Laziness and Equality

By Simon Grey, on May 11th, 2011
From ASI:

Some say this is unfair because it offers the rich more options than the poor. But to stop people from being able to pay for places just to bring them down to the level of the poor is completely backwards – we should be trying to see how we can raise the poor up to that level. Equality for its own sake shouldn’t be the objective; what we want is to improve people’s lives. So how could we do this? Quite simply: by making sure that student loans are available to everybody with the grades needed for these places, and allowing universities to raise their fees to reflect the supply and demand for places.

Destroying wealth in the name of equality is the lazy man’s way of ensuring fairness because it is incredibly easy to destroy. If one man makes $20,000 a year and another man makes $30,000 a year, it is easier to take $5,000 from the better-paid man and give it to the lesser-paid man.
The more moral thing to do, however, would be to help the lesser-paid man find a way to earn $30,000 a year. Not only would there be equality, as was true with the prior scenario, but there would also be an increase in aggregate wealth. Additionally, neither man would have his wealth destroyed or taken from him. Of course, it is more difficult to help pull someone up than it is to push someone down, and so future attempts at ensuring equality will largely consist of destroying wealth instead of creating it.


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Stable Money Supply: The Real Way to Help the Poor

By Richard Daughty, on April 12th, 2010

I am happy to note that the Tea Party, which appeals to me personally, is gaining traction and power, which adds more political overtones to my life and gets me, a shameful Republican, away from the loathsome Republicans (except Ron Paul), which have acted almost as despicably as the Democrats.

I cheerfully denounce them all with a snotty, disrespectful tone in my voice and a condescending sneer on my lips, also an indicator of disrespect, because I am a guy who has spent a lifetime reading about what happens when governments try this “increasing the money supply” crapola that, since the 1960s, the Democrats made into a political mainstay and the Republicans went “grudgingly” along with it, and I am, in a word, horrified and disgusted.

The truth is that I am now continuing to write, as after writing that last horrific sentence about “increase the money supply”, I took the rest of the morning off to think about it, hopefully to calm my shattered nerves. Now I am back at work after discovering that I am more, much more than horrified, and instead am in a Raging Mogambo Snit (RMS) because, according to Fox News, “Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the influential Finance Committee” said that the “overhaul” of the healthcare system was “an ‘income shift’ to help the poor”, which is not what I am angry about because it’s exactly true, else why do it? So you can’t fault him for saying what is true! Hahaha!

However, I can fault Senator Baucus for just being a typical laughable-yet-loathsome modern Democrat, entirely emblematic as he is of the egotistical big-hearted people who love, and live to love, and love to live to love, and who think that the Beatles were right when they sang “All you need is love”, and use their arrogant “more-compassionate-than-thou” conceit as a bloody bludgeon to beat into submission common sense, economics, the entire history of fiat currencies, and the eternal problem of what to do with the poor people, the crippled people and the old people.

The part that really makes me despise Democrats slightly more than I despise Republicans is that Democrats ridiculously try to “help” the poor by tearing down the only system that has been shown to actually help the poor; namely, supplying them with jobs and keeping consumer prices from rising, but instead – wonderfully! – prices gently come down so that the poor have a rising standard of living because their money buys more.

“And what could such a wonderful system be?” you ask, unable to believe your ears. I reply, “It’s what you automatically get from a system of free enterprise powered by a stable money supply. It works like magic! It always has! It always will!”

Instead, the Federal Reserve will be forced to create so Monstrously Much Money (MMM) to finance a cancerously enlarging government to drown us in total debt, and thus continuously, massively enlarge the monetary base, which must make prices rise and rise continuously, prices which the poor can’t afford to pay and which makes them poorer, which makes Congress borrow and spend more money, which makes the money supply rise and rise, with prices always rising and rising as the monetary base gets larger and larger, round and around, whirling and twirling, spinning, spinning, spinning until you fall to the ground, crying out, dramatically, “Noooooo! More money only creates, paradoxically, more poor working people to add to the huge existing population of poor people because wage increases always lag price increases!”

Senator Baucus does not acknowledge my scorn or compliment me on my fine acting performance, and I hope everyone noticed how he would not meet my gaze, either, and instead lamely talks about “income mal-distribution” by saying that “Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America”, like this is some kind of news to him or something.

To this I say, “Hahahaboohoohoohahahaboohoohaboohaboohaha!” which shows that I am laughing and crying, and then laughing, and then crying, and then laughing, and then crying while laughing at the sheer idiocy of it, which proves that it must be idiotic for me to be laughing that way, QED.

Then, to show that he is a true Democrat, he says, “This legislation will have the effect of addressing the mal-distribution of income in America”, although he did not elaborate by saying, “by taking it away from somebody richer and giving it to someone poorer” and he did not say, “it will be paid for with fiat money created by the Federal Reserve so that Congress can borrow and spend it” and he did not say, “this unprecedented avalanche of new money will monstrously drive up prices paid by the poor, making them much, much poorer and angrier” but he could have and he should have.

Apparently, though, Senator Baucus is kind of stupid, as he does not understand that when a government deficit-spends, it does so by borrowing the money, but since the poor don’t have any money to loan to the government, the rich end up borrowing the money to loan to the government, whereupon the rich, over time, get all their money back, plus interest, making them richer, while, unfortunately, the poor get poorer because prices have risen.

All of these things he could have said, and he might as well have said, as it is all there in black and white at Mises.org, or it should be, and might well be!

And while neither he nor Mises.org said to buy gold, silver and oil as protection against this sheer economic idiocy and insanity, they might as well have, and while I cannot imagine either of them saying, “Whee! This investing stuff is easy” I certainly will! Whee!

Stable Money Supply: The Real Way to Help the Poor originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning.



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Does Economic Security Depend on Average Income Levels?

By Winton Bates, on December 17th, 2009

In an earlier post I suggested that there would be widespread agreement that a good society would provide members with a degree of personal economic security against potential threats to individual flourishing, including misfortunes such as accidents, ill-health and unemployment. (See: What are the characteristics of a good society?)

In suggesting that there would be widespread agreement about this I had in mind that nearly everyone would tend to be somewhat risk averse if they had to choose what kind of society to live in without any knowledge of their own personal circumstances. Rather than focusing exclusively on the median (or most likely) outcome of their choice I think nearly everyone would have some regard to what their quality of life might be like in various societies if they were to draw the short straw in terms of parentage, health, intelligence, good looks and good luck. (How people would actually respond to such a thought experiment is an empirical question. I recall reading somewhere that John Rawls’ difference principle has not been supported by empirical research, but this principle seems to assume extreme risk aversion applies to choices made behind a veil of ignorance. If any readers are aware of useful empirical research on this question I would be grateful to be made aware of it.)

It seems to me that the average income of people at the lower end of the income distribution is an appropriate measure of economic security because it relates directly to the quality of life that people are able to lead. This can be estimated for a wide range of countries using survey data on the percentage of national income or consumption of people in the lowest 10 percent of the income distribution. Another relevant indicator is survey data on the proportion of the population that have at times not had enough money to buy food that their family needed in the preceding 12 months.

The following table shows countries ranked by the average income level of people in the lowest 10 percent of the income distribution. Percentages with not enough food are also shown along with a range of other indicators of average well-being and institutional quality. As in similar tables in recent posts, the ratings of countries with performance in the top quartile for each indicator are shown against a green background, those for the second quartile are shown in yellow, the third quartile in orange and the fourth quartile in red. Indicators are defined below the table.

As would be expected, countries which rank highly in terms of average incomes of the bottom 10% tend to have the lowest percentage of people who claim that at times they did not have enough money to buy food. There are some interesting anomalies, however, at both ends of the spectrum. For example, the percentage claiming that they did not always have enough money for food were higher than would be expected in several high-income countries including the UK, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. Low-income countries in which the percentage claiming inadequate money for food was lower than expected included Nepal, Vietnam and India.

The table shows that average incomes of the bottom 10% of the population depend strongly on the goose that lays the golden eggs – i.e. on the institutional factors that determine average income levels of the whole population. I do not intend to imply, however, that democratic institutions and income redistribution policies of governments play no role in supporting incomes of the bottom 10%. A regression analysis suggests that democratic institutions do tend to support average income levels of the bottom 10% of the population. Examples are evident in the table. Countries in which relatively low ratings on ‘Voice and accountability’ may help explain lower than expected incomes of the bottom 10% include Iran, Tunisia and Argentina. Countries in which relatively high ratings on ‘Voice and accountability’ may help explain higher than expected incomes of the bottom 10% include India and Mongolia.

Hint: Click on the table for a clearer picture.


Notes:
Income index for the poorest 10%: Index expressed as a fraction of estimated average income of the poorest 10% of families in Norway, the country in which the poorest 10% have the highest average income. Estimates based on share of income/expenditure of the poorest 10% of the population from Table M, HDR 2009 Statistical Tables, UNDP.

Not enough food %: The proportion of the population claiming that at times in the preceding 12 months they have not had enough money to buy food that their family needed. Survey data from the Gallup World Poll.

Average income index: Real GDP per capita (rgdpl) for 2007 from the Penn World Table, expressed as a fraction of per capita GDP in the United Arab Emirates, the country with highest per capita GDP. Source: Alan Heston, Robert Summers and Bettina Aten, Penn World Table Version 6.3, Center for International Comparisons of Production, Income and Prices at the University of Pennsylvania, August 2009.

Voice and accountability: Index compiled by the World Bank capturing perceptions of the extent to which a country’s citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association and a free media.

Economic Freedom (Fraser): According to the Fraser Institute’s definition, individuals have economic freedom when property they acquire without the use of force, fraud, or theft is protected from physical invasions by others and they are free to use, exchange, or give their property as long as their actions do not violate the identical rights of others. Data from the 2009 report (for 2007).

Control of corruption: Index compiled by the World Bank capturing perceptions of the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as ‘capture’ of the state by elites and private interests. Quality of life index: Gallup World Poll data on “life today” (latest available) country averages, expressed as a fraction of the rating for Denmark, the country with the highest rating.

Social capital: A sub-index of the Legatum prosperity index which reflects how well people are engaged in social networks and relationships that are trustworthy and supportive.



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