Posted on 09/19/2012 10:02:40 AM PDT by jazusamo
The recently discovered tape on which Barack Obama said back in 1998 that he believes in redistribution is not really news. He said the same thing to Joe the Plumber four years ago. But the surfacing of this tape may serve a useful purpose if it gets people to thinking about what the consequences of redistribution are.
Those who talk glibly about redistribution often act as if people are just inert objects that can be placed here and there, like pieces on a chess board, to carry out some grand design. But if human beings have their own responses to government policies, then we cannot blithely assume that government policies will have the effect intended.
The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.
In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler's Holocaust in the 1940s.
How can that be? It is not complicated. You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops, when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm animals that they would normally keep tending...
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
And yet we have a big chunk of America that is perfectly willing to confiscate current wealth and mortgage the future so that they can live the good life today. In the long run, they are dead and its someone else's problem.
The problem is that the Republican party continually nominates people who don’t have the skills to articulate the problem with redistributionist, socialist economics as opposed to truly free market capitalism. Instead we get nice guys (like that makes any difference whatsoever) who cannot debate the real issue.
I have no doubt that Romney is a (limited) free market capitalist). But so far his response to Obama’s redistribution remark has been “Obama thinks that is the way America should go, I don’t.”
Paul Ryan could probably do it, but it’ll never make the news. Why could we not nominate someone like Newt Gingrich who could chew up Barack Obama’s philosophies and spit them out six ways from Sunday?
But no, we have to appeal to the middle. BS. From where I sit the middle wants articulation, not merely some milquetoast appeal like, “Obama’s a nice guy we just disagree on the way forward.” Great, Milt. Now tell people something they can sink their teeth into. For crying out loud, even 9-9-9 would be better than this.
Thomas Sowell for President!
Confiscation of wealth and apportionment to favored groups? Yes.
But something that is not ‘distributed’ cannot be ‘redistributed’.
“In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous.”
Someone once said that if you took away everyone’s money and redistributed it equally to ALL ... in a year the people who had the most to begin with would have it back and the people who were broke before would be broke again!
I believe that.
” and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated.”
Why so much private wealth has DISAPPEARED from the USA in the past 3 years.
We on this forum all know Obama is a socialist. So this is not news to us. However there may be some voters that this news will have an effect on. So it is good this redistribution tape is back in the news. Maybe we can convert a couple of percent of the voters.
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The meek may inherit the earth, but the next day the strong will take it back.
The meek will inherit the earth.... but they’ll be too meek to accept it.
Love it.
That is what Obama is all about and it needs to be repeated constantly to get through to people that are trying to ignore it.
Marxism doesn't work, it has never worked, it never will work.
It's time to unmask Obama as a marxist and explain to the public what that really means.
Another problem with confiscation and redistribution is that it depletes the supply of capital available for investment in new and existing ventures and thereby makes such ventures (and the jobs they create) less likely. In short, capitalism requires capital.
Money is a tool.
If you take the tool away from people who know how to use it and give that tool to people who do not, less is produced with that tool. When less is produced, you have less wealth.
Redistributing wealth reduces the overall wealth of a nation. The more you do it and the longer you do it the poorer the nation becomes.
Its as simple as that.
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