You Want More Equality? Support More Capitalism
3rd November 2011
David Harsanyi points out that all of the equality-mongers focus on bringing the high low rather than hoisting the low up. Makes you wonder whose side they’re on.
If the wealthy get wealthier, no one has to become one penny poorer. This childish idea that the economy is a zero-sum game might appeal to the populist sentiments of the so-called 99 percent—or to the envious nature of some others or to the emotions of many struggling through this terrible economy—but in the end, it doesn’t stand up to the most rudimentary inspection.
The explanation lies in ‘income distribution’, as if ‘income’ were a waterfall coming from the stars and what we need to do is ensure that The Wrong Crowd don’t get more than their ‘fair share’. This is what reading Rawls in college will do to you. For the Useless Class, ‘incomes’ are being passed out somewhere and the ‘fat cats’ are cutting in at the head of the line. The swine! Of course, the Useless Class have no idea where ‘incomes’ come from (except perhaps when they get their welfare remittance — ‘It’s free! It’s free! Just swipe your EBT!’), but they’re pretty sure they’re not getting their cut.
You will notice that the Occupy Wall Street crowds—and the progressives who support them—focus on bringing the wealthy down to earth rather than lifting the 99 percent. They have a nearly religious belief that too much wealth is fundamentally immoral and unhealthy for society. The economic systems they cheer on would coerce downward mobility for the sake of equality but ignore prosperity for the people they claim to represent.
And that is a degenerate cultural position that causes more damage than their political activity ever could, entertaining though it might be..
November 3rd, 2011 at 16:58
More attempts to change the discussion into one where the conservatives have a case. Instead of talking about the share of the pie, they always want to shift the discussion to the size of the pie.
The income disparity is, in fact, a zero-sum game. There is one pie (total income earned in a given year), and the slice acquired by one segment is necessarily taken from another segment. Hence, zero-sum: The entire pie is divided, and what one person gains in share another loses. The size of the pie is irrelevant: big or small, one person still takes 60% and the other 99 get to divy up what’s left.
And simple math will tell you that if one person took less, the other 99 would get more–hence lowering the top 1% in fact is raising the bottom 99%.
(Oh, and if you’re going to rail against “class warfare”, you probably shouldn’t indulge in it yourself. “Useless Class”, “welfare remittance”, etc., etc. You get the point.)
November 3rd, 2011 at 20:04
Your argument is defective in several respects.
1. There is no ‘pie’. What you (and people who make the same noises that you do, chiefly soi-disant ‘progressives’) call a pie is an instantaneous section of a dynamic economy that is more accurately portrayed as a tube that extends over time and expands and contracts as it goes.
2. Consequently, the ‘zero-sum game’ (as you describe it) exists only for an infinitesimally small instance in time, and is constantly changing, hence your ‘take’ on it, while trivially true, is worthless — your own expression, ‘what one person gains in share another loses’, describes something that is constantly changing over time. This is why right-thinking people (not only conservatives, but libertarians, and even ‘liberals’ who have a greater than room-temperature IQ) talk about the size of the ‘pie’, because if the size of the ‘pie’ gets bigger IT DOESN’T MATTER WHETHER SOMEBODY ELSE’S SLICE IS BIGGER THAN YOURS because your slice can get bigger, too.
3. But that’s all a red herring, because such a discussion treats the ‘pie’ as if it were a big fish traveling past, whose only connecting with those ‘dividing the pie’ is as a source of heaven-dropped goodies. (The giveaway is your phraseology ‘one person still takes 60% and the other 99 get to divvy up what’s left’.) That ain’t the way it works. (This is what comes from reading Rawls in college – it rots the brain.) Certain people are responsible for making the ‘pie’ in the first place, and they (quite naturally) claim dibs on who get the slices. That intrinsic connection between production and ‘distribution’ is something that the left never mentions (and, indeed, resists other people mentioning, as you have done) because once it’s mentioned, people say ‘Oh, yeah, that makes sense!’ and the ‘distributive justice’ crowd gets outed as the intellectually vacant people that they are.
4. And it’s hardly ‘class warfare’ to point out that a lot of people who are pretending to some claim on a slice of the ‘pie’ did not, in fact, have any part in making the pie in the first place. (This constant mucking about with the definition of terms is another distinguishing characteristic of the left, which makes any attempt at rational discussion with them like running through water.)
Learn some economics rather than just parroting shallow-minded ‘progressive’ talking points next time.
November 4th, 2011 at 10:13
A lot of words to say not much of worth.
The ‘pie’ metaphor is simplistic but useful. Whether it is stationary or ongoing through time is irrelevant, as the only way to study a dynamic system is through such snapshots; the only thing that needs to be adjusted is the sampling rate, set with regard to the volatility of the system. Since the economy changes only slowly, today’s snapshot provides useful information with regard to tomorrow.
“…if the size of the ‘pie’ gets bigger IT DOESN’T MATTER WHETHER SOMEBODY ELSE’S SLICE IS BIGGER THAN YOURS because your slice can get bigger, too.” Only true if the relative proportions of the slices remains static. If the pie gets bigger but my proportional slice gets smaller, I have no net gain in pie. What I’m doing instead is making more pie for the guy whose slice is growing relative to my own. This is what the data indicates has been happening, and this is what folks are complaining about.
“Certain people are responsible for making the ‘pie’ in the first place, and they (quite naturally) claim dibs on who get the slices.” Nonsense. This is the fundamental flaw in the conservative viewpoint, which is that only a few at the top made the pie ALL BY THEMSELVES, as of Henry Ford or Steve Jobs assembled ever Model T or iPad one at a time in their garage. Your “intrinsic connection between production and ‘distribution’” is well-recognized by the left, but they—unlike the right—include in their calculation those folks who actually do the work. From what I’ve seen, the most ‘productive’ thing some CEOs do is somehow convince others to produce the goods and services while he/she sits back and takes the biggest share of the ‘pie’ they ALL are baking.
Should the guy at the top make 100x what I’m making? Probably. Should he be making 1,000x, or even 10,000x what I’m making? I doubt he’s that much more ‘productive’ than I am. By any objective measure, someone with 100x my income is still rich. The rest is just assets locked up in the bank which could more usefully be spread out to others where it would be spent—with the concomitant multiplyer effect—to stimulate the economy.
“And it’s hardly ‘class warfare’ to point out that a lot of people who are pretending to some claim on a slice of the ‘pie’ did not, in fact, have any part in making the pie in the first place.” Mere tautology. Many of those protesting would love to participate in the pie-making, but they’ve been excluded from the kitchen for one reason or another. Give ‘em jobs, and they wouldn’t be so cranky.
Sharpen your rational thinking skills rather than just parroting shallow-minded ‘reactionary’ talking points next time.