one legitimate concern about the growth of the gap between the rich and the poor is: what are we doing to help the poor? they're the ones who are in the harder spot.
it's tempting to think we can help them by re-distributing through taxes. it's tempting to think we can help them through welfare. it's tempting to think, internationally, that we can help through ODA. but those methods have been tried and found wanting. as much as i'd rather help the poor more dramatically and more directly, capitalism and trickle down appear to work the best with the least bad side-effects.
kind of like what Churchill said about Democracy: the worst, except for every other way...
What's your opinion? Does trickle-down work? Is there a better way to help poor people than trying to create wealth and help the economy expand in a way where the rich do in fact get richer?
10 comments:
Off the cuff, I'd say that trickle-down is the system-wide backdrop that we supplement locally through good works in our own communities.
Figuratively: ceteris paribus, rising tides lift all boats. Except some boats have holes in them, and some people are treading water. What can we do to mend the boats and offer a hand within a reasonable radius of our view?
This bears some relation, perhaps, to Galbraith's notion of "case" vs "insular" poverty:
"Case poverty is not remedied because the specific inadequacy preclude employment and participation in the general advance. Insular poverty is not directly alleviated because the advance does not remove the specific frustrations of the environment to which the people of these areas are subject."
Galbraith is good and out-of-fashion, I suspect, and therefore worth considering. He has the added distinction of being roundly disliked by Friedman.
Perhaps part of the problem/solution is deciding whether poverty should be described in relative or absolute terms. Does your yacht make my seaworthy dinghy poor, or just less wealthy?
Does that make sense? I'm not a student of economics, so this may be totally mixed up. And I suppose a response of this length is best posted to, say, my own blog. But it made the last few minutes of my lunch break stimulating :-)
The "trickle down" crowd depends on lazie fair government policies that do not work at the end of the day. Welfare may not work either. I like work incentives, and government capital investment incentives, so people can help themselves more effectively. That can, and should involve some tax policy and wealth distrbution.
Unless we spread the definition so far as to include Marxists, and in fact consider those Marxists to be our baseline definition of the word, no "liberal" I've ever known has advocated keeping the rich from getting richer. As a non-recovering liberal -- why anyone should feel the need to "recover" from liberalism I don't know -- what troubles me are economic formulations that suggest (a) that making the rich richer is the best (or worse, the only) way to help the poor, or (b) that helping the poor to do better is of no import in the first place.
That said, I'm hard pressed to think of a time in history where "trickle-down" actually worked.
In your youth?! HA!
Economics. The one proven science the center and stage left refuse to embrace. Something to do with ego, condescension and the desire to enslave other people. Murder them and use their body parts too. ;~\
We can redistribute wealth to allow our citizens to live in frugal comfort. Indeed, we must, as that is our Christian obligation.
But if we wish to allow all men to live in frugal comfort -- to lift up the entire world -- that means focusing on economic growth. That, too, is our Christian obligation.
Realizing both of these mandates - as well as the fact that economic growth drives up income inequality -- means that fighting inequality is a chimera. "Frugal comfort" is not achieved by envy, and focusing on lowering the inequality coefficient does a lot to sustain misery throughout the Gap.
1st, thanks one and all for the good comments. if i'd answered sooner, perhaps i could have multiplied them ;-(
Jason: interesting distinction b/t case and insular
Jim: laissez-faire doesn't work: true. welfare doesn't seem to work either.
Jaq: but isn't it true that liberals are the chief ones who decry the rich getting richer?
i agree with you on the troubling economic formulations.
(as to why i have felt the need to recover from liberalism, it doesn't work, in my judgment)
GLASR: you are a nut ;-)
Dan: Xian duty should certainly have a place in this discussion.
I don't think liberals decry the rich getting richer on the basis that they shouldn't get richer at all. We decry the idea that all that is needed to solve all problems is to just step back and allow the rich to get richer, because through all of history, it just hasn't ever worked out that way.
As for your judgment that liberalism doesn't work, I'm not sure what this means. No one ever promised that liberal programs or policies would eliminate the existence of poor people -- and in all the centuries before liberalism arose, the fact of being poor was far, far worse than it is now. Replacing the social safety net with free-market ideology would be disastrous for millions, and anyway, we've already done it. I'm not eager to resurrect the robber-baron era. And economic mobility is actually decreasing now, after twenty-plus years of rolling back liberalism. When's the trickling going to start?
(Now, I'll agree that specific programs work less well over time for various reasons, but that's not the same thing as saying that liberalism has failed.)
I agree welfare does not work. Incentives and personal ownership might. That is how tax dollars should be used.
it is interesting to think on poverty on a base-level, if one adds a 'god' into the equation. the christian god decided to be poverty ridden throughout his earthly career as god, and interestingly enough allowed judas to be the money keeper of the clan. if one also allows oneself to think that a religious viewpoint on finances has no left or right, it even becomes more complex. it is impossible for a person to believe that a human being can lavish riches on himself and his family, and then expect anything in return in an afterlife, being the one true reason people have remained hungry and desolate. the best thing these people can hope for is a true cold death. if the latter is the case, then good for the rich, they deserve their spoils, they figured at least one thing out. if the case is eternal, then they're fucked. (figuratively speaking).
sorry to be so heavy-handed, delete appropriately
great point about Jesus and $, td.
but people not eating and people being rich is not a zero-sum answer.
however, it's obviously true people who love money will spend eternity without God.
self-righteous warning: i love ya', t, but you live more richly than 90% of the world's population, not least in PBR, so watch it...
Post a Comment