What Is Economic Fairness?

Some can support themselves and the privileged parasites who charge them full market value for permission to do so. Others can support themselves but not the parasites, and so they are denied permission to do so.

As is the % of their wages that the privileged steal.

More die from the despair caused by economic injustice -- i.e., from alcohol, drugs, crime, suicide, etc. -- than from eating too much.

 

English translation: I cannot refute the claim.

Why don't you explain to everyone who it is that will be all the stocks, bonds, other financial instruments and real estate to convert it to cash to redistribute it?

 

It is wonderful to have so many so thick that they don't even know that capitalism is one of a number of ways of robbing the majority, and that the answer is to put the major thieves in jail and have a system of those who need, get, those who can provide. Only the very-very brainwashed have never hear that only total mugs are, like you lot, total slaves.

 

Removal of property and behaving like sensible people.

 

Anyone who believes in the abolition of property makes this one fatal error:

They trust the government.

They think the government can manage the economy. They think the government can manage land and resource distribution. Even though that has proven to be a universal disaster. The experiment was done, the government can't do any of these things adequately -- you will not get your egalitarian utopia, you will have tyranny, time and time again.

Another assumption to be made is that these proponents have probably never run a business. Because working hard to establish a viable business and having the government confiscate by force couldn't be seen as fair except in the eyes of fascists.

Take fairness in Zimbabwe (this is an archetype for pretty much all forms of government sponsored land redistribution programmes).

Problem:

Whites in Zimbabwe own a disproportionate amount of farming land. (never mind whether it was purchases legitimately, never mind that it's a very productive farm, never mind that plenty of locals are employed on said farm and are thus able to feed their families).

Solution:

Confiscate land, and place it in the hands of black Zimbabweans (preferably government officials, never mind about their farming credentials).

New problem:

Land becomes arid, farms fall into utter disrepair. Turns out these government types can't farm.

I know I know the enlightened folks who propose to manage these types of things will make the types of provisions which escaped good old Mugabe and everything will work just fine. So long as you make this argument you will forever have to cling to the notion that the government is competent and benevolent which is pie in the sky unicorn thinking. Oh well.

 

Of which government are you thinking?

Property is very largely managed by city and state "governments" not the government in DC.

Who elects them? We do.

Population growth in the US, according to the Census Bureau, is 0.8% a year from 2010 to 2017- which is not that great a rate ...

A rather dreary forecast for a country with some of the best economic progress of any developed country.

I would suggest that the key problem is not "income-growth", but who shares in the income-growth.The population is growing modestly well, but we are not doing enough to make sure that more people share equitably in the economic results* ...

*The US has the worst Income Disparity rate of any developed country - so the challenge is not in creating Wealth, but in sharing it equitably ...

 

Every government which has gone down the route of large scale land/property redistribution/collectivism.

We're talking of collective ownership, and the abolition of private property. My contention is simply to get from a capitalist system to a collectivised one you require the state to exert considerable force on the citizenry and the market in order to bring it (the 'means of production', if you will) under state control and supposedly redistribute its fruits more equitably. To argue in favour of such a scenario is to place a great degree of confidence in the competence and benevolence and incorruptibility of such a group; which isn't justified by the general track record of the state which is more or less universally corrupt, incompetent and violent; and always has been regardless of who was steering.

So the question is, in the face of the evidence, why trust the government to undertake such a task? If we can't answer that then I guess the next question is how to you propose to get from a capitalist society to a collectivised society without a massive state apparatus exerting force (violence) in order to bring it about?

I'm not entirely sure why you're talking of income growth. I didn't mention income growth.

 

Appreciate the point, but large scale collectivism does often work. The issue is when and how. See, for example, the use of national parks. Also you can factor in both tragedy of the anticommons (where land ownership can stop multi-use) and pollution (e.g. avoiding intensive farming).

Property rights, mind you, are critical for efficiency criteria to hold

 

Private property and collective ownership are not mutually exclusive. You can collectively own whatever you want in a free market so long as you have the capital and a bunch of partners willing to go into business.

So instead of placing all this unfounded trust in government. If people really believe in egalitarianism then the goal should be simply to make co-operatives the standard for how businesses are run -- this is entirely OK within the realms of capitalism but does require some work on our part rather than just hoping the state (which is historically a crazy beast not to be trusted) does our bidding.

But look if people with the capital want to set up hierarchical structures which compensate workers according to vastly different levels of value then we'll have an unequal society. Start co-operatives, compete, and only shop (economically support) these types of organisations as a matter of principle. If the amount of people who carried on about egalitarianism acted in accordance with this, and had enough business acumen I think that income gap will close just fine.

 

The appeal of egalitarianism is greatly reduced when you have to provide an equal share of your own.

An equal share of other peoples work is more desirable.

 

You are "talking about it".

This procedure would take an earthquake of national rebellion to implement against the existing democratic order (that accepts private-property as national law) in most countries today.

Most populations just would not put up with it. It is reversion to a past time (like Russia, 1919). At that time, monarchies throughout Europe controlled/influenced the political process. Monarchs nominated the heads-of-state.

That all changed in Europe, first with Russia and finally definitively with WW2. The winners (the US, Britain and France) insisted upon democratically elected Heads-of-state. Russia, also a winner, took another seven-and-a-half decades to come around and institute a democratically elected president. (Russia's version of "democracy" is decidedly different from most of the rest of the world.)

The only major states on earth today that vaguely resembles an unelected Head-of-state is North Korea and, very recently, China with its new "President-for-life" - both of whom are (now) unelected heads-of-state* ...

*And methinks its about time the United Nations established a rule that makes a democratically elected head-of-state as a condition for adherence.

 

Yeah... I was, in response to a post about the abolition of private property. Would you like to talk about something else?

OK -- I'm gonna skip most of this post because it seems you're straying from the point and it's useful to deal with things one at a time.

This surge of national rebellion, what is its nature and character? Is it looking to take over the state? Just a classical Marxist dictatorship of the proletariate? Because there will presumably require a dictatorial element... there's going to be resistance... not everyone will join this movement which promises to confiscate land and property in order to hold it collectively -- so these people will need to be dealt with. Traditionally they're shot and imprisoned until they capitulate. How else do we deal with capitalists and counter revolutionaries?

Then what... who's in charge? Who gets to say how resource is allocated? Who allocates labour? Who gets to decide how much of each product is produced so as to be in harmony with the necessary need or the aggregate demand?

Try and stick to these points if you can.

 

And when you rebut a comment, copy it so we know to whom you are addressing your rebuttal.

It is called "civil politeness" ...

 

Sure thing mum.

 

By taxing the piss outta them. That is, those who are benefitting by the overt manipulation of upper-income tax rates.

The less the ultra-rich pee on the rest of their fellow citizens who share a market-economy with them, the better off the latter shall be. This is not Socialist Doctrine.

It is simply dealing with unfair Income Disparity in a market-economy where all of us were born equal - but some more equal than others! (Because they inherited a whoppingly large amount of Net Worth from their parents at ultra-low Inheritans Tax-rates.)

And what I mean by that is a radical cut-off of upper-income by a taxation rate close to 100%. Whyzat? Here's why:
*Earning and keeping (net of taxation) 10/15 megabucks is enough for anyone to live a life of luxury without further work. Taxing it further when it become inheritance to those who never earned a penny (which is unfair) will allow offspring to live well, and the taxed dollars earned will be put to better use.
*And hopefully, not employed to fund waste DoD-expenditure that is GOBBLING 54% of the nation's Discretionary Budget. (See that brazen fact here.) But spent giving Americans a national-healthcare-service and free tertiary education.
*It makes no sense whatsoever for an individual to earn billions that they can never spend (unless you'd like to buy Greece) and they inevitably leave to their children (who never earned it and will likely waste it away).

I don't know how many times I have to post the same economic research (conducted by economists at the UofCall) that resulted in this eye-opener infographic - here. Which is just a bit more thorough than the analytical work done earlier by Domhoff (also of UofCal), the result of which is here.

The truth of the matter of Income Disparity in America is well-known by economists. The rest of America seems to get pissed-off in a blog about how "unfair life is", rather than militating politically for radical change to alter acute Income Disparity ...

 

OK, so you're not proposing land and property confiscation. That's fine but I did indicate in my original post what I was rebutting.

So just hike up taxes for the ultra rich and this will close the income gap. How? It's not actually a given. There are two problems:

Higher tax revenue doesn't necessarily correspond with higher income for the 90 percent.

Higher tax rates for the rich doesn't necessarily result in higher tax revenues.

I can go into detail but I'd be interested to know what you thoughts on that is.

 

I think very little of them, because economic research shows otherwise. Once again, infographics of that research here and here indicate clearly the Gross Inequality of After-tax Income and thus Wealth.

Please read it and tell me how YOUR PROPOSITION ABOVE can be justified by what we actually know about Wealth in America ...

 

Not denying an income gap, it's indubitable, would be silly to deny an income gap. I hope that's clear.

Am denying the logic that higher tax rates will always result in higher tax revenue which is a sure fire route to a more equal society.

Qualifying that is pretty easy. All while this income gap has been widening, tax revenue has been going up, and the top one percent pay most of the income tax. So the rich are paying more and more tax... and the income gap gets wider and wider. That's a real problem for your thesis.

 

Proper socialists know that if you abolish property you won't need a government. Governments are the central committees of the local property-owners.

 

lol fine, no government. How do you manage property/resource/labour allocation and deal with dissent, ie: the people who own the **** who don't want to let it go without a fight? Gotta have some kind of authority over these things. Good luck.

 

In America the rich are paying less than 25% of their total income in taxes.

So other 75% is a colossal Income that becomes Wealth.

Which is why the infographics that I linked show clearly why the upper 0.01 percent of the population is "hoarding riches". Whilst 14.2% of Americans are consigned to a bare existence below the Poverty Threshold (annual income of $24K for a family of four.)

The facts are obvious. Your reasons for avoiding the facts are not the least bit evident ...

 

Out of the vast wealth of humanity you just use what you need and put it back when you're not using it. Obviously, those who can't think of anything to do with their lives than pile up stuff they have no use for will kill mercilessly to keep the fatuity going. How do you think Stalin came to power? The thing is - set up a democracy and teach people to strike at the drop of a hat whenever these nutters start their nonsense.

 

Hang on. I asked how you manage property/resource/labour/allocation and deal with those people who own things who won't give it up without a fight.

Your answer is...

People should use only what they need!

and people should strike more!

meh I'm not so sure it deserves a response.

PS Stalin ultimately came to power because a group purporting to act on behalf of the proles took control of the state by force and then started trying to manage labour/resource/property allocation centrally. It didn't work because it never works... no group is that smart to be able to do it effectively -- it's always a shambles. If you and you're mates tried it you'd be equally useless. I couldn't do it either. Any group who thinks they can is either being dishonest or unjustifiably hubristic.