The Politics Test: #4

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Yes, I consider it a moral imperative.

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Strongly Disagree. We need to rewrite the tax system entirely.

Agreed. Reform and simplify, and reduce everybody's taxes.

This exactly.

Many people on Atlas seem to be suffering from a critical form of jealousy.

I don't know. Jealousy? It seems like basic morality to me that something is fundamentally unfair when one arbitrary group of people get all the fruits of economic growth while others are left in the cold.

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Ah you misunderstand. I think it is immoral for a few lucky individuals to amass as much wealth as possible off the backs of others. I'm not necessarily prescribing any specific policies based on that ethical observation, just noting that I find a system where such gross inequality is required as distasteful. Once you have reached a certain threshold, money ceases to bring happiness (and that isn't me being airy-fairy, being have studied it). If we look at this through the eyes of a utilitarian it becomes evident that more happiness is created when money is in the pockets of the less well-off than in the accounts of the very rich. After all it would be nice to think that the rich are the most deserving, and that race goes to the swift, and the battle goes to the strong; but reality shows us that reaching the "elite" is a darkened labyrinth: sure you need some wits and savviness to get there, but dumb luck is the most important attribute.

As I said, this is a moral observation and not a prescription. Economists far smarter than me all wreak out there own competing theories, and I try to chose the best one based on the evidence as I see it. But on some level, I have to maintain a fundamentally moral element to my views: that equality is the most worthy goal we can strive towards.

(Please note I'm not calling you, or anybody else immoral. We all have different moral focuses in our own philosophies - yours, I assume, being based on the fundamental right to private property and the right to accumulate and choose the destiny of your own capital)