Wealth Redistribution

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ThePainefulTruth
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Wealth Redistribution

Post #1

Post by ThePainefulTruth »

Socialists use compassion (a religious concept) as the reason to forcibly redistribute wealth. But I think that's more politics than compassion. If we're going to be uniform in our compassion, that redistribution would have to take place world wide. Is there anyone in the US, other than the voluntarily poor (drop outs) who wouldn't be giving up a major portion of their incomes to others outside the US.

The average income in the US is $27K*, which does not include government aid in the form of: housing, furniture, appliances, utilities, transportation, healthcare and food stamps, which could easily bump that up to $30K.

The average global income, $3K, does NOT usually include any of the above US benefits. So the average American would be redistributing in cash and benefits $27K, raising the global average to what, guessing $3.5K...OK $4K.

So now what, put it to a vote? Keep in mind that the vote must necessarily be worldwide. Democracy would truly be compassionate then, don't you think?

Wouldn't it be better to promote economic freedom (capitalism with legal oversight) around the world, which rising tide would raise all boats.

* Av. income for US by race:
Whites $31K
Asians $30K
Blacks $18K
Hispanics $15K[/code]

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bluethread
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Post #31

Post by bluethread »

2ndRateMind wrote:
Not really. But I am assuming that current economic activity would be unaffected by such a redistributive plan. That might not be the case, I admit. Two things occur to me immediately; the very rich would be unable to leverage their riches to screw ever more money out of the economy, and the very poor would have sufficient capital to start their own micro-businesses without going cap in hand to the bank. I honestly cannot see either of these effects as undesirable.

You assume erroneously. The wealthy do not have dollars stacked up in some corner somewhere. The numbers on the ledger represent resources based on an agreed upon arbitrary scale, i.e. dollar, pound, deutsche mark, bit coin, etc. So, the distribution of actual currency would be a miniscule part of the process. The difficult part would be the redistribution of the resources that currency represents. In order to redistribute that wealth evenly the ownership of all goods would have to be divided up into increments small enough to facilitate the equal distribution and future exchange. This would create major upheaval in the economy. As with any major change, those with the most power would have the greatest control of the redistribution process.

Economic power is gaged by the control of goods and services, i.e. wealth. Therefore, those from whom the greatest number of goods are being taken for redistribution would have the greatest control of the redistribution process. How do you think that is going to go?
On the other hand, you would appear to be assuming that the rich are rich by their own virtue, and the poor are poor by their own vice. I do not think there is evidence for this, if one looks around the world and makes an impartial, dispassionate assessment. Mostly, it seems to me, the rich and poor are rich and poor by accident of birth.

Best wishes, 2RM.

I am not assuming anythiing so simplistic. The rich are rich because, by hook or by crook they have obtained a large amount of resources. Whether they are able to hold on to those resources depends on whether or not they are wealthy. If they are not wealthy, they will squander those riches on "candy and gum", as the saying goes. However, if they are wealthy, those goods will be invested in the economy such that they create more goods and services that are desired by the populous, both riich and poor. In that way they will increase their wealth.

The same rule applies to the poor. If they expend all of their resources on consumer goods, they will just get poorer. However, if they invest some of those resources into the economy they create more goods and services that are desired by the populous, both riich and poor. In that way they will increase their wealth.

Regarding your assertion regarding inherited wealth, that may hold for a generation or two, but the law of commons applies to them also. If the patriarch has several children the wealth becomes deluted and if the children do not invest the resources in the economy, they do not remain rich.

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Post #32

Post by bluethread »

2ndRateMind wrote:
bluethread wrote:
Amazing how colored paper can make everyone content.... Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.�
Uh huh. However happy or sad $bills may be, the fact is that currency is the way the world currently chooses to ration finite resources amongst infinite desires. If you have a lot, you get a lot of resources. If you don't have any, you get no resources (food, housing, clean water, health care, etc) at all. So, small green pieces of paper are not irrelevant to the discussion.

Best wishes, 2RM.
No, on a serious note, currency just facilitates the exchange of resources. One can distribute resources without it. It is just more cumbersome. That is the reason why barter is often used in the black market. If governments tighten down too much on monetary policy, the inconvenience of not using money becomes more acceptable.

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Post #33

Post by bluethread »

2ndRateMind wrote:
bluethread wrote:
Amazing how colored paper can make everyone content.... Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.�
Uh huh. However happy or sad $bills may be, the fact is that currency is the way the world currently chooses to ration finite resources amongst infinite desires. If you have a lot, you get a lot of resources. If you don't have any, you get no resources (food, housing, clean water, health care, etc) at all. So, small green pieces of paper are not irrelevant to the discussion.

Best wishes, 2RM.
No, on a serious note, currency just facilitates the exchange of resources. One can distribute resources without it. It is just more cumbersome. That is the reason why barter is often used in the black market. If governments tighten down too much on monetary policy, the inconvenience of not using money becomes more acceptable.

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Post #34

Post by bluethread »

2ndRateMind wrote:
bluethread wrote:
Amazing how colored paper can make everyone content.... Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.�
Uh huh. However happy or sad $bills may be, the fact is that currency is the way the world currently chooses to ration finite resources amongst infinite desires. If you have a lot, you get a lot of resources. If you don't have any, you get no resources (food, housing, clean water, health care, etc) at all. So, small green pieces of paper are not irrelevant to the discussion.

Best wishes, 2RM.
No, on a serious note, currency just facilitates the exchange of resources. One can distribute resources without it. It is just more cumbersome. That is the reason why barter is often used in the black market. If governments tighten down too much on monetary policy, the inconvenience of not using money becomes more acceptable.

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Post #35

Post by bluethread »

2ndRateMind wrote:
bluethread wrote:
Amazing how colored paper can make everyone content.... Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.�
Uh huh. However happy or sad $bills may be, the fact is that currency is the way the world currently chooses to ration finite resources amongst infinite desires. If you have a lot, you get a lot of resources. If you don't have any, you get no resources (food, housing, clean water, health care, etc) at all. So, small green pieces of paper are not irrelevant to the discussion.

Best wishes, 2RM.
No, on a serious note, currency just facilitates the exchange of resources. One can distribute resources without it. It is just more cumbersome. That is the reason why barter is often used in the black market. If governments tighten down too much on monetary policy, the inconvenience of not using money becomes more acceptable.

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Post #36

Post by bluethread »

2ndRateMind wrote:
bluethread wrote:
Amazing how colored paper can make everyone content.... Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.�
Uh huh. However happy or sad $bills may be, the fact is that currency is the way the world currently chooses to ration finite resources amongst infinite desires. If you have a lot, you get a lot of resources. If you don't have any, you get no resources (food, housing, clean water, health care, etc) at all. So, small green pieces of paper are not irrelevant to the discussion.

Best wishes, 2RM.
No, on a serious note, currency just facilitates the exchange of resources. One can distribute resources without it. It is just more cumbersome. That is the reason why barter is often used in the black market. If governments tighten down too much on monetary policy, the inconvenience of not using money becomes more acceptable.

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bluethread
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Post #37

Post by bluethread »

2ndRateMind wrote:
Not really. But I am assuming that current economic activity would be unaffected by such a redistributive plan. That might not be the case, I admit. Two things occur to me immediately; the very rich would be unable to leverage their riches to screw ever more money out of the economy, and the very poor would have sufficient capital to start their own micro-businesses without going cap in hand to the bank. I honestly cannot see either of these effects as undesirable.

You assume erroneously. The wealthy do not have dollars stacked up in some corner somewhere. The numbers on the ledger represent resources based on an agreed upon arbitrary scale, i.e. dollar, pound, deutsche mark, bit coin, etc. So, the distribution of actual currency would be a miniscule part of the process. The difficult part would be the redistribution of the resources that currency represents. In order to redistribute that wealth evenly the ownership of all goods would have to be divided up into increments small enough to facilitate the equal distribution and future exchange. This would create major upheaval in the economy. As with any major change, those with the most power would have the greatest control of the redistribution process.

Economic power is gaged by the control of goods and services, i.e. wealth. Therefore, those from whom the greatest number of goods are being taken for redistribution would have the greatest control of the redistribution process. How do you think that is going to go?
On the other hand, you would appear to be assuming that the rich are rich by their own virtue, and the poor are poor by their own vice. I do not think there is evidence for this, if one looks around the world and makes an impartial, dispassionate assessment. Mostly, it seems to me, the rich and poor are rich and poor by accident of birth.

Best wishes, 2RM.

I am not assuming anythiing so simplistic. The rich are rich because, by hook or by crook they have obtained a large amount of resources. Whether they are able to hold on to those resources depends on whether or not they are wealthy. If they are not wealthy, they will squander those riches on "candy and gum", as the saying goes. However, if they are wealthy, those goods will be invested in the economy such that they create more goods and services that are desired by the populous, both riich and poor. In that way they will increase their wealth.

The same rule applies to the poor. If they expend all of their resources on consumer goods, they will just get poorer. However, if they invest some of those resources into the economy they create more goods and services that are desired by the populous, both riich and poor. In that way they will increase their wealth.

Regarding your assertion regarding inherited wealth, that may hold for a generation or two, but the law of commons applies to them also. If the patriarch has several children the wealth becomes deluted and if the children do not invest the resources in the economy, they do not remain rich.

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Post #38

Post by 2ndRateMind »

bluethread wrote:
No, on a serious note, currency just facilitates the exchange of resources. One can distribute resources without it. It is just more cumbersome. That is the reason why barter is often used in the black market. If governments tighten down too much on monetary policy, the inconvenience of not using money becomes more acceptable.
Currency doesn't 'just' facilitate exchange, though it clearly does that. Under a system of barter, if I have 20 mink skins, and want a chainsaw, I have to find someone who has a spare chain saw, and wants 20 mink skins. Under a system of currency, this transaction is split, so all I need to do is find someone who wants 20 mink skins and has currency, and someone else who wants currency and has a spare chainsaw. Obviously this latter is easier.

But currency also determines who gets what. That is why the absolutely poor, who live on less than $2.00 per day, can't get hold of what they and their families need to survive in good order. That is why we should redistribute our wealth; and why hogging an excess of it is sinful and wrong. Because otherwise, we are effectively killing people (at the rate of 36 million a year from hunger alone, according to google) whose only 'crime' is that they are dirt poor.

Best wishes, 2RM.
Last edited by 2ndRateMind on Wed Jul 11, 2018 6:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post #39

Post by 2ndRateMind »

bluethread wrote:
The same rule applies to the poor. If they expend all of their resources on consumer goods, they will just get poorer. However, if they invest some of those resources into the economy they create more goods and services that are desired by the populous, both riich and poor. In that way they will increase their wealth.
Ummm. Not quite. There is a certain minimum level of wealth (income and net worth) required to sustain life at all, and, beyond that, a certain desirable level of wealth required to sustain anyone at a level of dignity appropriate to any human individual. The 'wealthy', are those with more than this; the 'poor' are those with less than this. One cannot blame the poor if all their income is taken up by consumer goods, such as food, clean water, health-care and so on. They are locked in a poverty trap; however much they might see the wisdom in investing in the economy, and however much they might want to do this, they just don't have the wherewithall, because just surviving takes priority, and so they are locked out of prosperity unless we decide to succour them in their predicament.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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Re: Wealth Redistribution

Post #40

Post by Aetixintro »

[Replying to post 1 by ThePainefulTruth]

Note.

This topic may want to take into account issues such as "black money" and "moral money" and the fact that some (few?) people simply fail to have anything to do with money and thus need people (psychiatric support?) to do basic things for them such as buying the food and paying basic bills. Such is this crazy/"non-square" World.

By the way, you can also check transactions "moral value" "from one point of view" by attaching OR-operated "cycled" gates to them, being a kind of quantum physics calculations of what these money transactions represent.

"Black money" may thus be a thing of the past quite fast given banks willingness to act in (Kantian/lawfully) ethical ways.
I'm cool! :) - Stronger Religion every day! Also by "mathematical Religion", the eternal forms, God closing the door on corrupt humanity, possibly!

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