[quote=sdduuuude]
The logical fact remains – when the government starts making decisions for people, it removes choices from every-day people, increasing their reliance on luck.

There’s no two ways about it from my perspective.
[/quote]

Your perspective is incomplete. When you take one person’s money – say, a wealthy person’s – and redistribute it to another person – say a poor person – you are removing the choice of what the the first person will do with that money, but… you are increasing the choices available to the person receiving that money. The wealthy person has already benefited from luck. All you’re doing is raising the odds that the poor person will benefit as well. Now, in reality, many poor folks will be HURT by receiving that money because it will set up a negative incentive (ouch!), but… in many other cases this redistributed “assistance” will help that disadvantaged person. The price of the former is one expense related to helping the latter. And, admittedly, I’m oversimplifying (just as you are).

[quote=sdduuuude]
And I’m quite certain that the government shouldn’t be in control of luck.
[/quote]

Spoken as someone who has benefited from luck and thus wants to simplify the debate into something that is silly on its face.

[quote=sdduuuude]
Somebody writes a book saying luck plays a part in people’s success and all of the sudden, we need the government to get involved to fix the whole problem.

True insanity.[/quote]

The problem is not “luck”, per se, and you know this. The problem is massive income (and thus influence) inequality of which one source is “random fortune” (or “luck”).

While I don’t advocate a Scandinavian-socialist model, it’s pretty clear to me (at least) that our system is rigged to perpetuate the ultra-wealthy and, as we saw during the financial crisis, to “protect” these folks from the actual downside risks associated with the risky assets from which much of this group’s wealth is derived (think of much of Big Finance). If these folks are going to have a permanent put related to their wealth – as it appears they do – I think they should pay for it in the form of redistribution that reduces the level of inequality that we see today.

I’m not saying this is a perfect model (far from it, in fact) – to be clear – I’m just saying the model we have now is completely screwed where the middle class is concerned vis-a-vis the 1%.