"Also, funny math in the referenced Forbes article - 3 of the lowest quintile supposedly get money back that they did not earn."
What you "earn" (in the sense of deserve) in a modern integrated economy with extensive division of labor is mostly a fictional number. Apple makes $0 without people to assemble iPhones and iMacs, and it also makes $0 without the designers in Cupertino designing the products. Given that both groups' labor is necessary (in the causation sense) for Apple to earn any money at all, what allocation of the proceeds is appropriate between the groups? We create a particular distribution on the front end through our legal system, then adjust it on the back end also through our legal system. It's all equally arbitrary.
Given that both groups' labor is necessary (in the causation sense) for Apple to earn any money at all, what allocation of the proceeds is appropriate between the groups?
This is a disingenuous question. The money taken from the designers in Cupertino is not given to the (mostly Chinese) workers who assemble the phones.
Instead, it is given to people who did not contribute at all to the production of the iPhone (retirees, other non-working Americans, etc).
Not at all arbitrary - if the person from whom the share is being taken gets to participate equally in the benefit it then provides, I don't have a problem with that (so long as the redistribute still affords person A to have a better standard of living). What I see as wrong, is when person A pays the bill, but does not get to enjoy any of the benefits.
For example, take Sweden or Canada, there is a baseline health care system. Every citizen participates. Some pay more than others, but everyone is protected. Not so in US - you have to fall well below middle class in order to get any real help.
Those bargains only exist in the context of an arbitrary legal framework for enforcing them. As soon as you make certain actions illegal and certain ones not (e.g. Burning your boss's house down is illegal, firing someone just when they find out they have cancer is not) you've descended into the realm of arbitrary. There is nothing fundamental about setting wages using a peculiar flavor of free bargsining in which people are not really free (and you're never free if physical coercion is off the table). It's just how we do it.
Rights are not arbitrary. Like the laws of physics, the gory details of what rights are may be hard to pin down exactly, but this doesn't mean that they don't exist. In the examples you gave, it's had to imagine a just society in which it would be OK to burn down another's house (violating physical property) or to be forced to hire someone or keep them employed (violating the right to contract.)
It is not arbituary, but it is mostly subjective. For example, here in Holland, an appearantly unjust country, you can not fire someone without cause after they've worked a steady year for you, in most but not all cases. This rule is the result of negotiations not between the individual employer and the employee, but between the brance of the economy, labour unions and the central government.
The problem with just having the employee and the employer come to a contract, is that the negotiation position is not on equal terms. And since the economy is here to serve us; not the other way around; we democratically elected this policy and have preferred it for almost half a century.
Your notion of rights, esspecially economic rights, as somehow inherent to reality as laws of nature, seems awfully short sighted. My neigbour is not free to have himself exploited, as it will affect my negotiation position as well.
And i honestly dont understand why so many Americans keep focusing on their rights to be exploited and abused in an economic sense. Of all inalienable rights i can think off, like autonomy of your own body (drugs? sex?) or freedom of speech (swearing?), that do not legally, socially or culturally apply to americans, the narrative limits itself to guns and slaves (exploitable workforce). The only two situations where it obviously does affect others, aand therefor the right can not be inherent.
Both physical property and right to contract are arbitrary. A hyena cannot sue in civil court if a lion violates his right of owning chattel property by divesting him of a carcass!
What you "earn" (in the sense of deserve) in a modern integrated economy with extensive division of labor is mostly a fictional number. Apple makes $0 without people to assemble iPhones and iMacs, and it also makes $0 without the designers in Cupertino designing the products. Given that both groups' labor is necessary (in the causation sense) for Apple to earn any money at all, what allocation of the proceeds is appropriate between the groups? We create a particular distribution on the front end through our legal system, then adjust it on the back end also through our legal system. It's all equally arbitrary.