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Politics : The Castle -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (5853)	7/30/2011 7:46:13 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7936

Taxing and redistributing is pretty much zero sum. It can have positive indirect effects, but it can have negative indirect effects and the later are probably more likely, since your both rewarding being poor (which of course isn't always a choice, and typically isn't a simple specific choice but by giving to the poor in general you do reduce the incentive to escape poverty), and punishing productive effort. Yes redistribution can go to people who desperately need help and can't help themselves, and even if its in some ways negative sum, it might then be justified. Also government spending isn't all redistribution. But the majority of federal spending is redistribution. Much of the rest is for public goods, which (to the extent they are real public goods, and the spending is well targeted, which often isn't the case) can increase opportunity, but I'm not sure that's the type of opportunity spending your talking about. If it is, then I have no problem with a moderate amount of spending on important public goods, or at least not that much of a problem (I consider taxation to be theft or extortion, but I have something of a consequentialist or utilitarian streak to my moral view, and if the net consequences are clearly very positive then it can be a justified evil, I just put the bar high on taxing and spending, it not only has to be a net positive in ways that can be quantified, it has to be enough of a net positive to justify the evil of the taxation.) Can you expand on what you mean by " to the extent that you use the money to provide opportunity"?