esk@wucs.UUCP (Paul V. Torek) (02/27/85)
[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 Don't hit that 'r' key! Send any mail to this address, not the sender's.
laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (03/01/85)
Funny, I don't see *that* problem in Friedman's argument. To say that ``I want the poor better off'' and to say ``I find poverty distressing'' amounts to the same thing for me. The hole that you find in my argument only exists if you think that ``wealth redistribution'' is the sort of thing that one can compell one's neighbours to do if one is in the majority. I have no qualms about prohibiting my neighbours from assaulting myself or each other, but I have yet to see an argument that holds water as to why ``a right to impose the beliefs of the majority on wealth redistribution'' should rank up there with ``a right to life'' and ``a right to liberty''. . . unless one hol;ds that the wealth that needs redistributing was acquired illegally (ie through offenses agaisnt such rights) which does not seem to be what is asserted about taxation. [Not to say that some on this net have not asserted exactly this -- I just do not think that this is what is being used as a rationale for taxation in either of our countries.] Laura Creighton utzoo!laura