Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!OHIO-STATE.ARPA!testa-j%OSU-20 From: testa-j%OSU-20@OHIO-STATE.ARPA.UUCP Newsgroups: mod.politics Subject: Wealth Message-ID: <12272334071.35.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Tue, 20-Jan-87 00:44:29 EST Article-I.D.: RED.12272334071.35.MCGREW Posted: Tue Jan 20 00:44:29 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 20-Jan-87 22:22:19 EST Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: testa-j%OSU-20@ohio-state.ARPA Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 37 Approved: poli-sci@red.rutgers.edu "Keith F. Lynch" writes: >[The government] should serve everyone, but only to the extent of >preventing individual rights from being violated. It should not and >cannot be involved with protecting people from their own economic >misjudgements, or with redistributing wealth, or trying to compensate >for the inequalities of past generations. >... >It should >be evident even to socialists and the feeble-minded that if people >who Then you admit that not all socialists are feeble-minded? :-) >worked are taxed to pay people who don't work, that the net amount of >wealth has not increased. Poverty is conserved. I agree that simply taking from the rich and giving to the poor does not increase wealth; however it does change the amount of poverty (please note that i am not advocating such a simple approach). If wealth were completely redistributed equally, then either everyone or noone would be in poverty, by definition! Thus it cannot be a conserved quantity! (Keith, you should have applied a little of your basic physics reasoning here :-) .) That is, unless you consider a rich person to be in a state of "negative poverty", but i have never heard of this usage before. It has also been argued by you and/or other libertarians that government should not be involved in public education. But does not using tax money to educate those who could not otherwise afford an education *increase* wealth by making more people capable of producing useful things/services/etc? ~joe testa~ ------- -------