Morality of Wealth Redistribution

[bripat9643]

What's your opinion on the morality of taking money from those who earned it and giving it to people who haven't? Not talking about people who cannot earn their own money but rather those who choose not to. And can you recommend any books or writings on the subject?

Seems to me basic self worth is at least in part a reflection on your independence. Or at least contributing something, your own labor or time to your family or community. This country does not like freeloaders, and while there is a certain amount of leeway in tough times like we're in now, at some point opinions change.

So are we morally right to redistribute somebody else's wealth or deny people support in an effort to incentivize them to be more productive members of society?

First of all, why do you say morally?

Because taking money from the people who earned it is a moral issue.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

What's your opinion on the morality of taking money from those who earned it and giving it to people who haven't? Not talking about people who cannot earn their own money but rather those who choose not to. And can you recommend any books or writings on the subject?

Seems to me basic self worth is at least in part a reflection on your independence. Or at least contributing something, your own labor or time to your family or community. This country does not like freeloaders, and while there is a certain amount of leeway in tough times like we're in now, at some point opinions change.

So are we morally right to redistribute somebody else's wealth or deny people support in an effort to incentivize them to be more productive members of society?

First of all, why do you say morally?

Because taking money from the people who earned it is a moral issue.

yes imagine if Steve Jobs went to the govt and said I know I got paid for the iphone but I want the govt to steal part of it back for me because I need the money to make new investments to create new products and new jobs.

Isn't that a more sensible form of redistribution?

 

[dnsmith35]

Damn, it is getting hard to stay a liberal in the face of all the left wing extremism.

Liberals want:
Good public education
Assistance for those of us who CAN'T earn their own livelihood
Universal health care
Equality of race, creed, sex, and the means for everyone to pursue happiness.

Leftwing extremists want:
Welfare state
Socialist control of the economy
Pay people more wage regardless of their productivity relative to the whole economy​

Just a few tidbits to help people understand the difference between liberals and left wingers.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Damn, it is getting hard to stay a liberal in the face of all the left wing extremism.

Liberals want:
Good public education( they why do they support the destructive unions)
Assistance for those of us who CAN'T earn their own livelihood( then why do they support Welfare Medicare SS Medicaid, etc etc)
Universal health care( single payer communism is liberal)
Equality of race, creed, sex, and the means for everyone to pursue happiness.(BS of course everyone wants that)

.​

make sense?​

 

[g5000]

What's your opinion on the morality of taking money from those who earned it and giving it to people who haven't? Not talking about people who cannot earn their own money but rather those who choose not to.

How do you separate those who cannot earn their own money from those who choose not to?

 

[bendog]

What's your opinion on the morality of taking money from those who earned it and giving it to people who haven't? Not talking about people who cannot earn their own money but rather those who choose not to.

How do you separate those who cannot earn their own money from those who choose not to?

That's ultimately the question with any act of charity. There are kids with birth defects whose parents truly do need the 700 bucks or so a month from SSI to help their needs, and there are kids whose parents coached them into special education for a check. But, as you said, how to distinguish?

That's why imo the question of whether we should use the political system to effectively raise wages by taxing profits should be separate from charity.

 

[dnsmith35]

Amazing! Even the liberal leaning NYTimes recognizes the housing bubble. We all need to recognize that federal housing policy caused the 2006 housing crash. Even with a slight increase in interest between 1997 and 2002 the government pushed housing onto people who could not afford them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/opinion/the-bubble-is-back.html?_r=1

Almost everyone understands that the 2007-8 financial crisis was precipitated by the collapse of a huge housing bubble.

Housing bubbles are measured by comparing current prices to a reliable index of housing prices.

Today, after the financial crisis, the recession and the slow recovery, the bubble is beginning to grow again. Between 2011 and the third quarter of 2013, housing prices grew by 5.83 percent, again exceeding the increase in rental costs, which was 2 percent.

Both this bubble and the last one were caused by the government’s housing policies, which made it possible for many people to purchase homes with very little or no money down. In 1992, Congress adopted what were called “affordable housing” goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are huge government-backed firms that buy mortgages from banks and other lenders. Then, as now, they were the dominant players in the residential mortgage markets. The goals required Fannie and Freddie to buy an increasing quota of mortgages made to borrowers who were at or below the median income where they lived.

Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development raised the quotas seven times, so that in the 2000s more than 50 percent of all the mortgages Fannie and Freddie acquired had to be made to home buyers who were at or below the median income.

 

[rdean]

That is such a bogus argument.

We've had 60 years of inflation eroding incomes since the 1950s. The high tax rates in that era were offset by more deductions. We didn't have the AMT. And most importantly of all, most of the developed world was reduced to rubble in WWII, with the exception of the U.S. We had very little competition in the world economy, which fueled a great deal of economic growth...benefiting those who wished to work.

It's not a bogus argument. Those taxes paid for an interstate highway system. For dams which provide power. They paid to start NASA whose inventions and developed technology has infused billions into our economy and gave us the technological foundation to be the world leaders in technology. Someone may have built the first personal computer in their garage, but without the chips and technology developed by NASA, that never would have happened.

And what are today's GOP alternatives? Cut taxes? Redistribute the wealth of the nation to the top 1% because they are the "job CREATORS"? Let everything fall apart. Bigger military? Slash education?

What?

Tell us, what?

Give us some examples of "think big".

think big?? conservatives want freedom from liberal govt. That is what made America great not big govt projects. Do you understand that? Freedom produced millions of inventions few of which had anything to do with govt.

In other words, you can't think of any examples. Got it.

Just saying magic words doesn't mean anything if not backed up with fact. I gave some facts. You didn't.

 

[rdean]

Damn, it is getting hard to stay a liberal in the face of all the left wing extremism.

Liberals want:
Good public education
Assistance for those of us who CAN'T earn their own livelihood
Universal health care
Equality of race, creed, sex, and the means for everyone to pursue happiness.

Leftwing extremists want:
Welfare state
Socialist control of the economy
Pay people more wage regardless of their productivity relative to the whole economy​

Just a few tidbits to help people understand the difference between liberals and left wingers.

No one wants that. It's retarded to even suggest it.

 

[dnsmith35]

What's your opinion on the morality of taking money from those who earned it and giving it to people who haven't? Not talking about people who cannot earn their own money but rather those who choose not to.

How do you separate those who cannot earn their own money from those who choose not to?

After graduate school I had to do an internship in Psychology. I did so at the State Rehabilitation Services in Dothan, AL. There are many ways to determine the difference between can't and won't, not the lease of which are achievement tests/surveys, physical exams (which were required before a person could enter the program) and observation of past history.

Two things stood out very sharply:

Family history revealed habituation to welfare.
Willingness to work once skills were taught.

Unfortunately, the federal concept does not take either situation into account even though the state could predict who would get a job and keep it and who wouldn't.

Both the before program prediction rate and the post program prediction rates ranged in the 90% rates.

 

[dnsmith35]

Damn, it is getting hard to stay a liberal in the face of all the left wing extremism.

Liberals want:
Good public education
Assistance for those of us who CAN'T earn their own livelihood
Universal health care
Equality of race, creed, sex, and the means for everyone to pursue happiness.

Leftwing extremists want:
Welfare state
Socialist control of the economy
Pay people more wage regardless of their productivity relative to the whole economy​

Just a few tidbits to help people understand the difference between liberals and left wingers.

No one wants that. It's retarded to even suggest it.

If you believe that, you have not been paying attention to the left wing extremists on this thread who parrot that kind of propaganda on a regular basis. if you don't want these things, (Leftwing extremists want:
Welfare state, Socialist control of the economy, Pay people more wage regardless of their productivity relative to the whole economy) then you fall more into the liberal category rather than the left wing extremist category.

So answer a few questions and we will make a reasonable determination. Do you believe that union workers should be paid typical union wages even if not productive by even union standards? Do you want to assist the less wealthy who can earn enough to have a standard of living higher than 90% of the worlds population? Do you want the government to control production and investment wage/income such that the top rung of the wealthy are cut down to size and spread their wealth? Do you believe that the wealth of our country is finite such that the top rung's "share" detracts from the welfare of the less wealthy? Answer these questions honestly and maybe we can arrive at some kind of mutual agreement.

Similarly there is a huge difference between a RW extremist and the typical conservative. When LW extremists talk about those to the right they lump all of into the same bucket of worms, which is, of course, ridiculous.

 

[bripat9643]

Damn, it is getting hard to stay a liberal in the face of all the left wing extremism.

Liberals want:
Good public education
Assistance for those of us who CAN'T earn their own livelihood
Universal health care
Equality of race, creed, sex, and the means for everyone to pursue happiness.

Leftwing extremists want:
Welfare state
Socialist control of the economy
Pay people more wage regardless of their productivity relative to the whole economy​

Just a few tidbits to help people understand the difference between liberals and left wingers.

No one wants that. It's retarded to even suggest it.

Hardly, You prove it to be correct every time you post, deanie.

 

[Uncensored2008]

There's a few Africa nations that follow the conservative economic system.

No, there are not.

But there are lots of retarded Communists willing to lie.

 

[Contumacious]

What's your opinion on the morality of taking money from those who earned it and giving it to people who haven't? Not talking about people who cannot earn their own money but rather those who choose not to. And can you recommend any books or writings on the subject?

Seems to me basic self worth is at least in part a reflection on your independence. Or at least contributing something, your own labor or time to your family or community. This country does not like freeloaders, and while there is a certain amount of leeway in tough times like we're in now, at some point opinions change.

So are we morally right to redistribute somebody else's wealth or deny people support in an effort to incentivize them to be more productive members of society?

First of all, why do you say morally?

Because taking money from the people who earned it is a moral issue.

How can you come here to oppose the redistribution of wealth while the supporting the distribution of over 100 BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBillion dollars to the Jewish State in order to finance the Palestinian Holocaust?


That is extremely hypocritical.

.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Who argues the US does away with capitalism,

The Communists at KOS and CommonDreams who train you to spew idiocy here.

Are you really so dull that you don't grasp what it is you advocate?

we just want o go back to the way it was BEFORE conservatives manipulated for the benefits of the few

2006.

Fiscal 2006 marks the high point for purchasing power among Americans across the board. You Communists squawk about income gap; and you lie that the "rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer."

Up until 2006, the rich were getting richer, and the poor were getting richer. The amount of material goods that could be purchased for an hour of work peaked at all levels. You of the left howled that the rich were getting richer at a faster rate than the poor - but everyone was gaining. Now, Obamunism has gutted the middle class, which of course is the goal of the left - to destroy the bourgeoisie - the middle class. The shift of a major portion of the workforce from full time to part time status - the gift Obama his given America, is steadily pushing the middle class into poverty.

 

[dnsmith35]

First of all, why do you say morally?

Because taking money from the people who earned it is a moral issue.

How can you come here to oppose the redistribution of wealth while the supporting the distribution of over 100 BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBillion dollars to the Jewish State in order to finance the Palestinian Holocaust?


That is extremely hypocritical.

.

I don't think the concern about the redistribution of wealth, so much as it is TO WHOM DO WE REDISTRIBUTE IT? I have mixed emotions about Israel. First, they have the right to defending itself. So long as the Palestinian terrorists shoot missiles into Israel they have the right to try and stop them. But there is a difference between stopping them and killing hundreds of innocent Palestinians. Maybe they should infiltrate Gaza and Surreptitiously find and destroy the missile sites and cave entrances.

I do believe we should support those who cannot work. We should educate those who can but do not have marketable skills. Beyond that it is hard to justify.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

lol, Right because IF a 'job creator' has more money from paying less taxes, they'll higher someone? NO demand doesn't drive it, lol

Myth #3: Lower taxes are the best way to grow the economy.

No one likes paying higher taxes. But do lower taxes actually spur economic growth? Bruce Bartlett, an economist in the Reagan administration, has compared tax rates in various rich countries in 1979 to each country's growth rate since then. His conclusion? There's virtually no correlation. Recent US history backs this up too.

Non-Partisan Congressional Tax Report Debunks Core Conservative Economic Theory



The conclusion?

Lowering the tax rates on the wealthy and top earners in America do not appear to have any impact on the nation’s economic growth.


...However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution


Non-Partisan Congressional Tax Report Debunks Core Conservative Economic Theory-GOP Suppresses Study - Forbes

Here's the thing. I don't care what you believe. It's no skin off my nose. I know the difference between income and wealth. You don't. You think that the varying, naturally occurring increases in wealth among the respective owners of the factors of production is . . . what? . . . evil? That's nuts. You think the market is a zero-sum-gain proposition, that wealth is a finite commodity. That's nuts. Hence, you're little pictures are not telling you what you think they are, and that's okay with me.

Carry on. . . .

Yes, keep believing in your myths and fairy tales lol

There is only so much corporate income in a given year. The more of that income that is used to pay workers, the less profit the corporation makes. The less profit, the less the stock goes up. The less the stock goes up, the less the CEO and the investors make. It’s as simple as that.


Wealth is a Zero-Sum Game

The Zero-sum Nature of economics

Yes, of course, zero-sum game. Brain fart. I am aware the phrase's origin. That's what happens sometimes when you get past 50.

Moving on. . . .

Now for the sake of some, like Dante, who fancies himself to be a master logician and gave your post, that rash of argumentum ad nauseam, a thumbs up.

Of course the total income of any given year is finite, which is all you're really saying. Do tell. Who said it wasn't?

Answer: no one, Mr. Straw Man. Stay away from open flames.

The sum of any given fixed term is finite, for crying out loud!

I'm talking about the growth of wealth, especially, the increase in wealth and economic mobility of those emerging from the lower rungs of the economic ladder, which you keep implying to be the finite commodity of annual income. Apples and Oranges. For example, you're using the terms annual income and wealth interchangeably, jumping from one to the other. Your link has nothing to do with the creation and accumulation of new wealth. Pay attention. Wealth is not a finite commodity; hence, the market is not a zero-sum-game proposition.

Rates of taxation above a certain threshold, along with increased regulation and wealth-redistribution schemes like ObamaCare, stunt economic growth due to their negative impact on the factors of production. They impede the investment and productivity of wealth creation from the bottom up.

You're going on about some generic model of marginal rates of taxation relative to historical growth in GDP. I'm well-aware of the recent rash of duplicity proffered by the shills of crony capitalism that would keep the working poor and the middleclass dependent on a corporatist economic structure sponsored by Big Daddy government. And a good many of the nominally conservative politicians in Washington are feeding the same animal.

This administration has doubled-down on the corporate welfare of crony capitalism like no other administration before it. It's not even close. This is the same Marxist strategy employed in socialist Europe as a means of stamping out small business, which is virtually non-existent there. The creation of new capitalist enterprises at the upper-middleclass level is necessary to the on-going survival and expansion of capitalism proper, and Marxists know that. What in the world do you think we classical liberals have been talking about these past several years?

Can't you hear us? Can't you see?

The whole point is to hold the masses down, dependent on the state via a predominate corporatist structure that becomes ever-smaller and more centralized. It's the process of nationalizing the means of production via a more gradual and, therefore, politically subtler pathway.

And one of the most deliriously funny things about all of this, well, that is to say, if it weren't so tragic, is that the Occupy Wall Street loons, for example, rave about corporate welfare as the socialist politicians who are pushing it cheer them on!

And why do they cheer them on? Because these loons, feeding on the anti-capitalist rhetoric of the socialist politicians who are pushing crony capitalism, vote for the socialist politicians who are pushing crony capitalism. These loons also help spread the disease of anti-capitalism. Bonus!

And so these politicians who are actually pushing crony capitalism impose more regulations, which accelerates the process, and tell the useful idiots about how these regulations will curb the abuses of those vile one percenters. . . .

Hook. Line. Sinker.

. . . All the while small business is fading away as smaller enterprises, let alone start-ups, are not big enough to bear the increasing taxes, mandates and regulations. --M.D. Rawlings

Hello! Yours is not the whole story. Got the informal logical fallacy of incomplete comparison, anyone?

Your propaganda, all your blather and that at the end of your Internet link, is nothing more than the rank stupidity of surplus value defined as the unpaid surplus labor of the working class: classic Marxist doggerel which confounds the finite sum of material resources/the finite sum of any given period of income with wealth. The latter is not a finite commodity, but the limitless accumulation of production capital ultimately bottomed on the emergence of new enterprises.

For instance, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) has found support for the theory that taxes have no effect on economic growth by looking at the U.S. experience since World War II and the dramatic variation in the statutory top marginal rate on individual income.[1] They find the fastest economic growth occurred in the 1950s when the top rate was more than ninety percent.[2] However, their study ignores the most basic problems with this sort of statistical analysis, including: the variation in the tax base to which the individual income tax applies; the variation in other taxes, particularly the corporate tax; the short-term versus long-term effects of tax policy; and reverse causality, whereby economic growth affects tax rates. These problems are all well known in the academic literature and have been dealt with in various ways, making the CRS study unpublishable in any peer-reviewed academic journal.[3]

So what does the academic literature say about the empirical relationship between taxes and economic growth? While there are a variety of methods and data sources, the results consistently point to significant negative effects of taxes on economic growth even after controlling for various other factors such as government spending, business cycle conditions, and monetary policy. In this review of the literature, I find twenty-six such studies going back to 1983, and all but three of those studies, and every study in the last fifteen years, find a negative effect of taxes on growth. Of those studies that distinguish between types of taxes, corporate income taxes are found to be most harmful, followed by personal income taxes, consumption taxes and property taxes.

What Is the Evidence on Taxes and Growth? | Tax Foundation

And once again:

In Theories of Surplus Value Marx conceded that the middleclass was actually growing under capitalism, not disappearing as he had previously held in The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, and more honest Marxist theorists have since conceded that the working class is not a culturally homogeneous, but a culturally heterogeneous component of production comprised of competing interests, and one that has become increasingly economically mobile under capitalism from generation to generation. Strike (1) those fallacious critiques of capitalism, the guts of dialectic materialism, insofar as they pertain to the allegedly historical antagonism between the oppressed proletariat and the exploitative bourgeoisie, (2) the abject stupidity of "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" and (3) the conceptualization of surplus value as an injustice or a problem to be solved, if not by bargaining than by compulsory wealth redistribution: what more must the world endure at the hands of this debacle before we toss it into the ash heap of history and move on?

Marxists disregard the rise in wages over time under capitalism as industries reinvest surplus value and grow. They gloss over the destructive results of over-bargaining industries into stagnation and bankruptcy.

Take a close look at Detroit.

Marx moralistically imagined surplus value to be the unpaid surplus labor of the working class. But surplus value is in fact the stuff of reinvestment and growth, the startup costs of producing new products and services, future wage increases, more jobs of varying expertise and levels of compensation despite increased automation, improved living standards, strategic surpluses, which are essentially production costs, as they must be maintained and replaced. The latter are not distributable profit. And don't forget about the public infrastructure and the all those public services, for good or bad. Don't forget about all that governmentally funded research, the scientific, medical and technological advances thereof. Don't forget about the exploration of space and the oceans, and the scientific, medical and technological advances thereof. All these things in addition to the strictly business concerns of the private sector were paid for by capitalist systems . . . way beyond what any communist system could ever dream of. . . .

That's the complex reality and the magic of capitalism, but in the stagnant, make believe world of Marxism, that zero-sum-game fantasy, surplus value is merely the accumulation and centralization of transferable capital and power. Hence, the supposed fatal flaw or irresolvable contradiction of capitalism, namely, the falling profits-unemployment crisis of over-accumulation.

. . . In recent history, this supposed Achilles' heel of capitalism is in fact the wrecking ball of economic collectivism: the punitive taxation, regulation or nationalization of the means of production. Businesses that don't continuously innovate and grow, stagnant, shrink and die. Businesses besieged by overbearing governments go elsewhere and take their jobs with them . . . or die.

Privately owned surplus value is the economic lifeblood of the developed world. It's not a horded and withheld commodity. It's not a limited commodity either. . . .

"Wait a minute! Stop right there, Mister! Material resources are finite," the unimaginative rube of the zero-sum-game mentality hysterically exclaims.

. . . Human ingenuity—the essence of technological innovation, ever-increasing efficiency—is not finite! Privately owned surplus value is readily attainable for all the world, but for the meddling of corrupt and oppressive regimes. It is this factor that alludes the Marxist . . . or does he simply turn a blind eye on the obvious resolution of the supposed contradiction of capitalism? Pretend not to see it?

I'm not kidding. In every rendition of the supposed problem of over-accumulated capital I've ever read, the Marxist author invariably claims that this critique has never been satisfactorily answered by free-market theorists. The factor of human ingenuity and its effects on production capital have been understood for at least two centuries. Marxism is sheer political ideology posing as an economic science propagated by rank sociopaths. If this supposed flaw of capitalism were real, capitalism would have universally collapsed long before now. In the meantime, the only economic paradigm that has collapsed every time it's been tried is communism precisely because it stifles the very factor its theorists obtusely disregard: human incentive and ingenuity. --M.D. Rawlilngs

 

[Agit8r]

Who argues the US does away with capitalism,

The Communists at KOS and CommonDreams who train you to spew idiocy here.

Are you really so dull that you don't grasp what it is you advocate?

we just want o go back to the way it was BEFORE conservatives manipulated for the benefits of the few

2006.

Fiscal 2006 marks the high point for purchasing power among Americans across the board. You Communists squawk about income gap; and you lie that the "rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer."

Up until 2006, the rich were getting richer, and the poor were getting richer. The amount of material goods that could be purchased for an hour of work peaked at all levels. You of the left howled that the rich were getting richer at a faster rate than the poor - but everyone was gaining. Now, Obamunism has gutted the middle class, which of course is the goal of the left - to destroy the bourgeoisie - the middle class. The shift of a major portion of the workforce from full time to part time status - the gift Obama his given America, is steadily pushing the middle class into poverty.

I think what is missed in this is that the GOP continually supports direct monetary redistribution to large families through the tax code. Though inadequately paid for, during the Bush years, the attempt was made to partially do so by inflating the currency. By contrast, Democrats are more likely to support strings-attached, means-tested programs, rather than cash handouts.

 

[Freewill]

What's your opinion on the morality of taking money from those who earned it and giving it to people who haven't? Not talking about people who cannot earn their own money but rather those who choose not to. And can you recommend any books or writings on the subject?

Seems to me basic self worth is at least in part a reflection on your independence. Or at least contributing something, your own labor or time to your family or community. This country does not like freeloaders, and while there is a certain amount of leeway in tough times like we're in now, at some point opinions change.

So are we morally right to redistribute somebody else's wealth or deny people support in an effort to incentivize them to be more productive members of society?

First of all, why do you say morally?

issues of morality naturally come up when you steal from someone at the point of a gun!

Define the morality you are referring to, please.

 

[dblack]

First of all, why do you say morally?

issues of morality naturally come up when you steal from someone at the point of a gun!

Define the morality you are referring to, please.

The question seems to circle around whether the mere act of earning "too much" money is immoral - are people who do this somehow harming society and, if so, should government pursue remedial measures (aka "wealth redistribution").