Have And Have Not Economics

We live in the "income equality" era. That is, people seem to worry if the fellow or lady next to them makes more money or has more income than them. Their idea is that people should all have the same amount of material wealth, a folly that used to be considered foolish but is now actually an ideal for the blind who believe it. Today the world is built on capitalism and free markets, and the truth is that for capitalism to work  there must always be an unequal distribution of wealth. In fact, the ideal of a free market economy is that some will be fabulously rich while others live in poverty.

The problem in evaluating it is that some think that by taking from the rich and giving to the poor there will be along term equalization of wealth. The failure of communism, which professed that ideal, shows that when wealth is given to the poor, it ultimately emasculates the will for the poor to create their own wealth.  Instead, they simply sit and wait for government to give them more.

In a recent study by Oxfam (an organization whose claim is to fight to end poverty), it was found that the world's 10 biggest corporations together have revenue greater than the 180 poorest countries combined.  The study also found that the richest eight people on the planet have net wealth of $426 billion, the equivalent to what's held by the bottom half of the world's population. Since capitalism creates a big divide between the haves and have nots, this isn't entirely bad. Surely, the ideal is to boost the poor to a higher level, but how to do it is the great dilemma today.

Driven by technology that informs  and misinforms even the least educated in the world, people who are poor are fed up with feeling ignored by their political leaders, and millions are mobilizing to push for change so that they can become...well...rich. Hmmm I wonder if a poor man who becomes the billionaire then becomes a hater of those who are the poor?

Oxfam is urging world leaders to, "take urgent action to reduce inequality and the extreme concentration of wealth by ensuring that workers are paid a decent salary and by increasing taxes on both wealth and high incomes." It's the same old Robin Hood failed strategy of stealing from the rich and handing to the poor. Perhaps Oxfam should concentrate more on making the poor more able to create their own wealth, instead of being handed the wealth of others. Education and government that is not corrupt is a good starting point for that. It seems to me Oxfam and other "steal from the rich" advocates are spouting more about jealousy of the wealthy than about about breaking the cycle of poverty.

The fact is that the world overall is more equal now in wealth than it ever has been. Millions have been raised  from poverty. The perceived problem is a few people at the top are doing increasingly better, so much better that the mantra for curing poverty is "let's just take it from them". In my view, that's a recipe for even more poverty. Good luck to Oxfam and the other Robin Hood's out there. I think they will need plenty of it to bring "income equality" to the world..