Elinda wrote:
I think you confuse the liberals view of property and wealth. I consider property and wealth to be gained by hard work quite positively. On the other hand, I expect the government to insure that each of use has the ability to proper while also insuring that no one is prospering at the expense of others.
The problem is in defining the difference between those two. How does one decide if that millionaire gained his wealth by "hard work". More importantly
who gets to decide this? Hell. What is "hard work"?
I suppose this also touches on an interesting difference between liberal and conservative economic views. Conservatives tend to believe that the free market (with some minimal regulation of course) is the best way to ensure that if someone has wealth it was gained via positive actions rather than negative. It's not "hard work" that is rewarded, but providing others with goods and services which are valued collectively by those others higher than the cost to produce. If I spend 5 million dollars on equipment, raw materials, labor costs, etc, and the result of putting those things together is some volume of products that people are willing to freely choose to buy for a total of 6 million, than the 1 million profit I just made is my reward for being the guy who took the risk guessing that what I would do would be worth something to others and did it right. If what I build isn't of sufficient value to others, then my business will fail and I'll lose my investment. It's self correcting.
I think that Liberals try to over fix something that isn't really broken, and in the process actually make things broken. Is there need for regulation to prevent abuses in a free market? Absolutely. But there's a difference between saying "you can't dump raw sewage into a river" and "you must pay higher taxes so we can provide free health care to people who aren't even working for you". I think that many liberals justify what they (or their party really) do with arguments that big business makes too much money, or makes it unfairly, or pollutes too much, or whatever. But IMO those really are just excuses. And pretty thin ones at that. Take the current push by Obama and the Dems to raise taxes on income over $250k/year. That affects all people or businesses which make that much. Clearly, that flies in the face of the claim that it's just about making sure only people who've earned the wealth and property they have get to keep it. Regulations on business practices are sufficient to accomplish that. Raising taxes on everyone who makes over X dollars is absolutely just about punishing success.
I just think that if we have a choice between allowing people's free choices to decide how much money people make and having the government do so, I'll take the people any time. We just don't need a government deciding that some people "make too much money" and no amount of flawed justifications make it a good idea.