A quote from Robert Samuelson's The Poor aren't Poor Because Rich are Rich:
Judged only by economic inequality, the financial crisis is a godsend. It will probably narrow the gap — though still vast — between the rich and everybody else. But what good will that do? Economic inequality also declined in the Great Depression. The country wasn't better off.
By and large, the poor aren't poor because the rich are rich. They're usually poor for their own reasons: family breakdown, low skills, destructive personal habits and plain bad luck.
The presumption implicit in the criticism of growing economic inequality is that society's income is a given and, if the rich have less, others will have more. Up to a point, that's true. The government already redistributes much income, often for the good.
During the boom years, companies might have been less lavish with top executives and slightly more generous to other workers or shareholders. Some new fortunes stem from self-dealing and financial razzle-dazzle, not the creation of real economic value. It's just desserts that some of this wealth has evaporated.
But the redistributionist argument is at best a half-truth. The larger truth is that much of the income of the rich and well-to-do comes from what they do. If they stop doing it, then the income and wealth vanish. No one gets it. It can't be redistributed because it doesn't exist. Everyone's poorer.
Read the whole thing. Of course, the whole Lefty populist mantra about "corporate greed" and "sharing" only appeals to economic illiterates, but America and the world have plenty of those.
It's difficult to create wealth if you are economically illiterate, so your own envy or greed will make you want to take it away from somebody else who created it with their creativity, effort, skill and drive.
The fallacy is the one we discuss so often: the notion that wealth is a zero-sum game. Wealth, as Americans understand better than most of the world does, is an infinitely-expandable thing. All it takes is peoples' desire and creative spirit.
Unlike material things, wealth is created from thin air - and wealth is destroyed leaving no residue.
Speaking of which, we were too caught up in the election flurry to post this video of Dem. Rep. Jim Moran discussing his thoughts on wealth redistribution. It's populist, socialistic - and either as ignorant as hell or manipulative as hell. Who does he think "owns" corporations? 2/3 of Americans "own" the corporations via being shareholders and bondholders. I'd like to see it advance to 100%.
