For some inexplicable reason, the owners of the web hosting company where I work decide to put a big LCD TV in our small waiting room - a waiting room that is almost never used because entry to the building is either with biometrics or having an employee open the door for you and escorting you where you need to go.

Anyway, they compounded this weirdness by tuning it to Fox Business Channel, and I have to walk past it multiple times during my shifts. The network is basically Dave Ramsey's Flying Circus with some side programming that looks like local access cable with better equipment.

No one with a shred of credibility or self-esteem should ever go on that network, not from its blatant ideology, but from how bad it is - and that's compared to Fox News, let alone something with intelligence.

"I want to make the money".

Epitaph for Varney's headstone.

What an asshat! He's lucky we let him off the boat - millions of others of equal promise never got that chance.

The denial that current success (or a big salary) has anything to do with luck whatsoever is a major fracture in the division between those who think they deserve their privilege (lately, most prominently displayed by Wall Street denizens) because they are superior beings, versus those who examine their life and the life of others and see how often virtue fails to guarantee whatever success means to those involved.

This is the highest form of denialism yet identified.

Although this is only a 6 minute segment, it was hard for me to even get through this. Varney is so blinded by his ideology that he can not even listen to Frank's argument, let alone agree with him.

I know poor people in the Fifth Ward of Houston that work hard, marry and have children (in that order) and they do NOT get ahead. They will be lower middle class at best. They have more things going against them than I ever had.

I accept the fact that luck plays a role....it is not the main determinant, I think my hard work and talent had a lot to do with me getting where I am. In fact, it was the main factor. But to say that luck (or circumstance or whatever you want to call it) plays NO role is silly and I believe, wrong.

Also very interesting that Varney very quickly turned the conversation to the Fox talking points: confiscatory taxes and socialism.

That transition from luck to an attack on high marginal tax rates was about as logical as the lack of precedent within the torture memos.

Excellent snark from Frank. Most people I know who are rich were born that way (aka trust fund babies, and boy are they babies!). My ex-husband got rich because he was in the right place at the right time (and yes, he did work hard but that would have been as nothing if he hadn't been in the right place at the right time!) AND let us not overlook the fact that his parents were well to do and could loan him the money so that his hard work would belong to him!

And he calls himself a self-made man, ignores the role his excellent employees and I played in his success (I was his do everything administrator), and tried to stiff me in our divorce proceedings.

Argh.

Anecdotal I know, but not apocryphal.

Friedrich Hayek talked a lot about luck being important to great success. The fact that luck is a big factor does not change the debate much.

Doesn't it kind of undermine Varney's argument that he doesn't know how marginal taxes work?

I mean, he's on a financial news network. He claims he got this job because he's smarter, more hardworking, and more talented than anyone else...wouldn't you expect he'd know something as basic as how the taxes he pays are collected?

Does Stuart Varney know what "risk" means?

I mean, if luck had nothing to do with anything, and he knew just how talented and hard-working he was, where was the risk?

That was hilarious. I don't even know what else to say.

or, as Dr. Johnson put it:
"It is certain that success naturally confirms in us a favourable opinion of our own abilities. Scarce any man is willing to allot to accident, friendship, and a thousand causes, which concur in every event without human contrivance or interposition, the part which they may justly claim in his advancement. We rate ourselves by our fortune rather than our virtues, and exorbitant claims are quickly produced by imaginary merit."
-- Rambler #172 (November 9, 1751)

Floccina, thats where you're wrong. Particularly among the wealthy elite, many have internalized the notion that wealth is a sign of good moral character, rather than being a sign of luck or aristocratic birth.

If fewer people held that belief, you would not see a society with massive social and economic inequalities. You fail to grasp the difference between knowing something in your head, and accepting it with your heart. Most of these people 'know' that luck plays a huge part in success (particularly who you are born to), they just don't 'believe' it.

I think that it takes luck to get really rich but if you exclude the bad luck of being born with a predilection/weakness for bad habits all the poor people that I know in the USA and I know at least 15 poor people did not become poor because of bad luck but due to bad habits.

Further the importance of luck is not important to debate. What we want is the system that gets closest to optimizing utility. There are people on the margins that can and do change their behavior based on incentives and so it good to have incentives to produce.

Also people seem to like tournament occupations with high luck and high chance of failure but with vary large maximum payouts so maybe it is a good thing that luck plays a big role. (Maybe this explains the attraction of the state lotteries which look very bad to me.)

Why is it that despite not liking great diversity in income that so often when Democrats get elected at the state level that like to institute state lotteries that are a tax on stupidity?

Stuart Varney kept pounding on the risks he took. The risk of coming to America with nothing, the risk of trying to make it as an anchorperson with an accent, etc.

Well, look. It's not a risk unless there's s possibility of failure. If he knows that hard work and talent will win the day, then it's not a risk at all!

Of course, these things actually were risks. Even with hard work and talent, his success wasn't a sure thing ... he had to get lucky too. That's not an attack or anything, it's just true. And what's more, I'll bet he knows it to be true.

---Myca

I love how Varney keeps repeating over and over, "Do you know how much RISK I took..."

At the same time he *insists* that LUCK had nothing to do with his success.

What. The. Hell. Do. You. Think. Risk. Is. Mr. Varney!

Talk about zombie brain dead.

BTW from Franks comments, what would be a good way to implement a steeply progressive consumption tax? That would suit me but I am bias because after making less than 30K/year for 26 adult years my business has finally taken off so my income is now high but I am not very wealth yet and it could go poof in a moment so I save a lot and consume at a modest level. Currently I pay twice as much in taxes as I spend.

I looked it up, he proposes higher marginal income tax rates but with something like and unlimited IRA.

this guy is willfully ignorant of white privilege in our society. And how can he claim that he took enormous risks and in the same breath say that it was not luck (to some extent) that allowed him to succeed?

I do want to pick a small bone with the professor. Being good my not be sufficient, but it is often necessary. I got into U of Chicago mostly because my father (an immigrant chinese who escaped china during WWII through a bizarre set of circumstances, talk about lucky!) was an alum and faculty member there. I was just lucky to be born his son. But getting in didn't earn me my AB (with honors) and MA there. I did have to be smart enough and work hard enough to not flunk out.

Thanks for showing me that. If FOX wants to drum up support for a much stricter immigration policy they should have Mr Varney on camera at every opportunity available.

The risk of coming to America with nothing, the risk of trying to make it as an anchorperson with an accent

Yes, because it's not as if Rupert Murdoch has found room for British and Australian editors, presenters et al. for his networks and newspapers. Good ol' Reg.

Particularly among the wealthy elite, many have internalized the notion that wealth is a sign of good moral character, rather than being a sign of luck or aristocratic birth.

Also, that the benefits of wealth in American society -- most notably access to healthcare -- are a demonstration of one's virtue. All very Calvinistic.

I wonder if Varney ever said that Ecclesiastes sounds insane:
http://kingjbible.com/ecclesiastes/9.htm

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

After this interview, Stuart Varney's luck is about to run out.

Luck plays a role in all of our lives. I was lucky enough to have loving parents who taught me to work hard. I was lucky to get an education, to find my wife, (31 years), to have great kids, to be healthy, to not have a plane land on my house! We are surrounded by luck and anyone who believes otherwise is purely ignorant. The tax issue, while I find myself lucky enough not to owe any today, is a different topic entirely. Although I agree with Mr. Frank about the luck factor, I couldn't disagree with him more regarding that issue. Raising taxes is not the way to stimulate economic growth. Letting people keep more of what they earn does. Balance the budget?...Sure, stop the wasteful spending. Now THAT would be luck.

Isn't being born smart a matter of luck?

I can see Stuart Varney's side of the argument... because if I see him crossing the street while I'm driving, he won't have a single ounce of luck.

ed hardy ed hardy clothing
ed hardy clothing

If you don't know about jewelry knowledge, but want to action you can see jewelry fashion review,then maybe you can save your money!