I tend to find myself in that situation quite often. It's usually my 100% plus effort to get the work done that puts my group over the top in past jobs, but it always bothered me that they made it seem as if they didn't notice this until it was too late. Recently I had my job evaluation done and was told I got the highest score having done the highest volume of work and the best performance at Customer Service. But I was not allowed to share this information and never really got any recognition for it.

I can only imaging how a basketball player, say from the Chicago Bulls, felt when he worked hard to play his best, to score when ever he had a chance and to play the best defense he could yet the team was known as Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls as if this was sorta like a one man team or the other 4 were just on the court just to have enough players.

Isn't that part of economic theory?

~Zoo

...and a whole new group of "movers and shakers" will evolve and/or the old ones will adapt to the changing conditions and times. No matter what happens there will always be someone to come out on top.

You think a new type of human will evolve that doesn't operate on the basis of self interest?

Regarding people doing what's in their own best interest, the problem is that too many people don't value their long term interests enough and simply focus on the short run, and then comes back to haunt them.  

Nope. What will evolve will he a human that will adapt to the new conditions and way of "doing things" and suceed in the new enviroment.

employing elitism against the dreaded elitists is sorta like fighting fire with fire no?

The Soviet Union waited many years for that. I wonder how that worked out for them.

There will always be successes in any environment. There were successes in Soviet Russia too. But it's all relative.

The rich will still be rich. The middle class, however, won't be so well off.

We are looking at a permanent reduction in our standard of living to EU levels.  We will have Pelosi, Obama & Reid to thank for that.  I wonder if they look forward to history judging them as having destroyed the greatest engine for good in history, because that's precisely what they are doing.

I disagreee with some points in your post brad, but not any of the major points you're trying to get across.

But what I don't get is...why do you say any of those 3 things is unPC to talk about?  If anyone is offended by any of those, they are a loser imo.  For example, for point #1, every team effort needs some superstars to truly excel...if any person that is not a superstar on the team is offended, I think they need to grow up.

It depends, because the original point was very general - if you increase taxes on the rich for example, you would still have it in the movers+shakers best interest to make as much money as they can, even though they won't get quite as much money from it. They might of course decide that they'd make more money as a result of the tax hike in a different country, hence why it'd be nice to have a few more specifics of what situations you're referencing to with "things" trickling down.

True, but it can be "luck" whether you are rich or not, which is the context that the luck accusation is often used in. You can be born into wealth, or you can make a few poor decisions but are really lucky with them and end up rich as a result (e.g. buying a lottery ticket). As to saying everything is genetic destiny if arguing that some people being more capable than others is luck, IMO there's a balance - some things are, others aren't. For example you mention "Some people are smarter, more energetic, healthier, more self-disciplined than others". Intelligence will be determined to some extent at birth, with the other being determined probably by effort+other factors (some of which will also depend wholly or partially on luck), meaning how smart you are does have some element of luck. Similarly how energetic you are will be determined partly by whether you exercise a lot, and what you eat, but also to some extent with how your body was built.

That said, I think by far the best system to have is one that rewards those better/more capable than others, even if at least some of that is down to luck.

A conservative is born.  Welcome, aeortar.

Daiwa,

   You don't have to be conservative to think that effort should be rewarded. What a vast over generalization. I wholeheadedly believe in both a progressive tax system and initiative being rewarded. Anyone who thinks that we do not reward intelligence and drive in this country is off their rocker. No one, including the PResident is advocating a system as seen in "Atlas Shrugged." Personally I enjoyed the book, the writing style was a little odd, such as the 15 page speech at a party on the glories of money as the only way to fairly judge talent. Personally, I just like the fact that someone decided to use John Galt as a verb.