Sunday, December 07, 2008

The free market and redistribution of wealth

Jesse argues the free market case: interventions just make things worse; real wages in Western economies must decline; international currencies must float freely.

Okay, if we also have some other system of supporting our workers through the change, instead of import tariffs and other protectionist measures. You can't drop masses of people from a great height and expect society to remain stable.

A lot of our present arrangements - health, education, welfare - seem to me to be a fairly inefficient way of transferring wealth from the upper strata to the lower, less the cost and inconvenience of all the system servicers in between.

Why don't we get honest and open about the need for wealth redistribution, balanced with the need to encourage enterprise? Could we get rid of weaselly taxes and insidious benefit traps? All we need is some way of levelling the playing field between groups of workers in very different parts of the world, in such a way as not to force the game to be abandoned by either side. Can anyone propose a system of financial support - could some form of the Citizens' Basic Income be made to work?

8 comments:

James Higham said...

Why don't we get honest and open about the need for wealth redistribution ...

Sticky wicket, Sackers.

Sackerson said...

We're doing it already, but in a complex and disguised way, and that is an invitation to all kinds of inefficiency, inconsistency and injustice.

AntiCitizenOne said...

> Why don't we get honest and open about the need for wealth redistribution?

Because there isn't a need. There's a desire to parasite. Welath is created though the exchange of peoples time, therefore redistribution is the forced use of other peoples time, i.e. a euphemism for slavery.

Citizens dividends are there to pay citizens who live in those countries for agreeing to abide by other peoples property monopolies (IPVT & LVT).

Charity is the ONLY appropriate vehicle for wealth redistribution and governments might have a useful role in helping people allocate their CitDivs to charity.

Sackerson said...

Maybe, ACO - but how do you get from here to there? The sudden change you propose, after many decades of direct and indirect financial support for the less well-off, is like spending hours climbing a cliff and then letting go of the rock face.

AntiCitizenOne said...

Simple!

1/ Gradually Raise the zero Income Tax threshold then abolish Income Tax.
2/ Create a 0.5% LVT and 1% IPVT
3/ Use the proceeds of the PVTs to fund a citizens Dividend.
4/ Gradually Lower CGT, VAT and NI.
5/ Gradually Raise the LVT and IPVT.
6/ Phase out failure rewards.

Sackerson said...

Before we abolish taxation, I think we need to abolish debt. Without that millstone around our necks, wages and prices here could reach equilibrium with our Far Eastern counterparts, much less destructively. Another eason why the bailout should not have happened in the way it did. I have suggested writing-off all mortgages and personal loans and effectively destroying the banks qua mortgage lenders; house prices would crash, of course. But maybe if we approached it in your gradualistic way? Time to apply the lit cigarette to the leeches.

AntiCitizenOne said...

Once persons loan is anothers asset.

Very Very bad idea.

Sackerson said...

In this case, the asset is the banks', haha.

At the moment, the banks've got away with it. Moral hazard? More like heavily incentivised certainty of reoffending.

I would of course support the protection of deposits.