"Wealth Inequality in America" Refuted
There's a video that's been going around the internet for the past few months called "Wealth Inequality in America," which essentially presents the argument that poverty is caused by an unfair distribution of wealth, and that wealth supposedly needs to be redistributed to make things more fair and balanced. You can watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijn...
However, the video fails to pass several tests of reason and logic (not to mention mathematics), and is thoroughly and totally refuted by the other video linked in the title. So if anyone happens to link you to "Wealth Inequality in America," just show them that.
Enjoy! :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijn...
However, the video fails to pass several tests of reason and logic (not to mention mathematics), and is thoroughly and totally refuted by the other video linked in the title. So if anyone happens to link you to "Wealth Inequality in America," just show them that.
Enjoy! :)
I won't argue that this is a "really, really bad analogy...." because I don't think that it is [a bad analogy]. However, I will suggest that the concept of what is "fair" in this analogy is unclear. Based on the sentence I started with (the quasi-last sentence of your example), the 2nd cousin had the "unfair advantage" of [being smart]... I find that to be interesting. It draws to many of the points made in Atlas Shrugged by stating that ability is something that society *needs* [in the Atlas definition of *need*] to distribute fairly.
Simply put, "ability" cannot be distributed fairly. When in doubt, check your premises. This logical conundrum can be solved simply by recognizing that ability cannot be distributed to begin with. To do this would require a number of illogical assumptions: 1) that everyone be perfectly educated with exactly the same information, 2) that everyone be as interested in learning that information as the next person, 3) that nobody is able to learn new information without everybody else knowing it at the same time etc etc.
Is the fact that the 2nd cousin placed his/her water wheel in a location ideal for running such a business unfair? I have made the argument that it is impossible to consider this as unfair. And, I take full responsibility for that claim.
Actually, my analogy is dead on. If you and I have the same amount of money, the same goods, the same level playing field... there will be no production. I need nothing from you, you need nothing from me. Placid, peaceful. Level. Even.
The energy of an economy is generated by inequality.
“There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the necessary condition of a free society, the second is a new form of servitude.”
– Friedrich August von Hayek
One of the major problems I see in modern American politics is that members of both the right and the left totally fail to distinguish between these two different kinds of equality, and so the left promotes them both, while the right attacks them both, and thus both parties lead us to different forms of tyranny.
How I feel about the two major parties is pretty much summed up by this picture:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v255/s...
Anyway, thanks for the compliment. ;)
Obviously forcing equal incomes on everyone would be unfair, but trying to apply the concepts of "equality" to topography and physics is just dumb.
Imagine you're an old-fashioned industrialist, from anywhere from 100 to 400 years ago. You want to power your textile factory, your metal works, your grain mill, whatever.
So you build it next to a lake, a nice, smooth, even lake, equally high everywhere, cause, y'know, that's fair.
You attach your waterwheel to the wall of the factory, with the paddles on the bottom dipped into the lake. You hook up your machines, and wait for them to start turning.
Nothing happens.
Your smarter second cousin twice removed (because he couldn't remove himself from you any farther than that), also wants to build his factory.
He builds his next to a nasty old river. The river isn't even; to the north it extends "upstream" (even the name smacks of class disparity) where the ground is higher, and to the south it extends "downstream" (see? The snooty water upstream is already looking down on the water downstream).
He attaches his water wheel to the wall of his factory, has the bottom paddles dipping into the river, and connects his machinery to the other end of the axle. He can hardly get out of the way before the wheel starts spinning and his machines start hammering and spinning and reciprocating, making him money.
This is, of course, unfair. The 2nd cousin had the unfair advantage of recognizing that there is no energy in a flat lake. (No doubt comrade Obama would pay Solyndra five hundred million thalers to build an energy converter to take power from the lake water and convert it into electricity... somehow...)