In the United States, the term “redistribution of wealth” is looked upon by many as a great evil, tantamount to Naziism.
In this thread, I’d like to remove that kind of rhetoric from the discussion and discuss the idea of “redistribution of wealth”. Why is it bad? Can it be good? Pros, cons?
What’s your ideas on it? Let’s try to keep this civil, please. 
im thinking maybe peoples visceral reaction to wealth redistribution is because of the way our civilisations concept of “rights” is derived from some assumed fundamental right to own shit. Look at the phrase “taking a life”. We consider even murder wrong only because you are taking something valuable from another person. This kind of works as a basis of morality but is actually totally fubar because it allows life to be quantified as a factor in equations of wealth. This is the fundemental evil of capitalism.
I wish i knew way more about philosophy cuz im having hecka trouble articulating this point hope it makes sense
Coherent meaningful sentences … Idi … what is this I don’t even …
One thing is crime. I gladly pay my 500 to 1000 € a month knowing I give my money to some poor single mother and her sons, knowing her sons won’t try to rob me when I’m drunk and walking home at 3 AM.
That is distribution of wealth and it can be measured statistically by the Gini-coefficient. Countries with a low Gini also have low crime rates, because people resort to ciminal acts because they are unable to feed themselves differently.
And how would you know your money is being used for that and not something else?
Well basically I know that my country spends
40 % on health and social services,
15 % on administration
10 % on repaying debts
8 % on defense
5 % on infrastructure
3 % on education (retards)
So about 50 % of my money (hence the 500 to 1000 €) go into the common public medical insurance fund and the social services. That way some poor family gets so called “Child-money” for each kid, and the state helps her pay the rent, her family gets something to bite and medical care, and if she supports her children and they want to learn, they will get more or less decent education. It could be better education wise in Germany, but oh well …
Edit: of course my country could be lying, but then we spend almost 3 times more money on “defense” than on education, that seems pretty realistics.
I disagree with the idea. I don’t see any reason for everyone to have the same amount of money or “power”. What we should prevent, however, is the existence of the two extremes, no one should have exaggerated amounts of money and no one should have trouble buying food, medicine and some entertainment as well.
Differences are good, they motivate people to innovate and to be creative. I agree that capitalism is out of control, but extreme control is bad too, it can actually be a lot worse (Cuba and China being the extreme examples). We need equilibrium between the two things.
This logic makes no sense, people need to be encouraged to get proper education and jobs, they quickly realize the government money is not enough, so it works well in most cases.
IMO wealth can’t be redistributed because some are always more fortunate than others. Redistributing wealth is like offering free plastic surgery to every ugly person in the world.
I want tons of money and do not care if other people get more or less money than I do.
euhm free health care is wealth redistribution too you know
and free education
etc
If I went to college for a Doctorate, and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for that education, should I have to give half of my money to someone who dropped out of high school at age 16?
You shouldn’t get a tax-paid bonus for being the CEO of a bank that failed to manage money correctly, period. This has happened and is still happening all over the world. I don’t care if you studied for 10 years to get that kind of a position, it’s just too much.
Half of your money to someone who dropped out of high school at the age of 16? No. But no country does that.
Just like everything else, wealth redistribution is a balance. Too much, and there is no incentive to work, too little, and education goes down, crime rises, things go to hell. I’d be inclined to lean towards too little over too much, since its hard to go back on this kind of spending. People are short sighted bastards, and will bankrupt a country if it gets them a paycheck every week.
I think that too many people buy into the false notion that “entitlements” lead to “lazy bastards”. In fact, the opposite is true. “Entitlements” actually lead to productive members of society.
Sure, you’re going to find the hapless layabout that would like to abuse the system, but abuse of the system does not mean that the system is bad. And it’s certainly no reason to get rid of the system. Go after the abusers, not the system.
Millions of people rely on the safety net created by the so-called “entitlement programs” to cover rough patches in their life until they can get back on their feet. And experts show that “entitlements” actually bring MORE back into the economy through economic multipliers than are spent.
inb4 “then put everyone on entitlements, 100% tax rate = infinite revenue”
That is a completely inane and asinine argument and I hope no one tries to use this argument.
I’d err on the side of too much than too little, then go after those that abuse the system. Erring on the side of too little is like cutting corners on the space shuttle; it leads to problems.
I think the big problem there is the overarching itself. “Other people’s money”? Really? Let’s take that apart, shall we?
When you go into a store and you buy something, isn’t the store “taking your money”? Aren’t you getting something in return for that money? I believe that everyone would agree that the answer is “yes, you get something in return for your money being taken from you”.
The store is “using force to take the money from you”, as Mr. Friedman would put it.
His economics are, unfortunately, akin to creationism because his beliefs are based not on fact or evidence but faith and belief.
He is just flat wrong about the de-incentivizing force of “welfare”. It just does not exist. If the government was out of the housing situation in New York, it would LOOK like the housing situation there would be “better than it is”…but it wouldn’t. The money would be in the hands of a few elite and there’d be massive homelessness and…yes…crime. Hooverville, anyone?
I always go back to “Pleasantville”. In that movie, there was an illusion of “nothing wrong” because the major problems were swept under a rug or behind a door where they’d fester and metastasize. Out of sight; out of mind. Until you suddenly have rioting in the streets and you can’t imagine where it came from.
Mr. Friedman was, unfortunately, wrong. You can’t ignore the problems hoping they’ll go away.
Because they won’t.
anyone who supports redistribution of wealth is a evil communist and needs to be wiped off of our great free us of a as a liberation of the people so that they may be free of all bounds in their mighty and free country that they call home of the free
death to communists
First I want to tell you that I respect your opinion and I’m very glad that you have an educated opinion.
However, I do respectfully disagree.
Yes, other people’s money. As in, money that would be person A’s otherwise, but now is given to person B.
The store example is the single most clear example of John Law’s philosophy on free markets. When you purchase something from a store, you are pursuing your own interests. This is categorically different from altruism or charity. Of course you are not required to purchase from StoreMart; you could instead purchase from MarketPlace. In such a scenario of free markets, neither of the retailers are forcing you to buy from them, therefore neither of them are taking your money by force.
However, in the case of the government, if you refuse to pay your taxes, you ultimately go to jail. Now of course, someone could opt to move to another country, but we are not discussing world economics and this is such an anomalous circumstance that it has no relevance to the discussion at hand. Therefore, the government takes money by force and the store does not.
I agree that the video I posted did not have any cited sources on the claims made, for which I am at fault. However I feel that most of the philosophy of laissez-faire, free market economics is common sense logic. I will explain.
Consider welfare. The concept is that you take money from the working (or the rich) and give to the retired, unemployed, etc (the poor). This is a simplification, of course, but it will serve its purpose as a clear example. Suppose I were to pay taxes all my working life and once I am retired, I wish to collect my dues. I expect to get out of the system what I paid in, more or less. Because, after all, that’s where I was told my taxes were going. Except the government doesn’t manage our retirements on a per-person basis. They effectively take the money and throw it into a big pile. Money is constantly being thrown in by the working generation, and money is constantly being taken out by the retired generation. So you are not even getting your own money, you are in fact relying on the generation after you to provide enough money for you. This is the definition of a Ponzi scheme. We are creating an ever expanding bubble and relying on future generations to not only buy into it, but also generate enough money to keep the bubble from popping. Recession, too bad; depression, too bad. I contend that it takes more faith to participate in this kind of system than the amount of faith it takes to buy into Friedman’s kind of system. You are inherently putting your faith and money into your kids’ hands and hoping they do the same and are able to, rather than counting on yourself. The welfare state also has to account for the unemployed.
There’s a nifty video that Milton also did that explains more thoroughly the de-incentivizing force of welfare has on the unemployed to actually get a job. This is consistently true throughout even today, wherein it is a trap in which people become dependent upon welfare and must give it up for the riskier proposition of getting a job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJWZ27OT16M This should address your argument posted a couple posts above.
You’re also making grand(ly baseless) assertions when you state that the few elite would have all the money in the NY situation. And as for Hooverville, well the government did have a role to remedy the great depression because it was government mishandling that caused it to begin with.
Also, as a side note, there are of course many flaws in the system besides what I pointed out, such as the fact that taking money out of the market has deplorable effects, and also the fact that there are individuals who easily scam for disability checks–my mother is one of them.
Allowing markets to work is not ignoring the problem by any stretch of the imagination. The free market is the single most effective tool to bring the poor out of poverty that has ever been conceived. Look at the richest countries of the world. Now look at socialistic countries throughout history. It seems there’s a correlation pointing to mutual exclusivity: The richest are the ones that lean more towards free markets.
I want the poor and unemployed and disabled, etc, to be able to live wonderful lives. I have a huge amount of sympathy for them and in no way do I want to leave them to die in the streets; however, I see plainly that the free markets are the ones that are going to enable them to have better. So often in time the government programs designed to help the needy are the ones who ultimately end up hurting them the most. Of course there is a lot more to this argument that I did not even touch on, as I’d have to write a book, but hopefully this gives you something to think about at the very least.
Evidence?
A system that is easily “abusable” is a bad system. Democracy might not be perfect in that sense, but it is hard to install a dictatorship in democracy. This kind of government also makes it easier for corruption to get caught and eliminated from the government when compared to monarchy and real socialism.
Which experts show that and what are the evidences presented?
You say “let’s install the system and then go after the bastards”, but going after the bastards is hard and costs a lot of lives. See the current revolutions in the Middle East and all frustrated attempts to create a revolution in China.
I support the idea that revolutions are extreme measures. Extreme measures are for extreme situations.
Now, why didn’t socialism ever really worked quite well? Because it is theoretical. Socialism is a radical change in the type of government, you can’t possibly create such a theory and certify that it will work like the theory. Genetic evolution works in nature because mutations in simple organisms are big, but, when you have a complex individual, small mutations work better. That is how you can create a better world: little by little. Wealth redistribution is a huge change in our current model of society, it is utopia, wishful thinking, it is not empiric.
It is already very hard for us to control the problems that arise in the small revolutions that happen throughout the world: criminalization of homophobia, legalization of abortion, elimination of dictatorships, fights against discrimination and government corruption, and so on. Then someone arises with a magical solution that will make a lot of those problems disappear? Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe in magic.
You can begin here:
https://www.anitra.net/homelessness/columns/anitra/eightmyths.html
From that site are links to other evidence.
I don’t think a bloody revolution is needed.
Whoa, whoa, whoa…Imma stopping you right there. “Socialism”? Really?
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