Income Redistribution


Scott Adams asked this hypothetical question in his blog:
“Suppose you could snap your fingers and instantly reduce the huge disparity in income distribution across the globe. Would you do it?

Many of you will probably say yes. You'd take some of the "extra" money from the rich and use it to help the needy. But suppose I put one condition on this magic power of yours. Suppose the only thing you can do by magic is reduce by half the wealth of the top 1% while knowing the money would be transferred to no one. The money would simply cease to exist. The rich would have half as much, while everyone else remained the same. Would you use your powers then?”

If you said Yes, I am guessing you must either be a communist or a socialist. After all, isn’t that what communism did? Oh wait, communism did even more: it didn’t just halve the wealth of the Top 1%: it reduced everyone to the same grinding level of poverty and, I am guessing, misery.

Which just goes to show that just harping about equality isn’t the right way to go: if equality was all that people wanted, communism should have been a paradise. And the Berlin Wall would have built by the West to prevent people from moving to the other side of the Iron Curtain. But that’s not what happened, did it?

Nobody wants equality: rather, everyone wants a good standard of living. Once they have a good standard, sure, they may still envy the uber-rich, but they aspire to join that group, not to bring everyone down.

And in case you thought socialism achieved a good standard of living for everyone, ask yourself this: is socialism proving to be a sustainable model? Or did it just promise and provide the good life when everyone was young and working (in the first few decades after World War II) but is now finding itself close to bankruptcy when everyone is turning old and has started encashing their pensions and health insurance?

Curse capitalism all you want, but I think it’s like democracy: neither is perfect, but both are the best systems we have. As of today, at least!

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