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To: MegaSilver

Income inequity is not a “problem” to be “cured” if it results from free market transactions. If it does, its Adam Smith 101 — someone getting rich (ie, having much more income than me) because he or she produced something I want. Way too many people have bought into the idea that unequal income is a problem. In its right form, it makes everyone richer.


2 posted on 01/06/2014 9:37:28 AM PST by Opinionated Blowhard ("When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.")
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To: Opinionated Blowhard
I agree with you. I will go one further. I believe that income inequality is a good thing - strike that - a great thing. Remember when America was called 'the land of opportunity'? That did not mean that if you came here you could sign up for an entitlement. It meant that if you worked hard, came up with a great idea, maybe caught a break somewhere, you could experience 'income inequality' in a big way. It inspired millions to build a great country by trying to better themselves. Unequal incomes and free market are all the incentives you need. I don't know if you have noticed, but no one calls America the 'land of opportunity' any more.
34 posted on 01/06/2014 12:17:38 PM PST by fhayek
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To: Opinionated Blowhard
I think you need to read your Adam Smith again. Consider these quotes:
"Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people." "Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counselors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters." "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged."
Adam Smith was one of the earliest and strongest proponents of Capitalism, but even he knew that excess is destructive to society. If only more of the current Titans of Industry(tm) knew this as well.
37 posted on 01/06/2014 1:39:34 PM PST by CommunityMan
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