Why not wealth redistribution?

Government taxes what it wants to reduce and subsidizes what it wants to promote. You figure it out.

 

dont the poor get free welfare food and housing? how was anything stolen from them?

 

Their rights to free markets, their right to freely use the knowledge they acquire, and their right to use what nature provided. The rich have government-issued privileges which allow them to exclude competition from land, occupations, and ideas. Without governments help, you wouldn't even know Bill Gates name; without government-issued privileges, I would say Donald Trump, and you would be saying “who the heck is that?”

Every rich person today holds some form of government-issued and enforced privilege which allows them to do things that others are forbidden from doing. That privilege allows them to exclude competition, and that is how you know their name. Without governments help in eliminating/restricting competition,virtually every rich person today would have much, much less … and the rest of us would have much, much more.

 

Now that's a laugh. Name one and how it is forbidden.

 

No, the poor make the food and the housing.

 

and they get payed for it.

 

no you would still be sitting at home jobless smoking pot and playing video games

 

And you do what, exactly?

 

what i do is irrelevant

 

There is no capitalism without a state, because capitalism requires a state to create ownership of capital.
That isn't something that happens without a state, and a currency and courts to enforce contracts, and a gendarmerie to enforce the courts orders, and a system of taxation to support this infrastructure.

 

My land title (which is a government issued and enforced privilege) forbids others from accessing the land which I hold ... even though it was their taxes which paid for the construction of the road which leads to my land, and makes my land much more valuable.

Amazon.com uses government issued and enforced privilege to stop competitors from allowing patrons to buy goods with “one click” of their mouse button.

Apple inc. uses government issued and enforced privilege to stop competitors from making phones with rounded corners.

Heart surgeons use government issued and enforced privilege to limit competition in their occupation.

Doctors use government issued and enforced privilege to stop penicillin manufactures from selling the drug to consumers.

Taxi medallion holders use government issued and enforced privilege to stop other individuals from operating a taxi-cab.

I could go on for days … but you get the point. Every rich person has some legal government enforced document which places restrictions on their potential competitors.

 

Let's bring this down to a personal level.

Me and my wife worked hard, got educated, worked hard, and made responsible decisions and as a result we enjoy a level of income that president Obama considers wealthy.
Why do you think it's fair for people who haven't made the same level of success for themselves to the fruits of our labor?

There is no guarantee of outcomes, only of opportunity.

 

Give me an example of a company like this.

Let's talk in actual examples. It makes it easy to spot platitude arguments based on progressive theory rather than reality.

 

Like all arguments you can keep on it too far and run it into the ground.

But I think it is still worth considering. Especially in regards to macro trends where there are not countervailing events to arrest it.

 

It's not just their wealth that gets redistributed, yours will too.

 

Successful people are successful because they are smarter, more ambitious and MUCH more disciplined than the average person. They aren't sitting in their single-wide sipping a cold Schlitz and watching Honey Boo Boo, they're using their resources to invest in their craft or talent and creating wealth and a future for themselves and their families. Why should they be penalized for that?
I agree that they should contribute their share toward society and that they have many ways to avoid taxes that the rest of us have to pay but contrary to what many people think, the government doesn't create jobs, it is the successful and wealthy people who do.
In actuality it doesn't really matter what steps are taken to "redistribute" wealth because the money and resources will always find their way back into the hands of the ones who are focused and work hard at their goals. If all the wealth of the world was collected and then given back out in equal shares to everyone across the globe, it would all eventually end up back in the hands of those that it was originally taken from because they would simply continue with the same drive and work ethic that gave them their wealth status to begin with and sadly,... so would everyone else!

 

While I agree that people who are ambitious hard workers will do better than those who don't (all other things being equal) I think that the quoted synopsis is a little too simplistic. There wasn't an account for people who were born with silver spoons in mouth or rusty spoons.

Bottom line take 2 people of comparable innate talent and drive, make one of them a silver spoon and the other a rusty spoon and the silver spoon will win out (make more cash) on average; They have access to better education, contacts and oppurtunities for growth and role models.
Saying there is an equality of opportunity is true, but it doesn’t take into account the full truth. Or said in another way for some people it takes twice as long to get half as far.

Ergo, if you were to redistribute the wealth and give it back equally I would imagine a slightly different outcome. People, being people would run the gamit. Those who were wealth because of their talent, education, contacts, role models and drive would probably get back up top soon. Those who were poor because of lack of talent, education, contacts role models and drive would probably stay down. Rich folk who really don't have talent or drive would probably stay down, where as poor folk with a lot of talent and drive would probably come up much quicker then they would in our world.

 

^Not really. Inherited wealth has a strong tendency to dissipate over each generation as the original fortune is even though it might be expanded upon is spread among a growing number of people.

Are there any Rockefeller's or Kennedy's among the richest in the United States anymore? Hardly.

 

Agreed. There would be a few people (very few) who would take their new found wealth and do something with it but over all the money would eventually end up right back in the same bank accounts that it came from and those who were born wealthy and don't really know how to make money would obviously join the ranks of the down trodden but there again, most of the people who are wealthy are wealthy for a reason. They didn't just wake up rich one day after the money fairy visited during the night, they are self made. They did it once and they'll do it again!

 

Well said, that's how it's like. The gov guarantees that you keep your privileges, you won't do anything without roads to transport goods, without police to patrol them, without laws to ensure your wealth is yours, and many other things which are easily understandable. The government actually is a consociate of the capitalists, they do businness together, there's no capitalism without state. Those who say the state should be out of the businness don't understand a thing on how things work.

 

There are some fundamental mistaken beliefs related to "investments" that somehow people don't understand.

1. "Billionaire A" purchasing $100 million in stock from "Billionaire B" doesn't create one dime of goods or services nor does it provide one dime of investment in enterprise that provide the means for production. Whether "Billionaire B" receives more money from "Billionaire A" doesn't mean a damn thing to the US economy,

2. External "Investments in Enterprise" can fund the capital expansion of the enterprise but they don't necessarly create jobs. Only the consumption (sales) of the goods/services provided by a corporation creates jobs. The poster child the exemplifies that "outside investments don't create jobs" is Solyndra where roughy $1 billion was invested but a failire to sell the products Solyndra produced resulted in bankrupcy and there isn't a single kob today based upon $1 billlion odllars of outside investment capital.

3. The lower then income level of the household the greater the percentage of disposable income they spend on goods and services and it is their spending that creates jobs. If we want the economy to expand and create jobs the focus needs to be on increasing the disposable income of low income households because they have the highest percentage of income that is spent on consumption. A 10% increase in income for the bottom 5% of income households creates jobs while an increase of 10% on the top 5% of income households creates no jobs.

 

@ shiva agreed.

Put more money (though not too much, and there IS a too much) in the hands of the hand-to-mouthers and you'll get more demand which will spur new investments from business and people.