fox’s company had sad squirrel divorces. All to have a better chance of being picked as the next CEO. But business was booming and Fox’s company, with its highly productive worker squirrels, drove Bear’s company out of business.

This is called “Tournament Theory” and it explains why CEOs (and Partners, upper management, etc.) are paid so much more than average employees.

Moral: pick your own acorns.