“redistribution takes from the productive and gives to the unproductive”
I read this Mish blogger guy in the interest of hearing what “the other side” says and thinks about things. He trends conservative or libertarian on the issues. He justifies inequality with this typical conservative mantra: “Wealth redistribution takes from the productive and gives to the unproductive.”
Income and wealth inequality has been debated throughout history. The original human lifeways, which lasted for 99% of our species history, were egalitarian. Egalitarianism waned after the rise of the division of labor and private property five thousand years ago. Then the debate started. For the sake of social cohesion some believe a modicum of equality is desirable, envisioning maybe a five-to-one ratio between the top and bottom earners. The lowest paid would make about $30,000 a year and the highest would make about $150,000. A household with two high earners would have to make do on just $300,000 a year.
Other progressives envision a range of incomes where top-to-bottom is a ten to one ratio; or maybe twenty to one.
What we currently have is a ratio of about 5,000 to 1. The inequality of our society is unbelievably egregiously scandalously insanely obscene. Mass society with huge markets of billions produces outcomes like that. Outcomes like that indicate that we live in an insane society. But until we start to deconstruct the Leviathan we should have policies that mitigate the worst outcomes.
I do understand that Mish thinks there’s little benefit in having the state pass out money to the faceless teeming masses. There’s a certain truth to that. That truth is an indication that we live in an insane society characterized by faceless teeming masses.
It would do a little good to redistribute wealth to the masses, but not an awful lot of good. But it should be done on the basis of the good it would do no matter how trivial and on the basis of aliens coming to Earth and saying: “The system they’re living under produces consequences that are unbelievably egregiously scandalously insanely obscene. Are they too dumb to do any better?”
Dumb conservatives think high earners are 5,000 times more-productive people than their peers.
The whole paradigm of mass-market productivity, profits, remuneration, hyper-wealth, and hyper-power should be replaced before the aliens get here.
