Arguments For and Against Redistribution

Arguments Against

• It is unfair to take my property and give it to others
• Is a disincentive to be productive due to marginal tax.
• Is a disincentive to be productive due to free riding.
• Hurts productivity by taking resources from the most productive people and giving them to the least productive people.
• Reward merit – hard work, intelligence.

Arguments For

• It's unfair to have so much inequality.
• Increase the total value to society (taking a dollar from a rich person and giving it to a poor person hurts the rich person less than it helps the poor person, and so is a net gain to society).
• Prevent/undo accumulation of wealth and power into the hands of the few.
• Undo the effects of unequal starting points (born into wealth vs. born into poverty).
• Increase market representation of the poor (democracy of capitalism – vote with your dollars for what goods and service should be produced. The rich have more votes.)
• Don’t reward based on chance – birth circumstances, chance opportunity, the genetic lottery.

Sunday Links

California's budget problem results from the uncontrolled growth of government. However, help is on the way! Unfortunately it's coming in the form of a possibly illegal takings (Mother Jones and Cafe Hayek).

You may have already guessed that a rushed and kludgey repair job on the Bay Bridge caused the recent failure. This analysis suggests that guess is correct (Sci-experiments.com).

The University of Utah Genetic Science and Learning Center has created an excellent interactive graphic that helps explain the scale of small things. You'll want to show this one to your kids as you explain to them about germs or molecules (U of U).

The problem with economics is that it hasn't advanced far enough that it can make useful predictions. However, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb would point out, that's OK because there are still plenty of economists who are willing to go out on a limb and suggest untestable hypotheses to explain past events (Amazon.com and Bluematter).

The problem with socialism is that no one knows how much anything costs. Eric Falkenstein uses Amtrack as an example. Funny, but I keep hearing the same thing about health care (Falkenblog).