If there > > were no efficiency consequences, why not equalize incomes? The answer, > > I maintain, is that more able and hard-working people deserve more.
> I don't see why, > efficiency aside, more able and hard-working people deserve more. Being > more able and hard-working should be reward enough by itself. Lazy and > incompetent people no doubt did not consciously decide to become lazy and > incompetent, so why should they be punished for it, again if efficiency is > not a consideration? > And another response: > This is an interesting point. Suppose we carry it a little further. > > Cruel and dishonest people didn't choose to be cruel and dishonest. > Or, if they did at some point choose to be those things, they didn't > choose to be the sort of people who would make that choice. So why > should they be punished for it? Part of the answer is that people do respond to incentives in the environment. Giving people an equal share of the annual economic pie regardless of their conduct will not give them any incentive to curb their antisocial impulses. But, on the other hand, there is an argument for some degree of redistribution. There is a limit to how much people can raise their competence level in response to incentives. No one is born a blank slate. Some people have a higher potential for achievement than others, and, in the genetic lottery, some people will always be born with very limited potential. Some of these persons are obviously helpless to survive without assistance even as adults, but then there are the marginal cases--people with limited educability who will eke out a marginal existence in good times but often find themselves unable to do so in bad times. Thus some sort of balance must be struck between compassion for our fellow man and maintaining the incentives for temptation-prone people (who are often the same as the incompetent or semi-competent people) to resist temptation. The biggest problem with public aid to the poor may be that it is value neutral. Very few moral demands are made on the recipients, perhaps because morality is intimately entwined with religion, and the lawmakers and opinion shapers are generally determined to keep "church and state" rigidly separated, apparently even in countries that have legally established churches! There is also an exaggerated concern with not "imposing" moral values on welfare recipients, which is a policy guaranteed to increase abuse of taxpayer generosity. ~Alypius Skinner
