Maybe. Maybe not. Hmmmmm.
You can't take talent, skill, initiative, creativity, hard work, dedication, or other intangible things and qualities away from people, so I guess the closest you can get is to take away the fruits of those virtues -- i.e., wealth? How much of the redistributive drive arises from envy? Besides, it justifies envy, doesn't it?
3 comments:
Actually, wealth redistribution realizes that economic structures have an effect on the futures of individuals, and that concentrations of wealth are due to structural features of the economy, not individual variation in talent. Taiwan's a good example -- when a huge chunk of the economy was underground and beyond government control, and consisted of family-run SMEs, wealth was very evenly distributed. Now that the economy is becoming more formalized, subsidy-driven, and corporate, income inequality and wage stagnation are on the rise. The hidden effect of government power, captured by elites for their own use and accumulation, is what your analysis doesn't cover -- instead, it apparently assumes that the economy has no interesting structural features that affect the distribution of wealth.
Michael
I think I've run into too many pie-eyed leftists who don't think so much on structures, as you say, as they do on utopian visions that have a markedly Marxist tinge.
Then again, I still do not think increasing use of subsidies/bailouts for the ailing US economy is helpful if it sets up "zombie corporations/businesses." Anyway, the redistributive drive as I'm looking at it is more (I should have said, I guess) in terms of high taxes for the purpose of giving it to the burgeoning welfare state.
Your point about the Taiwan economy is well-taken. My overall concern for all free economies is that the more an economy if formalized, subsidy-driven, and meshed with government (a command economy?), the less ultimately free it is, and therefore the less vibrant. Too much control overall I think is bad for individuals as much as larger structures, though I'm convinced that too much intervention/control reduces an individual's opportunities.
Michael, the appropriate answer is not wealth redistribution, but changing the structures that concentrate wealth. E.g., if there are no government subsidies, the economy can't become subsidy driven. If a group (e.g. a political party) has enough control over the government to command wealth redistribution, then it has enough control to change wealth-concentrating structures.
This leaves me with a good motive to believe that those advocating wealth redistribution are either unaware of the structures you're talking about, or that they are not really interested in redressing inequities so much as concentrating power in their own hands.
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