We're gonna need a bigger pie!
The new world order that has taken over in Washington has changed the game.
America has classically been about win-win. I get my 10 acres and a mule and so do you. Plenty of land and prosperity was mine (and yours) for the taking. Just apply effort and sacrifice and your children will do better than you. The pie just keeps getting bigger and bigger. As all boats rise in high tide, some measure of prosperity floats even the least productive and ambitious, as those who succeed give charity and a hand up out of a feeling of social connectivity and spirituality. These social goods are often served with a side dish of sympathy and encouragement and also with empathy when bad things have clearly happened to a good person.
In hard times, the tide went out and it seemed that charity and the hand up weren't enough for the poorest of us. The small pie of the economy had to be cut up by Washington, out of necessity, for the many good people who had fallen into hard times.
As the times improved, however, the concept of a redistributing the pie began to take hold. Why should those who earn bigger pieces get to keep them, to use them as they see fit? Aren't we all one nation, one society, one family at the dinner table? The social welfare programs just kept on coming, as government kept trying to find new ways to redistribute wealth. Income could be redistributed by taxation as could overall wealth by estate/death taxes. Land could be redistributed by eminent domain. More recently, we got new redistributions (recovery acts, bank and private enterprise "bailouts") and a new health plan.
In spite of the above, the American economy just kept growing as those people with ideas and drive kept raising the tide.
Now our leaders want to make the pie smaller. Regulations, fines, lawsuits. Taxes that prevent growth. Cap and trade, bans on drilling, and other barriers to economic growth will begin to shrink the pie in a land made fat and lazy with high expectations. People were told they deserved a house even if they couldn't afford it. When the chickens came home to roost, there was not enough money to redistribute to keep everyone in their homes.
There can only be one happy ending: allow the pie to grow by reducing regulations, limiting liability and accepting the downside. This will raise the tide again.
The government appears to be determined to have a win-lose scenario but it actually is creating a lose-lose nation. By redistributing to the poor, it would seem that the poor are winning and the rich are losing, but in reality, as the rich have to deal with the shrinking pie, the poor will have less opportunity, and the tide will continue to fall.
A less happy ending, but still better than the lose-lose scenario currently underway in Washington would be to take smaller pieces from the producers of wealth and give less to those in need. This would create the prisoner's dilemma, with the producers having less than they could have if growth was not fettered by the government and with the entitled getting less than they could have if the government allowed the pie to grow. This would create less loss on both sides than our current direction.
In summary, the poor benefit more from a growing pie than from redistribution. As long as the rich have the opportunity to grow the pie faster than the government can redistribute their wealth, we will move forward as a nation. This basic check and balance was once controlled by the invisible hand of charity and true need, but is now under the heavy hand of the government with taxation and entitlement. Charity tends to fail in the short term, as needs can arise when charity is limited (small pie scenario, economic depression), entitlements fail in the long term, as unlimited ability to take from producers creates a culture of needy entitlement. We have choices: poverty for all with everyone grabbing pieces of a shrinking pie; population contraction with a smaller pie feeding less people reasonably well; or a bigger pie.
America has classically been about win-win. I get my 10 acres and a mule and so do you. Plenty of land and prosperity was mine (and yours) for the taking. Just apply effort and sacrifice and your children will do better than you. The pie just keeps getting bigger and bigger. As all boats rise in high tide, some measure of prosperity floats even the least productive and ambitious, as those who succeed give charity and a hand up out of a feeling of social connectivity and spirituality. These social goods are often served with a side dish of sympathy and encouragement and also with empathy when bad things have clearly happened to a good person.
In hard times, the tide went out and it seemed that charity and the hand up weren't enough for the poorest of us. The small pie of the economy had to be cut up by Washington, out of necessity, for the many good people who had fallen into hard times.
As the times improved, however, the concept of a redistributing the pie began to take hold. Why should those who earn bigger pieces get to keep them, to use them as they see fit? Aren't we all one nation, one society, one family at the dinner table? The social welfare programs just kept on coming, as government kept trying to find new ways to redistribute wealth. Income could be redistributed by taxation as could overall wealth by estate/death taxes. Land could be redistributed by eminent domain. More recently, we got new redistributions (recovery acts, bank and private enterprise "bailouts") and a new health plan.
In spite of the above, the American economy just kept growing as those people with ideas and drive kept raising the tide.
Now our leaders want to make the pie smaller. Regulations, fines, lawsuits. Taxes that prevent growth. Cap and trade, bans on drilling, and other barriers to economic growth will begin to shrink the pie in a land made fat and lazy with high expectations. People were told they deserved a house even if they couldn't afford it. When the chickens came home to roost, there was not enough money to redistribute to keep everyone in their homes.
There can only be one happy ending: allow the pie to grow by reducing regulations, limiting liability and accepting the downside. This will raise the tide again.
The government appears to be determined to have a win-lose scenario but it actually is creating a lose-lose nation. By redistributing to the poor, it would seem that the poor are winning and the rich are losing, but in reality, as the rich have to deal with the shrinking pie, the poor will have less opportunity, and the tide will continue to fall.
A less happy ending, but still better than the lose-lose scenario currently underway in Washington would be to take smaller pieces from the producers of wealth and give less to those in need. This would create the prisoner's dilemma, with the producers having less than they could have if growth was not fettered by the government and with the entitled getting less than they could have if the government allowed the pie to grow. This would create less loss on both sides than our current direction.
In summary, the poor benefit more from a growing pie than from redistribution. As long as the rich have the opportunity to grow the pie faster than the government can redistribute their wealth, we will move forward as a nation. This basic check and balance was once controlled by the invisible hand of charity and true need, but is now under the heavy hand of the government with taxation and entitlement. Charity tends to fail in the short term, as needs can arise when charity is limited (small pie scenario, economic depression), entitlements fail in the long term, as unlimited ability to take from producers creates a culture of needy entitlement. We have choices: poverty for all with everyone grabbing pieces of a shrinking pie; population contraction with a smaller pie feeding less people reasonably well; or a bigger pie.
posted by DocBrain at
4:09 AM
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