Is Economic Equality Worth the Loss of Prosperity?

Real Clear Markets ^ | 8/3/2009 | Bill Frezza

[SeekAndFind]

As our nation remakes itself into a European social democracy, bidding farewell to American Exceptionalism, we hear constant calls for "sacrifice." Have you wondered exactly what it is that we've been asked to give up?

The radical idea that all men should be equal before the law, each free to pursue happiness using his own means, created a nation of innovators that transformed the world. American culture had little tolerance for hereditary privilege, instead celebrating the self-made man accepting unequal outcomes as the price society pays to motivate entrepreneurial risk. Our founding social contract gave almost everyone a shot at riches but guaranteed outcomes for none. The system lasted 200 years because the same market that rewarded innovation eventually spread its fruits to even life's laggards. In historical blink of an eye material luxuries became necessities became basic human "rights."

Has there ever been more rapid increase in living standards than that delivered by unprecedented revolution in liberty? Millions flocked to our shores escaping political policies we rush to embrace. They - we - lifted ourselves from poverty to prosperity in as quickly as a single generation.

In response to the occasional economic reversals that are part and parcel of the freedom-to-fail, our government ratcheted up a safety net that became cushion that threatens to become a smothering blanket. Will it snuff out the fires of innovation as it attempts to spread heat from the dying embers of what we once were?

In other words, are you prepared to give up material progress in return for economic equality?

Examples abound of countries that have made this tradeoff. They can be wonderful places to visit, though one wouldn't want to start a business there. Which is why their best and their brightest usually came here. Or at least they used to.

[FromLori]

NO

[Dudoight]

So now we will have economic equality rather than equality of opportunity.

[Iron Munro]

"When you are all poor, you will all be equal."
-- Karl Marx Obamaski

[ripley]

Will the last one out please shut the lights?

(Then again, with enforced poverty, they won’t be generating electricity, except the ruling elites will be holding the purse strings and guarding the light switch.)

[SonOfDarkSkies]

Obama's war isn't just against prosperity, it is against individual freedom.

Obama is a collectivist...and he wants to kill the human desire for individuality in favor of a kind of government organized world in which individuals are subordinated to society as a whole.

He is trying to turn humans society into that of ants...a hive mentality.

He has been indoctrinated into believing it can work when there is no evidence anywhere in the world to support his position.

[the invisib1e hand]

Is Economic Equality Worth the Loss of Prosperity?

Next question: Is Economic Prosperity Worth the Loss of Liberty?

[aquila48]

“How do you track innovation that never happened? America’s coming descent will go unmeasured, making it difficult to sound the alarm. What agency will catalogue the businesses that were never started, the products that were never launched, the immigrants who choose to go elsewhere, and the brilliant foreign students who returned home after being educated here?”

We won’t need an agency to give us notice of our decline - all we will have to do is look at China, India and Brazil. Having come from the paradise of “economic equality”, they have answered the question “Is Economic Equality Worth the Loss of Prosperity?” with a resounding NOOOO!

[MamaTexan]

In other words, are you prepared to give up material progress in return for economic equality?

Nope.

Just because the Founders believed 'all men are Created equal' DOESN'T mean government has a mandate to keep everyone that way.

By equality, in a democracy, is to be understood, equality of civil rights, and not of condition. Equality of rights necessarily produces inequality of possessions; because, by the laws of nature and of equality, every man has a right to use his faculties in an honest way, and the fruits of his labor, thus acquired, are his own. But some men have more strength than others; some more health; some more industry; and some more skill and ingenuity, than others; and according to these, and other circumstances the products of their labor must be various, and their property must become unequal. The rights of property must be sacred, and must be protected; otherwise there could be no exertion of either ingenuity or industry, and consequently nothing but extreme poverty, misery, and brutal ignorance.
St. George Tucker, "View of the Constitution of the United States" 1803
Of the Several Forms of Government, Section VI [Page 40-41]

[Cowgirl]

The truth is, spreading the wealth means everyone will just get poorer. If one person makes a lot of money he is not taking it from a poor person but is creating wealth. When the person creating wealth is stopped, that doesn’t make the other person wealthier. It just means everyone is poor. Oh sure, they can take a wealthy person’s money for a short time but then it is all over after that money is spent.