Jan 24, 2018
I give you one clap, because in one thing you are correct: Governments do have a role to play in the free enterprise market: to keep it free and fair. The market place is governed by the Laws of supply and demand, and those are not a “Set of rules” created by government; they occur naturally between willing buyers and willing sellers. The Government’s only role is to enforce ethical behaviour by all participants, to prevent theft, corruption, crony capitalism, oligarchy and monopolies, all of which distort the free market. What the Government must not do is to plan the market, to set prices, production quotas and so forth. We have a century’s worth of data to prove that Central Planning does not and cannot ever work.
Governments should police the market, not plan it: the only thing that has ever worked to balance supply and demand is the price signals of the free market.
I disagree with your statement “capitalism is a recipe for extinction of the species, not the natural outflow of human trading instincts that sustain us.”
The exact opposite is true: Capitalism has lifted billions out of poverty by the natural outflow of human trading instincts. Bill Gates devoted his 2014 Gates Foundation Annual Report to just this point: “By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been. People are living longer, healthier lives. Many nations that were aid recipients are now self-sufficient. You might think that such striking progress would be widely celebrated, but in fact, Melinda and I are struck by how many people think the world is getting worse. The belief that the world can’t solve extreme poverty and disease isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful. That’s why in this year’s letter we take apart some of the myths that slow down the work. The next time you hear these myths, we hope you will do the same.”
You are also wrong about taxation: you say “Take the new tax law. Pure and simple redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top, right when the bulk of society has already been badly starved of it’s fair share.” This is a lie, and it is easy to prove it is a lie. Tax tables show that tax rates are progressive, so more tax is paid by the rich.
Household incomes are mainly in low to average tax brackets, where taxes are low.
IRS data shows that “taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more paid well over half (58.8%) of federal income taxes, though they accounted for only 4.5% of all returns filed.” In round figures the top 5% paid 60% of all US income tax. That is not “redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top,” it is the exact opposite. The progressive tax rates are designed to steal from the rich to give to the poor: to believe the opposite is true is just silly, and is not supported by the facts. The left are fond of that old canard “The Rich get richer, and the poor get poorer!” It is a lie too: the truth by any measure you care to use is that “The rich get richer, and the poor get richer too!”
“In no way is society served by having any of its members secure 1000 times greater access to survival assets than any hundred of its other members.”
In a free market, that is exactly what does happen, and there’s nothing wrong with that: in 2017 Beyoncé earned $105 million, and J.K. Rowling earned $95 million. That is because people want to hear Beyoncé's songs and read Harry Potter novels. I don’t pretend to understand why anyone would want to do either, but is a free world, and that is what they choose to spend their money on. These two entertainers paid over 100 million dollars in tax between them, so would you rather they earned the same as a restroom cleaner and paid less than $5000 towards the general good?
Your argument is based on jealousy of the very people who pay 60% of America's taxes. Equality of opportunity is a fine thing, but equality of outcome cannot be achieved without coercion through totalitarian socialism, the very thing that would destroy our ability to create new wealth. Greed and envy are a poor basis for public policy, but that is what you are proposing.
