What would the income distribution look like with no redistribution?

[BasketCase]

How broadly are we defining income redistribution?

Doesn't matter. Regardless of definition, all attempts at income redistribution have always failed, except one: learning to fish for oneself.

What Sill is trying to say is that while it better to teach a man to fish, one also must make sure the man is properly fed until he has properly learned to fish.

Yet, as history has already shown us, human beings don't make sure the man is properly fed until he's learned to fish. It doesn't matter if you believe they should; they don't, and nothing any of you say or do will make them do it.

The poor can't depend on the rich or on anybody else. The only dependable thing the poor can do is to get an education (and do it themselves, because they clearly can't depend on government education), and make themselves rich.

At which point we run into yet another problem: the minute a poor person pulls himself up by his own knickers and becomes rich, he becomes One Of The Enemy. HE'S A RICH PERSON!! WE MUST DESTROY HIM!!! It's a self-defeating cycle the progressives have got themselves stuck in.

Mexico doesn't subsidise its citizens to leave (in fact I'm pretty sure the Mexican government is pretty pissed off about this). Mexican people do this because they are incentivized by the wealth of the US, so in a way, the US government is subsidising Mexican immigration by its sheer economic prowess.

However, economic emigrants often benefit the country they are leaving, as they usually send remittances to family who stay, thus leading to more demand in their home country (Mexico in this case) and thus incentivizing production in Mexico as well.

Gremlin in the fridge. There's no verifiable evidence that this is helping Mexico. Is Mexico catching up to the United States? Is the playing field levelling off between American rich and Mexican poor? NO. Mexico is falling further and further behind.

The only way you can arrive at this conclusion is by arguing semantics that show that you don't understand the question or the problem.

Ad hominem. Debate fail.

I conclude that income redistribution doesn't work, by observing it in the real world and noticing that it has always failed.

 

[Princeps]

Yet, as history has already shown us, human beings don't make sure the man is properly fed until he's learned to fish. It doesn't matter if you believe they should; they don't, and nothing any of you say or do will make them do it.

Yes, actually we do provide unemployment benefits and re-education opportunities to the unemployed in various countries in Europe and elsewhere. In fact, most communities do provide something for people who may, for example, no longer be able to support themselves with obsolete skills.

What "HISTORY HAS SHOWN US ALL!!111111" is actually that the willingness of societies to help for the less fortunate or poor or whatever you may call them, is generally connected to that culture's ability to help them. In pre-industrial often malthusian societies, material limitations are very soon encountered when communities try to help for their non-working poor. People already had large families of their own and had to work hard to feed them. Modern wealthy societies are astronomically more productive and we can and do help the impoverished and unemployed.

As for the rest of your post, I have no idea where you come up with these nonsense arguments. Every thread is full of them, coming from you.

 

[Dachs]

A good barometer of whether somebody actually knows something about history is how often he or she pulls out the "history has shown us" canard. The more often one uses it, the less historical knowledge one tends to have.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

A good barometer of whether somebody actually knows something about history is how often he or she pulls out the "history has shown us" canard. The more often one uses it, the less historical knowledge one tends to have.

How come ? Is it that when discussing topic x , history tends not to show us much about x, or simply that you have observed co-incidentaly that the quotation tends to be followed by gibberish ?

 

[Dachs]

I think the most appropriate response to that would be "yes".

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

I think the most appropriate response to that would be "yes".

Refreshing from a "most appropriate response to that would be no" kinda guy

 

[Mise]

Of course. Even a brief glance at history will show you that.

 

[JollyRoger]

History has shown us that a good barometer of whether somebody actually knows something about history is how often he or she pulls out the "history has shown us" canard. The more often one uses it, the less historical knowledge one tends to have.

Filled in the hidden phrase.

 

[Dachs]

Man, Mise already beat you to it by two whole hours. You're getting old, man.

 

[El_Machinae]

Couldn't number crunching correlations work decently here? % of GDP taken by gov't, % used in entitlements, vs. GINI?

 

[Leoreth]

I think Mise's graph from the first page was already pretty conclusive, at least for the UK, and one would need to be a, ahem, basket case to not see that.

 

[Farm Boy]

To the OP question, the income distribution would be very great, like in kleptcratic LDCs. Income distribution depends on the economic and political power distribution, and a desperate workforce has no power to demand rising wages. Or to resist wages decreases.

Doesn't most of our historical evidence suggest that in totally unregulated/untaxed capitalism wages stagnate just barely above the line of subsistence?

 

[Akka]

I've read many times that the rich in the US have huge salaries while the poor have tiny miserable wages. That doesn't seem to be true, or at least it's not any more true than for other rich countries.

And yeah, people do focus on executive compensation. How many times have we heard of the German CEOs who get paid a fraction of their American counterparts, while the German workers still make good pay? Turns out wages in Germany are more unequal than in the US. While of course I've never seen anyone state otherwise straight up, I've certainly seen it implied.

Considering you just have to type "wealth disparity" in Google to have "by country" proposed and end up on this page, which shows that US has twice as big income disparity than Germany (and is in fact right into the "Third-world level of inequality"), you don't seem to have put a lot of effort (that is, any) in searching the actual truth of the statement - or I've missed/misunderstood what you are talking about.

 

[Leoreth]

Luiz was surprised at the pre-redistribution differences, while your link is post-redistribution.

 

[Mise]

The link actually has pre-redistribution differences as well, which clearly show that the US has less pre-tax/redistribution inequality than Germany. It's basically the same as France. And actually I think it's taken from the same source that Luiz linked to earlier.

Not to put too fine a point on it

 

[luiz]

Considering you just have to type "wealth disparity" in Google to have "by country" proposed and end up on this page, which shows that US has twice as big income disparity than Germany (and is in fact right into the "Third-world level of inequality"), you don't seem to have put a lot of effort (that is, any) in searching the actual truth of the statement - or I've missed/misunderstood what you are talking about.

What the other guys said, Akka.

If you read my first post on the subject you'll see I said this:

So the higher concentration of income in the US is explained by lower taxes and welfare transfers, not wage differences.

Give me some credit, man.

 

[Cutlass]

Doesn't most of our historical evidence suggest that in totally unregulated/untaxed capitalism wages stagnate just barely above the line of subsistence?

Often. But I think there are a whole mass more variables involved that make it really hard to control for and see the whole picture.

 

[Farm Boy]

Often. But I think there are a whole mass more variables involved that make it really hard to control for and see the whole picture.

Ok, wanted to make sure I wasn't mixing up things I read a long time ago.

We're talking about a complex issue so I guess I thought it was assumed that correlation does not equal causation, or at least causation in full, while remaining a pertinent and valuable thing to consider. I am confused as to why we have half-degenerated to e-peening off the logical fallacy chart in the last page or so. That is valueless(not addressed at you Cutlass).

 

[Gustave5436]

Doesn't matter. Regardless of definition, all attempts at income redistribution have always failed, except one: learning to fish for oneself.

It's hard to fish when you're not allowed anywhere near the water.

So long as the waters are monopolized under the private control of an elite few, it is inevitable that everyone else will be disenfranchised. Surely you see the problem here? You're telling people to go fishing, when the lake is under private dominion. Without legal access to the lake, the hungry populace are then dependent on the patronage of the jerk who saw fit to appropriate the common inheritance of man - the Earth's natural resources - to be his own private swimming pool.

 

[BasketCase]

Yes, actually we do provide unemployment benefits and re-education opportunities to the unemployed in various countries in Europe and elsewhere.

We try. The volume of anger and protests at the amount of said assistance (i.e. the demand for more) is the proof that our charity falls far short.

A good barometer of whether somebody actually knows something about history is how often he or she pulls out the "history has shown us" canard. The more often one uses it, the less historical knowledge one tends to have.

Ad hominem = debate fail. By the way? I'm not a historian, I'm a software developer. I don't need to know jack squat about history; I simply look it up in books and on web sites. All efforts to take from the rich and give to the poor have failed to elevate the poor.

It's hard to fish when you're not allowed anywhere near the water.

So long as the waters are monopolized under the private control of an elite few, it is inevitable that everyone else will be disenfranchised. Surely you see the problem here? You're telling people to go fishing, when the lake is under private dominion.

The figurative lake is not under private dominion. Portions of it are, but the planet is simply too big for anybody to monopolize the whole thing.

The actual cause of the problem, rather than monopolization by a few, is the fact that there are simply too many people. When there are too many people fishing, the lake runs out of fish. Overpopulation is the real cause of most of the world's problems.

Simply demanding that all kings and queens relinquish their crowns is never going to happen. You can demand it all you like; as we're seeing with the Occupy movement, such demands are either ignored or met with batons and tasers (or in extreme cases such as China, with bullets). People who demand fairness from the rich spend their entire lives waiting, they never get it, and their lives are wasted. The only thing for it is for the poor to find a way to take care of themselves rather than relying on fairness.