"Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on."
-- Thomas Jefferson; from letter to James Madison (Oct. 28, 1785)
"Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on."
-- Thomas Jefferson; from letter to James Madison (Oct. 28, 1785)
1. Those of us who have read Jefferson, studied him, know that one can pretty much find support for any position in his writings.
You know that, don't you?
2. There has never been a problem with starvation in this country, even at the height of Roosevelt's instituting the Depression.
Didn't you know that?
3.The Old Testament actually obviated your point about "
uncultivated lands and unemployed poor,"...
Ungleaned fields are left for the poor (Leviticus 19:10). Wealthy people are not to harvest every last bit of their crops—and poor people are allowed to work those fields to collect their food." Is God a Socialist?
4. . “The philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt argues that
economic inequality is not inherently objectionable…”To the extent that it is truly undesirable, it is on account of its almost irresistible tendency to generate unacceptable inequalities of other kinds.
…Frankfurt’s alternative …is the
‘doctrine of sufficiency….’…imperative should be that everyone has
enough.
This should have nothing to do with ‘the quantity of money that other people have’ because
‘doing worse than others does not entail doing badly.’ George Will, “The Conservative Sensibility,” p. 284-285
5. There is no real poverty....poverty in the Dickensian sense, in America. That would be defined by no home, no heat, no food.
Once, the rich rode in carriages, the rest of the people walked.
Today both ride in cars, whether or not they are all the same model.
“Nobody, not even Bill Gates, lives like Marie Antoinette. And nobody in the US lives like her peasants. “
Cochrane's Questions About Inequality - Econlib
I hope you are smart enough to have taken notes on the above.