What if There Were No Poor Among Us?

[_Droopy]

Consider the hypothetical situation of a society in which there were no poor. In this society, the vast majority are employed in gainful, productive work, and are, for the most part, economically independent. Taxes are quite low in this society (let us say a flat 10% rate upon all income, taxed just once at the source) and the government does not spend beyond its own means. Inflation is very low (if present at all in the sense of a general and continuous price inflation over time) and the government does not encourage the population to finance its wants and desires with debt, but to pay for what it has out of the funds it generates over time though productive economic activity ( big ticket items, of course, like homes and vehicles, will have to incur some long term debt). Interest rates are set by the market, and reflect the actual price of money within various financial markets.

Savings, risk, investment, and entrepreneurship are valued, celebrated, instead of resented, and are encouraged within this society as the key to prosperity, economic security, and the abolition of poverty. It is a dynamic, creative, growth oriented economy. More than enough jobs are always available to take up any who become pore through job loss, or because of entrance into the community with few skills or experience.

Individuals in the private sector hire, train, and employ essentially all who can work. Low taxes, minimal and rationally administered regulation, and the absence of taxation of dividends, capital gains, and estates encourage and incentivize production over tax avoidance behavior and the withdrawing of earned income out of a hostile business environment.

Crony capitalism does not exist in this society. Unions do not exist. Wages and prices represent their actual market values. The market (the general population of this society) determines, through their choices to buy or withhold purchase of various goods and services, which goods and services are produced, in what quantity and at what price.

In this society, due to low tax rates and the incentivization of productive work, government at all levels is overflowing with the funds needed to provide welfare support to those who cannot work, or who are out of work temporarily, and a fair level of living standard. Being righteous folks, there is little if any waste, fraud, or abuse of the tax revenues. It is judiciously used and overhead is kept minimal (there is no massive featherbedding and padding of employment or salary within government welfare agencies as in all present secular systems).

Due to the overwhelmingly free, unhampered, growing economy (and hence, tax base), the poor who cannot work are taken care of, the temporarily poor are taken care of while they find a new job in an expanding economy, and poverty qua poverty disappears. The reason is that the vast majority of the poor are no longer poor. They are self sufficient and economically sound.

Now, here is the question: if poverty could be abolished in this manner, under these economic conditions, would this be preferable, or not preferable, to a socialist system in which the central focus was on, not necessarily making the poor that much less poor, but on making them equal in their claim on the available resources and wealth of the society?

In other words, is economic equality as an ideal and societal goal of more importance than the actual abolition of poverty? Is equality of income distribution of greater importance, in the overall scheme of things, than the creation of wealth by the poor themselves and the addition of that wealth to, not only their own temporal condition, but to the net wealth of the entire society?

If it were possible to abolish poverty from the human condition utilizing either a free market capitalist economic order, or a socialist economic order, which would be preferred, assuming, for all intents and purposes, the same outcome?

Why?

[_emilysmith]

Any system is fine so long as there is a way to combat corruption. So far, all systems have proven to be equally corruptible.

[_Analytics]

Now, here is the question: if poverty could be abolished in this manner, under these economic conditions, would this be preferable, or not preferable, to a socialist system in which the central focus was on, not necessarily making the poor that much less poor, but on making them equal in their claim on the available resources and wealth of the society?

In other words, which utopia do you like best: that of Sir Thomas Moore, Karl Marx, Joseph Smith, or Droopy? I like Moore's the best, because it was th most creative, and the most realistic.

[_Droopy]

Now, here is the question: if poverty could be abolished in this manner, under these economic conditions, would this be preferable, or not preferable, to a socialist system in which the central focus was on, not necessarily making the poor that much less poor, but on making them equal in their claim on the available resources and wealth of the society?

In other words, which utopia do you like best: that of Sir Thomas Moore, Karl Marx, Joseph Smith, or Droopy? I like Moore's the best, because it was th most creative, and the most realistic.

Are you going to engage my points and questions?

[_Droopy]

Any system is fine so long as there is a way to combat corruption.

Nazism?

[_UnicornMan]

I think this is your question:

"Is it better to eliminate poverty, or equalize wealth?"

I think it's best to eliminate poverty. Equlization of wealth is great -- provided it's not forced by the society on the wealthy. This kind of voluntary wealth-equalization will only happen if the society has strong values of charity, with the super-heros of the society being those who are extremely charitable.

[_Analytics]

Are you going to engage my points and questions?

It's hard to figure out how to engage this. For many reasons, I just don't believe that the libertarian economy you envision would produce the results you expect it would. On the other side of the coin, you fundamentally don't understand what thoughtful folks on the left believe, much less why they believe it.

[_moksha]

In other words, which utopia do you like best: that of Sir Thomas Moore, Karl Marx, Joseph Smith, or Droopy? I like Moore's the best, because it was th most creative, and the most realistic.

I would choose the Joseph Smith variety, although Droopopia would have much to offer if you like both okra and the white board scribblings of Glenn Beck.

[_Droopy]

It's hard to figure out how to engage this. For many reasons, I just don't believe that the libertarian economy you envision would produce the results you expect it would.

Then I'm sure you can adduce a coherent argument showing why I should believe this to be the case.

On the other side of the coin, you fundamentally don't understand what thoughtful folks on the left believe, much less why they believe it.

Hmm...and after over a quarter of a century thinking, reflecting, studying, and reading on what the Left believes, much of it from primary sources on the Left , I thought I was pretty knowledgeable on the matter. Of course, from within a certain intellectual/psychological/sociocultural template and milieu, what one believes, or believes one believes, may appear quite different to someone else outside that intellectual/psychological/sociocultural framework.

In point of fact, I think I and other conservatives/libertarians have a better grasp on what leftists actually believe then perhaps they do. This is part of the "nature of the beast," so to speak.

There is a vast gulf between the moral,philosophical, and psychological realist mentality that informs conservative/classical liberal thought, and the kind of mind that reposes in utopian dreaming and romantic, idealistic academic theorizing.

Given the very real history of the 20th century, we have a substantial record of what leftist ideas have actually wrought whenever they are applied, to the degree they are applied, which allows us a clear glimpse into the realm you mention - what leftists actually believe and why they believe them, as they have, as a body, never taken responsibility for the terrible failures of their ideas across a broad spectrum of the human condition, nor have they ever retreated from the realm of romantic, idealistic abstract theorizing about abstract, idealized human types living in an abstract, idealized future utopia that is at the root of those very failures.

Their ideas, in other words, have had a consistent and unambiguous record of consequences. However, even when they recognize those consequences as bad and undesirable, they will not and have not ever retreated from the ideas that generated those consequences. Indeed,they have tended to desire to intensify the application of those same ideas again and again, failure after failure, with the idea that if their abstract utopian theories of the perfectibility of humanity are just applied fully, properly, and by the right people, they will finally, in the fullness of time, "work."

The fascinating phenomena of "anti-anti-communism" of the Cold War era is a case in point. Many leftists, liberals, and social democrats knew they didn't like or approve of the gulags, the psychiatric hospitals, the liquidations, mass murders, militarism, and totalitarian repression of the actually existing socialist world. At the same time, most of them could never bring themselves to clearly reevaluate the ideas that encouraged and generated those very conditions, and attracted to and created within it the very people, like Lenin and Stalin, who always end as leaders holding power within the systems those ideas produce.

What do leftists really believe? Well you should ask.

[_Buffalo]

No poor implies no rich. You cannot have an upper class without an underclass, just as you cannot have a dominant predator species without a whole chain of organisms lower on the food chain to support them.