Why not wealth redistribution?

A simple yet infinitely debatable question, yet i have the audacity to ask you.

Why are so many people against a wealth redistribution? Why are you ok with pop stars owning dozens of supercars but your neighbour commiting suicide because couldn't find an employment? Why are you ok with corporation chiefs possessing one zillion times your wealth, knowing that they could live far, far above average with just 1/1000 of that wealth?

Why making donations to aid associations while there are people who possess immense, unutilized wealth and are unwillingly to give a cent away to less lucky people? I mean... it's as if you enjoy inequality somehow, speaking frankly. Isn't that it?

 

Remove the incentive to gain wealth and watch innovation plummet. Just look at how dominating the US is compared to....everyone. Medical, tech, silicon value, robotics, military, engineering, EVERYTHING. No country comes close. China borrows, reverse engineers and steals EVERYTHING we do here.

Find me a hard worker that works for free, with NO incentive to make more money later on? Get back to me in 1000 yrs.

I agree somewhat. The most Liberal out there, movie stars, certain sports stars and musicians, and rich Democrat politicians should give 3/4 of their earnings back to "the people". Oh, they're not lining up to do their fair share? Color me surprised, hehe=)

The problem is who decides how much people who are better/more intelligent/more talented/ than them are able to keep?

 

The person who possesses wealth does so because he or someone else has contributed something to society and society has benefited from whatever that is whether you approve of it or not. The unemployed neighbor is not contributing something, not that anybody is glad that someone loses their job. The wealth of some billionaire has no probable direct impact on my survival. Whether or not they elect to give that money away and to whom is their choice. People could buy and sell most of us for what they will drop on a painting to hang on a wall. To me the question isn't why isn't the government redistributing this wealth so much as it is why aren't the people who want the government to redistribute the wealth doing more to help prevent their unemployed neighbor from committing suicide instead of just expecting the government or somebody else to assist a stranger when the people who know them won't?
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That's a weak argument i'm sorry. Average people like you and me don't have the material power to consistently help the others, maybe because we already spend our time to work and provide to our families, with little time left for ourselves. My question is the opposite of yours: why should I, just an average guy, provide for others while the state does nothing? I'm sorry but you too should understand that it is the state who should provide assistance and equality, not me nor you. And those who should contribute more to the welfare are those who possess much more than they need, don't you agree?

 

I sit on a board for a local organization that does lots of good for people in our community across several issues they might confront. Your assumptions are weak as far as I am concerned. I call it the "Do as I say, not as I do" escape hatch that the left always scurries to.

 

Those movie stars, singers and sports team people got their money from folks to patronize them. Many of their admirers work minimum wage jobs.
If they stop paying to see them they wouldn't be so rich.

 

Because they have been led to believe (brain washed) that all wealth is deserved and that one day, if they work hard and smart enough that they too will be wealthy.

As someone who was had a career in innovating, I can tell you that you are a little off in your opinion of how this works. Typically how it works is that a group of engineers and/or scientists will develop a product or process and the company they work for will make millions of dollars. Those who did the developing will get to keep their job, making in the order of $50,000 to $100,000 a year. There will be those in the factory who will make the product, and receive $20,000 to $30,000. The executives in the company will make as much as a million dollars or more and the owners, even more.

Without the engineers, scientists, and workers the executives and owners are nothing. The reason managers make more money than anyone else is because they get to decide how much everyone is paid. Of course they always pay themselves more.

What benefit is it that drug smugglers have brought to society? What about speculators? They do little more they cause prices to increase. Most very rich people become so not by doing anything beneficial but rather by siphoning off the efforts and wealth of others.

Actually he does. If he buys the company you work for and lays everyone off, as has happened tens of thousands of times across America then he will have a very real impact on your survival. Also, it is billionaires that have essentially bought most politicians and spend hundreds of millions to influence your opinions.

Democracies only work if there is an equality of access and distribution of ideas. When a small portion of the population is allowed to gain excessive wealth they can and do exert an unfair advantage over all others.

 

They serve a demand and create lots of employment opportunities for police, military, healthcare workers, etc. Price increases reduce the opportunity cost of debt, especially in the long term.

Only if I sell it to him.

No democracies work when people are allowed to vote. Democracies are governmental arrangements, not economic ones. There have been some pretty failed economies in democratic societies.

 

They are against wealth redistribution but they don't understand it. They don't understand that wealth is redistributed UP the pole and protected at every level in this country. Just take the way pharmaceuticals are patented and manufactured. When the patents expire, the brand names PAY the generic manufacturers to NOT jump their claims. Who ends up paying for all that while Pharma continues to get fat and the CEOs are anointed with olive oil while women wash their feet?

 

I think the idea is stupid , everyone should be free to keep the products of his/her personal labor. Say i am a web developer and run several projects that grand me €60000 a year, why i should share it with the average Greek who makes €12.000 ? i did not exploited or stole from anyone .


Ending the wage slavery nonsense and state favoritism will fix most issues .

 

So true. At this point many will say that rich people also created work and opportunities: that's true. But we live now in a world where work demand is almost totally fulfilled: what will unemployed people do? That's where the state has to intervene. It's called welfare and i don't understand why many people think it's not fair. It's as if they wish unemployed people disappear from the planet, so they do not have to pay their for them anymore. Ok and let's suppose you lose your job all of a sudden or you become disabled because of an incident: suddenly that welfare doesn't seem that bad right?

Could you explain this one? Very thankful...

 

It's a matter of voluntary will. Taking money away from rich people can only be done at the point of a gun. (i.e. taxes). The Sports stars/celebrities are making money off of other people's choices to pay money to see them in some way. It's amazing to me how anti-free will that leftists can be.

 

It is one of the basic ideas behind communism : we don't care how much you make but how you make it .
Say you own a business and you operate it alone , you are the rightful owner of all the profit you make.
Say that you cannot operate your business alone and you need five more people , all six of you are equal partners in profits and in losses .
Say that you get bored of this business and you want to start something else or work elsewhere, by the time you leave you are no longer in the old partnership.
Compensations, vacations, medical care and everything else are decided by the partners themselves and nobody else can interfere .


On state favoritism i support the idea of "dead is dead" ; so your business is bad then it goes down , there are no subsidies to survive with taxpayers money and there are no too big to fail or too big to jail personas.

 

Ok lets redistribute all the wealth from Hollywood and all the millionare and billionare democrats in Congress.

 

Sounds fair to me. I mean since they howl the loudest about this stuff they get to go first. I wonder if Barack Obama would enjoy returning to being a pauper? I KNOW that Queen Michelle, however, would not be . . . amused.

 

Technically, all taxation is wealth redistribution.

So, for most societies, it's not so much a matter of whether or not to engage in wealth redistribution but rather a question of how much to engage in.

 

Wealth equality is an aid to production. Go ahead and take it from Hollywood.

 

No it is not , taxation is taking from the working & middle classes and grand it to the rich.
Did the government even subsidized your small business or leverage your bank account ?

 

While it is true that many governments spend tax money on subsidizing business, most tax codes involve taxing the wealthy more than the working class.

Now, percentage-wise, the wealthy sometimes pay less than some working class people. It's all dependent on things like deductions and what kind of taxation applies to things like stock options and capital gains.

The practice of taxation itself, however, does not specifically require subsidization of business and usually takes wealth from the wealthy and working class alike.

 

The wealthy take their money from the poor, so if you take money from the poor and the wealthy alike, then no money is actually taken from the wealthy.

 

Taxing the wealthy doesn't matter because they always get that money back in several different ways.
I don't know why you are trying to sanitize the issue ... there would be no rich without the government and no government without the rich .
Take a look at France with their hideous 75% tax in high incomes , yes a couple of wealthy people left but you think the rest are idiots?

 

I guess that depends on the amount of taxation of the wealthy.

I would think the personal taxation of the wealthy in a country like Norway is high enough to be considered a net negative for the wealthy. That being said, the money seems to be well spent for the sake of public infrastructures.

 

I mean this in the form of a law, not according to the people's mood eh... i'm not robin hood, i want a fair and mutual respectful system. First we start by defining an average standard of life, then people who have more are forced to redistribute, but the % of money to verse is progressive just as your taxation, so if you have slight more than average your contribution would be small, if you are bill gates you have to contribute much more %. BUT of course i'm not intended to cut down businness by taking away all their money until they become average like others, meaning that if you have in mind to invest your money for better production, better ecology then you can invest that money, but first you have to show your project to a statal commission, which will give it's approval or not. The commission is elected by common people, who have all interests in improving the ambient.

IF you don't invest your money and keep accumulating more and more money, THEN you have to redistribute and frankly i don't see the need to possess immense unutilized wealth other than to show the world how long your penis is. If you are an evoluted man you don't need that to prove your worth, you prove much more by making good things and improve existing ones.

 

I would argue classes develop with or without government whenever the system present is capitalist or feudalist.

In fact, they even were present among communist states.

Hypothetically, if you eliminated government and everything was privately run, that wouldn't stop some people from accumulating more wealth than others.

 

How is that consolidating companies into large corporations improve competition. How are liberal efforts to break up these behemoths into smaller units not competitive?