Saturday, May 09, 2015

Misunderstanding Economics

Regarding the former Labour leader, in the wake of this past week's British election:
The cause of the Labour downfall is simple enough. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, proves to be a hard-line Leftist, believing that the state should control the individual and the individual should have no control over the state. Resenting capitalism, he wants to control markets and punish through taxation everyone who has benefitted from markets.
“Benefitted” from markets? Who doesn’t “benefit” from markets? The author should have said “been successful”.  Was that a poor choice of words or a look into the author's true beliefs?

2 comments:

Ellen K said...

Pair this story to your story on Prop 13 in California and anyone who is not totally in denial can see what way this could go.

maxutils said...

The labor parties of other countries are deeply steeped in Markian philosophy -- and if you read Marx, it sounds perfectly logical -- in fact more so than Smith. So. no it isn't a misstatement, they actually believe it. The problem is if you actually employ it, it winds up being 'fair' in the sense that every one gets the same, but there is absolutely no incentive to grow, and lots of incentive to cheat. So, you get unequal shre of a smaller pie, instead of a varied share of a largerr pie, which is usually more …so, as W. once noted, "We've got to make the pie higher!"