| Baalzamon said: Forced reformation? Sorry, but I don't believe it will happen. The only way to ever fix the income gap from continuing to grow would be to tax the rich much more, and proceed to redistribute this wealth to the "poorer" people. This ought to go over really well (I'm sure some people would just love it). The ironic thing is, if you do something like this, many of the people that originally complained in the worst place would be worse off than they currently are (according to economic theory). But, since all people seem to care about is that it isn't fair that their neighbors make more money than they do, perhaps they would be happy in a society where more wealth is redistributed to the poor. |
Why is there always this stupid false dichotomy in people's views? Why is it always "redistribute wealth" and "let the rich get richer" as the only two options?
The world is far more nuanced than that. It is possible to come up with a tax system that has even extreme levels of tax for the very rich, but that actually encourages economic growth and boosts investment. The result ends up being that the rich don't make quite as much money, but they still make loads of it, and everyone else makes significantly more.
What's more, the same types of solution can also solve government debt, without in any way depressing the economy. It has just one caveat - the tax money has to be spent on things that feed back into the economy. It is possible to analyse the net impact on both debt and the economy of anything that the government spends money on. Some of these, such as spending on preventative medicine, actually saves the government money, without negatively impacting the economy. Others, such as infrastructure spending, can actually boost the economy while being a net neutral effect on debt - that is, neither increasing or decreasing either a surplus or deficit relative to not spending the money.
It sounds counterintuitive, but that's because everyone focuses on the idiotic false dichotomy, and insists on simplifying everything down to soundbites. The world is more complicated than that, and it's about time that people stopped treating it like it's so simple. And I aim this comment at people on both sides of the traditional split.
