Over at Right Wing News today: What if we just gave everybody the same amount of wealth?
Well? What if we did?
What if we quit playing at redistribution, and actually redistribute? Take all the wealth in America, and divvy it up. Everybody gets the same, as close as we can make it.
Imagine! No more rich and poor; no more “haves” and “have-nots.” No more Two Americas. No more half the nation struggling to make ends meet while two percent just can’t seem to find enough help to clean the toilets in their second summer home.
An economic paradise!
Let me admit up front, this is a bit of a straw man. While there may be in fact, probably are plenty of liberal “progressive” socialists radical enough to like this idea, nobody’s actually suggesting that we pursue it in any serious way.
This is really more of an academic exercise, because I think it’ll be fun.
The socialist actually, more of a Communist ideal. Everybody gets the exact same amount. Nobody has any more than anybody else.
Then what?
Then what? I’ll tell you “then what.” If you click the link.
UPDATE - Linked by The Linkiest, which means John Hawkins linked to a post that leads to a post on another of his own websites which in turn links right back to The Trog.
Just remember: we’re in the Northern Hemisphere, so that’s all swirling clockwise.
Like this:
Comments are closed.
I read about this about a year ago. There is a name for the number that I can’t recall, but if we did this worldwide, divided up everything equally, we only get about 10K each. With that we would then have to provide everything for ourselves again. We would not have cars or washing machines no wealth at all.
Doesn’t sound all that great when you look at the actual numbers.
Funny. I was thinking about this just a few days ago. If such a thing were possible, I’d be willing to wager, that given the disparate personalities and ambitions of the human race, that within a generation, the old disparities would be back.
Plus, wealth does not exist solely within cash or negotiable instruments. If your share of the “wealth” consisted of a boxcar in Kansas, would it do you any good? Would it be even worse, if you lived on the other side of the planet from your “wealth”?
Would there not be coalitions of people willing to cooperate who would increase their wealth? (We could call these: “Corporations”) Would there not be others who would sell their “birthright” for a “mess of pottage”?
Even if it were possible, it would be ultimately meaningless.
Or what if your wealth was a third of a boxcar? Or a tenth of a locomotive? Now imagine that two of your fellow boxcar owners or nine of your fellow locomotive owners had an entirely different idea about how to use their wealth than you did?
If some of those who received the cash wanted to loan it to you to buy out your fellow owners, is it permissible fr them to ask you to pay interest?
Wealth is not static, it is fluid, constantly changing.
Utopia means “nowhere” for a reason!
Mexico has a long, glorious history of breaking up the haciendas, and its continuing opulence should be a lesson to us all.
I don’t mind a third of a boxcar, as long as I get one of the ends.