What is the "fair distribution of wealth"? I personally believe that you are only entitled to the wealth you yourself created (or which someone voluntary gave you).
Isn't that a fair distribution of wealth? Or what other metrics do you use?
It is usually the duty of parents to raise their children (and pay for their education). The left however feels that it “takes the village to raise the child” (nice way of saying that someone else should pay for education, etc…). This means that dysfunctional people and families can externalise the consequences of their actions.
If we think of it in a crude way: wouldn’t the most fit evolutionary strategy in such a system be to just get as much children as you want? Since someone else will bust their but to pay for the raising and education of your child.
This is unfortunately what happens in many countries, and it is quite sad. In my country there are 13.4 million people on government grants and there are 12 million people working. Of those that work, only about 3 million pay tax (75% which is paid by 750,000). Of the 13.4 million receiving “social grants”, about 9 million are child grants (government pays them for each child under 16, thereby encouraging people to get children. Many people receive the child grant from their children before they stop getting their own grant).
The point of this is that each tax payer is paying to raise 3 children that are not theirs. Is that fair? Should someone really be allowed to get children if they cannot afford them?
This is also one of the reasons I believe that democracy does not work in most countries – especially countries with a high population or which is not homogeneous.
The excuse of “family location” is BS. Many people have put off or postponed having children until they can afford them, and at least kept the number of children to a minimum. Many people also at least put in the effort to raise the kids that they have properly.
Probably not, but there's the rub. How do we prevent this? Perhaps if we refuse to bail them out... but are you willing to watch a child starve to death? Will you be the one to pull the plug?
I come from a lower-middle class background ( military family during the 80's and early 90's ), grew up in many different small cities and never finished high school. I am in my mid 20's now and have the wealth that people here like to refer to as 'FU Money'
In a city, you cannot say that you have sole right to a piece of property, to do with as you please. Everything's too packed in together. If you're blasting music at all hours of the night, that alters the composition of the air around you. That may increase or decrease wealth, depending.
To put it simply: the wealth of New York City was mostly created by the city; the plumbing, the roads, the zoning laws, the building codes, the fire departments. The city government is the only entity that can really claim to have created that wealth. An individual building owner's contribution is very small.
If we divide all the land in the world equally, within 20 years some people will have more and some people will have less (due to differing productivity and non-coercive selling). This isn't unfair - it just means that some people are unproductive.
> In a city, you cannot say that you have sole right to a piece of property, to do with as you please. Everything's too packed in together. If you're blasting music at all hours of the night,
Yes you can. Blasting music is a different story - you are effecting your neighbour's quality of life (and destroying his property value).
But trust me, you can do anything on your property as long as the neighbour doesn't hear or see you.
> To put it simply: the wealth of New York City was mostly created by the city; the plumbing, the roads, the zoning laws, the building codes,
The wealth in New York city is created because highly skilled people are close to each other (a type of network effect). Just because the demand for property is higher (and therefore the asking price) doesn't mean that the wealth represented by the property is created by the state.
Sure, but in another 50 years many of their children will have just as much land through none of their own doing. If others could have used the land better, I'd say there's a good deal of unfairness there. It's possible life could have been better for everyone if not for inheritance.
>Blasting music is a different story - you are effecting your neighbour's quality of life (and destroying his property value).
Eh? That's the sort of thing I was talking about. You have the right to do what you want, within reason. But that said, you can't for example use residential land for a commercial enterprise beyond a certain point, and there are good reasons for these sorts of zoning laws.
On your last point, the state is the proxy by which we as a group determine how to divvy up that wealth that cannot be directly attributable to any one group. Again it is imperfect, but it's better than letting those who own the land have the entire say, because they are not necessarily responsible for the value in that land.
Whoever planned that part of NYC did a pretty good job of fair distribution, I think. Some for everyone to enjoy, some taxes taken for upkeep, everyone's a winner.
I don't think the market would do a good job of allocating that resource.
Economists don't even try to answer the question of which distribution of wealth is fair. That's why mainstream economic theory does not concern itself with this question. All the economists say is that everybody should be richer if markets work well, they have no opinion about how rich the rich should be.
However the distribution of wealth is a very relevant question to a great number of people. If a majority thinks the outcome of the market is not satisfactory, they can correct it with politics.
