Jewish World Review Sept. 20, 2012/ 5 Tishrei, 5773
The Fallacy of
Redistribution
By Thomas Sowell
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The recently discovered tape on which Barack
Obama said back in 1998 that he believes in redistribution is not really news.
He said the same thing to Joe the Plumber four years ago. But the surfacing of
this tape may serve a useful purpose if it gets people to thinking about what
the consequences of redistribution are.
Those who talk glibly about redistribution often act as if people are just
inert objects that can be placed here and there, like pieces on a chess board,
to carry out some grand design. But if human beings have their own responses to
government policies, then we cannot blithely assume that government policies
will have the effect intended.
The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set
out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The communist
nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.
In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to
make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union
confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people
died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler's Holocaust in
the 1940s.
How can that be? It is not complicated. You can only confiscate the wealth
that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that
future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to
be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort
they invested in growing their crops, when they realized that the government was
going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm
animals that they would normally keep tending and feeding while raising them to
maturity.
People in industry are not inert objects either. Moreover, unlike farmers,
industrialists are not tied to the land in a particular country.
Russian aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky could take his expertise to America
and produce his planes and helicopters thousands of miles away from his native
land. Financiers are even less tied down, especially today, when vast sums of
money can be dispatched electronically to any part of the world.
If confiscatory policies can produce counterproductive repercussions in a
dictatorship, they are even harder to carry out in a democracy. A dictatorship
can suddenly swoop down and grab whatever it wants. But a democracy must first
have public discussions and debates. Those who are targeted for confiscation can
see the handwriting on the wall, and act accordingly.
Among the most valuable assets in any nation are the knowledge, skills and
productive experience that economists call "human capital." When successful
people with much human capital leave the country, either voluntarily or because
of hostile governments or hostile mobs whipped up by demagogues exploiting envy,
lasting damage can be done to the economy they leave behind.
Fidel Castro's confiscatory policies
drove successful Cubans to flee to Florida, often leaving much of their physical
wealth behind. But poverty-stricken refugees rose to prosperity again in
Florida, while the wealth they left behind in Cuba did not prevent the people
there from being poverty stricken under Castro. The lasting wealth the refugees
took with them was their human capital.
We have all heard the old saying that giving a man a fish feeds him only
for a day, while teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime.
Redistributionists give him a fish and leave him dependent on the government for
more fish in the future.
If the redistributionists were serious, what they would want to distribute
is the ability to fish, or to be productive in other ways. Knowledge is one of
the few things that can be distributed to people without reducing the amount
held by others.
That would better serve the interests of the poor, but it would not serve
the interests of politicians who want to exercise power, and to get the votes of
people who are dependent on them.
Barack Obama can endlessly proclaim his slogan of "Forward," but what he is
proposing is going backwards to policies that have failed repeatedly in
countries around the world.
Yet, to many people who cannot be bothered to stop and think,
redistribution sounds good.
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure,
The creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.
Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.."
-- Winston Churchill
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First thing Obama did in Oval Office was remove portrait of Churchill.
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity,
by legislating the wealth out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for,
another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government
does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to workbecause
the other half is going to take care of them;
and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work,
because somebody else is going to get what they work for,
that is the beginning of the end of any nation.
Original Chinese Proverb:Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. 2012 White House Revision: Give a man a welfare check, a free cell phone with unlimited free minutes, cash for his clunker, food stamps, section 8 housing, free contraceptives, Medicaid, ninety-nine weeks of unemployment, free meds, and he will vote for Democrats the rest of his life; even after he's deceased. |
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