Opinion of redistribution of income/wealth

[mencken]

Wealth is not "distributed" upwards in a capitalist society. Such terms imply that wealth is a fixed quantity. Rather, capitalism greatly rewards innovators who augment the overall wealth of the populace. Bill Gates may be worth eleven figures, but he had to make personal computers a household staple in the process.

Redistributionists, who seek to dull this personal stake in meeting the desires of others, in effect make the poor that ostensibly motivate them worse off in order to make the "rich" significantly worse off.

[ApatheticAustrian]

Redistributionists, who seek to dull this personal stake in meeting the desires of others, in effect make the poor that ostensibly motivate them worse off in order to make the "rich" significantly worse off.

if you think poverty is compassion and the only useful motivator to get your life together, be my guest..i would humbly disagree.

[mencken]

Redistributionists, who seek to dull this personal stake in meeting the desires of others, in effect make the poor that ostensibly motivate them worse off in order to make the "rich" significantly worse off.

if you think poverty is compassion and the only useful motivator to get your life together, be my guest..i would humbly disagree.

Economics is decided on the margin; all else being equal people would rather not work harder to obtain additional income if they do not have to. Quite unfortunate since the lower-compensating jobs are often an essential stepping stone to achieving greater success down the road.

[ApatheticAustrian]

Economics is decided on the margin; all else being equal people would rather not work harder to obtain additional income if they do not have to.

no offense, but where does that "equal people"-nonsense always comes from? no one in their right mind wants to give everyone the same amount of money for different work.

i don't detest inequality, i detest poverty and that is not measured in income differences but very basic human necessities.

and yeah, i agree, it's all about the margin - sensible distribution isn't really channging the margins but even very small changes can mean a lot for millions.

[mencken]

Economics is decided on the margin; all else being equal people would rather not work harder to obtain additional income if they do not have to.

no offense, but where does that "equal people"-nonsense always comes from? no one in their right mind wants to give everyone the same amount of money for different work.

i don't detest inequality, i detest poverty and that is not measured in income differences but very basic human necessities.

and yeah, i agree, it's all about the margin - sensible distribution isn't really channging the margins but even very small changes can mean a lot for millions.

"all else being equal"

Is that expression seriously so foreign to you that you do not recognize it?

[ApatheticAustrian]

"all else being equal"

Is that expression seriously so foreign to you that you do not recognize it?

setting it in quotation marks or not translating it, would surely have helped my understanding - mea culpa.

[parochial boy]

No, inequality by itself, is a bad thing. It leads to shorter, unhealthier, more isolated, lower quality lives. And it does this across all levels of society, regardless of how wealthy the society is. That is before you even factor in the morality of allowing some people to have significantly more comfortable and luxurious lives than others, especially when a great deal of your wealth in life is a direct result of the wealth and social class of your parents.

There is also an increasing consensus that inequality is bad for economic growth and bad for economic stability, you know, marginal propensity to consume and all that. The reduced level of redistribution certainly hasn't made all of society wealthier, as the flat lining median income over the last 4 decades shows. In many respects, living standards have declined, sure, we have nice flashy gadgets; but home ownership is increasingly out of reach, social isolation has skyrocketed and more.

In any case, economics is a collaborative process. The wealthy as a whole rely tremendously on the labour, capital and innovations of other people; and many of the great innovations in recent years have been driven collaboratively and directly by tax funded government spending. A major part of the reason Bill Gates made his wealth is that he was able to exploit his power, and the work of others; which would have happened regardless of whether he was there or not.

[ApatheticAustrian]

ofc inequality can be a bad thing, which means that shrinking inequality, up to a certain degree, is a good thing, which is why i support redistribution. i was just trying to say, that total financial equality is ofc neither the goal nor realistic, since "conservatives" often make the case, that if you want a little bit more equality, you totally want TOTAL equality.

[parochial boy]

Fair enough, but I think their are really two sides to it. One is the moral argument of course, but the other is really that we shouldn't ever let Conservatives get away with the "muh, make the pie bigger" argument - seeing as redistribution is absolutely not something that will stop the pie from getting bigger; whereas failing to redistribute actually is.

[mencken]

No, inequality by itself, is a bad thing. It leads to shorter, unhealthier, more isolated, lower quality lives.

Citation? (And do not give some observational study. Far more likely that countries with shorter life expectancy and lower quality of life also suffer from income inequality, rather than the latter being a cause of the former.)

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A large part of what motivates people to work beyond that which would satisfy their basic needs is to secure a good future for their children. I am skeptical of the morality of forbidding (as in the antonym of "allowing") people from securing a better livelihood for their children.

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I debunked this once before: Long-term economic growth depends on saving (i.e. people taking in more income than they can immediately consume), as that is where the supply of money for long-term projects must come from. 

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What metric are you using to measure levels of income redistribution?

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And what would have become of that money had the government not spent it? Do we know that it would not have been used more efficiently otherwise?

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Einstein should really have his Nobel Prize posthumously revoked; after all, someone would have eventually discovered the photoelectric effect if he did not exploit his power and the work of others.

[ApatheticAustrian]

Much simpler approach:

If the middle class is shrinking, even more people became dependent on government help cause the economy isn't working properly or there is a growing case of "working poor", the social net of a country is dissolving and the costs of other factors are rising, which would of course be side effects or larger inequality.

[Antonio the Sixth]

muh homo oeconomicus

[parochial boy]

No, inequality by itself, is a bad thing. It leads to shorter, unhealthier, more isolated, lower quality lives.

Citation? (And do not give some observational study. Far more likely that countries with shorter life expectancy and lower quality of life also suffer from income inequality, rather than the latter being a cause of the former.)

Kate Pickett and Richard Williamson "The Spirit Level". And to pluck one example from the ether, the USA has a lower life expectancy than Denmark, in spite of both being largely equal in terms of per capita income.

By the way, if you are going to write off observational studies, you might as well write off any sort of research into this sort of area, given the nature of the independent variable at hand.

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And taking an excessive share of income to achieve this would be immoral. Other people have children too, and social class is one of the major determinants of the opportunities that you are afforded in life. So "allowing" for inequality will have an adverse impact on the ability of others to "secure a better life for their children".

In any case, the moral argument still stands, the free market rewards power as much as it rewards anything else; and we should morally stick up for those who don't have as much power of influence over what happens to them. As human beings, we also shouldn't allow some of us to have much better lives than others.

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Economic growth depends on a lot of things, but it does actually rely on people spending as well as investment. In an era where savings/asset ownership provide a higher level of return than working, then that does create a perverse economic incentive. Tying up a high level of your wealth in a non-liquid asset like property does not really drive the sort of productive investment you were talking about.

In fact one of the key economic issues of recent times is precisely that savings have not been immediately returned into "productive" investment. Bank lending for example, has reduced; and there has been a high reliance by major companies to use the cash generated by their profits to simply buy back shares. That is, they use their retained earning (savings) to artificially prop up their share price rather than re-invest it.

A huge proportion of invested savings also goes into speculation on things like derivatives; which is of somewhat limited economic advantage (yes, I know that currency options and the like do have an economic reason, but the current derivatives market has gone well beyond this).

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The GINI coefficients for both income and wealth, which, have increased dramatically since the 1970s.

Argue what you want, but there is a pretty strong correlation between a highly progressive income tax system; a strong welfare net and business regulation with lower levels of inequality.

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Well that's a what if question, we can only hypothesise.

We know that private investment is not always efficient. People aren't always rational actors, simple as that.

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And Higgs was awarded the Noble prize too. Even he, however, would recognise that this was thanks to the huge public investment in building the Large Hadron Collider, and the teams of Physicists working at CERN.

As I am sure you are aware, modern science is not about the isolated individual genius, but about large teams working together and bouncing research and ideas off of each other.

[mencken]

No, inequality by itself, is a bad thing. It leads to shorter, unhealthier, more isolated, lower quality lives.

Citation? (And do not give some observational study. Far more likely that countries with shorter life expectancy and lower quality of life also suffer from income inequality, rather than the latter being a cause of the former.)

Kate Pickett and Richard Williamson "The Spirit Level". And to pluck one example from the ether, the USA has a lower life expectancy than Denmark, in spite of both being largely equal in terms of per capita income.

By the way, if you are going to write off observational studies, you might as well write off any sort of research into this sort of area, given the nature of the independent variable at hand.

I have not read the work, but based the synopsis using Japan, the Nordic countries, and New Hampshire and you using Denmark as an example, it seems that an unmentioned variable here is "ethnic homogeneity" that seems to correlate strongly with inequality. Why not compare Asian-Americans with Asian nationals and European-Americans with European nationals on these metrics and see if a correlation still exists*?

*I expect to be called a racist for this approach, to which I would reply that epidemiologists already engage in racial stratification in their studies to avoid much the same problem. 

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And taking an excessive share of income to achieve this would be immoral. Other people have children too, and social class is one of the major determinants of the opportunities that you are afforded in life. So "allowing" for inequality will have an adverse impact on the ability of others to "secure a better life for their children".[/quote]

And who gets to determine what is "excessive"? I would think a child's parents would be a better gauge than some bureaucrat thousands of miles away. But, for the sake of argument, suppose an upper cap were placed on the maximum amount that one could spend on each child's schooling, lodging, and miscellaneous expenses, and there were no loopholes to avoid this capricious statute. Do you really think a person's marginal propensity to work once they have reached that point will not be significantly diminished? Will people save nearly as much if their children cannot benefit from their foresight? What effect do you think all of this will have on total economic growth?

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It rewards the power to provide goods and services that other people value. People with that kind of power are truly monstrous.

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Economic growth depends on a lot of things, but it does actually rely on people spending as well as investment. In an era where savings/asset ownership provide a higher level of return than working, then that does create a perverse economic incentive. Tying up a high level of your wealth in a non-liquid asset like property does not really drive the sort of productive investment you were talking about.[/quote]

I do have some Georgist sympathies; I would have no problem with replacing income taxes with property taxes, as my prior diatribe ought to reveal. However, the problem you reveal is self-correcting - more money stored as savings will eventually drive interest rates lower than prospective entrepeneurs' expected return on investment, thus prompting productive investment and job creation. When the regulatory environment is unstable and bureaucrats thousands of miles away impose regulations needlessly burdening businessmen who employ a certain number of people for more than 30 hours per week, then that vacation home starts to look like a better use of time and money.

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Again, I would attribute this to onerous regulatory policies.

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The GINI coefficients for both income and wealth, which, have increased dramatically since the 1970s.

Argue what you want, but there is a pretty strong correlation between a highly progressive income tax system; a strong welfare net and business regulation with lower levels of inequality.[/quote]

Especially when you use the GINI coefficient to measure both the amount of redistribution and the amount of inequality. Perhaps I should use a scale that reads in both kilograms and pounds to determine the gravitational constant at different altitudes...

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Well that's a what if question, we can only hypothesise.

We know that private investment is not always efficient. People aren't always rational actors, simple as that.[/quote]

People are not always rational actors when using their own pocketbook, therefore they can be expected to be more rational actors when using taxpayers' pocketbooks?

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And Higgs was awarded the Noble prize too. Even he, however, would recognise that this was thanks to the huge public investment in building the Large Hadron Collider, and the teams of Physicists working at CERN.

As I am sure you are aware, modern science is not about the isolated individual genius, but about large teams working together and bouncing research and ideas off of each other.

[/quote]

Perhaps I should explain my analogies better, lest they be taken literally. The intended point was that all the resources needed to solve a problem may be available due to the efforts of others, but I see that as no reason to discount the efforts of the first person to take those resources and use them to create a novel idea.

[Coolface Sock #42069]

Horrible concept. One of my most passionately conservative positions on economics is on taxes.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

I support redistributing mencken's wealth specifically to black single mothers specifically (normal).

[mencken]

I support redistributing mencken's wealth specifically to black single mothers specifically (normal).

http://www.techlawjournal.com/glossary/legal/attainder.htm

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

I support redistributing mencken's wealth specifically to black single mothers specifically (normal).

http://www.techlawjournal.com/glossary/legal/attainder.htm

Jurisdiction-strip it to hell and back (sane, FF).

[mencken]

I support redistributing mencken's wealth specifically to black single mothers specifically (normal).

http://www.techlawjournal.com/glossary/legal/attainder.htm

Jurisdiction-strip it to hell and back (sane, FF).

Your ad hominem attack (if it even rises to that level) has convinced me of the error of my ways. I see now that, despite what I have learned from economics and civics courses, that redistribution is indeed a positive good for society, and all of its members.

[bagelman]

It ought to be done by brute force. I'd like to see repossessed Ferraris and other luxury cars in scrapyards, mansions or manors converted to hotels, public buildings, or simply padlocked, and private jets that can't be converted to public ones be forever grounded.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

I support redistributing mencken's wealth specifically to black single mothers specifically (normal).

http://www.techlawjournal.com/glossary/legal/attainder.htm

Jurisdiction-strip it to hell and back (sane, FF).

Your ad hominem attack (if it even rises to that level) has convinced me of the error of my ways. I see now that, despite what I have learned from economics and civics courses, that redistribution is indeed a positive good for society, and all of its members.

Wasn't one of the reasons people liked H.L. Mencken his sense of humor?

[dead0man]

It ought to be done by brute force. I'd like to see repossessed Ferraris and other luxury cars in scrapyards, mansions or manors converted to hotels, public buildings, or simply padlocked, and private jets that can't be converted to public ones be forever grounded.

usually you guys hide the jealousy aspect of this discussion a little better than this

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Inherently evil.

[ApatheticAustrian]

Inherently evil.

you are a Jeb!-populist. :-/

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Inherently evil.

you are a Jeb!-populist. :-/

What?