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From: esk@wucs.UUCP (Paul V. Torek)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Laura Creighton on wealth distribution
Message-ID: <799@wucs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-Feb-85 18:23:51 EST
Article-I.D.: wucs.799
Posted: Tue Feb 26 18:23:51 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Feb-85 20:26:05 EST
Reply-To: pvt1047@wucec1.UUCP (Paul V. Torek)
Organization: Washington U. in St. Louis, CS Dept.
Lines: 37

[yay, no quotes!]

Laura Creighton argues that national taxation for redistribution of wealth
is flawed.  Instead, such payments should be made voluntary.  People would
either give, or not.  If they do, it shows coercion was unnecessary; if
not, it shows that "the will of the people" was against such redistribution
anyway.

There are two holes in her analysis.  The first is that maybe most but not
all would contribute, and maybe there is nothing wrong with coercing the
rest to contribute also.  Admittedly, that's a big controversy between
libertarians and others, but for that very reason, taking one side or the
other without arguing for it is question-begging.  The second is that maybe
charity is a "public goods" problem.  Milton Friedman thinks so; see
*Capitalism and Freedom*.  If people approve of wealth-redistributing
taxes because of the distress that seeing poverty causes them, then they
may not contribute voluntarily.  The reason is that the government action
drastically decreases poverty (let us suppose this -- granted it's debatable)
while individual action has little effect on the overall problem.  Thus, 
regardless of whether one gives individually one sees roughly the same
amount of poverty and thus feels the same amount of distress; whereas
a redistributive tax reduces one's distress significantly.

That is Friedman's argument, anyway.  I find it suspicious, because there
is something bass ackwards about wanting poverty eliminated *so that one
doesn't feel the distress one feels when seeing it*.  The point is first 
and foremost to make the poor better off, and only secondarily to make
*me* feel better!  Right?  I mean, I wouldn't feel distress at seeing
poverty if I didn't wish, for *their* sakes as well as mine, that the poor 
were better off!  So I think that Friedman has the cart leading the horse 
when he claims that poverty is an externality/public goods/neighborhood 
effects problem.  The first hole in Laura's argument remains, however.

				--the Reluctant Centrist,
				Paul V. Torek, ihnp4!wucs!wucec1!pvt1047
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