Cover of Free to Choose: A Personal StatementRead related » The Magic Bullet
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“We have lowered the marginal rates on high incomes four times since the inception of the income tax — in the 1920s, the 1960s, the 1980s, and the 2000s. In each case, the result was a much more prosperous national economy, lower unemployment, and higher tax revenues for the government. If you do A (lower marginal rates) four times, and four times, despite differing economic circumstances, B (increased prosperity) happens, a rational person might conclude, at least tentatively, that B is the result of A. Not liberals. As I said, high tax rates on the rich is a religious principle with the left. If the poor have to suffer because of it, so be it.”
— JOHN STEELE GORDON - 12.12.2010 (commentarymagazine.com)
Read related » Why populism isn't popular
[This related article is recommended in its entirety.]
“[Slate's Timothy] Noah's thorough examination of the Great Divergence [widening of the gulf separating the rich from the rest] suffers by eliding the basic distinction between inequality and destitution. The truly destitute are poor in absolute terms, not because their finances, vis-a-vis the affluent, are so meager. If Obama somehow discovered the policy formula to double every family's disposable income during his administration, millions of people's economic anxieties would be greatly alleviated. However, the "problem" of economic inequality would not be mitigated even slightly. The ratios between a New York Times janitor's take-home pay, Noah's and Warren Buffett's would be the same at the end of Obama's presidency as they were at the beginning.”
— November 29, 2010|By William Voegeli (latimes.com)
The green delusion polluting the left is not about carbon footprints or tree-hugging hippies. The green delusion is envy.
The Obama and His ilk who claim to champion the welfare of the poor via redistribution of other people's wealth are doing nothing of the sort, either knowingly or not. They are in fact focusing on Warren Buffet's lawn and envying its finer shade of green.
The delusional aspect stems from ignorance of fundamental economic principals, among which is that wealth creation is not a zero-sum game. If Buffet's lawn is greener than Obama's, it does not follow that Joe the Plumber's lawn is necessarily riddled with crab grass. And if Obama declares that Buffet's grass may not exceed in splendor Obama's smoke, it also doesn't follow that the plumber's grass will miraculously assume the quality of a putting green.
"The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if the exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another." — Free to Choose, by Milton and Rose Friedman, p.13.What the do-gooders at the NYT like to think is that their own feelings of envy comprise the moral imperative to act on behalf of the helpless. The so-called "helpless", however, would most likely prefer to have the opportunity to improve their own lot in a thriving economy, without the stifling and meddlesome interference of the elitist "progressive" left.
Post 1,511 The Green Delusion Pollutes the Left
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