I won’t be able to answer you to the full extent of your post. I don’t think we have much disagreement anyhow. I’ll just give you a quick reponse on this small portion.
[quoteuser=“Remrie Arrie”]
Fortunately a free market isn’t dictated by your Manual Labor to Income ratio.
[/quote]
I’m guessing this is directed at me. I’m not aware I had a such a ratio, heh. I was proposing to you that a wage isn’t such a ratio. One does not deserve money directly proportional to a amount of labor put in unless that has been a contractually agreed. Rather a wage is paid on achievemens of labor, as Mises pointed out.
[quoteuser=“Remrie Arrie”]
In a free market, efficiency in creating income is what creates wealth.
[/quote]
I suggest looking at this thread entitled Why Capitalism?, it has already been quoted once before in this thread.
[quoteuser=“DD5”]
confiscation vs. redistribution is not a mere ethical distinction between two sets of behaviors that essentially describe the same economic process, which I think is what you are alluding to. Nor is it a mere [superficial] semantical distinction.
The two types of action; confiscation and redistribution, are logically and praxelogocically distinct. The former must precede the latter.
Mises here says something similar:
Now in the market economy this alleged dualism of two independent processes, that of production and that of distribution, does not exist. There is only one process going on. Goods are not first produced and then distributed. There is no such thing as an appropriation of portions out of a stock of ownerless goods. The products come into existence as somebody’s property. If one wants to distribute them, one must first confiscate them. It is certainly very easy for the governmental apparatus of compulsion and coercion to embark upon confiscation and expropriation. But this does not prove that a durable system of economic affairs can be built upon such confiscation and expropriation. (HA)
[/quote]
I see. Thank you for the HA reference.
I was alluding to the difference in redistribution between confiscation and voluntarism, minus the ethical distinction. It could be argued that voluntary charity, as opposed to wealth confiscating welfarism, is more well equipped at appropraiting it’s aquired wealth (donations) to the true desires of the disfortunate. While the State will plead and allocate wealth to the greatest special interest groups in their political pursuits. A behavior which is removed from reality and the market.
Say I argue to someone that redistribution of wealth (a straight transfer of cash from Person A to Person B), ethics of the action aside, does no good. I say it’s because Person A won’t be able to spend that money to buy clothes for his children, and that may inevitably increase unemployment in the clothing sector of the market. Person A could also save that money in the bank and make it easier for others to take out loans.
What would I say if someone came back at me with, “Well, then Person B would have the money to invest or spend, so it equals out to the process being done, just by different people.”
(His own argument says it doesn’t matter who has the money; so why give it to person B in the first place? He’s ignoring that B has a gain for no effort and A, for all efforts, has a loss.)
Yes I agree, there is no justification for redistribution of wealth by force but lets get back to the original argument.
We are discussing the argument from the government that :
“It makes no difference to the economy if the owner of the money spends it or if it is given to person B to spend- both lead to stimulating the economy”. —so they say.
I and others also argued that whenever the government is the middle man in this redistribution it distorts the economy.
We can discuss how morally wrong it is to take from person A by force to give to person B on another thread but leaving out that argument- even if person A voluntarily gives some or all of his money to person B (like people give money to churches, or Haiti or the Boy Scouts…
( I guess the argument becomes does voluntary donations have negative effects on the free market.)
does it not also stimulate the economy?
I contend no, as long as you voluntarily contribute to your favorite causes you are not as visibly impacting the free markets, but it still distributes resources to inefficient and non productive recipients- even though it is within your right to do so.
And yes, they will use the money to buy things like food for homeless or tents for Haiti, but they would spend that money with less care than their own earned income.