All individuals could enjoy such rights simultaneously. With the growth of the transfer society, American citizens have gravitated away from negative rights and toward positive rights, also known as welfare rights, which are in effect claims on the resources of other people.
As such entitlements have grown, therefore, liberties in the sense of negative rights have necessarily diminished. Ironically, in the full-fledged transfer society, where governments busy themselves redistributing income by means of hundreds of distinct programs, hardly anyone is better off as a result. Those who get something of value from the system frequently give up even more in taxes.
Further, because many of the consequences of government income redistribution share the common aspect of impoverishing the society, even those who get a bigger slice than they surrender are cutting into a smaller pie.
In the transfer society the general public is not only poorer but less contented, less autonomous, more rancorous, and more politicized. Individuals take part less often in voluntary community activities and more often in belligerent political contests.
Genuine communities cannot breathe in the poisonous atmosphere of redistributional politics. Most importantly, the society that allows its government to redistribute income on a wide scale necessarily sacrifices much of its liberty. Finally, one must recognize that, notwithstanding what some regard as the institutionalization of compassion, the transfer society quashes genuine virtue.
Redistribution of income by government coercion is a form of theft. Its supporters attempt to disguise its essential character by claiming that democratic procedures give it legitimacy, but this justification is specious. Theft is theft whether it be carried out by one thief or by million thieves acting in concert. And it is impossible to found a good society on the institutionalization of theft. Council of Economic Advisers, Annual Report , p. Gwartncy and Richard L. Stroup, Microeconomics: Private and Public Choice , 6th ed.
Fort Worth: Dryden Press, , pp. By Robert Higgs. Also published in The Freeman « Show Fewer. Myth versus Reality It is tempting to think about government transfers in a simple way: one person, taxpayer T, loses a certain amount of money; another person, recipient R, gains the same amount; and everything else remains the same. Neglected Consequences 1.
Culmination Ironically, in the full-fledged transfer society, where governments busy themselves redistributing income by means of hundreds of distinct programs, hardly anyone is better off as a result. Notes: [1] U. Reprinted with permission from The Freeman December Before posting, please read our Comment Policy.
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Bush as inaugurated. Last Friday it closed at —a 30 percent decline over eight years and one of the most remarkable destructions of wealth in our lifetime. The United States has remained one of the most capitalistic countries in the world in large part because its leaders have recognized that to protect markets government must round off some of the roughest edges of capitalism. That is why Republican progressives like Theodore Roosevelt supported the progressive income tax, why Franklin Roosevelt pushed Social Security and Unemployment through Congress in , and why Richard Nixon won approval of the Supplemental Security income program and proposed a national minimum income plan.
All of these proposals served to make the outcomes of ordinary Americans a little more even than they might have been if left solely to the markets.
But they also served to create greater social cohesion and promote stronger economic growth within a system that remained very fundamentally free market. Whether or not you view that effort to redistribute wealth as fair, you have to concede that it has been a total failure with respect to creating jobs, raising living standards, generating sustainable wealth, and maintaining fiscal discipline.
It is too bad that those who have finally risen to speak against the evils of wealth redistribution did not do so much sooner. You Betcha! Download this column with full graphs pdf Read more: Understanding Bushonomics: How We Got Into This Mess in the First Place Our nation was just treated to an entire weekend of conservative commentators talking about the evils of income redistribution and class warfare. Actions taken by this administration during the past eight years include: Refusal to adjust the minimum wage for inflation for 10 years, driving it in inflation-adjusted terms to the lowest level in half a century.
Studies have repeatedly shown that freezing the minimum wage affects not only those working at minimum wages but also those well up the income ladder. Refusal to enforce hourly wage violations so that many employers could pay less than the legal minimum and refuse to pay legally required overtime with little concern over being caught or penalized.
Appointment of a National Labor Relations Board that constantly abridged the right of workers to organize or file just grievances, and provided employers with considerable assurance that union efforts to organize their workplaces would fail regardless of wages and working conditions.
One of the most robust series on income trends is produced by the Congressional Budget Office CBO , albeit it with a multi-year delay: the numbers for were released in November CBO provides careful estimates of income across the distribution and over time, as well as before and after taxes and transfers.
Importantly, CBO takes full account of government-provided health care, which makes a big difference in the results, especially on the lowest income rungs. See the technical note below for more details on their approach. CBO presents data for both average income and share of income. Since , the households right at the top of the distribution, the much-vilified 1 percent, have seen their incomes rise fastest, more than doubling since even after taxes:.
On this chart, any differences in the remaining 99 percent are harder to see, simply because the left-hand axis has to stretch to accommodate the big rise at the very top. Fortunately, the CBO also provides data for the top quintile minus the top 1 percent i.
This allows us to shrink the left-hand axis and see more clearly what is going on in the bottom 99 percent:. The top quintile has been pulling away from the middle class, even without the top 1 percent in the mix.
But not from the bottom quintile, according the CBO. In fact, income growth for the poorest group has been as great as for the upper middle class 79 percent versus 78 percent growth between and , while the middle class have experienced sluggish growth by comparison 46 percent.
As Bob Samuelson points out in the Washington Post , it is simply wrong to claim that has been no increase at all for middle class household s— and it is unhelpful when that claim is made.
Low growth is better than no growth; but it is still low. It hardly needs saying that this does not mean all is well for those on the lowest rung of the ladder. These are measures of growth , not level, and 79 percent of not very much is still not very much.
Reeves and Christopher Pulliam Tuesday, September 4, On the contrary, it may have begun with two of the most famous 19 th Century economists, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. There is nothing optional or arbitrary about them. It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution only.
The things once there, mankind, individually, can do with them as they like. But redistribution aims to take money from people who earned it and give it to those who did not. David Ricardo had earlier made the identical mistake. In his book The Good Society p. For the amount of wealth which is available for distribution cannot in fact be separated from the proportions in which it is distributed.
Moreover, the proportion in which wealth is distributed must have an effect on the amount produced.
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