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At 10:32 AM -0400 on 9/21/02, Gary Lawrence Murphy wrote:
> Cool --- I wasn't aware that the US had lifted it's population out
> of poverty! When did this happen? I wonder where the media gets the
> idea that the wealth gap is widening and deepening...
All the world loves a smartass...
:-).
Seriously. Look at he life expectancy and human carrying capacity of
this continent before the Europeans got here. Look at it now. Even
for descendants of the original inhabitants. Even for the descendents
of slaves, who were brought here by force.
More stuff, cheaper. That's progress.
Poverty, of course, is not relative. It's absolute. Disparity in
wealth has nothing to do with it.
It's like saying that groups have rights, when, in truth, only
individuals do. Like group rights, "disparity" in wealth is
statistical sophistry.
Besides, even if you can't help the distribution, industrial wealth
is almost always transitory, and so is relative poverty, even when
there are no confiscatory death-taxes. The 20th anniversary Forbes
400 just came out, and only a few tens of people are still there
since 1982, a time which had significantly higher marginal taxes on
wealth, income, and inheritance than we do now. More to the point,
they're nowhere near the top.
I'll take those odds. It is only when neofeudalism reasserts itself,
in the form of government regulation, confiscatory taxes, legislated
monopoly, corporate welfare, "non-profit" neoaristocratic tax dodges,
and legalized labor extortion that we get slowdowns in progress, like
what happened in Fabian-era Britain, or 1970's USA.
In fact, it is in countries where wealth is the most "unfairly"
distributed, that you get the most improvement in the general --
economic -- welfare. More stuff cheaper, fewer people dying, more
people living longer.
I'll take those odds as well. People take greater risks when the
returns are higher, improving the lot of us all as a result.
Cheers,
RAH
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'