The Sound of Milton Friedman Rolling in His Grave
I’ve been up all night working on a research paper, so I really wasn’t in the right mental state to watch this video posted over at Blue Oregon:
I’ve heard all about the horrible scourge of income disparity, but, frankly, I’ve always wondered what happens after the Great and Just Redistribution of Wealth. Lets just assume, as shown in the video, that that the private wealth of the country is equally divided and every family gets $500,000. What happens next?
Color me crazy, but wouldn’t people just, y’know, get rich and poor again? Or would we continually redistribute wealth to stop any sort of evil income disparity? Would people who make good business decisions or investments have their earnings redistributed to people who blew their $500K on strippers and coke (read: me)? Of course, maybe the presenters in the video are just assuming we’ll be in the midst of the glorious dictatorship of the proletariat by then.
I’m reminded of my days back in a 100-level polisci class when we discussed wealth redistribution. One of my classmates, a staunch Republican, spoke up and said, “If you gave everybody the same amount of money, some people would buy Cheetos … and some people would buy a Cheetos factory.”
