l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 By THOMAS SOWELL
The recently discovered tape on which Barack Obama said back in 1998 that he
believes in redistribution is not really news. He said the same thing to
Joe the Plumber four years ago.
But the tape's surfacing may serve a useful purpose if it gets people to
thinking about the consequences of redistribution.
Those who talk glibly about redistribution often act as if people are just
inert objects that can be placed here and there, like pieces on a chess
board, to carry out some grand design.
But if human beings have their own responses to government policies, then we
cannot blithely assume that government policies will have the effect
intended.
The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set
out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The
communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.
In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to
make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union
confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many
people died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler's
Holocaust in the 1940s.
How can that be? It is not complicated. You can only confiscate the wealth
that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and
that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is
going to be confiscated.
Farmers in the Soviet Union cut how much time and effort they invested in
growing their crops, when they realized that the government was going to
take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm animals
that they would normally keep tending and feeding while raising them to
maturity.
People in industry are not inert objects either. Moreover, unlike farmers,
industrialists are not tied to the land in a particular country.
Russian aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky could take his expertise to America
and produce his planes and helicopters thousands of miles away from his
native land. Financiers are even less tied down, especially today, when vast
sums of money can be dispatched electronically to any part of the world.
If confiscatory policies can produce counterproductive repercussions in a
dictatorship, they are even harder to carry out in a democracy.
A dictatorship can suddenly swoop down and grab whatever it wants. But a
democracy must first have public discussions and debates. Those who are
targeted for confiscation can see the handwriting on the wall, and act
accordingly.
Among the most valuable assets in any nation are the knowledge, skills and
productive experience that economists call "human capital."
When successful people with much human capital leave the country, either
voluntarily or because of hostile governments or hostile mobs whipped up by
demagogues exploiting envy, lasting damage can be done to the economy they
leave behind.
Fidel Castro's confiscatory policies drove successful Cubans to flee to
Florida, often leaving much of their physical wealth behind. But poverty-
stricken refugees rose to prosperity again in Florida, while the wealth they
left behind in Cuba did not prevent the people there from being poverty
stricken under Castro.
The lasting wealth the refugees took with them was their human capital.
We have all heard the old saying that giving a man a fish feeds him only for
a day, while teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime.
Redistributionists give him a fish and leave him dependent on the government
for more fish in the future.
If the redistributionists were serious, what they would want to distribute
is the ability to fish, or to be productive in other ways. Knowledge is one
of the few things that can be distributed to people without reducing the
amount held by others.
That would better serve the interests of the poor, but it would not serve
the interests of politicians who want to exercise power, and to get the
votes of people who are dependent on them.
Barack Obama can endlessly proclaim his slogan of "Forward," but what he is
proposing is going backwards to policies that have failed repeatedly in
countries around the world. Yet, to many people who cannot be bothered to
stop and think, redistribution sounds good. | P*********0
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【在 l****z 的大作中提到】
: By THOMAS SOWELL
: The recently discovered tape on which Barack Obama said back in 1998 that he
: believes in redistribution is not really news. He said the same thing to
: Joe the Plumber four years ago.
: But the tape's surfacing may serve a useful purpose if it gets people to
: thinking about the consequences of redistribution.
: Those who talk glibly about redistribution often act as if people are just
: inert objects that can be placed here and there, like pieces on a chess
: board, to carry out some grand design.
: But if human beings have their own responses to government policies, then we
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