I heard Rush reading from the supposed thesis yesterday, and listened long enough to hear that he got it from Michael Ledeen. Instinctively, I turned off the radio muttering, “This is stupid.” In the nanosecond it took for me to come to that conclusion, I think I processed various ideas like, “Sounds abysmally childish” and “He was an International Studies major: why would his thesis be about the Constitution?” and “Sounds like that stupid NPR interview.” Your point, CK, is well-taken.
Nevertheless, the comment thread on CK’s post led me to jot a few thoughts. Here goes:
Can we have a point of clarification?
Is “redistributive justice” code for reparations?
I’ll answer my own question: yes.
For decades now, racial justice has been defined in terms of structural changes external to black society itself, with the quick fixes of affirmative action and reparations (the payback that dare not speak its name) being the principal mechanisms. But in order for true repair to take place, internal change must happen. It’s a fact, however, that the middle-class values that would lead blacks out of the wilderness are widely disparaged by popular black culture and by the likes of Barack and Michelle Obama, who are, ironically, the examples ne plus ultra of the dogged embrace of those values.
In his autobiography, DOMF, BO discusses the dynamic within the black community and disparages the middle class blacks for looking down on and being judgmental of others in the community who engaged in antisocial behavior. For him, the good Marxist, solidarity is the thing, the way the group is going to get “theirs.” His path to success depended on two things: his own self-created solid family life and work ethic (you don’t have to agree with the work to know that he has discipline and talent) and the reinforcement of the destructive and dysfunctional status quo for the vast majority of his community. It was in his own best interests as a politician to not truly address the degeneracy of the crime-ridden poor neighborhoods but to maintain that external factors, especially racism, were the first causes and beyond the control of the group.
Michelle, for her part, straddles the divide between personal conduct and political ideology with a brazen panache that is, IMO, the product of blissfuly ignorant hypocrisy . On the one had, she wants everyone to eat vegetables and she makes her kids go to sleep at 8:00 p.m. On the other hand, she childishly explains the economic pie as something that most people are happy to have a tiny sliver of, and her husband is going to take from those greedy people who want too much and give to those who need just a tiny bit more to be content. Meanwhile, she’s against vouchers and her kids go to Sidwell Friends where they spend an hour on Wednesdays thinking about ways to “give back.”
A part of the destructive pathology of the black community is that they are conditioned to look for a messiah, someone who will facilitate reparations in whatever form. This is the self-reinforcing mechanism for the promulgation of adept, shallow, charismatic leaders who bubble up from that community who never really help. It’s not in their interest.
Comments 46
In the clip the MacLeod put up, I didn’t hear Obama use the phrase “redistributive justice”.
October 24th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
I think you’re right, sissy, that Obama never uses the precise phrase “redistributive justice.” He speaks of “redistributive change” as a means of achieving “social and economic justice.” In somewhat extensive discussion and dissection of his remarks, the longer construction has been contracted. I agree that one should always attempt to be accurate with one’s quotes, but do you see much distinction in meaning? If Barbara wrote “redistributive change” above rather than “redistributive justice,” would it affect her argument?
October 24th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
Of course it would.
If she, or anyone else, equates a certain phrase such as RJ with advocacy of a certain policy, reparations, and says that Obama’s using to phrase and thus advocating reparations, then it has to matter that he doesn’t use the phrase.
I happen to think that Obama is a politician and it’s likely that somewhere, sometime, he’ll have used the magic words. You may even be able to find them.
I think that it’s about as important as whether Clinton inhaled or whether Bush drank a lot and skipped his Guard sessions.
Keep your eye on what his administration does and fight against the things you don’t like.
Redistributive change, not being equivalent to redistributive justice, has to make you guys pause a second and you have to hang the argument on Obama’s “unAmericanness” on a different, and hopefully more well-rooted, post.
October 24th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
@ fuster:
Can’t agree that it would change the sense of her argument. At most it would make Ø seem a teensy-weensy bit less of a vulgar Marxist, a teensy weensy bit more the marble-mouthed lecturer/legislator. When you give the larger context of “economic and social justice… through redistributive change” (slight paraphrase, good enough for comments-work), even that superficial distinction tends to evaporate.
October 24th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
No – the “redistributive” part is much more important than the theoretical difference between “change” and “justice.” And, as I said, even that difference disappears when you consider what Ø actually did say.
Barbara asks:
I think the latter would be a special case of the former. Use the phrase “redistributive change” instead, and that’s still true.
Conceivably – and, as Barbara points out, in practice – you could retain doubts about a full-fledged (implicitly revolutionary) program aimed at total redistributive justice a la the Khmer Rouge, but still believe that there was some sense to reparations – just as you can believe that reparations is an absurd and impossible concept to sell to the 9/10 non-African American populace, yet still persuade large enough numbers of voters to support or at least look the other way from reparations under other names – in the form, say, of affirmative action or, say, supporting a completely unqualified and dangerous weirdo president cuz his racial ID made you feel good.
October 24th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
MacLeod, you gonna have to come to grips with why wanting a “redistribution” of wealth is, in itself, unAmerican, illogical, immoral, or wrong.
I doubt that you could or would. You’re gonna have to argue about the means. That’s gonna lead to an actual, substantive discussion if we’re not careful.
October 24th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
sorry, fuster, I don’t gotta do nuthin.
I am happy, however, to stand foursquare, heck, I’ll stand five or even six-and-a-half square against redistribution of wealth, which is another word for theft. As an aim of government, it was completely outside the American tradition until the Progressives, and, even under them and up to the present day, it remains highly controversial, to the extent, for instance, that proponents of “progressive taxation” or of deficit-financed social programs rarely admit that what they’re doing amounts to taking from the wealthy and giving to the less wealthy. Instead, they construct elaborate justifications referring to the general welfare – such as impediments to business, unsustainable costs, etc.
You don’t seem to grok that the concept of redistributive change already implies 1) a static view of societal wealth and 2) the notion that such wealth is commonly owned, and that it’s up to the government to determine how it is to be apportioned. If everything you or I possess doesn’t already belong to the government, then the government wouldn’t be able to “re-distribute” it.
American democratic capitalism is based on a completely different view of the proper role of government, the rights of individuals, and the functioning of the economy.
October 24th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
( “nuffin” ) …. for the children …..
I don’t think that either of your 1) or 2) is logically entailed in redistribution.
If you do, I can understand you thinking it obnoxious, because, then you’ll be expecting the use of foul means to effect redistribution.
I’ve heard redistribution used in many and varied ways. Heard an economist or two say that the Bush tax cut was an example of redistribution.
October 24th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
While I appreciate CK’s defense and interpretation of what I said (did a better job than I would have done,) I want to say that I inadvertently collapsed “redistributive change” and “social and economic justice.” I should quote accurately, but I rather like my coinage because it points more directly to what is actually going on. Simply put: the redistribution of wealth to achieve justice. Reparations is even more direct.
But directness in aims it antithetical to achieving them in this case, because sensible people (that 9/10 of the population CK refers to) know that taking from one group willy-nilly and giving to another group willy-nilly is no way to achieve justice of any kind, but it is a way to consolidate power.
October 24th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
@ Barbara:
Got an example of where Obama goes willy-nilly and advocates confiscatory tactics or comes out and talks in favor of reparations?
Reparation talk anytime since he’s held any public office is gonna start me re-evaluating.
October 24th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
@ fuster:
Well, that one’s not even hard, Smidge. No coming to terms necessary. It’s all right there. “Redistribution” of wealth is:
a. Theft
b. Unconstitutional
c. Oxymoronic
d. Ineffective for the intended purpose
These aspects of it make it un-American, illogical, immoral, and wrong.
October 24th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Please, Imperial Majesty, some redistribution from the big pot?
https://jspivey.wikispaces.com/file/view/MPT_OliverTwist_1200.jpg
October 24th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
I don’t immediately hear the echoes of “reparations” in Oslash’s words about redistributive change, but that may be because, unlike Barbara, I haven’t read all the way through Dreams from My Father.
I just hear the standard “justice comes from redistribution” bromides of the tired, old, discredited boutique-Marxist left.
October 24th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
You get paid in the Navy?
October 24th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Try to understand the distinction, Smidge.
Redistribution is theft.
Giving is mercy, compassion, and grace.
October 24th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
@ fuster:
No.
October 24th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
@ fuster:
:
#1 is a constant, persistent feature of leftist rhetoric: that there is a “pie” (see Michelle) and that we need Big Brøther to make sure that the pie is divvied up “fairly” and #2 is obviously implied in #1. If the fundamental right to keep and use what you earned were assumed, the redistribution of pie slices would be a non-starter.
As to foul means, I refer you to the tax code.
Not knowing the context of the comment about the Bush tax credit, I will say two things: that a all Leftists have framed the tax cuts as a “redistribution” because their starting point is that it was THE GOV’T's money to begin with. So, even though the producers were simply keeping the money that they had earned, if you think that all wealth is owned in common (see #2), allowing inequality of retention amounts to passive “redistribution”
October 24th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
See my comments about directness. “Reparations” is the so-called third rail of leftist politics- it can never, ever be spoken aloud. But philosophically, that is what Marxism is based on. If you think that the only way some people succeed is to oppress and exploit others, you seek reparations as a means of achieving justice. I think it’s noteworthy that the means of implementing “fairness” have been those mechanisms that lead most directly to financial gain but not to long term building blocks for stability.
The part of the book that I’m referring to is really fascinating. BO supposedly takes to heart the words of a lowly janitor about the snobbery of the church ladies who were “middle class.” Basically, financially stable, law-abiding, and so on, but that their success bred a judgmentalism that separated them from The Group and weakened The Group. He went on to mention that the covered their furniture in plastic (so I guess they were tacky, which is undoubtedly another bourgeois quality…)
October 24th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
I actually do think that I understand what you’re saying and meaning about giving and taking and I also cherish the difference.
I, however, think that you understand Obama to be calling for redistribution by means that are obnoxious and I don’t hear that in the clip or see much of that in his administrations actions.
(I might make some kind of jest about Obama not being anywhere near as radical in redistributing property as that Lincoln guy, but I foresee terrible trouble if I do that.
So I won’t.)
October 24th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
@ Barbara:
Of course. It’s not about long-term buiding blocks for stability. When we have those, a lot of people become well-off through their own efforts, and don’t think they need to benefit from “redistribution.”
October 24th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
As for 1, under the democratic capitalist view, societal wealth is something created by free individuals in the pursuit of happiness. Under free enterprise, tomorrow’s wealth should be much greater than yesterday’s, unless somehow impeded – for instance by government-sponsored (barrel of a gun) expropriation and constraint – in which case tomorrow’s wealth may be much smaller than yesterday’s both in the aggregate and especially in discrete sectors.
That understanding doesn’t preclude enlightened self-interest even and especially on the part of the largest concerns, as in the “Fordist” concept that well-paid workers would generally be better able to afford Fords. That’s not “redistribution” of wealth: It’s efficient maximization of wealth by means that include investment in consumers.
You can construct some theoretical definition of “redistribution” that applies it to Fordism and its many public policy variants, but that’s not what Professor Ø was talking about, or what all the little Ø’s mean when they use the term.
As for 2, you merely assert, as is your wont, that a counterargument exists without actually making it and without actually addressing the argument offered in support. Under the Ø and conventional usage of the term “redistribution,” the assumption that a government can and should be in a position to apportion all of a society’s wealth remains fundamental.
Under the American constitutional system, the owners are the people, not the government. The citizens own the government: It’s their common possession.
The socialist view – which underlies modern as opposed to classical liberalism – sees things the other way around: The people’s wealth belongs to whichever people only to the extent that the state allows. That’s why the Bush tax cuts, since you bring them up, are described by liberals as “giveaways” to the rich: If the money didn’t “belong” to the government (as the representative of the societal collective), it couldn’t be “given away”: It could only be given back to its original owners. This is a fundamental difference between conservative and liberal worldviews in the modern era.
October 24th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
@ Barbara:@17. Understand all too well about leftist rhetoric. Been listening to that shirt all me life. Got so that I think that it probably rolls off me too easily sometimes.
The comment about the tax code was meant to point out that the government, any government, is in the business of redistributing and that, for economists, all that’s left to discuss is how much, to whom, and for what.
October 24th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
@ fuster:
There is not, in fact, a means of redistribution that is not obnoxious.
It’s the concept of redistribution itself that is the problem. Thinking we need “redistribution” is a great root of evil. Neither you nor I is the master of the question who “should” have what. There is no moral basis for anointing anyone, or any institution, to that position.
We can tax ourselves to buld roads for the common good, and we can tax ourselves to provide relief for those who are suffering and in need. We can call doing the latter compassion, or we can call it enlightened self-interest, which is where a lot of republican capitalists would put it.
But the proposition changes when it becomes a search for “redistribution.” That proposition posits NOT that we are seeking to relieve suffering out of compassion or a view of the communal good, but that we imagine having an authority that can prescribe remuneration and level of wealth for everyone.
It’s pointless to say that’s not what “redistribution” is about. Of course it is. It’s inherently, and by definition, about imposing an idea of how much everyone should have on the people. The very urge to redistribute comes from the positing of such an idea. If no such idea were in view, there would be no one arguing for “redistribution.”
It cannot be done non-obnoxiously. Taxing and paying for roads or a military is not “redistribution,” it’s the purchase of goods and services. The intent to redistribute is what’s obnoxious, and it can only be done through obnoxious means.
October 24th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
@fuster, are you implying that a voluntary redistribution of wealth is/might be moral/sensible and thus the various schemes for compulsion amount to a basket of red herrings?
Recall that it was Ø who wanted to reduce the charitable deduction for the wealthy. If my goal were to establish that “pure,” uncompensated altruism is a good thing but the rich cannot be relied on to engage in it, that’s where I’d start.
The question then becomes, is compulsory state-imposed altruism any “purer” than the tax-deductible kind? I would say even less so. And that’s leaving aside Gilder’s claim that capitalism itself is inherently altruostic, and Hayek’s that statism is slavery.
Apropos Barbara’s post, I’d be surprised and dismayed if most adult blacks go through life thinking whitey owes them a living based on their hue.
October 24th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
I second your “of course.” It seems so obvious, but I talk to people every day who have no clue.
Well, don’t we all.
October 24th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
@ Seth Halpern:
Really? Maybe you couldn’t get most of them to say they are owed a living based on their color, but if you take it down a notch, say, owe them extra consideration for that job, extra consideration for that slot in medical school or law school or any school, you would be hard pressed to find any people of color who would not agree to that premise.
Most blacks, if their allegiance to the Democrat party is any indication, believe that “whitey” owes them for the injustices suffered by previous generations, and by extension, their own putative (and collective) lower economic station in life.
Seth, you just have to go to one Ward Connerly talk and hear the students call him an Uncle Tom for advocating redirecting educational resources to high schools in poor neighborhoods and to economically disadvantaged students without regard to color. As a group, African-Americans know that they can’t compete for compassion if you take color out of the equation.
October 24th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
You include social security taxation in that obnoxiousness?
October 24th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
@ Seth Halpern:
Seth what I’m saying and implying is that governments redistribute wealth. I don’t think that there’s a way to have a government without having it do so.
I’m also unsure about the extent to which the redistribution is voluntary.
October 24th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
The dynamics of growth are simply not understood by the growing collective mass of people dependent on government largesse and government jobs.
The dynamics of growth should be taught in our schools but the Democrats (and Susan Collins Republicans) would not like that.
Our children would learn about human nature, our natural and normal focus on self interest. They would learn about choices, incentives, free markets, risk & rewards.
They would learn about the virtue of hard work and savings. They would learn about merit and responsibility.
They would learn about the intentions of our founders in our founders’ own words.
As it is, they must learn about this at our kitchen tables, and from a small portion of our popular media.
October 24th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
@fuster: Reallocate maybe, but not necessarily redistribute. As JED suggested, there’s a difference between taxing everybody to purchase something of general utility and simply stealing it from people you dislike on principle. Of course you could argue that spending a rich man’s money on public schools is giving it to the poor, or that spending a poor man’s money on police benefits the rich, but simply transferring wealth from one economic stratum to another (or arbitrary imposing punitive taxation on the upper strata to achieve economic leveling) is hardly intrinsic to governance. Okay, maybe Ron Paul believes it is (which could explain his libertarianism) but I’m not there yet.
October 25th, 2009 at 10:18 am
I don’t think there’s any appreciable difference in the words “redistribute” and “reallocate.”
Broadly, moneys taken from one group and used for any purpose is a “redistribution” or a “transfer of wealth” as the economists put it. The more vague and distant the purpose of transfer, the more it looks like “redistribution” and indeed, that is where so much mischief takes place with corruption, padding of the bureaucratic rolls, and pure waste. This does amount to theft.
As a sidebar, I note that some localities are so dependent on corruption as a way of life that even the most blatant, jail-term worthy graft barely raises an eyebrow. Look at what’s happening in New Jersey, with two huge busts that should, by rights, tank Corzine’s campaign, and nothing. Chris Christie is still flat to Corzine. The “Chicago Way” is the culture of the White House today, and if we didn’t have a lapdog press, we would hear more about fundamental corruption à la Chicago.
October 25th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Barbara, so what if any kind of government would you tolerate?
October 25th, 2009 at 11:44 am
I think you’re misunderstanding the extent of my anti-governmentism.
The words “distant” and “vague” are key. I live close to a very liberal city. Their priorities are not what I would choose, but the officials are democratically elected and the books are open. It is up to me and other citizens to criticize policy or promote solutions.
Clearly, that is an unworkable model for the federal government. The distance and dilution of the effects of many laws, combined with their vagueness, invites corruption. My issue is with a legislature that has bubble-wrapped itself in self-protective, self-serving laws. Dan Rostenkowski was a Democrat from Chicago. Arguably, Charlie Rangel is at least as corrupt, certainly John Murtha is, but you have to get caught with $90K in your freezer to even get a passing glance from the Ethics committee.
This is how local tolerance for corruption feeds corruption at the federal level, and frankly, much of the country has bought into the government-as-slush-fund mentality.
By the way, vast numbers of my family are or have been employed by local and federal government entities, mostly starting as police and military service people. One of the things I’ve noticed is that it’s very hard to get out once you’re in: you get molded into a certain mentality of employment and the security becomes everything. Merit ceases to be the means to advancement and you become satisfied with the little step-raises you get by gaming the system from within. You also become vested in the pols who cater to funding more government.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
@ Barbara:
Actually, I disagree that there is a broad category in this sense — at least if you’re suggesting taxation and traditional public expenditures fall into it. It’s not “redistribution” or a “transfer of wealth” for me to pay federal income taxes and for the government to spend one quarter of them on buying a military. It’s taxation, and the purchase of goods (tanks, fighter jets) and services (uniformed personnel).
It’s not even necessarily “redistribution” or a “transfer of wealth” for me to pay federal income taxes and for the government to spend another quarter of it on welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid. It can be mistaken for redistribution given that the mechanism is taxing the income of one to create an artificial “income” for another.
But that is a very, very dangerous mistake, and one I don’t buy into. America has never predicated the “social safety net” on a redistributionist idea. That has never been the political argument. Rather, the pretext has been temporary assistance to the needy, out of compassion and a concept of the public good. We can argue about whether that is valid or not, but it’s inaccurate to say the political argument for it was ever that some people have to much, and need to have their too much leveled down with those those who have less, in a perpetual transfer scheme.
Those who have warned in the past that the danger of public assistance is precisely that it can be elided to “redistribution,” and that people will carelessly accept that we’re already redistributing, are quite right. We see that in the ongoing argument here.
But there is a vast chasm between the political intent to provide goods and services for the public good, and the political intent to redistribute. Leftists will call the latter a measure on behalf of the former, but they are two different things. Buying a military, building roads, operating public hospitals — these are legitimate functions of government. Having an opinion about people’s levels of income and wealth, and purposely trying to equalize them, is NOT a legitimate function of government.
This is why Social Security is not “income redistribution.” That doesn’t mean I think it’s a good scheme or is being run properly, but the political purpose of it is not to redistribute income between citizens, nor is it administered on such a basis. Your qualification for Social Security depends on what YOU do, not on what anyone else has. That is a premise that may be financially unsustainable, but it is the opposite of redistributionist. Redistributionism is all about what someone else has.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Yep, been that way since Hector was a pup – longer even, come to think of it. It’s considered by some smart people to be the origin of history and civilization (the origin of writing as a tool for proto-bureaucrats). It has been the basis for the historically most stable civilizations, though also the natural tendency for falling regimes whose original justifications for existence have ceased to matter except as smokescreens.
October 25th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
@ J.E. Dyer: Never heard an economist who would say that Social Security isn’t a redistribution.
October 25th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
@ fuster:
Smidge, it’s a “redistribution” when you go buy gas or pay your electric bill. It’s a “redistribution” when you rent a movie from Netflix.
All exchanges are “redistributions,” if we want to look at it that way.
My point is that we don’t. You don’t get Social Security merely because (a) you exist and
someone else has more than you do. Nor do you pay SS withholding because you exist and someone else has less than you do. Those factors have to be present for there to be a political intent to redistribute.
I imagine you are aware that Social Security was inaugurated not for the purpose of redistribution but to provide a retirement “safety net” for those too old to go back to work when times get tough. You have to qualify for Social Security; you can’t just show up for it, as you can for welfare and food stamps.
The most important point about the economists is that they would give different answers to this question:
Is government spending tax dollars on public assistance the same thing as government consciously intending to redistribute income, based on a standard that says X is too much and Y is too little, but Z is just right?
Economists on the libertarian model would say no, these two things are not the same. Economists on the Marxist model would say they might as well be the same thing. There is nothing compelling us to accept the assessment of the Marxist model.
October 25th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
Dyer, if you were an adult when Social Security was being proposed, I kinda think that you would have been arguing against it, because it damn well is income redistribution.
You can’t get over or around that by throwing off chaff about purpose or qualification.
As I been trying to point out, redistribution is a term that covers a good bit of ground and it’s not necessarily true that advocating redistribution is advocating any kind of radicalism.
If you want to keep decrying redistribution, fine. I just ask that you be a bit more clear on what you’re using the term to mean, so’s us smidges don’t get all atwisted.
October 25th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
We need to distinguish “redistribution” the overt Marxist goal, and redistribution, the practical effect.
When the Government takes money, for whatever purpose, that is a transfer of wealth. It may be for excellent purposes, or ones that you judge excellent (military preparedness, say) but it still takes control of the money from one group and gives it to another. There may be safeguards and accountability that make Boeing and Grumman and Brown-Root produce what they are supposed to under contract, so you can say that the public is getting a product for its money (and a standing military, to boot) but a part of the cost of doing biz is growth of that entity Government, which invariably accrues power to disperse moneys, as well as to accumulate it, with less and less accountability to the people it’s taking the money from.
Social safety net becomes entitlement becomes a permanent generational transfer of wealth. Good intentions or no, mismanagement has made it so.
October 25th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
I’m not sure we’re talking about the same kind of security. For the individual bureaucrat or for society as a whole? In theory, the most secure people on earth, job-wise, were the Soviets: everyone had a job and a pension, until there was no Soviet Union. Poof!
October 25th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
@ Barbara:
You know that verse in Revelation about how in the last days people will still be getting married? John might have added that the bureaucrats will still be having turf wars.
October 25th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Good grief, of course I would have argued against Social Security when it was being proposed. Which was back in the 1930s, BTW.
I’ve spent a good deal of effort on precisely the distinction between redistribution, the political intent, and “redistribution,” the misnamed effect. In reality, there can be no such thing as “redistribution.” There are taxation, public expenditure, and theft. These are valid categories. “Redistribution” is a made-up term to try and mainstream theft by giving it a function in economics and — for some partisans — morality.
Neither wealth nor income is “distributed” in the first place. That’s why “redistribution” is an invalid term. You can’t redistribute what was never distributed.
Wealth is created, and income is earned. Income and wealth can be taxed, but they cannot be redistributed. Collectivism has proven this over and over again. All attempts to “redistribute” wealth and income simply cause both to shrink, and cause initiative and diligence to be replaced by politics and cronyism as the means of either getting enough to eat, or accumulating power over others.
It is 100% wrong to say that Americans have bought into redistribution, the political intent, because we have accepted taxation for Social Security and public assistance programs. We have most emphatically not done so. We have indeed assumed economic burdens with these public programs that have a discouraging effect on economic initiative — but it’s precisely because we have never crossed the political Rubicon of believing the “redistribution” fairy tale that we have continued to overcome the economic burden of public assistance entitlements.
If we do cross that Rubicon, we can kiss all our prosperity goodbye. There’s no other “America” out there to perform our economic role: to let the maximum number of people live in the greatest prosperity. The wealth will disappear, the pie shrink, and the great majority of people everywhere will live worse than they do now. Prosperity will revert to being the privilege of the few.
October 25th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Incidentally, I’m in the company of a whole school of economics in making my points about “redistribution.” This is hardly a radical interpretation, unless you consider Hayek, von Mises, Friedman, Sowell, Gilder, de Soto, and a number of others “radical.”
The economics texts used in 101 courses in college (there are basically two) take a Marxist view that accepts “redistribution” as a valid term, but free-market capitalist economists have been around for decades and are very widely known, and hardly a fringe group.
October 25th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
and you probably would have gone around saying, ” good grief, an income tax is unconstitutional.”
October 25th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Now, Smidge, you’re just being silly. You know the 16th amendment was adopted.
October 25th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
@ J.E. Dyer:
I didn’t want you to be silly alone, batwoman.
October 25th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
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