Who divides society? (about economic redistribution philosophies)
I took a short walk around the neighbourhood of the main library of Edinburgh university this afternoon.
It kept raining and I bought something to eat at the Chinese supermarket so that I could enjoy eating while walking.
But I could not enjoy either walking nor eating because I had to hold the umbrella and the plastic bag.
How foolish I was..
Sometimes I feel that the real wisdom is nothing but exactly reading the real position where I am and exactly knowing what is the most important thing now.
In the world, there are so many problems that await to be sorted out. But everybody knows that we can't afford to solve all the problems no matter how much time is given, let alone at once.
While walking back to the library, I listened to the Question Time on BBC. The main issue today was, as I expected, the controversial pension program that May proposed in her Conservative Manifesto. As always, the labour party was attacking the government, agitating the anxiety of the audience who fear that they might lose the benefits that they are enjoying at the moment because of the cold-blooded Conservative.
Always socialists do that way.
.
.
.
I often feel that socialism is somewhat like what South Koreans call "Flower snake".
It sounds like justice, and its supporters claim justice all the time, but actually they ruin what people have already been enjoying up to now.
Some British people do not seem to remember or understand why the Conservative had to employ austerity policies for the last seven years. Of course, even if Labour did not insist the budget cut on welfare system is unacceptable, everyone knows that it is not pleasant to see withdrawal or reduction in governmental support for their lives.
Then why did George Osborne have to deliver such painful austerity policies instead of continuing the indiscriminate distribution of welfare service of the past Labour government?
Because there was no money.
Because Labour failed in managing the financial state.
The only thing Labour did was to keep growing state deficit to an enormous level.
The essence of what socialists say is that any social problems can be solved by governmental support or intervention.
The result is an increase in national deficit or if worse, moratorium.
A more malignant result of this is that people are addicted to the governmental power, the mightiness of the big government.
Economy is depressed? OK, hire more young people as civil servants!
Unless one does not have the brain, he or she must ask with what money government would support its citizens.
That is, how would government bring the money that is needed to solve the problem?
Socialists (and Keynesian economists also) argue that government needs to ...
1) raise the tax rate (especially targeting the richest groups)
2) cut other budgets
3) reduce the leakage in budget
4) expect the rise of budget from an economic upturn that would result from the consumption of the people who would receive the benefits from the governmental support.
5) just sell more national bonds (in other words, quantity easing)
6) just print more money!
Most of those solutions above are significantly lacking not only in economic perspectives but also in understanding of social mechanism and human behaviour.
1) Even if you raise the tax rate, this does not mean that you can expect the rise in tax revenue. Rather, there is a higher chance of decrease in tax revenue, because higher tax rate lowers economic motivation of both consumers and producers.
If you focus on the richest groups to collect tax, then the situation is very likely to get worse, because they are mostly business owners or investors, who are the economic source from which the currency in the market flows.
If those richest groups become reluctant to open their wallets or to invest their surplus capital, the domestic economy becomes frozen. Most likely they will send or invest their money abroad, or even may migrate.
This is why such punitive tax policies always end up in only doing good things to other countries with lower tax rate.
For instance, if Scottish government raises corporate tax rate than many business owners get tempted to move their financial sources to England, and vice versa. This is indeed why even such a socialist government of SNP does not raise corporate tax rate even when they can.
If you considered of migration, you will definitely know how easy rich people can migrate. They are welcomed by any countries. But if you are poor, no country welcomes you.
If your country targets the richest groups for tax raise, then it means your country has decided to be good to other countries at the cost of ruining its own domestic economy.
In summary, whichever way you try to raise tax, the situation gets worse than now.
The ideal tax policy might be flat tax like Russian one (although countries like Russia are not benefited from their own tax policies because their legal systems are generally problematic in translucency and stability and their diplomacy hinders foreign trade and investment).
I believe that flat tax system is much more fair and efficient tax system.
It is philosophically fair in terms of classical liberalism which objects to the unrealistic division of economic freedom and political freedom by the reductionist scheme of modern 'social liberalism' (or fashionably used to be called Fabianism in British history but more exactly should be called 'liberal socialism', because if economic freedom is infringed, it is least likely that political freedom is protected).
.
.
.
Furthermore, the punitive tax system targeting the richest has more fundamental problems regarding the collectivistic ideology on which it is based.
It divides society into those who are rich and those who are poor.
But nobody can legitimately draw the line that can divide them in society.
We should ask who divides society?
The current issue of identity politics is also related to such social division projects by socialism, which I would call social tendencies of collectivism.
...
We should respect each other no matter who they are.
Do we not feel satisfied with this simple and seemingly universal principle, which, yet, has been taken for granted only in the last century and only in certain societies in human history?
However, the reality is that people always try to divide you and us.
At the fundamental level, socialism is not different from nationalism, considering that both are based on collectivism, or tribalism or whatever.
.
.
.
And a more fundamental question about the economic redistribution philosophy ...
Is it effective either economically and morally to penalise the richest by progressive tax that socialists claim to be as sharp as possible?
Is it because of the social discomfort that would be caused by the gap between the rich and poor?
Socialists argue that government should intervene to tackle this inequality.
But the historical reality is closer to that social discomfort is only exacerbated by economic poverty that is caused by extinction of economic energy which usually results from abandoned rule of law or suppressed markets.
Money, if you let it go freely, always flows from the richer to the poorer, like water flowing from higher to lower, and likewise people go from poorer regions to richer regions for making more money.
Even without governmental efforts who try to do something to 'redistribute' wealth, it is the nature of money that tends to disperse throughout society wherever it can go.
(Socialists resist global trades, preferring block markets, like British socialists who want to remain in the protected EU market. South Korean socialists, who value self-sufficient economy within the Korean peninsular more than profits which economic trade is all about for ordinary business people, are exceptional, maybe because they are national socialists.)
.
.
.
However, at an even deeper level, a still more fundamental question arises ..
In the first place, what do you think the richest would do with their money?
Would they want to hide and lock the money in a safe?
Or would they want to spend the money to be loved by people or to get reputation from society?
Modern history of capitalist societies tells that the richest always chose the latter.
Because humans are the animals that always wants to be loved and to be accepted.
They always try to reach other humans.
This is the human nature.
If you live on an island where there is only you living and you have enormous amounts of cash and luxurious hotels and cars ...
Meaningless.
Everybody knows that.
Unlike socialist governments and socialist parties, the market and the classical liberalism allow the richest to freely spend their money, not having to hide their money or leave their countries.
The old 19th century prescriptive social planning system called socialism may work in a small community that consists of kind and decent people, like the one experimented by Robert Owen.
I know how it works because I experienced that. The socialists that I have met in my life were largely good and reliable people.
A sad thing, however, is that in politics and economics at the governmental level, such a collectivist ideology unexceptionally ruins the personalities of people and extinguishes the economic energy of the country, both of which take place always at the same time.
This is not because collectivism is a bad thing but because humans have not yet possessed a political system that could check collectivistic rashes in real politics.
(I am watching a country that is being overwhelmed by a collectivistic rash in the full scale now.. sadly which is South Korea, the country that has elegantly insisted that her democracy is one of the most advanced ones in Asian countries ... although in my view she had gotten in that direction well before this decade.)
This may be a sad story that implies humans cannot win their own weakness or evilness.
Religions teach us, therefore, to accept our limitations (sometimes as sins).
Anyway, any project for social control cannot reprogram human brains. It only can brainwash them for a limited period, which can be as long as 500 years in certain nations though, as can be seen in the history of Joseon dynasty.)
.
.
.
Back to the socialist argument,
Anyway, 2) and 4) are pointless or unrealistic for that purpose,
3) may be helpful, as long as the main cause of the leakage (big government) is tackled,
and 5) and 6) are severely destructive as the 1).
In the future when I have time, I'd like to discuss why.
At Keio University (Mita campus) - My memory of Tokyo trip
It kept raining and I bought something to eat at the Chinese supermarket so that I could enjoy eating while walking.
But I could not enjoy either walking nor eating because I had to hold the umbrella and the plastic bag.
How foolish I was..
Sometimes I feel that the real wisdom is nothing but exactly reading the real position where I am and exactly knowing what is the most important thing now.
In the world, there are so many problems that await to be sorted out. But everybody knows that we can't afford to solve all the problems no matter how much time is given, let alone at once.
While walking back to the library, I listened to the Question Time on BBC. The main issue today was, as I expected, the controversial pension program that May proposed in her Conservative Manifesto. As always, the labour party was attacking the government, agitating the anxiety of the audience who fear that they might lose the benefits that they are enjoying at the moment because of the cold-blooded Conservative.
Always socialists do that way.
.
.
.
I often feel that socialism is somewhat like what South Koreans call "Flower snake".
It sounds like justice, and its supporters claim justice all the time, but actually they ruin what people have already been enjoying up to now.
Some British people do not seem to remember or understand why the Conservative had to employ austerity policies for the last seven years. Of course, even if Labour did not insist the budget cut on welfare system is unacceptable, everyone knows that it is not pleasant to see withdrawal or reduction in governmental support for their lives.
Then why did George Osborne have to deliver such painful austerity policies instead of continuing the indiscriminate distribution of welfare service of the past Labour government?
Because there was no money.
Because Labour failed in managing the financial state.
The only thing Labour did was to keep growing state deficit to an enormous level.
The essence of what socialists say is that any social problems can be solved by governmental support or intervention.
The result is an increase in national deficit or if worse, moratorium.
A more malignant result of this is that people are addicted to the governmental power, the mightiness of the big government.
Economy is depressed? OK, hire more young people as civil servants!
Unless one does not have the brain, he or she must ask with what money government would support its citizens.
That is, how would government bring the money that is needed to solve the problem?
Socialists (and Keynesian economists also) argue that government needs to ...
1) raise the tax rate (especially targeting the richest groups)
2) cut other budgets
3) reduce the leakage in budget
4) expect the rise of budget from an economic upturn that would result from the consumption of the people who would receive the benefits from the governmental support.
5) just sell more national bonds (in other words, quantity easing)
6) just print more money!
Most of those solutions above are significantly lacking not only in economic perspectives but also in understanding of social mechanism and human behaviour.
1) Even if you raise the tax rate, this does not mean that you can expect the rise in tax revenue. Rather, there is a higher chance of decrease in tax revenue, because higher tax rate lowers economic motivation of both consumers and producers.
If you focus on the richest groups to collect tax, then the situation is very likely to get worse, because they are mostly business owners or investors, who are the economic source from which the currency in the market flows.
If those richest groups become reluctant to open their wallets or to invest their surplus capital, the domestic economy becomes frozen. Most likely they will send or invest their money abroad, or even may migrate.
This is why such punitive tax policies always end up in only doing good things to other countries with lower tax rate.
For instance, if Scottish government raises corporate tax rate than many business owners get tempted to move their financial sources to England, and vice versa. This is indeed why even such a socialist government of SNP does not raise corporate tax rate even when they can.
If you considered of migration, you will definitely know how easy rich people can migrate. They are welcomed by any countries. But if you are poor, no country welcomes you.
If your country targets the richest groups for tax raise, then it means your country has decided to be good to other countries at the cost of ruining its own domestic economy.
In summary, whichever way you try to raise tax, the situation gets worse than now.
The ideal tax policy might be flat tax like Russian one (although countries like Russia are not benefited from their own tax policies because their legal systems are generally problematic in translucency and stability and their diplomacy hinders foreign trade and investment).
I believe that flat tax system is much more fair and efficient tax system.
It is philosophically fair in terms of classical liberalism which objects to the unrealistic division of economic freedom and political freedom by the reductionist scheme of modern 'social liberalism' (or fashionably used to be called Fabianism in British history but more exactly should be called 'liberal socialism', because if economic freedom is infringed, it is least likely that political freedom is protected).
.
.
.
Furthermore, the punitive tax system targeting the richest has more fundamental problems regarding the collectivistic ideology on which it is based.
It divides society into those who are rich and those who are poor.
But nobody can legitimately draw the line that can divide them in society.
We should ask who divides society?
The current issue of identity politics is also related to such social division projects by socialism, which I would call social tendencies of collectivism.
...
We should respect each other no matter who they are.
Do we not feel satisfied with this simple and seemingly universal principle, which, yet, has been taken for granted only in the last century and only in certain societies in human history?
However, the reality is that people always try to divide you and us.
At the fundamental level, socialism is not different from nationalism, considering that both are based on collectivism, or tribalism or whatever.
.
.
.
And a more fundamental question about the economic redistribution philosophy ...
Is it effective either economically and morally to penalise the richest by progressive tax that socialists claim to be as sharp as possible?
Is it because of the social discomfort that would be caused by the gap between the rich and poor?
Socialists argue that government should intervene to tackle this inequality.
But the historical reality is closer to that social discomfort is only exacerbated by economic poverty that is caused by extinction of economic energy which usually results from abandoned rule of law or suppressed markets.
Money, if you let it go freely, always flows from the richer to the poorer, like water flowing from higher to lower, and likewise people go from poorer regions to richer regions for making more money.
Even without governmental efforts who try to do something to 'redistribute' wealth, it is the nature of money that tends to disperse throughout society wherever it can go.
(Socialists resist global trades, preferring block markets, like British socialists who want to remain in the protected EU market. South Korean socialists, who value self-sufficient economy within the Korean peninsular more than profits which economic trade is all about for ordinary business people, are exceptional, maybe because they are national socialists.)
.
.
.
However, at an even deeper level, a still more fundamental question arises ..
In the first place, what do you think the richest would do with their money?
Would they want to hide and lock the money in a safe?
Or would they want to spend the money to be loved by people or to get reputation from society?
Modern history of capitalist societies tells that the richest always chose the latter.
Because humans are the animals that always wants to be loved and to be accepted.
They always try to reach other humans.
This is the human nature.
If you live on an island where there is only you living and you have enormous amounts of cash and luxurious hotels and cars ...
Meaningless.
Everybody knows that.
Unlike socialist governments and socialist parties, the market and the classical liberalism allow the richest to freely spend their money, not having to hide their money or leave their countries.
The old 19th century prescriptive social planning system called socialism may work in a small community that consists of kind and decent people, like the one experimented by Robert Owen.
I know how it works because I experienced that. The socialists that I have met in my life were largely good and reliable people.
A sad thing, however, is that in politics and economics at the governmental level, such a collectivist ideology unexceptionally ruins the personalities of people and extinguishes the economic energy of the country, both of which take place always at the same time.
This is not because collectivism is a bad thing but because humans have not yet possessed a political system that could check collectivistic rashes in real politics.
(I am watching a country that is being overwhelmed by a collectivistic rash in the full scale now.. sadly which is South Korea, the country that has elegantly insisted that her democracy is one of the most advanced ones in Asian countries ... although in my view she had gotten in that direction well before this decade.)
This may be a sad story that implies humans cannot win their own weakness or evilness.
Religions teach us, therefore, to accept our limitations (sometimes as sins).
Anyway, any project for social control cannot reprogram human brains. It only can brainwash them for a limited period, which can be as long as 500 years in certain nations though, as can be seen in the history of Joseon dynasty.)
.
.
.
Back to the socialist argument,
Anyway, 2) and 4) are pointless or unrealistic for that purpose,
3) may be helpful, as long as the main cause of the leakage (big government) is tackled,
and 5) and 6) are severely destructive as the 1).
In the future when I have time, I'd like to discuss why.
At Keio University (Mita campus) - My memory of Tokyo trip
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