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If they're wrong ( and oh so many are ) , "Adam Smith's sycophants" have a fundamental reading comprehension problem. He's nominally a tepid-right, Virginia sch

If they're wrong ( and oh so many are ) , "Adam Smith's sycophants" have a fundamental reading comprehension problem. He's nominally a tepid-right, Virginia school economist, but Russ Roberts frames "Wealth of Nations" as a drill down of "Theory of Moral Sentiments". Smith spends barrels of ink decrying rents. Many, many people who espouse Smith just cherry-pick reinforcement from him. Now: having said that, I am no progressive. I'd actually be for redistribution if it could be shown to work; we can't even get insurance payments fo people from Hurricane Sandy right. There is just always a paucity of philsopher-kings. We're just not that smart. It takes decades for the permanent bureaucratic class to debug these things - look at the history of the relativelty simple ( and possibly brilliant ) ag. subsidy regime. I don't think we have a good empirical handle on aggression. I've known too many wealthy people who I would not turn my back on. I've known too many saintly/salt-of-the-earth/shirt-off-their-back poor people. The proportions do not favor material comfort having much of a seat at the table. The cultural more of "crushing people" kinda looks like a thing now, and it makes me modestly angry. I view Smith as one element of the (very important) Scots Enlightenment, along with Hume, James Watt and all the others. Where those guys are/were right, they're still right. That's my bias, though.

tim333 10y ago
In practice altering the distribution of wealth and income doesn't usually involve taking from A and giving to B. It usually is more taking from the rich and spending the money on free education and the like. You can also put taxes on large estates, give subsidised houses / loans to the less well off and so on. There used to be quite a lot of that between WW2 and Thatcher getting in in the UK with tax rates as high as 98%. The period of this song https://youtu.be/pzU2owPegHE?t=23s https://youtu.be/pzU2owPegHE?t=23s
- jedmeyers 10y ago
  And also the period of this album https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwfpcTYv7Ts&list=PL7sBCGkQNm0BfEyGIbo_hz7V8ZxKeYlMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwfpcTYv7Ts&list=PL7sBCGkQNm... 'Exile' in the title is not a coincidence.
- xbmcuser 10y ago
  Overall even the rich benefit from higher taxes if the middle class had more income today most of them would have been spending it on things the rich provide. Today by squeezing the middle class and lower middle class they might be making money but over long term with the middle class having lower disposable income they will be spending less so hurt the higher classes as well.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  In general, if you subsidize something you get more of it and it costs more. Of course there may be some odd current in the river which makes this untrue - an example is bulk grain subsidies in the US, which prices risk of underproduction way down. IMO, this is like "if you need 4 GB RAM , get 8 just to be safe". Indeed, in both housing and in education, we've subsidized it, there is more of it and it costs more.
  - kilotaras 10y ago
    >in both housing and in education, we've subsidized it, there is more of it and it costs more. What about all of Europe that has almost free education?

tim333 10y ago

In practice altering the distribution of wealth and income doesn't usually involve taking from A and giving to B. It usually is more taking from the rich and spending the money on free education and the like. You can also put taxes on large estates, give subsidised houses / loans to the less well off and so on. There used to be quite a lot of that between WW2 and Thatcher getting in in the UK with tax rates as high as 98%. The period of this song https://youtu.be/pzU2owPegHE?t=23s https://youtu.be/pzU2owPegHE?t=23s

jedmeyers 10y ago
And also the period of this album https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwfpcTYv7Ts&list=PL7sBCGkQNm0BfEyGIbo_hz7V8ZxKeYlMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwfpcTYv7Ts&list=PL7sBCGkQNm... 'Exile' in the title is not a coincidence.
xbmcuser 10y ago
Overall even the rich benefit from higher taxes if the middle class had more income today most of them would have been spending it on things the rich provide. Today by squeezing the middle class and lower middle class they might be making money but over long term with the middle class having lower disposable income they will be spending less so hurt the higher classes as well.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
In general, if you subsidize something you get more of it and it costs more. Of course there may be some odd current in the river which makes this untrue - an example is bulk grain subsidies in the US, which prices risk of underproduction way down. IMO, this is like "if you need 4 GB RAM , get 8 just to be safe". Indeed, in both housing and in education, we've subsidized it, there is more of it and it costs more.
- kilotaras 10y ago
  >in both housing and in education, we've subsidized it, there is more of it and it costs more. What about all of Europe that has almost free education?