barriomulas.com - Against the Redistribution of Wealth

I am not a proponent of wealth distribution. I believe in the right to wealth but under the condition that there exist the rights to accessibility to acquire it as well. I believe that it is necessary in society for there to exist an upper and lower class in order to provide an incentive for social mobility (supposing that social mobility exists). If there exists a means to obtain the wealth through innovation and hard work then I see little justification in the poor masses stealing wealth from the rich in a move to redistribute it.

Stockman makes a good point when he said that "People who would benefit from an income redisistribution plan in, say, the United States, are thought by the proponents of such plan to be victims of an unjust distribution of wealth. No such plans are ever presented to the effect that U.S. citizens are more morally deserving than, say, citizens of Asian and African countries. Yet distributive justice on a worldwide scale would surely result in most of these "victims" losing rather than gaining wealth." Even a worker on minimum wage in a poor U.S. city has much more wealth than a peasant in Afghanistan.

Before wealth can be put in the hands of those who don't have it, they first must know what to do wish such wealth. Somebody once told me that, "if you were to give everybody in the ghetto a million dollars, there would still be ghettos." A comic portrayal of such can be seen in David Chapell's famous skit on Black reparations. (The video can be seen here.) Puerto Ricans are familiar with the sight of shanties and degraded homes with Direct TV dishes mounted on the roofs or new cars parked in the drive way. Another amusing picture can one sent to me by a friend in Venezuela of Direct TV dishes popping out from under the highway, where shanties obviously lay (pictured right).

Our society teaches us by default use our wealth on consumerism. Bureaucrats and elected officials tell us to use our tax cuts on purchasing consumer goods, and not for savings, investment, or to start businesses. Schooling is aimed towards discipline, following orders, getting a job and keeping it instead of creating jobs of your own. Interestingly enough, I'm sure that once a citizen is educated on how to use wealth, it won't even be necessarily to re-distribute wealth for he will already be able to use the little he has.

Some might argue my stance on the need for certain public industries (such as health and education) is a method of redistribution. I would differ. Such is simply a safeguard to assure that citizens have the tools to obtain social mobility.