[RogueScholar]

Originally <a href='/showthread.php?p=16449692'>posted</a> on 10/20/2012:

I understand mikej. I voted democrat when I was a broke dik. Then I realized that taking from the rich and redistributing their money slows the economy and eventually leads to economic ruin. Sort of like we are seeing now.

I have nothing against Obama. He is a career politician with zero business experience. It's not his fault that he has no clue how to fix the economy. And its not your fault that you do not realize that socialism is not the answer. I'll bet the day you make something happen you will rethink your opinion on redistribution.

Let's cut the shit, John. You don't oppose redistribution of wealth because you give two shits about the American economy. You're greedy and you think your "work ethic" or your willingness to take risks with money in search of prosperity somehow makes that greed a virtue. That's the end of my criticism of you though, because I can articulate an opinion without stooping to calling the other side "broke diks" and dismissing their opinion because they have different priorities than I do. You've given me many examples here of how awful that looks, so I'm gonna be the bigger man this time with you and teach you why you're wrong rather than call you names.

The fact is that redistribution of wealth is a vital component to any capitalist economy, because like any pyramid-shaped structure, that tiny gold capstone at the top comes tumbling down the minute the foundation erodes from underneath it. At its core, the generation of wealth is made possible by leveraging the resources of many people into the creation of value. This means that any economy is fundamentally dependent on the ability of its poorest members to generate productivity, because it's those smallest of currency units that define value for the rest of us.

A healthy capitalist economy is an essentially decentralized one, which is why—in theory at least—we have to prevent monopolies from occurring at any cost. When America was at its most prosperous, just cooking a burger involved the efforts of a grain farmer, cattle rancher, butcher and a grocer, all working independently and sometimes at odds with each other for their own prosperity. Each person along the line served as a check on prices and inflation, because their survival depended on being competitive with their counterpart one town over. That kind of fighting for pennies at each step along the way meant that average consumers were spending as little as possible on the necessities of life, leaving them with extra money to spend and giving the country a huge middle class.

The system begins to break down once the process becomes streamlined and one man, in the effort to sell that same hamburger, buys out the grain farmer, the cattle rancher, the butcher and the grocer, replacing them with the cheapest labor available and keeping the profits once made and spent by the farmer, rancher, butcher and grocer for himself. He's only one man though, so he's not spending that money locally like they did on haircuts and drinks at the pub, rather he's buying a jet in France and hookers in Thailand. As a result, the barber can't make enough cutting hair and the pub owner can't sell enough drinks to stay afloat, so they have to take worse jobs as cogs on Mr. Burger's gears, while he then opens up a Supercuts franchise and Buffalo Wild Wings to replace their services in town. The downward spiral continues until only two classes of people are left, Mr. Burger and the people working for next to nothing to feed his greed.

Back to my point of an economy being limited by the potential of its poorest members, we now see why that is. Mr. Burger didn't really make all those profits out of thin air, he took them from the farmer, rancher, butcher and grocer to put in his own pocket. As a result, the ranks of the impoverished swelled as their skills were assiduously devalued to fuel the greed of Mr. Burger and his shareholders.

The conservatives are right that there's a moral crisis at the heart of our current economic woes, but it's not gays getting married and teen girls having babies out of wedlock or getting abortions. The crisis is, in fact, the greed exhibited by the people who already have more money than they could spend in a lifetime. As a society, we create those outrageous tax brackets at the top of the pyramid in order to discourage that greed, to make clear that we are aware that every millionaire in America got his fortune on the backs of the poor and middle class, and that comes with a responsibility not to turn them into de facto slaves. Our message, borne of a simple understanding of human nature and history, is that we want people to work hard, innovate and compete, but that there should always be limits on wealth, because with it comes corruption.

Thomas Jefferson said it best, I think, when he wrote:

“We have no paupers. The great mass of our population is of laborers; our rich, who can live without labor, either manual or professional, being few, and of moderate wealth. Most of the laboring class possess property, cultivate their own lands, have families, and from the demand for their labor are enabled to exact from the rich and the competent such prices as enable them to be fed abundantly, clothed above mere decency, to labor moderately and raise their families. Can any condition of society be more desirable than this?”

All of you who denounce redistribution of wealth by high taxes on the rich also forfeit your claim to a virtuous work ethic. When you decided that your skill at taking money out of someone else's pocket to place in your own absolved you of a responsibility to reinvest in your own economy, all you had left was a greed ethic. Paying high taxes is your investment in our economy, ensuring that society can help the poor to become middle class, and the middle class to become rich, which keeps the prosperity cycle alive, diverse and competitive. We suffer now because you refuse to honor that sacred responsibility.